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[Saundra Hummer]

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Torture by any other name is just as vile

Andrew Sullivan
[An earlier article, but one that needs to be seen again.]
The Sunday Times September 24, 2006


Last week America’s political classes found themselves forced by the Supreme Court to confront the issue of whether the United States has legally authorised the torture of terror suspects in its prisons.
That has been the issue for five years now, ever since the Bush administration unilaterally evaded the Geneva conventions and, on the president’s executive authority, tortured several Al-Qaeda suspects in CIA custody.

It blew up when the Abu Ghraib photographs emerged, showing that torture and abuse had spread like a cancer through the ranks of the military, with hundreds of documented cases in every field of combat.

It was almost halted last December by the McCain Amendment, which the president subsequently declined to enforce. It came to a climax last week in a confusing blizzard of legislative verbiage. Both sides are still fighting over what exactly the Senate-Bush deal meant, which means that “the programme” will apparently continue.

Of course, the narrative I have just used is disputed by the president. He stated very recently: “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorised it — and I will not authorise it.”

So we are reduced to fighting over a word, “torture”. President George W Bush’s preferred terminology is “alternative interrogation techniques” or “coercive interrogation” or “harsh interrogation methods”, or simply, amazingly, his comment last Thursday that a policy of waterboarding detainees is merely a policy to “question” them.

Suddenly I am reminded of George Orwell. One essay of his, Politics and the English Language, still stands out over the decades as a rebuke to all those who deploy language to muffle meaning. One passage is particularly apposite:

“A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”

It is time to concede that in America right now the atmosphere is bad. Here is Bush defining torture in a speech he gave in June 2003: “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control.”

So what is “severe physical or mental pain or suffering”? The president does not apparently believe that strapping someone to a board, tipping them upside down and pouring water repeatedly over Cellophane wrapped over their face is severe suffering.

The CIA confirms that most suspects cannot last much more than 30 seconds of the drowning sensation. But no marks are left. So that is not “torture”.

We are then informed that almost all the “coercive interrogation techniques” used by the Bush administration are not torture. One is called “long time standing”. Basically, it entails forcing a prisoner to stay standing indefinitely, by prodding him if he tries to rest, or shackling his wrists to a bolt in a low ceiling or a railing.

At first the detainees in CIA custody were required to be so restrained for a maximum of four hours without any rest. Then a memo from Donald Rumsfeld , the defence secretary, came down the chain of command: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?”

Why indeed? It certainly sounds mild enough.

But here is a description of what it actually means in uncorrupted English: “There is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands only while being interrogated — because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down.

“It can be set up in another way — so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn’t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to deprive a person of all his strength and to force him to testify to anything at all.”

What wimp wrote that? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who documented “long time standing” as a method used by the Soviet Union in the gulag.

“Sleep deprivation” also sounds mild enough to avoid the moniker of “torture”. Here is one account of such an alternative questioning method, in which a prisoner “is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget . . . Anyone who has experienced the desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it”.

Again, which whiny liberal wrote those words?

The answer is Menachem Begin, former Israeli prime minister and a former terrorist himself. He is also describing the methods used by the Soviets in Siberia, where they imprisoned him in 1939.

We know that one prisoner in Guantanamo Bay was forced to go without sleep for 48 of 55 consecutive days and nights.

He was also manacled naked to a chair in a cell that was air-conditioned to around 50F and had cold water poured on him repeatedly, until hypothermia set in. Doctors treated him when he neared permanent physical damage.

According to the president of the United States, this is not “severe mental or physical pain or suffering”. This is an “alternative interrogation method”. This is not torture. it is “the programme”.

And so Latin words fall upon the West’s moral high ground “like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details”.

If only George Orwell were still alive. If only all of this weren’t actually true.

Click on the URL below to access article and any available links.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,29449-2371815,00.html <<<O>>>

[Saundra Hummer]

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Actor tackles emotional political role
Ailing Fox seeks stem cell funding
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/elections/bal-te.fox03nov03,0,1487880.story?coll=bal-election-headlines

From the Baltimore Sun
By
Jennifer Skalka
Sun reporter
November 3, 2006

CHEVY CHASE -- Michael J. Fox sits in a chair in a hotel room, in constant motion. Legs are crossed and uncrossed. Socks are repeatedly pulled up underneath trousers. His head moves side to side with reliable irregularity.

The movements would be arresting if not for the man behind them. He is focused. So determined to tell what he has to say.

Fox is bringing his Parkinson's disease, and a political message, to Maryland and other states where control of the U.S. Senate is in the balance: Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin.

While politicians debate whether frozen embryos should be adopted, used for research or discarded, Fox wants to change people's minds.

Federal money for embryonic stem cell research can improve life for the sick and the disabled, he told a couple of hundred people backing Democrat Benjamin L. Cardin's bid for U.S. Senate yesterday. Fox said he will stump for candidates who support such funding and fight like crazy against those who don't.

"We are who are," Fox, 45, said in a Holiday Inn ballroom with Cardin by his side. "We have what we have. We want what we want, and we have a right to seek the representation that will get it for us."

The actor has become one of the most visible figures of the campaign season by thrusting himself into an emotional debate over emerging science and its moral implications.

Fox, the star of the Back to the Future movies and the situation comedies Family Ties and Spin City, is commanding a bigger stage these days as an advocate for embryonic stem cell research, targeting states that could elect senators favorable to the science.

Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, the GOP's Senate nominee in Maryland, opposes embryonic stem cell research. He and Cardin are airing television ads on the subject. Fox is featured in Cardin's. In Steele's, his sister, Monica Turner, calls the Fox ad "deceptive, tasteless" and reveals that she has multiple sclerosis.

During an interview at the hotel before the Cardin event, Fox took the high road when asked about the Steele ad. He said he had not seen it in full.

"I don't want to get involved with any conflict with another patient," Fox said. "It just is what it is. I respect everyone's point of view. And I respect her right to express it. I really do. And more power to her. And I'm sure she's thought about it and prayed about it and done whatever process she has to do to reach the conclusion she's reached, and I fully respect that."

He had harsher words for a Steele campaign spokesman who, Fox said, called his ad in extremely poor taste.

"As far as the other goes - the campaign itself calling my ad in extremely poor taste - that leads you to conclusions about attitudes toward sick people and their symptomatology and their right to be involved in the process and their franchise to help shape government policy and the future of health and science in the country," he said. "That's strange to me. And certainly to millions of Americans."

Fox, whose Parkinson's foundation has raised about $70 million over the past five years, said he does not care about political labels. He said he would back, and has supported, members of both parties who favor embryonic stem cell research.

In Maryland yesterday, with Fox by his side, Cardin promised that if he is elected Tuesday, he will promote the research, which is opposed by some conservatives and anti-abortion candidates because it involves the destruction of a human embryo.

"I am going to be pushing that bill with all the energy I have," Cardin said to applause.

On NBC's Meet the Press, Steele said he views the destruction of an embryo as the taking of a life and that, in keeping with his anti-abortion views, can't condone it. He suggested adoption for the 400,000 or more embryos in fertility clinics across the country.

Fox said yesterday that adoption could be a fine use for some of the embryos but that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of others would remain. And embryonic stem cells can do something their adult stem cell counterparts cannot, Fox said, because they're more flexible.

Adult stem cells, research on which Steele and Bush support, are "cranky cells," Fox said.

"They already are what they are, they don't want to be anything else," he said. "When you try to get them to be something else, they don't like doing it. And when you get them to be something else, they don't want to stay that way."

Embryonic stem cells, in contrast, can become various cells in the human body. That is how the healing could start for the paralyzed, the Alzheimer's patient or the actor turned advocate who is trying to make Washington stand up and listen.

"To limit it to [adult stem cells] is like saying you can have a seat belt, but you can't have an air bag," Fox said. "We have the technology to have air bags. I'd like both. If that's OK."

Then he pauses, a wry smile spreading across his face. "Tasteless idea," he says.

jennifer.skalka@baltsun.com
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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[Saundra Hummer]

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Candidates are selling fear and anger. Don't buy them.
Using reason instead of fear to make important decisions is not an alien concept.
By Jeffrey Shaffer
from the November 03, 2006 edition
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1103/p09s02-cojs.html

PORTLAND, ORE.
I hope radio and TV transmissions don't have any effect on global warming because temperatures across the broadcasting spectrum will be heading through the roof during the final countdown to the midterm elections.

No time left for thoughtful, substantive discussions at this point. The main focus now for campaign consultants and other political professionals is to bring on the heat in all media venues. Most of the messages will be using the conventional formula: short on words, long on repetition. Keep it simple. Say it again. Over and over. Never let up.

I also hope a majority of voters are savvy enough to know that a lot of what goes out over the airwaves during the next few days is simply the concluding phase of a marketing plan. Marketing experts understand that fear and anger can be effective motivational tools. These qualities are highly prized commodities on television and radio because of their entertainment value.

I'm not being cynical. The reality of modern America is that some people truly enjoy working for political campaigns and the electronic media because both fields offer plenty of opportunities for drama, and they often reward behavior that we'd never let our children get away with.

I once heard a columnist tell a group of aspiring writers that he didn't mind when readers wrote letters to the paper complaining about his work. He explained that an editor told him angry letters were good because it meant people were reading the column and reacting to it. Not getting mail was a bad sign because it was an indication of reader apathy.

That notion has never appealed to me, which probably explains why I'll never be called to appear on any of the talking-head network shows. But I've done enough local TV segments to know what producers want from a guest. You have to be glib, decisive, and self-confident. Excitement is good, and saying something that gets the audience riled up is definitely exciting.

This isn't a new idea. Filmmakers have been tapping into it for decades. A memorable example occurs in the 1951 science- fiction classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Halfway through the movie, the alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) escapes from government custody, begins mingling among the local population, and is alarmed by the growing climate of antialien hysteria.

Soon he joins a crowd gathered around his flying saucer. A reporter, eagerly so- liciting worried comments from the onlookers, extends a microphone toward Klaatu and says, "I suppose you're just as scared as the rest of us." Trying to change the mood, Klaatu replies, "I am fearful, when I see people substituting fear for reason...." The newsman, dismayed that Klaatu is digressing into a boring monologue, cuts him off with a quick "Thank you!" and moves on to someone else.

Keep all this in mind when you enter the voting booth on Nov. 7. Don't base your choices on something you saw during a 30-second attack spot. Using reason instead of fear to make important decisions is not an alien concept.

I'm Jeffrey Shaffer, and I approve this message.

.Jeffrey Shaffer writes about media, American culture, and personal history.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links
Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

[Saundra Hummer]

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Turning the corner into madness
Robert Scheer
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Original story by Truthdig

11.03.06 - Every time I hear President Bush railing against those who would "cut and run" in Iraq instead of pursuing "victory," as he does almost daily, I think back to similar claims being made for the Vietnam debacle when I reported from Saigon in the mid-'60s. Back then, the U.S. troop presence was lower and casualties fewer than now in Iraq, but the carnage, on all sides, would escalate for the next decade, as we waited miserably for the corner to be turned.

Then, as now, calls for setting a timetable for an orderly withdrawal were rejected as emboldening our enemy to attack America. Instead of a dignified withdrawal, we plunged ever deeper into the quagmire, leaving 59,000 U.S. troops and 3.4 million Indochinese dead as tribute to our stupidity. Finally, there was nothing to do but "cut and run" in the most ignominious fashion.

With our U.S. personnel being lifted by helicopter from roofs near our embassy, it seemed like a low point for U.S. influence, and there were dire predictions of communism's global dominance -- just as there is today for the "Islamo-fascist" bogeyman the president has seized upon.

Those predictions, however, proved dead wrong. Communism did not advance as a worldwide force after our defeat in Vietnam. On the contrary, a victorious communist-run Vietnam soon went to war with the China-backed communists of Cambodia -- overthrowing Pol Pot's evil Khmer Rouge -- and with communist China itself, in a bloody border war.

Today, communist Vietnam is still battling communist China -- but now it is for shelf space in Wal-Mart and Costco. The United States, meanwhile, spending itself silly under the haplessly irresponsible President Bush, is now dependent on China both to carry its debt and contain communist North Korea's nuclear threat.

So why accept the president's shrill insistence that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster? Surely our departure would compel Iraq's neighbors in Iran, Syria and Jordan to get serious about quelling the civil war that they have abetted and which, in the absence of the U.S. occupation, would threaten to breach Iraq's borders. Why not assume, as turned out to be the case with Vietnam, that the Iraqis are best qualified to make their own history?

The astounding arrogance that underwrites Bush's smug determination to keep killing and maiming tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people is no different than that of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Both knew the war was a failure but determined to "stay the course" for a decade out of a misguided belief in protecting an image of American infallibility that was paired with shameful political motives.

Now, as in Vietnam, our arrogance has created disaster in Iraq. Our soldiers continue to kill and die, at enormous cost to the U.S. taxpayers and in international influence and moral standing, but the cause is already lost, doomed by the ignorance, lies and bad faith that launched it.

Astonishingly, considering our history and the stakes, our leaders show not the slightest interest in understanding the fierce nationalism and deep religious divisions that have marked the Mideast since long before the United States existed as a nation. And thus we have repeated the decisive folly of Vietnam, where our "experts" ignored a thousand-year history of Chinese occupation in assuming that the fierce nationalist Ho Chi Minh was a puppet of masters in Red Beijing.

This time, we are led by a false warrior who insists on playing the simpleton, ignoring his prestigious education at Andover and Yale in favor of what he presumes are the prejudices of Middle America. Or is this giving Bush, the son of a president, too much credit?

After all, we know from the various insider memoirs that Bush was unaware that Islam is roughly divided into two rival sects, Sunni and Shiite, while just last week he bizarrely announced that our Iraq policy had never been "stay the course" -- as if he was unaware of the invention of video-recording equipment that had captured him saying just that countless times.

Whatever you call it, his approach is a sham and a disaster. It is long past time to let pragmatic realpolitik find a patchwork solution that the region and Iraqis can accept, peacefully. That is the expected advice from Bush family consigliere and troubleshooter James Baker and his Iraq Study Group, which is to report soon after the election. Truly frightening during this Halloween week, though, is that Bush probably won't listen to reason, unless the voters first soundly repudiate him in next week's election.

(c) 2006, Truthdig.com

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21597 :: :: ::

[Saundra Hummer]

*******Iraq Oversight Agency Silenced
Posted on Nov 3, 2006
An obscure provision inserted at the last minute into a military authorization bill signed by President Bush has closed the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The oversight agency had repeatedly embarrassed the administration by exposing corruption, exploitation and negligence in the reconstruction effort in Iraq.

New York Times:

Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

Mr. Bowen’s office, which began operation in January 2004 to examine reconstruction money spent in Iraq, was always envisioned as a temporary organization, permitted to continue its work only as long as Congress saw fit. Some advocates for the office, in fact, have regarded its lack of a permanent bureaucracy as the key to its aggressiveness and independence.
Link: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20061103_iraq_oversight_agency_silenced/ *****

[Saundra Hummer]

A Satirical Jab: Osama Is Voting GOP
An anonymous group calling itself RCR Entertainment has produced a funny video that cleverly satirizes Bush & Co.’s assertions that Al Qaeda wants Democrats to win on Nov. 7.

http://www.truthdig.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6q780vKSfY

[Saundra Hummer]

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U.S. speeds attack plans for North Korea

By
Bill Gertz

11/03/06 -- - "Washington Times" -- -- The Pentagon has stepped up planning for attacks against North Korea's nuclear program and is bolstering nuclear forces in Asia, said defense officials familiar with the highly secret process.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the accelerated military planning includes detailed programs for striking a North Korean plutonium-reprocessing facility at Yongbyon with special operations commando raids or strikes with Tomahawk cruise missiles or other precision-guided weapons.

The effort, which had been under way for several months, was given new impetus by Pyongyang's underground nuclear test Oct. 9 and growing opposition to the nuclear program of Kim Jong-il's communist regime, especially by China and South Korea.

A Pentagon official said the Department of Defense is considering "various military options" to remove the program.

"Other than nuclear strikes, which are considered excessive, there are several options now in place. Planning has been accelerated," the official said.

A second, senior defense official privy to the effort said the Bush administration recently affirmed its commitment to both South Korea and Japan that it would use U.S. nuclear weapons to deter North Korea, now considered an unofficial nuclear weapon state.

"We will resort to whatever force levels we need to have, to defend the Republic of Korea. That nuclear deterrence is in place," said the senior official, who declined to reveal what nuclear forces are deployed in Asia.

Other officials said the forces include bombs and air-launched missiles stored at Guam, a U.S. island in the western Pacific, that could be delivered by B-52 or B-2 bombers. Nine U.S. nuclear-missile submarines regularly deploy to Asian waters from Washington state.

The officials said one military option calls for teams of Navy SEALs or other special operations commandos to conduct covert raids on Yongbyon's plutonium-reprocessing facility.

The commandos would blow up the facility to prevent further reprocessing of the spent fuel rods, which provides the material for developing nuclear weapons.

A second option calls for strikes by precision-guided Tomahawk missiles on the reprocessing plant from submarines or ships. The plan calls for simultaneous strikes from various sides to minimize any radioactive particles being carried away in the air.

Planners estimate that six Tomahawks could destroy the reprocessing plant and that it would take five to 10 years to rebuild.

Asked about the strike planning, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.S. government is seeking a "peaceful, diplomatic solution" to the threat posed by North Korea.

Regarding any military options, Mr. Whitman said, "The U.S. military is prepared and capable of carrying out all of its assigned missions." The planning does not mean that the United States will attack, only that military forces are ready to do so if President Bush orders strikes. Concerned about threats from rogue states such as North Korea, Mr. Bush called for a ballistic missile defense system, parts of which are operational.

Defense officials said a key factor in the ramped-up planning effort is China's new attitude toward North Korea. Beijing's leaders, upset that North Korea conducted the test, supported a U.S.-led United Nations' resolution.

Chinese opposition to military action had limited defense planning, the officials said. In the past, U.S. military plans required warning Beijing, a move considered likely to compromise any planned action because of the close military ties between China and North Korea.

The Bush administration regards the new level of Chinese support as a "green light" for more aggressive military planning.

U.S. officials think North Korea will conduct another underground test soon because Pyongyang is demanding to be recognized as a declared nuclear power. Both China and the U.S. gauged the test as only partially successful.

The Yongbyon plant, 32 miles from the coast and a half-mile from a river, is considered a key target because U.S. intelligence agencies suspect that it is where the plutonium fuel used in the Oct. 9 test was produced.

Defense planners also said equipment destroyed at Yongbyon would be difficult to replace once newly approved U.N. sanctions are in place. Another set of targets could be the nuclear test site near Kilchu, in northeastern North Korea. That site includes several research and testing-control facilities in the mountains -- and possibly one more tunnel where a nuclear device could be set off, the officials said.

Recent intelligence reports also provided new information about Pyongyang's uranium-enrichment program, which remains hidden in underground facilities in northern North Korea, the officials said.

The U.S. Special Operations Command has been planning raids against North Korean nuclear facilities for some time. It has conducted training for joint operations with South Korean special forces as well as unilateral U.S. operations.

U.S. Pacific Command spokesman Capt. Jeff Alderson declined to comment on military planning but said the command is continuing to shift forces to the Pacific and has four missile-defense ships deployed in Japan.

Mr. Bush said recently that any transfer of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be a "grave threat," phrasing viewed as diplomatic code for a military response. Defense officials said the military option will be used if North Korea is caught transferring nuclear arms to other states or terrorist groups.

Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc.

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

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15497.htm ***

[Saundra Hummer]

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CIA Wants to Keep Interrogation Methods Secret

The CIA has argued that allowing detainees to publicly describe interrogation techniques used against them would endanger national security.

New York Times:The Central Intelligence Agency has told a federal court that Qaeda suspects should not be permitted to describe publicly the “alternative interrogation methods” used in secret C.I.A. prisons overseas.

In papers filed in the case of Majid Khan, a Pakistani who is among 14 so-called “high-value detainees” recently transferred to the Guantnamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, Justice Department and C.I.A. officials argued that allowing Mr. Khan to disclose details of his treatment could cause “extremely grave damage to the national security.”

“Many terrorist operatives are specifically trained in counter-interrogation techniques,” says a declaration by Marilyn A. Dorn, an official at the National Clandestine Service, a part of the C.IA. “If specific alternative techniques were disclosed, it would permit terrorist organizations to adapt their training to counter the tactics that C.I.A. can employ in interrogations.”

Link: The New York Times:C.I.A. Wants Prison Tactics Secret
By
SCOTT SHANE

The Central Intelligence Agency has told a federal court that Qaeda suspects should not be permitted to describe publicly the “alternative interrogation methods” used in secret C.I.A. prisons overseas.

In papers filed in the case of Majid Khan, a Pakistani who is among 14 so-called “high-value detainees” recently transferred to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, Justice Department and C.I.A. officials argued that allowing Mr. Khan to disclose details of his treatment could cause “extremely grave damage to the national security.”

“Many terrorist operatives are specifically trained in counter-interrogation techniques,” says a declaration by Marilyn A. Dorn, an official at the National Clandestine Service, a part of the C.IA. “If specific alternative techniques were disclosed, it would permit terrorist organizations to adapt their training to counter the tactics that C.I.A. can employ in interrogations.”

The court filings, first reported by The Washington Post on its Web site Friday night, also argued that revealing the countries where the prisoners were held could undermine intelligence relationships with those governments. Such disclosures “would put our allies at risk of terrorist retaliation and betray relationships that are built on trust and are vital to our efforts against terrorism,” Ms. Dorn wrote.

Lawyers for Mr. Khan, who lived in Maryland for several years and is accused of researching how to blow up gasoline stations and poison reservoirs, have alleged that he was tortured while in American custody and falsely confessed to crimes.

Intelligence officials have acknowledged that some terrorism suspects were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation, exposure to heat and cold and a simulated drowning technique. Human rights advocates believe the methods amount to torture, which is banned by international law, but United States officials deny the charge.

Mr. Khan is represented by Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has been in touch with his wife, Rabia Khan, according to court documents.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20061104_cia_wants_to_keep_methods_secret/

Posted on Nov 4, 2006 .....

[Saundra Hummer]

~~~~~~~
"The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind."

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

~~~

"Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation."

Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: We, The Judges, 1956

~~~

"Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive."

Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) Historian and author Source: Freedom and Order, 1966

~~~~~

[Saundra Hummer]

<<<o>>>Rough Justice

Prowling Baghdad with a sidearm and a defective bulletproof-vest

By
Mike Whitney

11/05/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- On Monday, an editorial is scheduled to appear in the “Army Times” which will call for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation as Secretary of Defense. The article will run simultaneously in the “Air Force Times”, “Navy Times” and “Marine Corps Times” and will be available to every active member in the United States Military.

The editorial “Time for Rumsfeld to go” provides a brief summary of Rumsfeld’s role in engineering the greatest strategic defeat in American history. It says that the “rosy reassurances” made by the administration (like “Mission accomplished” and that the insurgency “was in its last throes”) were in stark contrast to the military’s “misgivings about the war’s planning, execution and prospects for success”.

Note: The “Army Times” has traditionally been about as critical of the government as their Soviet equivalent, Pravda. They have never publicly bashed the civilian leadership even in the worst days of the Vietnam War. This is entirely unprecedented. The military has clearly lost its faith in Rumsfeld’s ability to lead.

Rumsfeld’s inability to learn from his mistakes or follow the advice of his subordinates has caused him to underestimate the challenges of military occupation or “the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity.”

Even at this late date, Rumsfeld has no plan for establishing security and he never did. He always believed that he could bomb the Iraqis into submission and bring the nation “to heel” with America’s overwhelming firepower.

He failed and his model of military subjugation failed as well.

The editorial states:

“Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead has been compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt….It’s time to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go.”

Rumsfeld has reacted in typical fashion. He is reorganizing the Pentagon’s public relations operations to create a “rapid response unit” to address the mounting criticism of himself and his war. His actions suggest that the personal attacks on him and the conduct of the war are merely a matter of perception management which can be corrected by a competent team of PR agents.

But the war will not be won by simply revving up the propaganda-machine. Nor will Rumsfeld’s image be restored by recasting his blunders as the bold actions of a military genius.

Baghdad is surrounded. Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured and killed every day. The country is in a state of collapse. There’s only so much that one can expect from public relations makeovers. Even the best propaganda has its limits.

Surprisingly, there are signs that Rumsfeld and Co. finally grasp the seriousness of the situation in Iraq and have begun negotiations with the Sunni-backed resistance. Juan Cole (Informed Comment) cites news from Amman newspaper al-Ra’y:

“Contacts between US Officials and Armed Factions…The Iraqi government meets representatives of the Ba’ath Party and armed Resistance and calls for reconsidering the decision to dissolve the army and canceling the Deba’athification.” Iraqi elites, including former members of the Saddam regime are negotiating the terms for “reconciliation” which may include the reinstating the Iraqi military and many of the members of the Ba’athist Party to positions of political power. “Some of those who attended the meetings are from the armed resistance moving under political cover.” They are insisting that the Bush administration “reconsider the dissolution of the army” and “cancel the De’bathification Law”.

If secret negotiations are in fact going on, then that is certainly a positive development. The present conflict won’t end without communication between the warring parties and a clearly-defined political solution.

Still, it seems manifestly hypocritical for President Bush to continue blasting the Democrats as the “cut and run” party, while he’s secretly working out the details for putting Saddam’s henchmen back into power.

The reports of secret talks coincide with a glut of rumors from Jordan which suggest that high-ranking American officials have met with Iraqi Generals in Amman and are working out the details to depose Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki through a coup d’etat. In fact, Al-Ahram Weekly reported that “discussions of a coup have been underway for some time between American and Iraqi officers. One politician stated that several Iraqi leaders, who have been working closely with the Americans…are also involved in the discussions.” (“A Volte Face for Iraq, Salah Hemeid)

Is it true? Is the Bush administration so desperate that they would abandon any pretense of “establishing a democracy in the heart of the Middle East” and try to resurrect the Saddam regime?

And, how does this new information square with Cheney’s claim that, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists; we defeat them!” Was it just more empty bravado and tough-talk like, “Bring ‘em on”?

The administration appears to be wearing-down from the deluge of bad news coming out of Iraq. Last week, Bush held a live interview with right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh where Bush opined:

“I am deeply concerned about a country, the United States, leaving the Middle East. I am worried that rival forms of extremists will battle for power, creating incredible damage that will topple modern governments, and they will be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West….If they control oil resources, and pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they do so unless we abandon Israel for example, or unless we abandon our allies.”

Imagine the level of desperation that Bush must feel to finally admit the real reason for our involvement in Iraq. All the nonsense about WMD and “bringing democracy to the Iraqi people” is brushed aside in one somber statement. Bush not only concedes that the war was about oil but, also, that we may now be facing a burgeoning resistance that could cross borders and engulf the entire region in flames. Now that IS a threat to our national security.

The war has released the genie of mass-destruction and there’s a strong probability that the fighting won’t be contained within Iraq. Oddly enough, this has always been the dark-vision of the neoconservatives who espoused “creative destruction” as the organizing-principle of foreign policy. Now that their dream appears to be materializing, they’re all in full-retreat trying to distance themselves from the president.


Cowards.

Only Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are left to take the blame.
The editorial in the “Army Times” is just the beginning of a long and agonizing slide toward the political ash-heap. Many will undoubtedly say that it is inappropriate for active military to speak out against the civilian leadership in a democracy, but most will conclude that the article doesn’t go far enough. There are some people who’d like to see a convoy of tanks and armored-vehicles clanking down Pennsylvania Ave on their way to removing the corporate-interlopers from the big white house with the rot-iron gates. And there are others are who’d like to see those same tanks take a spin through the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court on their way to the Time-Warner Building where they can send Wolf Blitzer and Paula Zahn scuttling down 5th Ave with cake-makeup and mascara dripping from the terrified faces.

And, there are even those who’d like to see the Decider-in-chief packed-off to Crawford while a responsible adult like retired General Zinni takes over and extracts the ship-o-state from the Iraqi quagmire.

But that’s too much to hope for, and besides, the problem we face is much greater than Bush or Rumsfeld. The American Corporatocracy cannot be beaten by removing a few small cogs in the mighty wheel of state-power. We need a sea-change in our political life; a complete system-makeover from top to bottom.

None of the people who started this war will ever be held accountable. In fact, the cabal of militarists, think-tank sycophants, and genocidal nutbars, who operate covertly behind the scenes, are probably devising their next bloodbath already. Unless we root them out, the cancer will persist.

The best solution would be to gather the lot-of-them together, issue each one a sidearm and the standard defective bulletproof-vest, and make them prowl the warrens of Baghdad in an unarmored Humvee like our troops do everyday.

That oughta’ be fair enough.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15513.htm <<o>>

[Saundra Hummer]

<<<<O>>>>
Bush Plans Post-Election Call Up Of National Guard And Reserves

By
Brent Budowsky

11/05/06 "BuzzFlash" -- -- American commanders in Iraq have privately told the President that additional troops will be needed in Iraq to maintain the current policy.

Plans are secretly underway for a suprise new call up of National Guard and Reserves to be announced sometime after the election.

The Washington Post has now reported that planning that is now classified, being kept secret from voters and military families until the election is over, could well include what the Post calls a policy change forcing a new wave of involuntary call ups.

With violence and chaos escalating in Iraq, with Iraqi police infiltrated by murderous pro-Iranian militia, with more than 20% of the Iraqi army on leave at any given time, the fact is: American troops are doing even more of the work that Iraqis should do and more will be sent to Iraq unless the policy changes.

The American people should demand full and complete disclosure, prior to the election, of any plans for new recalls of our Guard and Reserve units.

The American people should demand full and complete disclosure, prior to the election, of any plans for policy changes that will include new waves of involuntary recalls, of our Guard and National Reserve units.

The American people should demand, prior to the election, plans for stop loss policies or any other form of involuntary or surprise troop rotation hardships, about to be imposed on those who serve in the United States Army and Marine Corps.

The American people should demand, prior to the election, the full budget cost of the Iraq war for the coming year, which is being kept secret until after the vote.

The American people should demand, prior to the election, public disclosure of a summary of the pending National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. This estimate undoubtedly descibes the major deterioration into chaos, which is driving the coming wave of involuntary calls ups being kept secret from the American people.

On Monday the Military Times will call for the firing of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in a couragous act that demonstrates the failure of the policy and the urgent need for change.

The Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Navy Times and Air Force Times are the most informed sources of information and truth about what our commanders and troops believe, in fact.

The truth is, to implement the current failed policy, without change, there will be a clear need for more Americans in uniform to serve in Iraq almost immediately. As a pure military judgment, if the policy continues unchanged, more troops will be urgently needed and more rotation abuses and involuntary call ups will be force fed to those who serve and their families.

As the Military Times publicly suggests and our commanders privately believe, there is an urgent need for a new policy that will be more successful and will not require such unacceptable abuses.


Military families and all Americans should consider this:
If the Democrats were in control of Congress, there would be public hearings and an informed discussion about upcoming policy changes regarding involuntary recalls and rotation abuses.

If Democrats were in control of Congress, national intelligence officials would be called to public hearings, and Americans would have a clear and honest understanding of the failures of the policy, and the destructive implications for those who serve.

If the Democrats were in control of Congress, the President, Congress and both parties would sit down and the policy would change.

It is shameful and wrong to have these abuses of troop rotations and these endless policy changes of involuntary recalls which are kept secret from the people, and forced by the failures of the policy.

It is time for the practices of secrecy and deceit to end. They violate the basic notion of American democracy, they violate the most basic rules of common sense, they violate the trust of our troops, their families and the American people.


We should demand full and immediate public disclosure.
We should demand full accounting of what force structures and budgets our military will need and work on a bipartisan basis to meet those needs of the Army, Marine Corps, Guard and Reserves with no further abuses of rotations and recalls.

We should end permanently these constant abuses that have done so much damage to the mission and to those who serve with such bravery and honor, and deserve better from our government.

The truth should be disclosed before the election. The coverup of coming recalls must end.

A Nation of informed voters would then have the chance to elect a Congress in the election, to bring about change after the election.
<o>
Brent Budowsky served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management. He can be reached at brentbbi@webtv.net <<<o>>>

[Saundra Hummer]

<<<o>>>
Saddam verdict date 'rigged' for Bush

Sunday November 5, 2006
Saddam Hussein's defence team has urged a delay of his possible death sentence and said the ousted Iraqi leader believed today's expected verdict was timed to boost President George Bush before US mid-term elections.

Saddam's lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi repeated warnings that a death sentence against his client - which would come before Tuesday's US Congressional elections at a time when Bush faces mounting criticism over the Iraq war - would plunge the region into wider bloodshed.

"We have requested at least a two-month adjournment to allow us to complete our presentations in the case in which our defence rights have been violated and in which our clients have been denied full legal defence," he said. US officials deny that Washington has any say over the timing of the verdict or the court's decisions, saying the American role was limited to logistics and security.

"This court is a creature of the US military occupation, and the Iraqi court is just a tool and rubber stamp of the invaders," insisted Dulaimi.

"The trial of the president should not proceed this way in a climate of mounting political pressure for a quick conviction that demolishes the trial's impartiality," he said.

The credibility of the trial had been tarnished by delays, the murder of defence counsel, courtroom chaos and political interference and court bias against the defence, he added.

"During all these months, the court has deliberately sought to limit our access and ability to defend the president ... this means that justice has not been done," he said.

Saddam, 69, and seven co-accused have been charged with crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shi'ite villagers after an attempt on Saddam's life in the town of Dujail in 1982.

Michael Scharf, a law professor who has trained judges and prosecutors in the Dujail case, said the trial, despite flaws, is one of the most important war crimes proceedings since the Nuremberg trials against top Nazis at the end of World War II.

Dulaimi said the verdict was timed to boost President George W Bush before US mid-term elections on November 7 and urged a delay.

Proceedings in the heavily fortified Baghdad courtroom have taken place against a backdrop of sectarian violence. Defence counsel, dominated by Saddam's fellow Sunnis, blamed Shi'ite gunmen for their colleagues' deaths. The first chief judge, a Kurd, resigned to protest government meddling.

Far from being a catharsis for Iraqis scarred by Saddam's rule, the trial, many feel, has deepened animosities between communities. Some legal experts say it should have been held in a third country. Dulaimi has warned that a death sentence against Saddam, held in a US-run prison, would plunge Iraq into full-scale civil war.

Security in the Green Zone, the courtroom's venue, has been tightened ahead of the verdict, which officials say should be announced today. The Defence Ministry said the army had cancelled all leave and put troops on alert.

As Bush faces mounting criticism over the war, a guilty verdict two days ahead of tight US Congressional polls could be a vindication of his policy to overthrow Saddam.

In a recent briefing, a US official close to the court said the trial against Saddam was historically more significant than those against former strongmen such as Slobodan Milosevic.

REUTERS

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

War Criminals, Beware:
[Go on-site to view this story click on the following link.]

On November 14 a group of lawyers and other experts will come before the German federal prosecutor and ask him to open a criminal investigation targeting Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and other key Bush Administration figures for war crimes. Link:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15516.htm
<<o>>

[Saundra Hummer]

<<<o>>>
After President Meets Reporters, Sullivan
-- Once a Bush Backer --
Now Suggests He May Have 'Lost His Mind'

By E&P Staff

Published: November 01, 2006 10:00 PM ET

NEW YORK In a move that no doubt sent a shiver through several candidates in his own party, President Bush, in a special interview with wire service reporters in the White House, today guaranteed a job for his Pentagon chief for two more years, adding that both Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney "are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them."

But it wasn't only endangered Republicans who have been calling for Rumsfeld's ouster who may have blanched. Andrew Sullivan, the conservative writer who was once a key media supporter for the Iraq war, denounced the latest Bush statement on CNN on Wednesday night, stating that the president is so delusional, "This is not an election anymore, it's an intervention."

Sullivan said the president was "so in denial," comparing the Rumsfeld endorsement to applauding the job FEMA's Michael Brown did on Katrina: "It's unhinged. It suggests this man has lost his mind. No one objectively could look at the way this war has been conducted, whether you were for it, as I was, or against it, and say that it has been done well. It's a disaster.

"For him to say it's a fantastic job suggests the president has lost it, I'm sorry, there's no other way to say it.....These people must be held accountable." He added that today, Richard Perle, a leading neocon and Iraq war backer, had today called the administration "dysfunctional."

Rep. John Boehner, the second-ranking Republican in the House, said, also on CNN: "Let’s not blame what’s happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld. But the fact is, the generals on the ground are in charge, and he works closely with them and the president."

E&P Staff

Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003347326

© 2006 VNU eMedia Inc. All rights reserved.
Arianna Huffington
11.05.2006

Haggard and the White House: Both Living in Denial
READ MORE: New York Times, 2008, Investigations, Global Warming, George W. Bush, Iraq, Dick Cheney, 2006, Evolution, Mark Foley
Let's face it: the Bush administration is sick. The fall of Ted Haggard is just the latest manifestation of the central disease of President Bush and his cohorts: the pathological refusal to accept reality, and the delusion that reality can be changed by rhetoric.

As Andrew Sullivan said last week on CNN, "this is not an election anymore, it's an intervention."

But while it's the administration that's sick, it's the whole country that's suffering.

How many more examples of this disease do we need? The insurgency is in its "last throes," we've "turned the corner" in Iraq, gutting Social Security would "save" it, global warming doesn't exist, evolution is just "a theory," Rumsfeld and Cheney are "doing a fantastic job" etc., etc., etc.

Mark Foley and Ted Haggard are textbook examples of how the relentless denial of reality perverts judgment and rots the soul. Same with the Bushies.

Was Ted Haggard's absurd claim this week that, yes, he saw Mike Jones, but only for massages and that, yes, he bought meth from Jones but never used it, really that different from Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld continuing to claim we're winning in Iraq?

That both the Reverend's and the administration's claims were made with the expectation that the public would buy them shows what the chronic refusal to acknowledge reality does to one's judgment.

I have little doubt that Haggard's homophobia was real (seen here in a particularly creepy clip), and that his desire to not be gay was real too. But facts are stubborn things. Instead of accepting those facts, Haggard chose to deny them, suppress them, and attack those who exposed them.

Sound like a familiar M.O.? Just before the Haggard hit the fan, the New York Times broke the story about a classified briefing that included a PowerPoint slide, prepared by U.S. Central Command, showing that Iraq was edging closer to "chaos." It's not like that's something the entire world didn't already know. But what was Rumsfeld's response? To start an investigation into who leaked the document.

Doesn't the public have the right to know how close Iraq is to chaos? If Rumsfeld were summoned to Capitol Hill and asked if Iraq were closer or farther to chaos than a year ago, would he lie? I guess we have to assume he would, since, to Rumsfeld, to tell the truth would be giving away "classified" information.

But the larger point is this: it ultimately doesn't matter if Rummy would fess up or not, because facts are facts. That Iraq is in chaos is a fact, and no amount of denying or spinning will change that any more than Ted Haggard's gay bashing will magically make him into a heterosexual.

The refusal by the Bush administration, its supporters in Congress and its "spiritual advisers" to acknowledge reality is sick -- and potentially lethal to the well-being of our country. But it's clear they're not going to get better, because to do so would require they acknowledge reality enough to know they're sick in the first place. And they're not going to do that. They actually believe there's an alternative to the "reality-based world," and that they live in it.

Yesterday, the New Life church fired Ted Haggard as its pastor because they felt it was "proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct."

Those darn facts again, coming home to roost.

The country can't rid itself of Bush until 2008, but on Tuesday it can begin to get rid of this sickness.

The mask is off of the Bush administration and their rubber stamp congress. Their lies, deceit, smears and criminal behavior are too massive to cover over. The only question that remains is whether the Republican expertise in voter fraud and intimidation can once again rob the American voters of their most precious right.

Go on-site to access the numerous links:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/haggard-and-the-white-hou_b_33324.html <<o>>

[Saundra Hummer]

............
American Progress Action Report

Few people will miss the 109th Congress. Rolling Stone called it the "worst Congress ever." Just 16 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, the legislative body's lowest approval rating in 14 years. "The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," notes constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley. Congress's conservative leadership has systematically committed each of the seven deadly sins (gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth, envy, and hubris) through its legislative inaction, culture of corruption, and pay-to-play system. But most importantly, this Congress has put the protection of its own power over the best interests of the American public. If "this band of brigands in the 109th represented a major corporation, that company would be bankrupt, the shareholders would be left to clean up the mess a la Enron and WorldCom, and the executives would be facing prison. But instead of an endless parade of deserved perp walks, many of these opportunists and enablers will be re-elected," writes Michael McCord of the Portsmouth Herald. Be sure to vote on Tuesday and help wipe away Congress's sins.

GLUTTONS OF GOLFING, PROSTITUTES, EXPENSIVE MEALS: The 109th Congress will be remembered more for its scandals than for any legislative accomplishments. Half of all Americans believe that most members of Congress are corrupt. On Friday, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) resigned from Congress after pleading guilty last month in the Jack Abramoff investigation, which has become the symbol of the 109th Congress's gluttony. The Washington Post called it the "biggest corruption scandal to infect Congress in a generation." In addition to Ney, five other congressional staffers and members of the Bush administration have pleaded guilty to giving legislative favors in exchange for perks from Abramoff, including golf junkets, foreign trips, sporting event tickets, and expensive meals. At least half a dozen other House and Senate members -- such as Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) -- have not yet been convicted in the Abramoff investigation, but their past ties to the lobbyist have been haunting their current re-election campaigns. In March, former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison -- the longest sentence ever given to a member of Congress -- for accepting $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for lucrative defense contracts. Two of the federal contractors charged in that scandal admitted to arranging for a prostitute for the congressman, in addition to throwing poker parties with prostitutes that high-ranking CIA officials and lawmakers possibly attended. FBI documents also allege Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) accepted bribes to help iGate, a small technology company, "win contracts with federal agencies and with businesses and governments in West Africa." Overall, "Mr. Jefferson and his family received more than $400,000 from iGate."

FOLEY SCANDAL LUST: Five conservative House members now find their re-election in jeopardy because of their failure to take appropriate action in the Mark Foley scandal. The former Republican congressman from Florida used his position of power to repeatedly send predatory, sexually explicit emails, and text messages to underage pages. At least 11 House members and staff, all Republicans, knew of the inappropriate emails sent by Foley to a page in 2005. But as ABC News reported, "Foley's obsession with 16- and 17-year-old male pages has been known to Republicans on Capitol Hill for at least five years, but, other than issue a warning, little else seems to have been done about the congressman." The Foley case "is nauseating, but the attitude of the House leadership is far worse," wrote the Winston-Salem Journal. To the American public, the Foley scandal clearly showed that the conservative leadership of the 109th Congress has been more intent on protecting its power than on representing the best interests of the American public. Seventy-nine percent of Americans believe that the House leadership was "more concerned about their political standing than about the safety of teenage Congressional pages."

CORPORATE AVARICE: Large corporations and special interests may actually miss the 109th Congress. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who pledged to "lead the effort to bring about the kind of reforms the American people are expecting from Congress," has "raised campaign contributions at a rate of about $10,000 a day since February, surpassing the pace set by former Representative Tom DeLay." His biggest donors have included the political action committees of lobbying firms, drug and cigarette makers, banks, health insurers, oil companies, and military contractors. In return, Boehner and other members of the conservative leadership in the House and the Senate have been kind to these special interests, often at the expense of the American public. In Aug. 2005, Bush signed into law an energy bill that lavished $14.5 billion in tax breaks on energy firms, nearly 60 percent of which went to "oil, natural gas, coal, electric utilities and nuclear power." The bill was largely written by a group of representatives from utility companies and the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries convened by Vice President Cheney in 2001. Their recommendations were often incorporated "word for word." Also in 2005, Bush signed into law a bankruptcy bill that made it more difficult for average Americans suffering from financial misfortune to declare bankruptcy. The credit card industry, which took in $30 billion in profits in 2004 and doled out more than $7.8 million to candidates in the 2004 election cycle, lobbied relentlessly for the bill. Congress allowed the Bush administration to hand out nearly $50 billion in Iraq contracts with "little or no oversight" to companies that were strong Republican donors. Similarly, the House Committee on Government Reform found that 19 federal contracts worth $8.75 billion for Katrina reconstruction have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement." Just 30 percent of all the contracts were awarded with full and open competition; many were doled out to companies with ties to the Bush administration or federal lawmakers.

THE WRATH OF A CONGRESSMAN SCORNED: Instead of repenting for its sins, the 109th Congress has fiercely gone after its critics and attacked any challengers. Ney has blamed his troubles on the Justice Department, the media, and liberal groups, charging that they have "savaged" him and "engaged in a coordinated smear campaign." The right wing, hoping to cover up the conservative leadership's role in concealing the Foley scandal, blamed America's policies of "tolerance and diversity." Hastert simply blamed his staff. More perniciously, the conservative leadership has used its position of power to block congressional investigations. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) -- whose official duty is "to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States" -- has repeatedly reneged on his promise to investigate Iraq pre-war intelligence. When the House Intelligence Committee released its report on Cunningham's ties to government officials, chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) chastised ranking member Jane Harman (D-CA), calling the release "disturbing and beyond the pale." Shortly thereafter, Hoekstra suspended a Democratic committee staff member over his alleged release of a National Intelligence Estimate, which Harman noted was in "direct response to my decision to release the 5-page unclassified Summary of the Cunningham Report by the Special Counsel."

SLOTH 'BY DESIGN': The 109th Congress has arguably done less than the "Do-Nothing Congress" of 1948. Congressional analysts Thomas Mann of Brookings and Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute wrote recently, "[E]ven those of us with strong stomachs are getting indigestion from the farcical end of the 109th Congress. ... With few accomplishments and an overloaded agenda, it is set to finish its tenure with the fewest number of days in session in our lifetimes, falling well below 100 days this year." The inaction has been by design. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) "decided to abandon any efforts at bipartisanship in favor of using his chamber to hold a series of highly partisan, mostly symbolic votes on conservative causes, including amendments banning gay marriage and flag burning, and fully repealing the estate tax." Congress adjourned for the election season passing just two of the 11 required spending bills. In March 2005, Bush, DeLay, and Frist used the tragic case of Terry Schiavo as an opportunity for political grandstanding. A memo distributed by Senate leadership to right-wing members called Schiavo "a great political issue" and urged senators to talk about her because "the pro-life base will be excited." The legislative branch has also stumbled in its efforts to pass much-debated bills onlobbying reform, immigration, offshore oil drilling, minimum wage, and the estate tax.

ENVY OF ABSOLUTE POWER: The conservative leadership of the 109th Congress wanted absolute power and set up a complicated pay-to-play system to obtain and retain it. Most emblematic of this system was the K Street Strategy -- set up by DeLay in 1995 -- which created the culture of corruption in which players like Abramoff and Cunningham flourished. DeLay explicitly stated he would operate by "the old adage of punish your enemies and reward your friends." (To gain influence over legislation, trade associations and corporate lobbyists were ordered to do three things: 1) refuse to hire Democrats, 2) hire only deserving Republicans as identified by the congressional leadership, and 3) contribute heavily to Republican coffers.) Despite being admonished by the House Ethics Committee numerous times for his conduct, DeLay's pay-to-play machine continued to plow full-speed ahead. In January, the Wall Street Journal wrote about the atrophy of Congress's principles, noting that "House Republicans have become more passionate about retaining power than in using that power to change or limit the federal government. ... Re-election unites them, however, so the leadership has gradually settled for raising money on K Street and satisfying Beltway interest groups to sustain their incumbency. This strategy has maintained a narrow majority, but at the cost of doing anything substantial. ... Ideas are an afterthought, when they aren't an inconvenience."

THE HUBRIS OF INCUMBENCY: In 1994, the right wing gained control over the House of Representatives on the strength of a series of reforms embodied in the so-called "Contract with America." The contract ostensibly "aimed to restore the faith and trust of the American people in their government" and end the "cycle of scandal and disgrace." But a year later, DeLay was already breaching the contract by setting up the K Street Strategy. With many of those lawmakers now enjoying the comfortable incumbency of the 109th Congress, that contract has been completely forgotten. The House Ethics Committee has been especially anemic, refusing to conduct appropriate and timely investigations into scandals such as the DeLay and Abramoff debacles, preferring to protect the conservative leadership. The American public is ready for a change. According to recent polls, 97 percent of Americans say that corruption in government will be an important consideration when they vote in November's elections and 85 percent want the government to commit "to the common good and put the public's interest above the privileges of the few."


Under the Radar

IRAQ -- PERLE CLAIMS HE TOLD TRUTH ABOUT WAR ONLY IF IT 'WOULD NOT BE PUBLISHED BEFORE THE ELECTION': Former Defense Policy Board chairman and prominent neoconservative Richard Perle, one of the principle advocates of invading Iraq, blasts the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq in a new interview with Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair published excerpts of Perle's remarks in a press release on Friday. " did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him," said Perle. "Huge mistakes were made," he said, though Perle accepted "no responsibility" for designing the campaign to invade Iraq and the mishandling of the aftermath. Neoconservatives now falsely claim they had "almost no voice in what happened." But now, Perle is calling foul, saying he only agreed to tell the truth if it was published after the election. "Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose…I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election." Another prominent conservative quoted in the article, Eliot Cohen, has a different view. “[T]hinking the government’s conduct of the Iraq war an entirely appropriate subject of political debate, I do not think anyone should have kept mum in an interview of this kind until an election had passed.”

POLITICS -- RIGHT WING RESORTS TO HARASSING ROBO-CALLS: In multiple states around the country, conservative groups have devised a way to suppress turnout and smear political opponents through push polling. (Push polling is "a campaign tactic that is often criticized as deceptive because it involves calling potential voters under the guise of measuring public opinion, while the real intent is to change opinions with questions that push people in one direction or the other.") The scheme involves making "repeated robo-calls to households late in the evening or early in the morning," when voters will be "sleeping and most annoyed by the calls." "When someone answers, they're led to believe the call is coming from" the conservative group's opponent. Those who end the call early believe the opponent's campaign is pestering them, and those who stay on the call receive misleading information. One Vermont resident said she received 21 of these calls since October 24. "They are very annoying," she said. A conservative group called Common Sense Ohio is funding the calls in that state. Pew Research Center pollster said the calling "smells like a push poll, it feels like a push poll, so I guess we have to call it a push poll." "The way they're sent is deceptive," one Pennsylvania voter told the Associated Press. "The number of calls is harassing. The way her stances are presented in these stories is deliberately misleading and deceptive."

MILITARY -- IN RECRUITING PITCH, ARMY RECRUITERS TELL STUDENTS THAT IRAQ WAR IS OVER: An undercover investigation by ABC News found that military recruiters are attempting to convince students that the war in Iraq is over, in an effort to get them to enlist. "Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter. "No, we're bringing people back," he replies. "We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says. But Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of U.S. Army recruiting for the entire Northeast, said that new recruits were likely to go to Iraq. "It's hard to believe some of things they are telling prospective applicants," Manning said. "I still believe that this is the exception more than the norm." Last year, the Army suspended its recruiting over documented evidence that recruiters were misleading students about dangers in Iraq. While the Army has reported that recruiting is going well, lower aptitude scores and a raise in the enlistment age have helped spur the growth of enlistees.

[B]Think Fast

FBI Criminal Division chief James Burrus says "the bureau is ramping up its ability to catch crooked politicians and might run an undercover sting on Congress." He expects an emphasis on rooting out public corruption "for many, many, many years to come."

House Speaker Hastert's (R-IL) future "is in doubt even if the Republicans retain control of the House" because of unease over his handling of the Foley page scandal and "what a House ethics committee investigation might conclude about him," the Washington Post reports.

A proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in South Dakota is too close to call. Forty-seven percent say they are opposed to the amendment while 46 percent support it.

Federal prosecutors rejected 87 percent of the international terrorism cases brought by the FBI during the first nine months of fiscal year 2006. Prosecutions fell from 118 defendants in fiscal year 2002, to 19 defendants from Oct. 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006. The Justice Department disputed the findings.
"The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue." Read the full study HERE.

Robert Novak writes conservative political operatives grumble that Bush's presence on the campaign trail has been a drag. One operative told Novak what Bush's strategy should have been: "The president should go on a 2 1/2 -week vacation, and when he gets back, go right into the hospital for minor surgery. In other words, he should have disappeared."

Iraq is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, according to new rankings from Transparency International. "When you have high levels of violence," the group's chief executive said, "not only does security break down, but so do checks and balances, law enforcement and the functioning of institutions like the judiciary and legislature."

A recent CIA assessment found that Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been "significantly weakened by rising popular frustration with his American-backed government." Karzai continues "to struggle to exert authority beyond Kabul," and is increasingly viewed as corrupt.

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) criticized the Bush administration yesterday "for its handling of a trove of once-secret documents from Saddam Hussein's covert nuclear program disclosed on a federal Web site." "It looks like they screwed up," he said.

And finally: Vice President Dick Cheney will shoot his friend pheasant on Election Day. "On his first hunting trip since he accidentally shot a companion last February while aiming at a covey of quail on a private Texas ranch," Cheney "will head to South Dakota to spend several days at a private hunting lodge near Pierre."
...........
Go on-site to view the numerous links in each of the following:

CONGRESS
The Seven Deadly Sins
November 6, 2006
.......
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053
Perhaps we should petition to have written into law that there has to be much more time spent on their jobs (assistants do most of their work, so why so little time on the Hill? Less than 100 days, around 3/4 of the year for a vacation?). There needs to be requirements as to how much time they actually do the work which we elect them to do, laws written up that they must adhere to or their pay will be frozen, their perks withheld, their retirement docked. There must be a way to have the Congress show up for their jobs. We're getting the shaft. They are making plenty and they begrudge our lowest paid citizens a higher minimum wage while voting themselves raises in pay at will, they begrudge us affordable health insurance while they have the best plans in the world, and they've even allowed our retirement funds to be raided and taken away from us, closing the barn door after the damage was done. Check out their retirement pay. Wow! Would we have such good fortune, and no one could raid theirs. What a bunch of jerks we are for allowing them these freedoms we can only guess about, while they rake it in and rake it in. How dumb are we?
.......

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*******What to Take to the Polls: ID, Video Camera, Audio Tape
The top watchdog of computerized voting prepares for the most hackable election ever.
MotherJones.com / interview / 2006
April Rabkin
November 01 , 2006

About 90 percent of American voters will cast computerized ballots next week. In polling booths, they'll touch a screen that feels like an ATM machine. Or their absentee ballots will be tallied by optical scanners with their own software. By now, partly due to Bev Harris's work, we know that security holes in these computerized voting systems are big enough to drive a truck through.

Before 2002, Harris had little interest in computers or voting. Since then she has arguably led more investigations into computerized voting than any official and dug up more scoops on it than any journalist. In addition, thousands of vigilant citizens collaborate at a "workspace" she founded, BlackBoxVoting.org.

Harris led investigations mentioned in the July/August 2006 story "11 Worst Places to Vote." She spoke to Mother Jones from the Black Box Voting headquarters in Renton, Washington.

MJ:Do you have any confidence at all in computerized voting?

BH: Some 92 percent of the people disapprove of the way we’re voting now. What we're all about is oversight. The bottom line is, we can't have any system that citizens can't oversee themselves, that they have to rely on an expert to tell them it's okay. We really have to have something—especially with vote counting—that your basic eighth grader can understand.

Mother Jones: How are you preparing for this election?

Bev Harris: We've been traveling non-stop and doing stuff in the field for the past three years. We put what we learned into what we call the "Citizen's Tool Kit," so that people can go out in the field and actually oversee [electronic voting].

There are things people can watch for. Take their video cameras or their camera and audio recorder, and take evidence that can't be spun. Stories, we learned in 2004, don’t do anything to create change, not much. Because we could have 10,000 affidavits about a vote that got flipped, and everyone still denies it. But if you videotape a 10-hour line, there's no denying or spinning it.

For example, the ballots in Cuyahoga when they did the recount were coming out in clumps—all these Bush ones, and all these Kerry ones, and one woman had a video and asked the officials why. They weren't thinking about what they were saying, and they said, "Because we counted them in private first," which is totally against the law. And three people have been indicted now. Video is the most important thing they can do.

MJ: How many citizens are keeping watch over electronic voting?

BH: BlackBoxVoting.org has about 3,200 active members [in August]. We feel like there's a lot of sites where people can talk politics, but we have a do-it-yourself upload thing, a citizens' workspace, so they can share their documents with each other. There was a million-hit day before the 2004 election.

If you see a problem, propagate it. Never put it in a funnel. Never turn it over to just one entity. Go with 10 different channels. Send it to the media. Write it up and send it to the elections office so it can be requested as a public record.

MJ: Have any of the security holes with voting machines been fixed?

BV: Yeah, there's the chopstick. [Laughs] Because you can hack the Diebold touch screens by getting into the case, Diebold drilled a hole into it and put something like a half a chopstick into it that does something that prevents people from getting in. [As if to say,] 'We had to drill a hole and put a half a chopstick in to keep people from getting into it, but it's a good machine, it's a good machine….' They constantly fix things, but it's a moving target. It's like that whack-a-mole game where you deal with this over here and somebody figures out something over there.

MJ: How do you operate BlackBoxVoting?

BH: We have a fulltime business manager, two fulltime investigators, and an office assistant. Most of [our funding] is citizen donations. We [haven't taken a lot of large grants because we] wanted to be something no one could manipulate. We have 26,000 small donors; the average donation is $59.

MJ: Norm Robbins of the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition said that while electronic voting security is more sensational and gets the most media attention, even more voters are disenfranchised by bureaucratic incompetence. Which do you think is worse?

BH: It depends. The issue is, we gotta get the system simple enough so that we can manage it and so that citizens can actually see what's going on, not just be told to trust. He’s right that there are huge problems with bureaucratic incompetence. It depends where you are in the country.

There are some places so sloppy that… take Arkansas where average turnout for a primary is 25 percent. But the first place we went in Arkansas had a turnout of 120 percent. It had been on the Secretary of State's website for a month…. We asked how. You know what their answer was? "I guess I sent the wrong number." I don't mean to be critical, but if your whole job is to be Elections Director, and there's only 4,000 people in the county….

There are all these problems. Some [elections officials] are just not up to speed. Some are incompetent. And some are also really crooked—Riverside County [California] is famous for it. The machines make a voter-verifiable paper trail, and they program them not to. There are some places that are scary. In Florida, the state laws are the worst in the country. Florida actually legislates that even in a recount it's illegal to count a paper ballot. That’s insane.

MJ: What will it take to create positive change on the problems with electronic voting?

BH: It's going to take a shift in public thinking. It's going to have to be unacceptable or dangerous for a candidate to not confront these problems, because they're going to lose their office. It's going to have to be a real evidence-gathering thing. When citizens do that, public officials change their behavior.

In California, for example, [the Secretary of State] is supposed to follow certain procedures, but he just took them off the Secretary of State web site. When citizens started saying, "Where are the rules?" he said he decided not to use them anymore. He commissioned a study that tells him his touch screens do not meet federal standards in any way, shape or form, and he certifies them anyway. So that's the thing that's got everyone scared. It indicates they're not afraid of not being reelected.

MJ: BlackBoxVoting reported that Diebold’s TSx-model voting machine has a curious feature, one that has meant that three in four voters don't check the paper trail after voting (the scroll is covered by an opaque brown door, making the paper trail if not undetectable, then difficult to find). A few months ago, you said of the design, "It's like if you ask a 6-year-old to do the dishes and he leaves gobs of food on the plates. It's almost unusable." Now how do you feel about paper trails?

BH: The prevailing view is that paper trail is not worth the paper it's printed on, because nobody uses it and nobody can see it. A study showed recently, Cleveland's paper trail doesn't even match the votes.

April Rabkin is an Editorial Fellow at Mother Jones

This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.
© 2006 The Foundation for National Progresshttp://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/11/bev_harris.html ***

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*********
Norman Solomon: Saddam's Unindicted Co-Conspirator: Donald Rumsfeld
By BuzzFlash
Published on BuzzFlash
Created 11/06/2006 - 4:26pm
(http://www.buzzflash.com/articles)

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Norman Solomon

Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let's reach back into history and extract these facts:

*On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld "visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving U.S. relations with that country."

*Two days later, the New York Times cited a "senior American official" who "said that the United States remained ready to establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq and that it was up to the Iraqis."

*On March 29, 1984, the Times reported: "American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name." Washington had some goodies for Saddam's regime, the Times account noted, including "agricultural-commodity credits totaling $840 million." And while "no results of the talks have been announced" after the Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad three months earlier, "Western European diplomats assume that the United States now exchanges some intelligence on Iran with Iraq."

* A few months later, on July 17, 1984, a New York Times article with a Baghdad dateline sketchily filled in a bit more information, saying that the U.S. government "granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years." The story recalled that "Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi president here," and the dispatch mentioned in passing that "State Department human rights reports have been uniformly critical of the Iraqi President, contending that he ran a police state."

* Full diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad were restored 11 months after Rumsfeld's December 1983 visit with Saddam -- who went on to use poison gas later in the decade, actions which scarcely harmed relations with the Reagan administration.

* As the most senior U.S. official to visit Iraq in six years, Rumsfeld had served as Reagan's point man for warming relations with Saddam. In 1984, the administration engineered the sale to Baghdad of 45 ostensibly civilian-use Bell 214ST helicopters. Saddam's military found them quite useful for attacking Kurdish civilians with poison gas in 1988, according to U.S. intelligence sources. "In response to the gassing," journalist Jeremy Scahill has pointed out, "sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most U.S. technology. The measure was killed by the White House."

These are facts that the public should know about the current defense secretary of the United States.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," is out in paperback. For information, go to: www.warmadeeasy.com [1]

Source URL:
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/articles/contributors/537 Links:
[1] http://www.warmadeeasy.com *****

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:: :: ::
What happens if Republicans retain control of the Senate? Here's a sample of what's in store
November 05, 2006 -- 12:28 PM EDT
(emphasis added):

Across the aisle, [Sen. Bob] Bennett [R-UT] is confident Republicans will hang on to control of the Senate, just barely, and could see the body being split evenly down the middle, with Vice President Dick Cheney tipping the balance ever-so-slightly to the Republicans.
If he's right, Bennett will have the ear of the presumptive Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

There is no one in the Senate whom Bennett is closer to than the Kentucky Republican. For nearly two years, the two senators have had a deal in place where Bennett would become counsel to the majority leader, a hand-picked adviser, putting him in the inner circle of Senate leadership and in the room for every deal cut and horse trade that gets done.

And McConnell has already given Bennett the green light to use his chairmanship of the Joint Economic Committee to take another swing at one of Bennett's pet projects: overhauling Social Security.

Once a cornerstone of President Bush's agenda, it was quickly torn to shreds by Democrats and seniors groups.

Bennett proposed raising the retirement age and indexing payments based on need. He also pitched a separate plan to create private retirement accounts. Neither plan went far, but they are still tucked away in his desk drawer, and he is prepared to dust them off.

Just another reminder of what's at stake Tuesday.

(Thanks to TPM Reader JL for the tip.)
-- TPM Reader DK
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010812.php

http://www.buzzflash.com/

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:: :: :: :: :: :: ::
Can you say hallelujah?
There's only one more day.
All together now, can you say hallelujah?

November 6, 2006
Tomorrow people will decide who will represent us in Washington D.C. and in Carson City. I learned a long time ago not to be overly optimistic. When you need rain, it probably won't come. When you have had enough rain and the rivers are overflowing their banks, it'll probably rain for another week or so. That's just the way things go.

This is a very red part of the state. All a lot of the people around here have to hear are the words liberal or taxes and they run and hide under their beds. They refuse to acknowledge that George Bush and the neo-cons in Washington D.C. today are not conservatives by any standard. They are big deficit spenders, for big government, welfare (for the rich and the oil companies), nation building overseas and against personal liberty. They have mortgaged our country to China and Saudi Arabia to pay for tax breaks for their rich friends. A report on MSNBC said they even borrowed money from Mexico! Ronald Reagan once vetoed a highway spending bill that contained 70 pork projects, according to NBC, George Bush recently signed a highway bill that contained 6,000 such projects.

Although the word liberal is all we've heard toward the end of the campaigns, liberals are not the problem; it's the neo-cons that have gotten us into a quagmire in Iraq and in debt up to our eyeballs. Heck, today's liberals sound like yesteryears' conservatives as they battle for liberty and fiscal responsibility.

I'm not holding my breath, but Gibbons might lose. One should never escort an intoxicated person to their car so they can drive off drunk. Now comes the story, first published by the Wall Street Journal, about a week-long cruise and a $100,000 (wow) campaign contribution he received from a Reno defense contractor. The house ethics committee will investigate. Does the name "Duke" Cunningham ring a bell? But, as I said, I learned a long time ago not to be overly optimistic. There is always prayer. It worked for Mom.

I don't know how Jill Derby will fare, but hats off to her for a very good and decent and different campaign. In my book, no matter what the outcome, she's a winner. For the record, she doesn't favor blanket amnesty, will not eliminate the child care tax credit, will fight for tax cuts for the middle class and will vote to roll back George Bush's tax breaks for the very, very rich, which have led to the largest deficits in history. I know that's not what the Republican National Committee has been telling you, but it's the truth. The RNC is relying on the worst in people. Too bad. People say they don't like mud-slinging, but, they hang on every word and the ads seem to work, unfortunately.

By the way, just in case you hear it from some GOP spokesperson, I have never been to the Playboy Mansion. The closest I've come to a bunny was watching Bugs on the big screen. I wouldn't know what to do with a bunny if I caught one. Well, maybe, if you're talking about skinning it, cleaning it and frying it. None of my columns have ever contained racy or explicitly sexual content (my wife is my editor).

Actually, as nasty as it got here, it doesn't hold a candle to what went on back east. Boy they love mud there. The RNC ran an ad accusing a candidate of calling a phone sex number from his hotel room. According to phone records released by the candidate, a member of his staff was one digit off and dialed a wrong number. He hung up immediately and re-dialed. Karl Rove's hit men still refused to pull the ad. The real question is how did Karl Rove and friends get their hands on the phone records to begin with. We told you they would spy on political enemies once given the okay for domestic spying without warrants. Is that what happened here? Maybe it was just a bunch of Watergate plumbers. You reckon?

Jim Webb, who is running in Virginia for the Senate, writes novels. Fiction. Novels with sexually explicit passages, for which he is being condemned by his opponent George Allen, he of the racist "Macaca" remark. The following writers are hereby advised never to run for public office; Stuart Woods, Nelson De Mille, James Patterson, John Grisham; ah, forget it, the list is a mile long. You get the picture. I would advise the wife of the vice president, the author of "Sisters," a book that openly discusses lesbianism, and King James, whose version of the Bible is very explicit, to forget about running for office.

NBC is reporting that $160 million has been spent on negative ads, compared to $17 million on positive ads. It's a disgrace. The Republicans have spent $20 million more on negative ads than Democrats. That's hardly a talking point for the Democrats. Shame on them, also.

I'm under no illusions that negative ads will ever cease. I'm not talking about exposing a person's record or questionable behavior or possible corruption to public scrutiny. I'm talking about distorting the record, taking comments out of context and vicious personal attacks that aren't true. It will only stop when you stop listening, or we have public financing of campaigns for instance, which could include a truth test before any public money is spent on ads. That might put Karl Rove and political hacks like him right out of business. All together now, can you say hallelujah?

Glen McAdoo can be reached at glynn@phonewave.net

http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/article/20061106/Opinion/111060013

http://www.buzzflash.com/ :: :: :: :: ::

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~~~~~~~"Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?"

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) Source:
at the US Constitutional Convention

~~~
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) US Supreme Court Justice 1928 Source: Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 479 (1928)
~~~
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience." Albert Camus (1913-1960) ~~~~~

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AWARDS
Go on-site to view the photo's with each award:
http://www.factcheck.org

We laughed, we cried. Now that the campaign is over, we recognize some notable ads we didn't examine before.
November 7, 2006

Summary

All year we've focused on what was true or false in the flood of 2006 campaign advertising, and we wrote about those that we found twisted, distorted, misleading or fabricated. Now, as we wait for the ballots to be counted, we look back on some of that ads that caught our attention for other reasons.

We offer these FactCheck.org awards just for fun.

Analysis

Here they are, the FactCheck.org Awards for 2006. We present them in no particular order, and with no claim of scientific accuracy. These are just our opinions. Feel free to agree or not, as you please.

Charlton Heston Award for Worst Impersonation of Moses
Winner: Colorado No on 42

This ad, set "somewhere in the mountains of Colorado," features a Moses-like figure speaking hyperbolically to God about the supposed evils of ballot initiative 42, which would amend the state Constitution to provide for an annual increase in the minimum wage that's pegged to inflation. "An annual minimum wage increase in stone for eternity," moans the faux Moses.
This is exaggeration of Biblical proportions. There's no Constitutional amendment, state or federal, that can't be undone, though it's harder than getting rid of a pesky statute. Remember Prohibition? (No, we don't either, thank goodness.) That was also known as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which went into effect in 1920. It was repealed by the 21st Amendment, which took effect almost 14 years later.

Busiest Supporting Actor
Winner: President Bush

President Bush was far and away the most frequent supporting actor – in Democratic ads. His name or image have appeared in at least 186 Democratic ads since Oct. 1, by our count, and we probably missed some that appeared in smaller TV markets not covered by the Campaign Media Analysis Group. The strategy is clear: whether they're referring to a Republican candidate as a "supporter" of the "Bush agenda" or as a "rubberstamp," Democrats believe the President's low approval ratings are a stone they can use to sink their opponents. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's ad, "Together," which began running on Sept 19, is a classic of the genre.

Busiest Supporting Actress
Winner: Hillary Clinton

Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York got the most mentions in Republican ads holding forth the supposed horrors of a Democratic-controlled Senate. We counted 11 since Oct. 1. This one from GOP Senate Candidate Pete Ricketts in Nebraska is typical, saying Democrat Ben Nelson will "vote to put Democrats in charge," including Sen. Clinton who "wants higher taxes."

The runner-up for this award is "San Francisco Liberal Nancy Pelosi," who is mentioned in at least 6 GOP ads as a reason not to vote for a Democrat who would in turn vote to make her Speaker of the House.


Kinkiest Action Figure
Winner: Kinky Friedman

Independent Jewish Cowboy Kinky Friedman, who's running for governor of Texas, used the "Kinky Friedman Action Figure" as a major element of his campaign strategy. The plastic Kinky had the following responses to tough questions from reporters in this ad:

On border issues:
"I'll keep us out of war with Oklahoma."

On getting the Democrats and Republicans to work together:
"I'm running for Governor, not God."

It is unclear whether the doll comes with karate chop action or hair you can style yourself.

The "Who Needs Enemies?" Award
Winner: Idaho State Rep. Bill Sali


State Rep. Bill Sali, a Republican running in Idaho ’s First Congressional District, appears to have few friends even in his own party. The quotes in this ad are not only devastating, but accurate, at least as reported by the press – except that state House Speaker Bruce Newcomb’s full quote was even better than we’re told in the ad. “That idiot is an absolute idiot,” he opined. Forcefully. Newcomb’s comments were made when Sali refused to stop talking about an alleged link between abortions and breast cancer on the floor of the state House last spring, even though a fellow legislator (the Democratic leader) who was a breast cancer survivor began crying. The House’s 11 Democrats walked out to protest Sali’s remarks.

Cult Classic Award
Winner: Vernon Robinson
(Recognized for the body of his work)

Taken together, Robinson's ads make up an anthology he could title, "The Attack of the 40-Foot Liberal." In one that has received wide (and free!) exposure on cable news programs, Robinson compares modern day America to the Twilight Zone, illegal immigrants to intergalactic alien invaders, and equates the 1950's show Leave It to Beaver with "traditional American values." An announcer says, "You can burn the American flag and kill a million babies a year, but you can't post the Ten Commandments or say God in public." (Note to Vern: Actually, you can say God in public. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned that ruling against reciting "under God" in public schools.)
Other Robinson ads included:

A claim that Democratic incumbent Brad Miller "has no trouble spending your money…he would just rather spend it on sex" (we debunked that claim here ).
A radio spot in which Robinson claimed, backed by a mariachi soundtrack, that if incumbent Democrat Brad Miller "had his way, America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals."
A mutation of the "Beverly Hillbillies" theme song that closes with this tag line: "Hey all you illegals. Put your shoes on. Go home. Don't come back now, y'hear?"

Best Send-up of an Ineffective Federal Mandate
Winner: Phil Maymin

Libertarian House candidate Phil Maymin, running in Connecticut's 4th district, ran a cable-only spot spoofing the "stand by your ad" provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign law. That's the federal requirement that candidates appear in their own ads and say "I approve this message," or words to that effect. The idea was to reduce the volume of distasteful attacks and false accusations by forcing candidates to take personal responsibility for them.
Clearly, that hasn't worked.
In this ad Maymin gets a rubdown from a voter who's clueless about who he is or what a Libertarian stands for, asking "You're a librarian? . . . You're Joe Lieberman?" Maymin explains, and then says "I approve this massage."

Best Musical Score
Winner: Ned Lamont

This ad’s shrieking strings, reminiscent of the score in the Alfred Hitchcock classic “Psycho,” seemed to us a perfect parody of much of this year’s crop of attack ads, with their over-the-top appeals to fear. Imagine this score behind, for example, the RNC’s ad suggesting that voting Democratic might lead to a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon, which we critiqued here , and you get the idea.



The "Empy Calories" Award
Winner: Americans United

This 15-second ad from a liberal group funded by labor unions takes the cake (so to speak) for lack of substance. It shows an elderly couple cutting a single hot dog in half to share for their meal, while the announcer asks "If George Bush and his backers in Congress privatize Social Security and cut benefits in half, what will you have to cut in half?" That wildly misrepresents Bush's proposal, which would not have touched benefits for anybody currently receiving them or about to receive them, and would have allowed benefits for future recipients to grow, though more slowly than under current law. The plan died last year for lack of Republican support in any case.



-Awards Committee: Brooks Jackson, Viveca Novak, Justin Bank, James Ficaro and Emi Kolawole

Sources

Footnotes? We don't need them here. These are just our opinions.

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*******Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

ABC NEWS PROJECTS THE DEMOCRATS WILL TAKE CONTROL OF THE HOUSE

GET UP-TO-THE-MINUTE RESULTS ON ALL OF THE DAY'S RACES AT http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2006/


http://abcnews.go.com?CMP=EMC-1396

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*******Rep. Nancy Pelosi
Bio [Go on-site to access Bio}
11.07.2006
One Hundred Hours READ MORE: 9/11, Iraq, 2006, New York Times Go on-site to View
In 100 hours, the top five oil companies will take in $4.3 billion in profits.

In 100 hours, $1.1 billion will be spent on the war in Iraq.

In 100 hours, the public debt will grow by $4.9 billion.

In 100 hours, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies will gain $2.6 billion in profits.

In 100 hours, the top CEOs will earn an average of $2 million each.

In 100 hours, a minimum wage worker working 8 hours a day will earn $171.67.

And if all goes as expected, in less than 100 hours my sixth grandchild will be born.

I want my grandchild to be born into an America where government is for and by the people. I want my grandchild to be born into an America that rewards and values hard work. I want my grandchild to be born into an America where you are not labeled a terrorist coddler when you honor the Constitution.

I want my grandchild to be born into an America where if the U.S. Central Command judges the situation in Iraq to be near chaos, with "violence at all-time high, spreading geographically", if the top intelligence agencies tell you that the war in Iraq is inspiring the very terrorism it was purported to prevent, and if four highly respected military newspapers say of the Secretary of Defense that "his strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised...[he] must go" that you fire your Secretary of Defense and change the course.

I want my grandchild to be born into an America whose government honors its duty for accountability and oversight.

I want my grandchild to be born into an America that inspires innovation, that leads with dignity and diplomacy, that rejects fear mongering, and whose leaders start each day remembering that the Constitution begins with the simple but revolutionary phrase "We the people," which announced to the world that here, the people rule.

If you honor Democratic candidates with your vote today, in the first hundred hours of a Democratic Congress: We will restore civility, integrity, and fiscal responsibility to the House of Representatives. We will start by cleaning up Congress, breaking the link between lobbyists and legislation and commit to pay-as-you-go, no new deficit spending.

We will make our nation safer and we will begin by implementing the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission.

We will make our economy fairer, and we will begin by raising the minimum wage. We will not pass a pay raise for Congress until there is an increase in the minimum wage.

We will make health care more affordable for all Americans, and we will begin by fixing the Medicare prescription drug program, putting seniors first by negotiating lower drug prices. We will also promote stem cell research to offer real hope to the millions of American families who suffer from devastating diseases.

We will broaden college opportunity, and we will begin by cutting interest rates for student loans in half.

We will energize America by achieving energy independence, and we will begin by rolling back the multi-billion dollar subsidies for Big Oil.

We will guarantee a dignified retirement, and we will begin by fighting any attempt to privatize Social Security.

I say this as a grandmother (of almost six) and as the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-nancy-pelosi/one-hundred-hours_b_33529.html?p=7#comments ***

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*******
Are we sinning yet?
Wed Nov 8, 9:40 AM ET
The United Church of Canada hopes an ad featuring a can of whipped cream and the question, "How much fun can sex be before it's a sin?" will fill its pews as Christmas nears.

The country's biggest Protestant denomination launched an advertising campaign on Tuesday meant to provoke debate on the "deep and persistent attitudes and images of organized religion."

"In order to get past those stereotypes, we thought we needed an ad campaign that was different, had a head-snap to it, that people would have a second look," Keith Howard, executive director of the campaign, said in an interview.

The C$10.5 million ($9.3 million) campaign targets 30- to 45-year-olds and rotates six images though December issues of Canadian magazines and newspapers as well as Web sites.

One asks, "Does anyone object?" to an image of two plastic toy grooms on a wedding cake. Another features a child sitting on Jesus's knee in the traditional Santa's village of a shopping mall, and asks, "Would you still take your kids?"

"We've had a long tradition of engaging the issues and concerns of the society that we are a part of," Howard said.

The United Church of Canada has a declining active membership of about 573,000, although almost 3 million people have some sort of affiliation with the church. Between 1994 and 2004, membership dropped about 20 percent, according to church statistics.

Last month, the church issued a statement defending federal legislation that allows same-sex marriage.

Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061108/od_nm/religion_dc *****

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Precriminations and score settling
E.J. Dionne, Jr. - Washington Post Writers Group

11.07.06 - WASHINGTON -- One verdict from the 2006 election was obvious before a single vote had been counted: the Republican Party no longer has a coherent governing philosophy. Republicans who care about advancing a consistent set of ideals are already at each other's throats, and are likely to stay there.

True, most Republicans still describe themselves as "conservative." But it is no longer clear what that word means -- and those who consider themselves the guardians of orthodoxy on the right are in a blessed rage over who can claim title to the label.

When they have nothing else to say, Republicans will always accuse Democrats of harboring secret plans to raise taxes. But the tax issue just sits out there, unhinged from any logical approach to how revenues and spending should fit together in a sensible budget.

Then there is Iraq. Republican foreign policy realists saw the war as a disaster going in. Neoconservatives who supported the invasion increasingly blame the Bush administration for botching the job after we got there. The administration's approach to Iraq is an orphan -- only President Bush and his closest advisers claim it as their own, and even Bush has had to admit that "staying the course" is a useless option.

That is why we can know with some certainty how Republicans and conservatives will spend the last two years of the Bush presidency. They will fault philosophical adversaries for what went wrong, purge various actors and ideas from the movement, and insist on contradictory forms of ideological purity. My God, they'll sound like Democrats, won't they?

Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, came up with the delightful word "precriminations" to describe the pre-election sparring and blame shifting.

At the beginning of the 2006 campaign, the most popular charge in punditry was that Democrats were going to the voters with "no ideas." As the election closes, it's clear that the Republicans won the "no ideas" contest. In race after race, they tried to win by saying how horrific their Democratic opponents were -- and, in many cases, Republicans started bragging about their own independence from Bush.

The Republicans have no coherence on immigration because the question splits them asunder. They have no plausible plans for fixing the mess in Iraq because the president's policy has left the United States with only bad choices. They have little to say about economic insecurity or health care or the budget.

One measure of the troubles facing Republican ideology is the proliferation of books from diverse conservative intellectual precincts on what went wrong. Such tomes don't get published in times of rampant contentment. Among them are Bruce Bartlett's critique of Bush's economic policies, Andrew Sullivan's critique of the conservative soul, Ryan Sager's book on the split between evangelicals and libertarians and Richard Viguerie's book subtitled, "How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause."

The liberal Washington Monthly got an impressive turnout when it asked conservatives to explain why Republicans deserve defeat this year. Bartlett and Viguerie were joined by former Rep. Joe Scarborough, Reagan economist William Niskanen, conservative movement founder Jeffrey Hart, legal scholar Bruce Fein and novelist Christopher Buckley.

All successful political coalitions have disparate elements. But the lesson of 2006 is that the last five years have aggravated every contradiction on the right to the breaking point: the religious conservatives against the libertarians; the neoconservatives against the foreign policy realists; the pro-immigration conservatives against immigration critics; the forces of big business against working class conservatives; compassionate conservatives against... hmmm, how do you describe the other side on that one?

In Congress, conservatives who voted for big budget deficits now blame figures such as former Majority Leader Tom DeLay for forcing them to do it. Some Republicans who condemn the cost of the prescription drug benefit under Medicare were once happy to brag about it to seniors. Incumbents attack congressional "earmarks" for special spending projects in the abstract, all the while bragging at home about the bacon they've put on their constituents' tables.

Add to all this the remarkable display of backstabbing among House Republican leaders over who did or didn't do what (and when) about the Mark Foley scandal. Political solidarity is not much of a value anymore in the Republican family.

That is why the most interesting battles over the next two years could take place not between the parties but within them. After a miserable year, Republicans have a lot of scores to settle. And conservatives, many of whom know they've lost their way, will be devoting a lot of energy to figuring out exactly who they are.

(c) 2006, Washington Post Writers Group

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21609 .........

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The revenge of the center

E.J. Dionne, Jr.
- Washington Post Writers Group
11.08.06 - WASHINGTON -- It's over.

American voters, in their wisdom, ended an era on Tuesday. They rejected a poorly conceived war policy in Iraq that has weakened the United States. They rejected a harshly ideological approach to politics that cast opponents as enemies of the country's survival. They rejected a president so determined to win an election that he was willing to slander his opponents by saying: "The Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses." The voters decided there was no decency in that.

No longer will the national tragedy of 9/11 be used to undermine the opposition party. It was only after he was forced to do so by an electoral defeat that President Bush Wednesday called for genuine bipartisanship. Imagine what the world would look like if he had done that a year or two ago.

And no longer will we pay attention to political strategists who assert that swing voters aren't important, and that independents and moderates don't matter.

If Democrats are to make good use of the power they have been granted, they need to remember that last point. This election was the revenge of the center no less than it was the revenge of the left. The decisive votes cast on Tuesday came from moderates and independents whom the exit polls showed favoring Democratic House candidates by margins of about 3-to-2.

Nancy Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders face a genuinely complicated political calculus. On the one hand, Democrats would not have won without the intense dedication of their partisan and ideological base. Among self-identified Democrats, the party's House candidates won by about 15-1. Liberals went about 9-1 Democratic. This energy was critical to the outcome.

But many of the party's successful candidates ran as moderates, and Democrats hold power on the basis of a loan of votes from middle-of-the-road Americans who simply could not stomach Bush Republicanism anymore. The loan can be recalled at any moment.

The good news for Democrats is that their candidates, moderates and liberals alike, ran on two common themes: that the Bush Iraq policy had to change, and that the Washington Establishment simply does not understand the personal struggles and economic insecurities confronting so many Americans.

On Iraq, the president, not Congress, controls the essential levers of power, especially since Democrats have made clear they will not use the one instrument they have -- to cut off funding for the war, and they are right not to do so.

What they should do is use the coming report from the commission headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman, to force a genuinely bipartisan approach to extricate us from Iraq at the lowest cost possible.

Tuesday's vote can help by making clear to the Iraqi government that there is a limit to American patience. The Shiite majority in Iraq must take more steps to reconcile with the Sunni minority. Our allies in the Arab world need to step up and help because the American people will not tolerate endless engagement in Iraq. And the Democrats should encourage the administration to engage with all the nations in the region that have reason to fear an Iraqi civil war. That includes Syria and Iran.

The other obligation of this new majority is to answer the economic discontent that helped build its victory. Republicans prayed that the economy would matter in this election. Their prayers were answered in an odd way: Two-fifths of the voters told the pollsters that the economy was "extremely important" in their voting decision -- and they voted 3-2 for Democratic House candidates. A lot of Americans are losing ground, and they spoke up.

As long as Republicans control the White House, Democrats will not be able to pass far-reaching measures to deal with worries about pension benefits, health insurance and job security. What needs to begin is a long struggle to create a new social contract that would protect and lift up the tens of millions of Americans for whom globalization is more threat than promise.

It's worth pushing hard-to-veto legislation increasing the minimum wage, expanding health care coverage and fixing the Medicare drug benefit. These steps need to be combined with hearings on more ambitious measures that would force the Washington Establishment to come to terms with grass-roots economic discontents.

This election creates an exceptional opportunity to move away from blind ideology to problem solving and from stupid divisiveness to a politics of remedy and reconciliation. The Democrats had better make it work.
E.J. Dionne's e-mail address is postchat@aol.com.

(c) 2006, Washington Post Writers Group

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Campaign '06
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Goodbye and good riddance
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate 11.08.06 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Right to the end, this insane conversation between reality and Not Reality. The president of the United States STILL says we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; STILL says we are creating democracy; STILL says we're preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and making Israel more secure; and, shoddiest of all, STILL not allowing that our fallen have died in vain.
The vice president, meanwhile, has announced that, all things considered in Iraq, "if you look at the general, overall situation, (the Iraqi government is) doing remarkably well." And now he's gone off to hunt in South Dakota, thus demonstrating a perfectly balanced sense of reality. South Dakota is so sparsely populated, it's really hard to hit another hunter.

Meanwhile, in case you hadn't noticed, Iraq is in a state of full collapse. And Afghanistan is not far from it. Baghdad is worse off for water, sewer, electricity and infrastructure than it was before the war. The R's have taken care of the whole problem with the brilliance we have come to expect from them -- they have decided to abolish the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (which has previously exposed bribery, contracts to cronies, shoddy work, lost billions of dollars, the failure to track hundreds of thousands of weapons shipped there and more). You must admit this is big, bold and brainy. This is Karl Rove problem-solving at its best.

This campaign has been like getting stuck in Alice's Wonderland for three months. "There is no use trying," Alice said, "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," replied the White Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Every time you turn around, you run into the Jabberwocky or the Frumious Bandersnatch -- Richard Perle in penitence -- or some other equally fantastic sight. The great Skywriter in the Sky has positively run amok with irony and has been splashing it all over the campaign like Jackson Pollock. Fortunately, it is not my duty to lend dignity to the proceedings. I do make it a rule to skip talk of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll -- but when Mark Foley turns out to the chairman of House Committee on Missing and Exploited Children, you know you just have to sit down like a tired dog and scratch for a while.

While this perfectly insane dialogue has been taking place, Congress stands before us so hopelessly corrupt that the stench has washed all over the country. Perhaps my least favorite excuse for cheating is, "Everybody does it." NO, everybody DOESN'T do it. Nor does the system make you do it, or alcohol or drugs or Jack Abramoff. I do not want to hear one more excuse -- apologize and go.

On the other hand, I am really going to miss the stories this Congress provided. Remember Terri Schiavo? I mean, you wake up one morning and there it is, kind of like finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator. And you listen to these people who do hold high elective office having this debate -- as though they know, as though they have any idea, as though they have any right. And then there are some of the troops, like Randy "Duke" Cunningham, semi-owner of the houseboat "The Duke-Stir." Some days you couldn't wait to get up to find out who'd been indicted. I miss watching Katherine Harris from Florida wear less and less blue eye-shadow as she went through her Senate race.

Well, it's been rank -- racist, sleazy, lying and full of insinuating scare tactics. Thank God it's over.

(c) 2006 Creators Syndicate

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21615 ***

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Plebiscite on an Outlaw Empire
Outlaw Empire Meets the Wave
5 Questions for Our Future
By Tom Engelhardt

11/08/07 "TomDispatch" -- -- The wave -- and make no mistake, it's a global one -- has just crashed on our shores, soaking our imperial masters. It's a sight for sore eyes.

It's been a long time since we've seen an election like midterm 2006. After all, it's a truism of our politics that Americans are almost never driven to the polls by foreign-policy issues, no less by a single one that dominates everything else, no less by a catastrophic war (and the presidential approval ratings that go with it). This strange phenomenon has been building since the moment, in May 2003, that George W. Bush stood under that White-House-prepared "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared "major combat operations have ended."

That "Top Gun" stunt -- when a cocky President helped pilot an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto a carrier deck and emerged into the golden glow of "magic hour light" (as his handlers then called it) -- was meant to give him the necessary victory photos to launch his 2004 presidential reelection campaign. As it turned out, that moment was but the first "milestone" on the path to Iraqi, and finally electoral, hell. Within mere months, those photos would prove useless for anyone but liberal bloggers. By now, they seem like artifacts from another age. On the way to the present "precipice" (or are we already over the edge?), there have been other memorable "milestones" -- from the President's July 2003 petulant "bring ‘em on" taunt to Iraq's then forming insurgency to the Vice President's June 2005 "last throes" gaffe. All such statements have, by now, turned to dust in American mouths.

In the context of the history of great imperial powers, how remarkably quickly this has happened. An American President, ruling the last superpower on this or any other planet, and his party have been driven willy-nilly into global and domestic retreat a mere three-plus years after launching the invasion of their dreams, the one that was meant to start them on the path to controlling the planet -- and by one of the more ragtag minority rebellions imaginable. I'm speaking here, of course, of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, of perhaps 15,000 relatively lightly armed rebels whose main weapons have been the roadside bomb and the sniper's bullet. What a grim, bizarre spectacle it's been.

The Fall of the New Rome
But let's back up a moment. After such an election, a bit of history, however quick and potted, is in order -- in this case of the post-Cold War era of U.S. supremacy, now seemingly winding down. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, to be followed by the relatively violence-free collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a brief moment of conceptual paralysis among leadership elites in this country, none of whom had even imagined the loss of the "Evil Empire" (in President Ronald Reagan's famous Star Wars-ian phrase) until it suddenly, miraculously evaporated. In this forgotten moment, we even heard hopeful mutterings about a "peace dividend" that would take all the extra military money that obviously was no longer needed to defend against a missing superpower and use it to rebuild America.

A mighty country, soon to be termed a "hyperpower," straddling the globe alone and without obvious enemies -- that should have been a formula for declaring victory (as many Cold Warriors promptly did) and acting accordingly (which none of them did). It should have been the moment for the Long Peace.

But in an enemy-less world, there was a small problem called the Pentagon (and the vast military-industrial complex that had grown up around it). So, while the peace-dividend-that-never-was vanished in the post-Cold-War morning fog, some new, prefab enemies did make their appearances with startling speed. They essentially had to.

These new dangers to our country were termed "rogue states," an obvious step or two down from a single Evil Empire. They were, in fact, so relatively weak militarily that you needed to pile them up into a conceptual heap to get an enemy that would keep an empire and its global network of bases in military restocking mode. Not too many years down the line, the Bush administration would indeed pile three of them up in just this way into the gloriously labeled "axis of evil"; this was that old Evil Empire rejiggered for midget powers (or alternatively the Axis powers of World War II shrunk to Mini-Me standards).

Back in 1990, Saddam Hussein, our former ally in a Persian Gulf struggle with Iran for regional supremacy, invaded Kuwait and, voilà!, you had the first Gulf War. His military, already weakened by its eight-year bloodletting with Iran, was not exactly a goliath for a superpower to reckon with; but Americans took a tip from the dictator (who liked to see images of himself puffed to gigantic proportions everywhere in his land), blew his face was up to Hitlerian size, and stuck it on every magazine and in every TV news report in town ("Showdown with Saddam"). His genuinely evil-dictator face took the place of a whole nuclear-armed Evil Empire, while American troops slaughtered helpless Iraqi conscripts, burying them alive in their own trenches or wiping them out from the air on the aptly named "Highway of Death" out of Kuwait City.

Not so long after, in 1992, under the aegis of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, a small group of unknown Defense Department staffers -- Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad – unveiled a new draft Defense Planning Guidance, a document for developing military strategy and planning Pentagon budgets. It was the first such since the Cold War ended and, leaked to the New York Times, it was denounced as an extremist vision and buried. As the website Right Web describes it, the document "called for massive increases in defense spending, the assertion of lone superpower status, the prevention of the emergence of any regional competitors, the use of preventive -- or preemptive -- force, and the idea of forsaking multilateralism if it didn't suit U.S. interests."

Sound familiar? No wonder. It was the very imperial program for eternal American dominance and endless war against the planet's rogue states that George W. Bush's administration would officially adopt. By then, Wolfowitz was the number two man at the Pentagon; Libby, the Vice President's good right hand; and Khalilzad was the new, post-invasion U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

In a post-9/11 atmosphere of belligerent fear, their program went mainstream. Having been attacked not by a rogue state but by a squad of 19 terrorists pledging allegiance to a stateless terrorist organization, we were "at war" with evil itself. By 2002, the administration had conducted a "successful" war in Afghanistan; the Taliban had been crushed; Osama bin Laden was MIA; and the neocons were riding high. The rest of us found ourselves in a Global War on Terror, or the Long War, or World War III, or even World War IV or whatever our rulers chose to call it that week. (As we would learn in Iraq, counting was not one of their skills.)

Dazzled beyond any reasonable imperial sense by the power to dominant that they believed American military superiority gave them, top Bush administration officials essentially proclaimed the U.S. an empire by fiat, a superduperpower the likes of which the world had never seen. In their infamous 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America (essentially the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document recycled), they swore that we would remain so forever and feed the Pentagon so much money that it would be bulked up into the distant future to suppress any potential superpower or bloc of powers that might emerge.

They insisted that we would go our own way, strike whomever we pleased, torture anyone we wished, and jail without recourse anyone we cared to sweep up or kidnap anywhere on Earth. The rest of the world could either approve or be damned, but it would be full speed ahead for us. Their acolytes in right-wing think tanks and lobbying outfits around Washington, along with Washington's assembled punditry (and some liberal tag-alongs) declared the world on the verge of a Pax Americana and this nation the globe's New Rome.

In the meantime, domestically, Karl Rove and his pals were working to ensure that the Republican Party would be dominant against all challengers for a generation or more. This was to be a domestic version of "full spectrum dominance." The two -- the global Pax Americana and the Party's Pax Republicana seemed joined at the hip back then, each reinforcing the unilateral, don't-tread-on-me, I'll-do-anything-I-wish dominance of the other. It was Rovian Abramoffism at home and Cheney-izing Wolfowitzism abroad.

How deeply they misunderstood the nature of power in our world, and how thoroughly they miscalculated the limited nature of the power of the New Rome! If you want to take the measure of how far we've come since then, consider the spectacle of this last election season. Take Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Like the President, deep into this September he was still excoriating the Democrats not just for their positions on the Iraq War, but for their "surrender" policies in the war on terror. As he put it in a PBS interview with Jim Lehrer on September 14th:

"I'd say, ‘Wake up, Harry Reid. Wake up, Harry Reid…' I think that [the president] has got it right, that we're not going to do what Harry Reid wants to do, and that is surrender, to wave a white flag, to cut and run at a time when we're being threatened… as we all saw just three or four weeks ago, in a plot from Britain that was going to send 10 airplanes over here."

He then characterized the Democratic Party as a group "who basically belittle in many ways this war on terror, who do want to wave this white flag and surrender."

By late October, however, according to Washington Post reporters Peter Slevin and Michael Powell, Frist had fully grasped that the global and domestic programs of dominance no longer were working together. So he offered the following succinct advice -- a flip-flop of the first order -- to congressional candidates: "The challenge is to get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues, and not on the Iraq and terror issue."

Just another "milestone" on the path to… well, that's the question, isn't it?

Oil Wars
After September 11, 2001, the President and his advisors were determined to run an invasion of, and war against, Iraq that would be the anti-Vietnam conflict of all time. From the draft to the body count, they were going to reverse all our Vietnam "mistakes." Above all, they were going to win quickly and decisively. The result? In no time at all, they had brought us deep into the Iraqi "big muddy" (as the Vietnam-era phrase went). Now, looming in the distance -- think of it as the dark at the end of this particular horror-fest of a tunnel -- is the worst Vietnam nightmare of all: defeat. Just check Juan Cole's Informed Comment website, for his "Top Ten Ways We Know We Have Lost in Iraq," if you don't believe me.

Unlike in Indochina, however, this time there's something essential at stake. Whatever we were doing in the largely peasant land of Vietnam, in terms of global wealth and resources, it was just what Henry Kissinger and other frustrated U.S. policy-makers of that era always called it, a third- or fourth-rate power of no real value to anyone (other, of course, than its own inhabitants).

In Iraq, where a continuing American presence only ensures a deeper plunge into chaos, mayhem, blood, and horror as well as fragmentation and potential dissolution, departure nonetheless remains largely inconceivable. After all, Iraq has something everyone desperately values: Oil. In quantity. A "sea" of oil in the words of former Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz. In a backhanded way, the President has finally acknowledged the obvious -- that his war in Iraq was, in significant part, an oil invasion, an oil occupation (remember it was only the Oil Ministry that we guarded in otherwise looted Baghdad), and so is also bound to be an oil defeat. As energy-obsessed Bush administration planners saw it, Iraq was to be the lynchpin -- hence those permanent bases that were on the drawing boards as American troops invaded -- of a Bush administration strategy for dominating the oil heartlands of the planet.

After Vietnam, the United States proved quite capable of putting itself back together (despite years of fierce culture wars). After Iraq -- and keep in mind that we undoubtedly have at least a couple of years of horror to go -- the question is whether the world will be similarly capable or whether the oil lands of the planet will lie in ruins along with the global economy.

Extremity on Display
So, just past the midterm election mark of 2006, what's left of the New Rome? You could say that George W. Bush's dark success story has involved bringing his version of the United States into line with the look of the "rogue" enemies and terrorist groups he set out to destroy. By the time Americans went to the polls on November 7th, 2006 to repudiate his policies, he had given our country the ultimate in makeovers, creating the look of an Outlaw Empire.

We now have our own killing fields in Iraq where, the latest casualty study tells us, somewhere between 400,000 and 900,000-plus "excess Iraqi deaths" have occurred since the 2003 invasion. And do you remember Saddam's "torture chambers" (which the President used to cite all the time)? Now, we are the possessors of our own global prison system, our own (rented, borrowed, or jerry-rigged) torture chambers, our own leased airline to transport kidnapped prisoners around the planet, and a Vice President who has openly lobbied Congress for a torture exemption for the CIA and spoke glibly on the radio about "dunking" people in water. And, thanks to a supine Congress, we have the laws to go with it all.

The administration went after the right to torture or treat captives any way its agents pleased in places not open to any kind of oversight remarkably quickly after the September 11th attacks. By late 2001, Donald Rumsfeld's office was instructing agents in the field in Afghanistan to "take the gloves off" with a captive. (Inside the CIA, as Ron Suskind has told us in his book The One Percent Doctrine, Director George Tenet was talking even more vividly about removing "the shackles" on the Agency.) Inside the White House Counsel's office and the Justice Department, administration lawyers were already hauling out their dictionaries to figure out how to redefine "torture" out of existence. But why such an emphasis on torture (which is largely useless in the field, as everyone knows)?

What administration officials grasped, I believe, is this: If you could manage to get the right to legally employ extreme (and normally repugnant) acts of torture, then you would have in your possession the right to do anything. Think of the urge to abuse as the initial extreme expression of this administration's secret obsession with the creation of a "wartime" commander-in-chief presidency which would leave Congress and the courts in the dust.

If you want to measure where this has taken Bush officialdom in five years, consider their latest legal defensive measure. According to the Washington Post, the administration has just gone to court to declare American "alternative interrogation techniques" -- which simply means "torture" -- as "among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets." It is trying to get a federal judge to bar "terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons" from even revealing to their own lawyers details about what was done to them by American interrogators. In other words, torture is now to be put in the secrecy vault like a national treasure. Next thing you know, we'll be sending it to the Smithsonian.

Reflected in this desperate maneuver, you can catch a glimpse of an administration driven to the extremity of going to courts it despised -- and thought it had cut out of the process of foreign imperial governance -- simply to bury its own extreme misdeeds. You can feel the fear of the docket (and perhaps of history) in such a stance.

Another example of the extremity into which this administration has driven itself and the rest of us lies in an editorial published in the four main (officially private) military magazines, the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times, on the very eve of the midterm elections. It called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation just after the President had given him his vote of confidence once again. Realistically speaking, this can only be seen as an extreme military intervention in the American electoral process.

In so many ways, the American Constitutional system has been shredded and this -- whether we are to be an outlaw empire (and a failing one at that) -- is what Americans were voting about this last Tuesday (though it was called "Iraq").

The Wave
The history of recent American politics at the polls might be seen this way: Not so long after he declared the successful completion of his Iraqi dreams, George W. Bush found himself, to the surprise of his top advisors and supporters, hounded by Iraq's Sunni insurgency. He essentially raced not John Kerry (who recently offered yet another example of his special lack of dexterity on the campaign trail) but that insurgency to the finish line in November 2004. With a little help from his friends in Ohio and the Rove smear-and-turnout operation, he managed to squeak by. Then, in another of those milestone moments on the way to disaster, he declared that he had "political capital" to spare and would spend it.

The next summer, two storms hit the endlessly vacationing President in Crawford, Texas -- Hurricanes Cindy and Katrina. Cindy Sheehan tore away the bloodless look of casualty-lessness in Iraq (where body counts, body bags, and the return of the dead to these shores was being hidden away from both cameras and attention). She gave a mother's face to a son's death and to a nation's increasing frustration. Katrina revealed to many Americans that the Bush administration had been creating Iraq-like conditions in the "homeland." And that was more or less that. The President's approval rating plunged under 40% and has (a few momentary blips aside) bounced around between there and the low 30s ever since. By election 2006, presidential "capital" was a concept long consigned to the dustbin of history.

Imagine where that "capital" will be by 2008. Our President has been wedded to his war of choice in a way unimaginable since Lyndon Baines Johnson quit the presidential race after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Based on what's happened so far, there's every reason to believe that, in 2008, he will still be wedded to it (as would potential Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain) and his approval ratings may be bouncing in the 20%-30% range by then.

So what part of the 2001 dream team and its "vision" of the world are we left with? To answer this, you first have to realize that yesterday's electoral "wave" of repudiation is hardly an American phenomenon. It's global and, if anything, we were way late into the water. All you have to do is look at the latest polling figures (which are but extensions of previous, similar polls) to see that wave in country after country. The most recent international survey of opinion -- in Britain, Canada, Israel, and Mexico -- found that Bush's America is viewed as "a threat to world peace by its closest neighbors and allies." In Britain, the land of the "special relationship," only Osama bin Laden outranks our President as a global "danger to peace." While he comes in a dozen points behind bin Laden, he does manage to best Kim Jong Il, North Korea's grim leader, as well as those shining stars of the diplomatic firmament, the President of Iran and the leader of Hezbollah. And these are the countries most likely to have positive views of the U.S.

As hectorer-in-chief, George W. Bush has, hands down, used the word "must" more than any combination of presidents in our history. Only recently, he repeatedly told the North Koreans that they must not develop (and then test) nuclear weapons; he told the Iranians that they must halt their nuclear program; and his minions told the Nicaraguans that they must not vote for former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. The results: The North Koreans tested a weapon; the Iranians went right on enriching uranium; and the Nicaraguans, poverty-stricken and threatened with nothing short of economic ruin if their democratic vote went into the wrong column, simply ignored him.

All these decisions were based on assessments of the limits of power that had been revealed by the desperate acts of a failing empire stretched to its military and economic limits. If these are the "rogue" parts of the global wave, all you have to do is look at Russia's reassertion of interest and power in its old energy-rich Central Asian bailiwick (much coveted by the Bush administration); or the expansion of Chinese economic power in Southeast Asia and energy power in Africa to see other aspects of the global wave of reassessment under way.

In fact, the global part of the election was long over by November 7, 2006. For vast majorities abroad, the vision of the U.S. as an Outlaw Empire is nothing new at all. The wave here has perhaps only begun to rise, but here too those presidential "musts" (along with the President's designation of the Democrats as little short of "enemy noncombatants") have begun to lose their effect. Hence the presidential plebiscite of yesterday. No matter what else flows from it, the fact that it happened is of real significance. A majority of the American people -- those who voted anyway -- did not ratify Bush's Outlaw Empire. They took a modest step toward sanity. But what will follow?

Here, briefly, are five "benchmark" questions to ask when considering the possibilities of the final two years of the Bush administration's wrecking-ball regime:

Will Iraq Go Away? The political maneuvering in Washington and Baghdad over the chaos in Iraq was only awaiting election results to intensify. Desperate call-ups of more Reserves and National Guards will go out soon. Negotiations with Sunni rebels, coup rumors against the Maliki government, various plans from James Baker's Iraq Study Group and Congressional others will undoubtedly be swirling. Yesterday's plebiscite (and exit polls) held an Iraqi message. It can't simply be ignored. But nothing will matter, when it comes to changing the situation for the better in that country, without a genuine commitment to American withdrawal, which is not likely to be forthcoming from this President and his advisors any time soon. So expect Iraq to remain a horrifying, bloody, devolving fixture of the final two years of the Bush administration. It will not go away. Bush (and Rove) will surely try to enmesh Congressional Democrats in their disaster of a war. Imagine how bad it could be if -- with, potentially, years to go -- the argument over who "lost" Iraq has already begun.

Is an Attack on Iran on the Agenda? Despite all the alarums on the political Internet about a pre-election air assault on Iran, this was never in the cards. Even the hint of an attack on Iranian "nuclear facilities" (which would certainly turn into an attempt to "decapitate" the Iranian regime from the air) would send oil prices soaring. The Republicans were never going to run an election on oil selling at $120-$150 a barrel. This will be no less true of election year 2008. If Iran is to be a target, 2007 will be the year. So watch for the pressures to ratchet up on this one early in the New Year. This is madness, of course. Such an attack would almost certainly throw the Middle East into utter chaos, send oil prices through the roof, possibly wreck the global economy, cause serious damage in Iran, not fell the Iranian government, and put U.S. troops in neighboring Iraq in perilous danger. Given the administration record, however, all this is practically an argument for launching such an attack. (And don't count on the military to stop it, either. They're unlikely to do so.) Failing empires have certainly been known to lash out or, as neocon writer Robert Kagan put the matter recently in a Washington Post op-ed, "Indeed, the preferred European scenario [of a Democratic Congressional victory] -- 'Bush hobbled' -- is less likely than the alternative: ‘Bush unbound.' Neither the president nor his vice president is running for office in 2008. That is what usually prevents high-stakes foreign policy moves in the last two years of a president's term." So when you think about Iran, think of Bush unbound.

Are the Democrats a Party? If Rovian plans for a Republican Party ensconced in Washington for eons to come now look to be in tatters, the Democrats have retaken the House (and possibly the Senate) largely as the not-GOP Party. The election may leave the Republicans with a dead presidency and a leading candidate for 2008 wedded to possibly the least popular war in our history; the Democrats may arrive victorious but without the genuine desire for a mandate to lead. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats in recent years were not, in any normal sense, a party at all. They were perhaps a coalition of four or five or six parties (some trailing hordes of pundits and consultants, but without a base). Now, with the recruitment of so many ex-Republicans and conservatives into their House and Senate ranks, they may be a coalition of six or seven parties. Who knows? They have a genuine mandate on Iraq and a mandate on oversight. What they will actually do -- what they are capable of doing (other than the normal money, career, and earmark-trading in Washington) -- remains to be seen. They will be weak, the surroundings fierce and strong.

Will We Be Ruled by the Facts on the Ground? In certain ways, it may hardly matter what happens to which party. By now -- and this perhaps represents another kind of triumph for the Bush administration -- the facts on the ground are so powerful that it would be hard for any party to know where to begin. Will we, for instance, ever be without a second Defense Department, the so-called Department of Homeland Security, now that a burgeoning $59 billion a year private "security" industry with all its interests and its herd of lobbyists in Washington has grown up around it? Not likely in any of our lifetimes. Will an ascendant Democratic Party dare put on a diet the ravenous Pentagon, which now feeds off two budgets -- its regular, near-half-trillion dollar Defense budget and a regularized series of multibillion dollar "emergency" supplemental appropriations, which are now part of life on the Hill. What this means is that the defense budget is not what we wage our wars on or pay for a variety of black operations (not to speak of earmarks galore) with. Don't bet your bottom dollar that this will get better any time soon either. In fact, I have my doubts that a Democratic Congress with a Democratic president in tow could even do something modestly small like shutting down Guantanamo, no less begin to deal with the empire of bases that undergirds our failing Outlaw Empire abroad. So, from time to time, take your eyes off what passes for politics and check out the facts on the ground. That way you'll have a better sense of where our world is actually heading.

What Will Happen When the Commander-in-Chief Presidency and the Unitary Executive Theory Meets What's Left of the Republic? The answer on this one is relatively uncomplicated and less than three months away from being in our faces; it's the Mother of All Constitutional Crises. But writing that now, and living with the reality then, are two quite different things. So when the new Congress arrives in January, buckle your seatbelts and wait for the first requests for oversight information from some investigative committee; wait for the first subpoenas to meet Cheney's men in some dark hallway. Wait for this crew to feel the "shackles" and react. Wait for this to hit the courts -- even a Supreme Court that, despite the President's best efforts, is probably still at least one justice short when it comes to unitary-executive-theory supporters. I wouldn't even want to offer a prediction on this one. But a year down the line, anything is possible.

So we've finally had our plebiscite, however covert, on the failing Outlaw Empire of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But what about their autocratic inclinations at home. How will that play out?

Will it be: All hail, Caesar, we who are about to dive back into prime-time programming.

Or will it be: All the political hail is about to pelt our junior caesars as we dive back into prime-time programming? Stay tuned.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.

Copyright 2006 Tom Engelhardt

Go on-site for the numerous links in this article by clicking on the following URL: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15544.htm :: :: ::

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Voting in the absence of Choice
By Charles Sullivan
11/08/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Too many Americans harbor the illusion that we live in a democracy simply because we have the right to vote. But let us be clear about something: voting matters only where real choices are allowed. It is universally understood that special interest money runs the American political system and thus defines what the choices will be. So we are left to choose between candidates who are financed by special interest money, which any fool can see, is no choice at all.

The system is purposely designed to require enormous expense from its participants. According to the very mainstream USA Today, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics predicts that $2.6 billion will be spent on Congressional races this year alone, which thus precludes any third party candidate, as well as ordinary people, from all but token participation. It requires big money to win political office and big money comes from the deep pockets of corporate America. In effect, special interest money has rendered the political process as we know it null and void by restricting our choices to candidates that have been pre-chosen for us by corporate America.

The choice is more illusory than real. Plutocrats and workers have nothing in common. People of ordinary means can no longer ascend to the presidency or even Congress. The composition of both the state and federal governments are very different from the socio-economic demographics of the populations they are supposed to represent, and it is no accident. Regardless where you look the rich are represented and the great majority is excluded.

So if the Democrats wrest control of the government from the hands of the Republicans, it will be because conservative Democrats won some important races, precluding any progressive mandate from coming into play. On the whole the nation will remain well to the right of center, and certainly will not progress toward the left. The bulk of the corporate money will reverse direction and flow from the Republicans into the coffers of the Democrats. The corporations will retain control.

One can cast protest votes, as I often do, for candidates who do not accept special interest money, but they are rarely, if ever, contenders. It requires huge sums of money to get media exposure, and to get on state ballots, yet alone contend for the prize. The system is designed to preclude challenges to the status quo, which leaves us to choose between Republicrats fielded by corporate backers.

Corporate money so owns the political process that voters are left to choose only between the finer nuances of the capital system, and between degrees of corruption. Ultimately the choice is between lesser evils, which speak volumes about the state of decay of American politics. Good never springs from evil, so we witness the steady moral decline of a nation mired in corruption and confusion.

There is nothing benign about corporate financiers who hedge their bets by supporting candidates of the major parties. Corporate CEOs are not philanthropists interested in the well being of America. They are motivated by greed and profits, and when they finance political campaigns, make no mistake about it; they are renting or buying politicians who will help them achieve their objectives.

Special interest money is a malignancy that grows in the bowels of government, and it must be removed lest it kill the host.

A system in which the high rollers and fat cats feed upon the bloated corpses of the tax payers and is accountable to no one should be an affront to all decent people of every political stripe. Let us see the political system in America for what it is, and for the cruel hoax that it has always been.

The corporate financing of political campaigns is, in fact, a capital investment in the status quo that benefits the wealthy and marginalizes those with neither wealth nor property. That explains why substantive change is rarely accomplished through the vote in America. It also explains the remarkable consistency and homogeneity of governmental policy through the decades; domestic and foreign, regardless of which party is in power.

Those policies have consistently accrued wealth and influence to the rich by exploiting the working class, and with disastrous results for the world. It has resulted in war after war, occupation after occupation; and the systematic overthrow of democracies everywhere.

The corporations and their puppets in government are realizing enormous profits from the system, and they will not allow significant or radical change from within the existing order. The system cannot and will not be reformed; the money changers will not allow it.

Now the great majority of the population is disenfranchised and left out of the equation. Only those with wealth are allowed to play. Money talks and those who do not have an abundance of wealth are without voice in a political system awash in cash and corruption.

If working class people were running the government, rather than wealthy Plutocrats, we would not be in the current predicament that threatens to engulf us, and we would have avoided many of the pitfalls that have trapped us in the past. We would never have experienced a Viet Nam War, there would have been no invasion and occupation of Iraq; and we would have socialized health care and decent schools like other industrialized nations, rather than tax cuts for the rich and massive corporate welfare.

There is a huge difference between a government of the people and corporate ‘for profit’ governance. America would be a much better place without corporate rule, and unquestionably the world would be better off and much safer.

I am not sure what the solution is to the dilemma we have created for ourselves through detachment, indifference and apathy. I do know, however, that doing the same thing over and over will assure a similar result to what we have gotten in the past. At some point we must acknowledge the illegitimacy of the political process, and see it for the prostitution and the sham that it is. It is incapable of producing just results or the change we need in order to become a Democracy.

There are no easy ways out of the morass we have created. It may be that another tea party similar to the one enacted at Boston Harbor over two hundred years ago is the only cure for what ails us. I survive on the hope that eventually enough good people will arrive at a similar conclusion, and that we will effect change directly in the streets of America. That is what I would call participatory Democracy, and it would be a thing of beauty to behold.

Sources:

USA Today 10/29/2006
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer and social activist living in West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com.
James Carvill is right, until we stop the special interest groups and their money, our system will stay corrupted, it will be open to abuse, it will continue, it will be the status quo. We need to end lobbying, it is no longer a group of farmers who didn't have the time or the resources to camp out on Capital Hill and plead for laws to benefit them, it is much more than that in this day and age and it has become the gorilla in the room. It needs to end, along with campaign finance reform becoming law so we can take back our government. SRH

Go on-site to access the numerous links by clicking on the following:
URL: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15540.htm *****

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"There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders."

Alan K. Simpson (1931- ) US Senator

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"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Source: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1909
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Will the Democrats Become Part of the Problem?

By
Paul Craig Roberts

11/09/06 "Information Clearing House " -- -- It only took six years for Americans to comprehend George Bush and the Republican Party and to realize that the Republicans were not leading America in any promising directions.

Exit polls and interviews with voters across the country by CNN political analyst Bill Schneider show that the November 2006 election was a vote against both Bush and the war in Iraq. Schneider reports that voters did not even know the name of the Democrats for whom they voted. Voters said: “I am going to vote Democrat, because I don’t like Bush, I don’t like the war. I want to make a statement.”

I believe that voters recognized that the peril of one-party rule is that political accountability exists no where except at the ballot box. With the Republican built and programmed electronic voting machines, even accountability at the ballot box was disappearing. Americans realized that they had made a serious mistake giving power to one party, and they rectified it.

With Republican control of the legislative branch ended, Pentagon Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was immediately swept from power. With the troops, generals, and the service newspapers calling for Rumsfeld’s head, only the delusional warmonger, Vice President Richard Cheney, wanted to keep Rumsfeld in power.

It was a battle that Cheney lost. Cheney’s defeat is an indication that reality has elbowed its way back into Republican consciousness, pushing hubris and delusion away from the control they have exercised over political power.

The lust for unbridled power proved to be too strong a temptation for normally cautious Republicans. The Republicans waved the flag and shouted “terrorist sympathizer” at every civil libertarian who attempted to defend the US Constitution, the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions’ proscriptions against torture, and America’s reputation from a nazified US Dept of Justice
(sic) and a president who behaved--with the approval of Republicans-- as if he were above the law. In violation of his oath of office, Bush used signing statements to negate laws passed by Congress, not with a veto, but with his personal opinion. Bush, thus, elevated himself above the rule of law that has protected America from becoming a tyranny and made a mockery of the separation of powers that are a foundation of American liberty.

Americans may not have understood this as clearly as the Founding Fathers did, but the people recognized, however dimly, a problem and exercised corrective action. The question now is: what will the Democrats do?

The Democrats clearly have no mandate for their pet issues of gun control, homosexual marriage, and higher taxes--especially at a time when the average American is deeper in personal debt than at any other time in history and jobs are being offshored at a rapid rate destroying the economic prospects of the American people.

After the years of illegal war and the overnight destruction of civil liberties that were 800 years in their creation, the United States stands at a watershed. If the legislation that has been put on the books permitting spying on Americans without a court warrant, legalizing torture and self-incrimination, and repealing habeas corpus and the right to an attorney remains on the books, the United States will be a police state regardless of which party is in power.

If the Democrats are to make a real difference, their first task is to repeal the Orwellian-named “Patriot Acts,” the torture legislation, the detention without court evidence legislation, and the right-to-spy and invade privacy without court warrant legislation. The White House tyrant needs to be quickly told that one more “signing statement” and he will be impeached, convicted, and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.

The notion that Americans can be protected from “terror” by giving up the Bill of Rights is absurd. Democrats are complicit in this absurd notion. Many were intimidated into voting for police state legislation, because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to call police state legislation by its own name. The legislation that has been passed during the Bush regime is far more dangerous to Americans than Muslim terrorists.

Indeed, the prime cause of Muslim terrorism is the US interference in the internal affairs of Muslim countries and America’s one-sided stance in favor of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Jimmy Carter was president, his even-handed approach made the US respected throughout the Muslim world. 9/11, if it was actually an act of Muslim terrorism, was the direct consequence of US one-sided meddling in Middle Eastern affairs.

When, and only when, the Democrats have erased the Bush administration’s police state legislation from the books, thus restoring the Constitution, they should clear the air on two other issues of major importance. The Democrats must convene a commission of independent experts to investigate 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report has too many problems and shortcomings to be believable. Recent polls show that 36 percent of the American people do not believe the report. Such a deficient report is unacceptable. 9/11 became the excuse for the neoconservative Bush regime to launch illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East. The 9/11 Commission Report is nothing but a public relations justification for the “war on terror,” which in truth is a war on American liberty. As long as politicians with a police state mentality can cling to the cover of the 9/11 Commission Report, the Bill of Rights will remain endangered.

The other issue is the blatant corruption in the Bush regime’s contract practices. So many contracts are tainted with their connections to Republican power brokers, including Vice President Richard Cheney, that the taxpayers are being fleeced on the level of the Grant administration. Indictments and long prison sentences are in order.

This leaves the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both are lost. Both invasions were illegal. Those responsible must be held accountable. The American prosecutors of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg emphasized, as Robert Jackson put it, that Germany’s crime was not in losing the war but in starting it. Under the Nuremberg standard, to launch a war of aggression is a war crime. It is punishable with a death sentence.

As the wars are crimes, they must be stopped. Having overthrown a stable secular regime in Iraq, the US and its craven allies have no recourse but to accept that Iraq will break into three states: In the north the Kurds will unite with the Turkish Kurds, and Turkey will have to deal with the situation without US interference. In the south, the Shiites will have an Islamic regime similar to the government in Iran, with whom the Iraqi Shiites will be allied. The Sunnis will be isolated in the middle without any oil.

The US and Britain no longer have any role to play in the Middle East. As the King of Jordan predicted, there is now a Shiite crescent that runs from Iran through Iraq into Lebanon. This Shiite crescent is the most powerful force in the Middle East.

The Iraqi Sunnis can come to terms with Shiite power or be destroyed. The American puppet states of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates are faced with the instability that comes from being allied with the “hegemonic” West against their own people. It is up to their own wits whether they can make the transformation. The US has neither the resources, the finances, nor the credibility to intervene.

The Israelis have isolated themselves with their genocidal policies against the Palestinians. Intelligent Israelis are already sending their children out of the country. Israeli peace groups have thrown up their hands in the face of the persistent intransigence of the Israeli government and the disregard of common sense. It remains to be seen if the Israelis can learn to care about anyone but their own kind. Israel can save itself if its political leaders will stop pushing Palestinians off of their own land by destroying their homes and orchards and murdering their children, thus turning more Palestinians into refugees. It would be easy for the economically talented Israelis to pull the Palestinians into prosperity, thereby ending the conflict. Are Israelis capable of the humane leadership required to create a place for themselves in the Middle East or are they forever wed to Mao’s dictum that “power comes out of the barrel of a gun”?

Republican rule in the 21st century has devastated American civil liberties and American prestige and leadership capability. Can Democrats restore American liberties and leadership, or will a lust for power corrupt them, too, and cause Democrats to retain the police state powers Bush has created?

If the Bush regime’s police state legislation is still law in 2008, the Democrats will have failed.

Paul Craig Roberts , was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington ; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice
Go on-site to access this and other articles, and links if provided, just click on the following:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15548.htm XXX

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*Post-election etiquette
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate
11.09.06 - AUSTIN, Texas -- The sheer pleasure of getting lessons in etiquette from Karl Rove and the right-wing media passeth all understanding. Ever since 1994, the Republican Party has gone after Democrats with the frenzy of a foaming mad dog. There was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, not to mention the trashing of both Clinton and his wife -- accused of everything from selling drugs to murder -- all orchestrated by that paragon of manners, Tom DeLay.

Media Matters collected some gems of fairness. For instance, Monica Crowley with MSNBC, in the wake of John Kerry's botched program, astutely observed "how lucky we are that he was not elected president. ... The Republicans remain the grown-ups, the responsible ones on national security."

How many dead Americans has this grown-up war resulted in?

And how darling of Fox's Juan Williams, upon learning polls show the people favor Democrats on taxes, to say, "To me, that's crazy."

And how many times did Chris Matthews use the Republican talking points about Nancy Pelosi? Extremist, uncooperative, incapable, unwilling to work with the president.

So after 12 years of tolerating lying, cheating and corruption, the press is prepared to lecture Democrats on how to behave with bipartisan manners.

Given Bush's record with the truth, this bipartisanship sounds like a bad idea on its face. Go back to the first year of the administration, when Bush double-crossed Ted Kennedy in the No Child Left Behind Act. Think about it: You've said at the outset of your administration that you need cooperation to get anything done. Then you double-cross one of the senior senators of the other party when your re-education and labor agenda is dependent on him?

These people are not only dishonest -- they're not even smart. Not that I recommend nailing them at every turn, but I wouldn't be surprised if they try to do it to Democrats. If what Republicans have been practicing is bipartisanship, West Texas just flooded.

O.K., here's what the D's have going for them. New kids. Easy, popular first moves -- for example, increasing the minimum wage. Republicans so inept that it's painful. You want to look at some really, really basic legislation, try fixing the Medicare prescription drug bill. Or the bankruptcy bill. Or new dollar and trade policies.

Then we get to the real meat of this election. There are all manner of shuffle steps and politically shrewd thing for the D's to do. But now is not the time to be clever. The Democrats won this election because we are involved in a disastrous war. We know how to do this: Declare victory, and go home.

I noticed when Republicans are forced to talk about how to end this, they tend to announce that it's all hopeless: They have no ideas at all. Thanks, guys. Of all the options, I would say splitting Iraq into three states is least advisable. First, it puts us in the position of screwing the Kurds once again. Second, Turkey has serious objections to a Kurdistan. Third, Turkey is not a militia. Fourth, it gives Iran and Saudi Arabia a pawn apiece. And there'd be an unimaginable amount of future hassle.

Do I have any good ideas? Yes, but it's not a solution. We need to start the Middle East peace process again. Because it's the right thing to do. Because it's what Bush should have done to begin with. Because we have to start somewhere.

(c) 2006 Creators Syndicate

http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=21624 .....

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San Francisco values
Will Durst - WorkingForChange.com

11.10.06 - Hope you were hanging on to something solid Tuesday Night, because this country lurched so hard to the left, half of Washington woke up with a wicked case of whiplash on Wednesday. No, make that most of Washington. And all of K Street. And the Republicans should be grateful. Because if it weren't for Democratic persistence, they wouldn't still be able to file for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The electoral semi-tsunami means new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is next in line after Dick Cheney in Presidential succession. In other words, she's only two chicken bones away from the Presidency. And Bush does not look like a picky eater. Does the term "unchewed pretzel" have any meaning here? Not to mention one loud noise takes Cheney out like that, leading to... President Pelosi. And to conservatives, that's got to be scarier than a raw meat bathing suit in a shark tank.

Since she's the human embodiment of what right-wing talk show hosts refer to as (cue theme music from Psycho) the extreme agenda of San Francisco values, people all over the country have to be curious as to exactly what are these alarming values? Glad you asked. Pull up a chair, plop the kids in front of "CSI: Topeka" and let me tell you about Ms. Pelosi and the den of iniquity she represents for the city named after Saint Francis of Assisi.

For those who can't wait to get Nancy Pelosi down on the ground to shave her head and expose her horns, I regret to inform you, they aren't there. She's a kindly old grandma now, and although she does smile like some fiend is twisting a knobby pole inserted up her butt, the ironic part is, in San Francisco, this supposedly frighteningly extreme liberal is considered a moderate. She is often protested against by leftist factions claiming she's too deep in the mainstream and has sold out. And yeah, there are factions here that believe the same is true of Fidel.

The best way to analyze The City, as we call ourselves, is to look to the movies. Like in "The Wizard of Oz," when Dorothy says, "we're not in Kansas anymore," that's our motto. Then, at the end of "Peter Pan," where Tinkerbell almost dies and the only thing that can save her is audience applause. Well, that's us, too. We're not Kansas, and we clap for fairies. So what? Big deal. Who cares?

What we believe in are the rights of the individual. Our biggest moral flaw is we hate judgmental people, a bit of an internal fallacy, I'll admit. We do go out of our way not to place restrictions on people, or their actions, or religions, or appearances. When you think about it, what they're really afraid of is the freedoms that citizens of San Francisco enjoy. That's right, they hate us for our freedoms.

We may be part of America, but we're the exception that proves the rule. You've heard of "thinking outside the box?" Well, we outlawed corners. We're as far beyond that whole red/blue thing as a sperm whale is beyond a toothpick. We're not blue. We're indigo. Eggplant. Plum. Aubergine. Periwinkle. And yes, a large percentage of us do know the difference between aubergine and periwinkle. And recent revelations seem to suggest that a large percentage of Americans do know the difference between hope and hopeless. We are no longer the last pocket of resistance.
Comic, actor, writer, occasional radio talk show host Will Durst believes it's important the world knows that in San Francisco, Halloween is redundant.

Catch Durst in stand-up mode at Rooster T Feathers Thursday the 16th through Sunday the 19th. 408.736.0921. And listen to his twice weekly commentaries @ audible.com/durst.

(c) 2006 WorkingForChange.
All Rights Reserved

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21626 *****

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*********Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:
OSCAR-WINNING ACTOR JACK PALANCE, KNOWN FOR 'SHANE,' 'SUDDEN FEAR' AND 'CITY SLICKERS,' DIES AT HOME IN CALIFORNIAhttp://abcnews.go.com?CMP=EMC-1396 XXXXX

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Spooky stuff, this massing of warships and other military might. There are news reports out today that Israel is talking about bombing Iran's nuclear producing facility. I would hope that some sort of diplomatic solution would have worked out, but it seems this is where things are headed, like a snowball down hill, like the ad's on television with a ball picking up anything and everything in it's path; but, in the end, will we be able to pick ourselves up, shake off the debris, and carry on as though nothing of import has come about? Go out and buy that insurance to keep it from ever hurting us? SRH
War on Iran
Unleashing Armageddon in the Middle East
By
Dr. Elias Akleh

11/10/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- In mid 1970s the American Power Elite drew a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources, for he who controls energy resources determines the fate of nations. The base of this “Grand Plan” is the invasion of energy rich countries to directly control their resources, and to create subservient governments that would exploit their own people as cheap labor to harvest energy for the United States.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had created a window of opportunity for the United States to ensure and to affirm its global superiority through expansion and controlling energy resources without any real opposition. The attacks of 911 were necessary requirements for the Bush administration to wage a “global war against terror” that would serve as a cover up for American hegemony. President Bush borrowed Mussolini’s fascist motto of “If you are not with me, you are against me” and turned it into “You are either with us or with the terrorist” to terrorize weaker nations into accepting American expansions.

Part of the “Grand Plan”, which deals with the Arab World (Middle East) and South East Asia, was handed down to the Bush/Cheney administration for execution. The invasions and destructions of Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are next. Controlling Iran is very important to the American administration. Iran sits on a lake of oil and has large deposits of uranium that, when mined and refined, could make Iran a super global power. Controlling Iran leads to the containment of China (America’s greatest competitor), who depends heavily on Iranian oil to satisfy its growing hunger for energy. Geographically Iran makes the shortest and the most economical route for Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea ,north, to the Persian Gulf south with all the oil-tankers traffic. Iran also fits perfectly within the line of American hegemony in South East Asia. Listening to Bush’s speeches – especially his speech to the United Nation last September 2006- one can detect his “enthusiasm” for “spreading democracy and freedom” into the “despotic Middle East” with Iraq as an example.

The Bush/Cheney administration started its overt aggression against Iran immediately after 911 attacks. Bush described Iran as one of the “axis of evil” sponsoring “terrorist” groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, who are in reality defending themselves against Israeli aggression. After the American invasion of Iraq the American administration accused Iran of instigating a civil war in Iraq by supporting Shiites against Sunnis, and of opening its borders wide for terrorists to enter Iraq. The administration is accusing Iran of building a nuclear bomb, and is continuously threatening its government to abandon its nuclear “ambitions” or else face dire consequences including nuclear strikes (a paradox of using nuclear weapon to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons). Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State described Iran as a “central bank for world terrorism” that is threatening the stability of the Middle East.

American media had joined the administration into demonizing Iran and its government. Iran is described as a fundamentalist theocracy, who seeks to revive the glory of ancient Persian Empire by establishing an Islamic “Caliphate” in the Middle East. Iran’s leaders are portrayed as extremists, who hate Americans for their freedom, and want to build nuclear bomb to attack the US. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is described as an irrational, violent, mad Hitler-like anti-Semite, who hates Jews, denies the Holocaust, and wants to wipe Israel off the map. Ahmadinejad’s visit to the US last September (2006) to give a speech at the UN was received with a cold shoulder by the US. American officials in the UN and the American media boycotted his speech, while NBC’s Brian Williams and Newsweek’s Lally Weymouth interviewed him only to corner him about the Holocaust and wiping Israel off the map.

Bush/Cheney administration had rebuffed all Iranian attempts to negotiate, and refused to give Iran any guarantees that the US will not attack Iran if it stops its uranium enrichment. President Bush totally ignored President Ahmadinejad’s personal letter, and his call for a debate. The Washington Post, in June 18th 2006, reported Richard Hass, head of policy planning at the State Department at the time, as saying that at the wake of the US invasion of Iraq Iranian leaders offered the administration a proposal for a broad dialogue that included full cooperation on its nuclear programs, acceptance of the state of Israel, and halting support to Palestinian militants. The administration rejected this proposal since they already have plans for a regime change in Iran.

The administration’s attack plan started immediately after the invasion of Iraq. Spy stations were erected at the Iraqi/Iranian borders. The Congress had authorized the expenditure of $75 million to support Iranian opposition and to finance an anti-Iranian political campaign. Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, reported in June 2005 and in his book “Target Iran” that the US has been using terrorist organizations (Mujahedeen el-Khalq, MEK), under the supervision of the CIA, to conduct covert terrorist operations in Iran. MEK has been officially designated as a terrorist organization by the US. Yet in 2004 Bush/Cheney administration pardoned the MEK making it the first terrorist organization to receive a “protected” status. The MEK terrorists were trained by the CIA in an American compound northeast of Baghdad, and then moved to Basra and established their base in Camp Habib, from which they launch their terrorists raids against the southern region of Iran.

Israel, on the other hand, criticized Iran’s nuclear program refusing to “live under the threat” of nuclear Iran. Israeli officials point to Ahmadinejad’s alleged threat to wipe Israel off the map as threat to their own existence, and a possible justification for a pre-emptive strike as a measure of self-defense. They continually threaten to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities the same way Israel did to Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Israel warned that Iran’s uranium enrichment is the red line that Israel will react to. Israel had sent its military operatives into the Kurdish region north of Iraq to establish training camps for the Kurds. The Kurds want to establish their free Kurdistan that extends from north Iran to east Turkey. Considering it their patriotic duty, and encouraged, financed and armed by the Israelis, the Kurds send their militants to conduct military operations into northern Iran.

Bush/Cheney administration is adamant on invading Iran. Invasion was originally planned to take place sometime during the end of April 2006 immediately after the end of the grace period UN gave to Iran to stop its nuclear program. The plan consisted of 5 days continuous aerial bombardment by joint air planes of Israel, UK, and US that might include tactical nuclear bunker buster bombs. Land invasion would follow from west (Iraq), from east (Afghanistan) and from sea (Persian Gulf from west and Gulf of Oman from south). The plan was to heavily bombard the Iranians into overthrowing their government.

In an attempt to stop this attack Iran flexed its military muscles in war games conducted in April 2006. Iran effectively demonstrated its capability of waging war on land, sea, and air with sophisticated weapons. Iran also conducted other war games in August 2006 in coordination with China and Russia on all of Iran’s geo-strategic borders giving a warning signal that any possible invasion of its territory would be very costly. The American administration discovered that it had underestimated Iran’s military power, and that Iran is a larger and a stronger country than the embargo-weakened Iraq. Therefore the administration decided to adjust its war plans and to bring in more allies such as EU and some Arab states.

Contrary to the misleading American propaganda about the threat of irrational extremist Iranian government Iranian leaders have been very pragmatic politicians, who seek peace, stability, and nuclear-free Middle East. There is no doubt that Iran has supported Palestinian families (victims of Israeli terror), Shiite Lebanese south of Lebanon, and Shiite Iraqis in an attempt to protect its own interests and to counter balance warring Israel, UK, and US. Israel had invaded all its neighboring countries while the UK and US had sent their troops across the globe to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to protect its own interests in the region. For many generations Iran was never involved in a colonial war and had never threatened other countries. Iran was defending itself during the eight years Iraq/Iran war of attrition that had been instigated by the US. Unlike the Israeli and American military threatening rhetoric Iranian leaders had always declared that they do not pose any threat to any other country, and that Iran is only seeking peace and prosperity for its own citizens. Iranian officials recognized that war is knocking on their doors when American troops invaded Iraq. They attempted to approach Bush/Cheney administration with dialogue and cooperation, but they were rebuffed violently.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not conform “..to the picture of a madman” the American administration and media portray him to be, wrote Fareed Zakaria in his Newsweek (10/2/2006) article “What Iranians Least Expect”. “He was smug, even arrogant, sometimes offensive, but always calm and intelligent” continued Zakaria. Ahmadinejad is not the Jew-hater, Holocaust denier, intent on wiping Israel off the map as Bush keeps describing him. Ahmadinejad pointed to the Iranian Jewish community, who are living peacefully within Iran as any other Iranian citizens. Iran is the home for the largest Jewish community (25 thousands) in the Middle East outside Israel, who lived there for the last 3 thousand years since the rule of Cyrus the Great. Iranian government recognizes the Jews as a religious minority to be protected and represented by a PM, Maurice Mohtamed, in Iranian parliament. Iranians make a distinction between Jews and Zionists.

When Newsweek’s Lally Weymouth (October 2nd 2006) asked Ahmadinejad about the Holocaust he acknowledged it as a historical event by stating “We know this was a historical event that happened. But why is it that people who question it are persecuted and attacked?” He also questions the reasons why the Palestinians have to pay their country and their lives for what the Europeans had done. He questions the exploitation of the Holocaust to justify the usurpation of Palestinian land, their evacuation from their homeland and the destruction of their civilian homes, the targeted assassination of their freedom fighters, and the abduction and jailing of their democratically elected officials. “The Palestinian people, their lives are being destroyed today under the pretext of the Holocaust. Their lands have been occupied, usurped. What is their fault? What are they to be blamed for? Are they not human beings? Do they have no rights? What role did they play in the Holocaust?” Ahmadinejad answered NBC’s Brian Williams, who asked him about the Holocaust during an interview in September 20th, 2006. His acceptance of the Holocaust as a reality could not be any clearer than in his statement reported by the Washington Post December 9th 2005 “Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler, the reason for their (the Europeans’) support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?”

Ahmadinejad’s plans to build a nuclear bomb and use it to incinerate and “to wipe Israel off the map” as Tzipi Linvi – the Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister and Vice Prime Minister- likes to keep reminding the world of, is totally baseless. It is an intentional misinterpretation and distortion of Ahmadinejad’s speech. In the New York Times of June 11th, 2006 Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan, stated that “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map, because no such idiom exists in Persian. He did say he hoped its regime i.e. a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.” Ahmadinejad was not threatening Israel; rather he was calling for the end of Zionist occupation of the city of Jerusalem. He – and the Iranian government- are intelligent politicians, who understand that striking Israel with one atomic bomb would lead Israel to shower Iran with its 200, or more, nuclear bombs, some of which are ready to be launched from submarines.

To avoid the seemingly inevitable war Iran had followed the diplomatic path with no avail. It opened all its nuclear facilities to the strictest and most detailed inspections by the IAEA, who stated that there was no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran proposed to halt its nuclear program if the US halts its threatening postures and gives guarantees that it would not attack Iran. The Bush/Cheney administration refused to give Iran any guarantees insisting that all options, including nuclear, are on the table. Ahmadinejad also called for peaceful negotiations and a nuclear-free Middle East in his speech to the UN in his September visit. Yet his speech was boycotted by the American officials and ignored by the American media. Lately Iran proposed to have an international consortium to supervise uranium enrichment in Iran to guarantee that its nuclear program is really for peaceful purposes only. This proposal was rejected by the EU for they all are aware of the American plans to invade Iran.

Iran had also turned to the international community – mainly anti-American countries- for political support through economical trade and common political interests. In 2004 Iran struck an oil deal with China Petrochemical Corp. (SINOPEC Group) to sell it 51% stake in Iran’s Yadavaran oil field near the border of Iraq. Iran also became Russia’s most important weapons customer. Iran had also gained the political support of at least 118 countries during the summit of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) in Cuba in mid September 2006.

Iranian government, like any other prudent government in its place, has no alternative but to seriously consider the Israeli and American continuous military threats to its security and to prepare for the inevitable coming war. In a deterrent attempt Iran had conducted war games in April and August 2006 hoping that the American administration would reconsider its plans. It also positioned its weapons strategically on its borders and sea. Iranian arsenals include Iranian and Russian made submarines carrying their own mini submarines and submarine-to-ship missiles. Iranian naval forces had been updated with the latest military equipment and weaponry with its naval airborne forces including helicopters, minesweepers and the sophisticated fast Chinese “Silkworm” and “Sunburn” anti-ship missiles with the speed of 225 miles per hour. Iranian Patrol Torpedo Boats (PT) – such as the “Jashan PT”- are small boats designed to attack larger warships and are equipped with latest electronic systems and missiles with a range of 100km. Iran’s navy also has the largest hovercraft fleet in the world. On the land Iran has long range missiles (Shehab) and land-to-sea missiles (Kowsar) that can evade electronic jamming systems. Some of Iranian missiles are reported to be invisible to radar and can have multiple warheads with multiple payloads to hit multiple targets simultaneously.

Iran has also recently modified its air defense shield in order to shoot down incoming missiles and invading warplanes. Iran has about 20 Russian “Tor” and “S300” antiaircraft systems. Besides Russian warplanes Iran has manufactured its own warplanes with laser-guided missiles and whose capabilities are still unknown and could surprise any invading enemy. Iran also has its own fleet of unmanned militarized drones.

The eight-year Iraq/Iran desert war had given Iranian army the longest experience in ground and desert warfare far exceeding any other army. The Iranians learned to manufacture their own weapons such as tanks, missiles, torpedoes, helicopters, submarines and warplanes. This gave them independence and strength.

Attacking Iran will disrupt oil traffic in the Persian Gulf. In an obvious and expected move Iran will close the Straits of Hermuz blocking all military and supply in-traffic and all oil out-traffic. American military bases in the Gulf States will be targeted, and there is the possibility of also targeting oil wells. To exacerbate the ensuing oil crises Syria and Iran may also target the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Turkey. Venezuela, an Iranian ally, would stop the flow of its oil to the US. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has warned that Venezuela would not sit idle if Iran and Syria were attacked. An energy crisis might devastate Western countries. China might also enter the conflict to protect its own oil assets in Khuzestan province that the Iranian had armed heavily to protect its oil resources and to assure the supply of crude oil to its own allies.

Recognizing that Iran, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, is a big country with a military power including strong aerial defense that is well ready for the anticipated heavy Western aerial strike, and that it has a military outreach towards the whole region that might disrupt the flow of oil, the American administration decided to postpone its attacks until it creates a “war oil reserve”, forms a large alliance of “willing countries”, and sends a military armada to the region to guarantee victory.

The American administration influence on the UN and NATO can be seen clearly by the types of resolutions the UN adopts, and by the NATO troops becoming an American proxy occupier of Afghanistan. To avoid internal political crisis the administration needs to spare the lives of the American troops as much as possible by convincing more countries that it is in their own economic interest to send their own troops to the Middle East to “keep” the oil flow to their countries. UN resolution 1701 was the best cover to send military personnel and equipment to the region. 15 thousand armed UNIFEL troops are stationed on the Lebanese southern borders to protect Israel from any Hezbollah’s attacks. An armada of NATO battleships is crowding the eastern shores of the Mediterranean allegedly to stop arm shipments to Hezbollah. The real purpose of this armada is to protect the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Terminal during the war against Iran and Syrian, and to guarantee the flow of oil to Europe.

The cooperation of Gulf Arabian States was also needed. Condoleezza Rice traveled to Egypt early October and met with foreign ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Rice followed the usual American tactics of dandling the resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli issue in order to gain cooperation from these Arab leaders. To put more pressure on these leaders President Bush divided them into “moderate vs extremists”. Israel had also courted these “moderate” Arab leaders during September United Nations meeting in New York, where Israeli officials held some private meetings with officials from Persian Gulf Countries (The Wall Street Journal, October 3rd). There was also a rumor about an Israeli/Saudi secret private meeting in Jordan’s King Abdullah’s palace at the end of September. The talks aimed to form some kind of secret intelligence and military alliance between Israel and the US on one side and the “moderate” Arabic regimes on the other hand against the Iranian nuclear threat and the so called “Shiite Crescent” –Iran, Syria and Lebanon- in the north. After all, these Sunni Gulf rulers had supported and financed Iraqi Saddam Hussein during his eight years war against Iran. They had sent Moslem fighters as an American proxy army to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. They had, for fifty eight years, stood silent about the Israeli terror against Palestinians, and finally had criticized Hamas and Hezbollah resistance as foolish and uncalculated useless adventures. Some of these Gulf States had joined actively into the American war games off the Iranian coastline in October 31st while others joined as observers only.

The US and NATO countries had amassed the largest military armada in the Middle East. The US armada consists of Carrier Strike Group 12 led by nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, Eisenhower Strike Group – another nuclear powered aircraft carrier with accompanied military vessels and submarines, Expeditionary Strike Group 5 with multiple attack vessels led by aircraft carrier USS Boxer, the Iowa Jima Expeditionary Strike Group, and the US Coast Guard. Canada has sent its anti-submarine HMCS Ottawa frigate to join the American Armada in the Persian Gulf. On October 1st the USS Enterprise Striking Group had crossed the Suez Canal to Join NATO armada at the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

The NATO force is composed of troops and naval vessels from several countries and is lead by Germany. It includes Garman command naval forces, Italian navy, 2 Spanish warships, 3 Danish warships, 10 Greek Warships, 2 Netherlands warships, and French, Belgium, Turkish and Bulgarian troops in South Lebanon.

This is the largest amass ever of military power in the region, and it is gathering for a reason.

The US had started its military provocation on October 30th with its “Leading Edge” war game across the Iranian shores. Iran responded with a 10 days military maneuvers “Great Prophet” taking place in Gulf, Sea of Oman, and several provinces of the country test-firing dozens of its long-range missiles capable of reaching Israel and American military bases in Gulf States.
The powder keg is ready and all it needs is a match to ignite it. This could come in the form of an “arranged” terrorist act in Lebanon – e.g. another political assassination or toppling of government- to be blamed against Syria and Iran. American warnings of such an act are already in the media.

The present American administration is an extremist theocratic apocalyptic neoconservative Christian-Zionist war mongering law-breaking power hungry administration with a bragging “war president” adopting the doctrines of “pre-emptive” strikes and perpetual war against “global terror”. This war will take place far away from the American home-land, and will generate large profits for the American military corporations. The war against Iran will engulf the whole Middle East and may overflow to its neighboring countries. Controlling Iran is a very important strategic move to assure American global hegemony. This war is scheduled to start between February and April of 2007, and it seems that there is nothing to stop it.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15564.htm

[Saundra Hummer]

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Chafee Considers Leaving GOP
By
MICHELLE R. SMITH
AP
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Nov. 10) - Two days after losing a bid for a second term, Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he was unsure whether he would remain a Republican.
Darren McCollester, Getty Images: Go on-site to view photo's and any links if provided.
Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee is the most liberal Republican in the Senate. He was the only GOP member to vote against the Iraq war.

Chafee lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in a race seen as a referendum on President Bush and the GOP. On Thursday, he was asked whether he would stick with the Republican Party or become an independent or Democrat.

"I haven't made any decisions. I just haven't even thought about where my place is," Chafee said at a news conference. When pressed on whether his comments indicated he might leave the GOP, he replied: "That's fair."

Chafee, 53, is a lifelong Republican who has represented Rhode Island for seven years. His father held the same seat for 23 years before that.

He is the most liberal Republican in the Senate and was the sole Senate Republican to vote against the war in Iraq. But that was not enough to prevail against Whitehouse, who shared many of Chafee's views but was a Democrat in a heavily Democratic state.

Chafee said his loss may have helped the country by switching control of Congress.

"The people have spoken all across America. They want the Democrats and Republicans to work together," he said. "I think the president now is going to have to talk to the Democrats. I think that's going to be good for America."

Chafee said he waged a lonely campaign to bring the party to the middle. He described attending weekly lunches with fellow GOP senators and standing up to argue his point of view, often alone.

"There were times walking into my caucus room where it wasn't fun," he said, adding that he stayed with the GOP largely because it allowed him to bring federal dollars home to Rhode Island.


Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

http://news.aol.com/elections/story/_a/chafee-considers-leaving-gop/20061109203709990001
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[Saundra Hummer]

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George Washington, Meet George Bush!
Posted Nov 10th 2006 5:25PM by Richard Tenorio
Filed under: President Bush

President Bush just surprised the Democrats with a George Washington moment.

During the Revolution, when Washington looked pinned down by His Majesty's troops, he stunned them with victories at Trenton and Princeton.

Now, after the Democrats captured the House and Senate, Our George has unleashed a little shock and awe of his own.

Bush wants firebrand UN ambassador John Bolton to stay in his post. The Democrats, plus the GOP's Benedict Arnold, Lincoln Chafee, don't. What follows, as reported by the New York Times, is worthy of a Dan Brown novel:

"Mr. Bolton is keen to stay at the helm of the American team at the United Nations, administration officials say, and White House officials, including the legal adviser, Harriet Miers, have been looking into whether Mr. Bush can somehow bypass the Senate and save Mr. Bolton. Administration officials said that Vice President Dick Cheney is backing the exploration of such a move."

Bush also requested Congress to keep letting the National Security Agency snoop on Americans without a warrant. The House of Hastert OK'd this in September.

"Republicans have held out hope of getting such legislation approved by the full Congress during the lame-duck session," the Times reported, "and Mr. Bush pushed anew on that front Thursday, calling passage an 'important priority in the war on terror.'"

The first American president won the Revolution by outlasting the enemy. We shall see if No. 43 can succeed with a similar strategy.http://www.aolelectionsblog.com/2006/11/10/george-washington-meet-george-bush/ XXX

[Saundra Hummer]

:: :: :: :: :: Father knows best. 'W' finally listening?
Fri Nov 10, 7:09 AM ET
Last month, the first President Bush said at a Republican Party fundraiser in Philadelphia that he hated to think about life for his son if Democrats took control of Congress. Asked about that on ABC's This Week on Oct. 22 by George Stephanopoulos, "W" replied: "He shouldn't be speculating like this, because he should have called me ahead of time and I'd tell him they're not going to."

So son went on a frenzied late coast-to-coast campaign, still convinced he could sell the public on his failed missions, especially his tragic mistakes in Iraq. Tuesday's elections proved him wrong.

Ironically, Iraq is where father and son first split. The son, along with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was determined to show the old man that he was wrong in not invading Iraq and wiping out Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Whither goest the son now that voters gave him what he called a "thumping"? His choices:

•He can continue as a tough-talking, gun-slinging, hip-shooting young cowboy and follow his failed policy of "If you are not with us, you are against us."


•Or he can decide that compromise is the key to solving his problems.


There are signs he'll do the latter. The president was not a very good student in school, and he's stubborn. But he's not stupid. Some of his usual cockiness was missing at his post-election news conference on Wednesday, and his belated surprise dumping of Rumsfeld might mean he's finally ready to listen to his dad - and to you voters.


If he now also turns less to Cheney for advice, his chances of salvaging his presidency will greatly improve.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20061110/cm_usatoday/fatherknowsbestwfinallylistening&printer=1
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[Saundra Hummer]

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A pregnant pause in the US over Iraq

The Monitor's View
Fri Nov 10, 3:00 AM ET

Washington is in useful political limbo. After winning Congress, Democrats must prepare to work with a GOP president to decide the next steps in Iraq. The war's executor, Donald Rumsfeld, is out. His expected replacement, ex-CIA chief Robert Gates, brings a fresh view. And any week, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group will deliver proposals for the choices ahead.

Call it a new beginning for an old war. Of course, Iraq itself remains a jumble of warring factions only loosely resisted by a newly elected government. And exit polls during Tuesday's elections in the US reveal public opinion split along three lines on what course to take: An immediate US withdrawal, a steady pullout over time, or a beefing up of troops to secure Iraq while it pulls itself together.

But despite differences in public opinion, Washington may enjoy a brief period of bipartisanship between President Bush and an incoming Democratic Congress.

Both sides have every reason to settle the issue of Iraq jointly before the next election. Neither party would benefit at the polls next time if Iraq remains in turmoil. Each party now has a hand on the tiller of Iraq's listing ship.

Democrats may get carried away by launching too many official investigations into how the war has been conducted so far by the Bush administration. A few backward-looking probes by a House or Senate committee may be useful, such as in correcting problems in misspent funds by private US contractors in Iraq, if done with a bipartisan tone.

But the postelection climate of joint responsibility for Iraq argues for not using the war's past as a partisan weapon. The key message from the 2006 elections: Figure out a different future for Iraq.

Fortunately, the likely next House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told PBS's NewsHour: "We're not about getting even. We're about helping the American people get ahead."

Democrats will need to develop a measure of consensus quickly around a plan for Iraq. Otherwise, Republicans may be diverted into once again using the Democrats' differences over the war for political gain. Representative Pelosi laid down tracks for such a consensus by talking of a "responsible redeployment" of US troops while also pushing Iraqis into necessary political compromises and enlisting the aid of Iraq's neighbors.

That sounds a lot like what may come out of the Iraq Study Group, led by Republican James Baker, former secretary of State, and Democrat Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee. The White House, too, is reportedly moving in that direction.

One possible point of consensus is that Iraq should not be left in the lurch, endangering the region, or become a launching pad for terrorists. Victory against such an outcome still requires a stable, and preferably democratic, government in Baghdad.

The French statesman, Georges Clemenceau, once said: "War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory." Iraq has had its share of catastrophes since 2003. Learning from the mistakes and then moving in unison is the only way ahead for now.

Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20061110/cm_csm/ewar&printer=1 Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.XXX

[Saundra Hummer]

I still have reservations as to how things could, or might, end up; how it will all turn out.

Cheney and Bush are still in office and they must (still) have ways to make things very difficult for anyone who was elected.

Until they're long gone, I don't think I can take an easy breath. :shrug:

[Saundra Hummer]

.............
An Open Letter to Carl Levin:
No Free Pass to Gates

By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 11 November 2006

Dear Senator Levin:
The humiliation you felt was palpable when, as the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, you were unceremoniously diddled by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, chief architects of the fiasco in Iraq. They all but thumbed their noses at you, and you often complained about their "lack of candor." In two short months, you will chair Armed Services and will no longer have to tolerate such behavior. Indeed, you can start practicing now by not letting the nomination of Robert Gates be a "slam dunk."

One need not be politically astute to see that the White House is again using its cat's paw Senator, patrician gentleman from Virginia John Warner, who now chairs the committee, to force through the nomination of Gates this year, while the lame-duck Republicans still hold the majority. That, of course, is par for the course. What is far more disturbing is press reporting that you intend to acquiesce in that maneuver. You don't have to do that any more.

I am having a hard time believing that you would give Gates a pass, since I have so much admired your courage in the past. But I fear that the many recent years in minority exile may have dulled your edge and that you have gotten too used to unsavory compromises. I have in mind the deal you worked out with South Carolina Republican senator Lindsay Graham curtailing some of the rights of "detainees." Not to mention your sudden cave-in, in the aftermath of 9/11, on funding for the National Missile Defense program, which you earlier recognized as obscenely expensive, of unproven reliability, and of dubious utility given the changing nature of the threats to our security.

A lot is riding on whether you step up to the plate on the Gates nomination. Your decision will be one of the earliest tangible signs of whether the November 7 election has injected some spine into Democrats - whether they still have it in them to act like winners. You have had a running dispute with the Bush administration over the way its representatives have misrepresented so much on Iraq in testimony before your committee. If you bow to Republican pressure to allow the Gates nomination to sail through without a thorough investigation of his record, you will be giving a fresh nihil obstat to the practice of no-fault dissembling before Congress.

In 1991, you joined 30 other senators in voting against Gates's confirmation as CIA director because Gates was a good deal less than candid about his role in Iran-Contra and unconvincing in his denials that he had politicized intelligence. A few days ago you said that you wanted to give Gates a "fair and fresh look; a lot of time has passed."

Fair enough. If you want to know what has happened in the interim, you can start with the fresh, documentary evidence adduced in award-winning investigative reporter Robert Parry's recent article, "The Secret World of Robert Gates". Parry's article contains unique and highly damaging information on Gates's role in the original "October Surprise" - the unconscionable but successful Republican effort to prevent the release of the 52 American hostages imprisoned for 14 months in the US embassy in Tehran until Ronald Reagan had won the election in 1980. Parry also provides fresh detail on Gates's involvement in the illegal sale of weapons, including cluster bombs, to Iraq in the early eighties.

Another excellent source on Gates's involvement in the secret arming of Saddam Hussein (yes, the same Saddam) and the Iran-Contra scandal is Amy Goodman's interview of Parry and former CIA analyst Mel Goodman on Democracy Now, November 9th.

As you suspected when you voted against his nomination in 1991, Gates knew about many of Oliver North's illegal activities but, under oath, he just couldn't remember. Gates has been able to escape close scrutiny of his own involvement in extralegal and illegal activities largely because there are far too few journalists with the enterprise, talent, and courage of Robert Parry.

All the above-mentioned escapades are enough to derail Gates's nomination, but the corruption of intelligence should be given priority attention, given the huge role this played in 2002 in deceiving Congress into voting for an unnecessary war. The record shows that Gates is the archetypal intelligence fixer, employing all the tricks of that dishonorable trade - including memory loss, when caught. Indeed, it was the malleable managers who prospered at CIA during Gates's tenure there who caved in to White House pressure to "lean forward" on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Those commenting on the Gates nomination so far seem largely unaware of this history. The exception is Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), who worked in the State Department's intelligence bureau and now sits on the House Intelligence Committee. Pointing out Gates's reputation for putting pressure on analysts to shape their conclusions to fit administration policies, Holt called the nomination "deeply troubling" and stressed that the confirmation hearings "should be thorough and probing." Good advice.

The question, Senator Levin, boils down to whether you will stand up and say, "Never Again." Even before you formally become chair of the committee, you have the power to require a serious vetting of Gates's past behavior and to make "Never Again" stick.

I am reminded that, at a hearing on his first (abortive) nomination to be CIA director in 1987, Gates kept denying that he had tailored intelligence to please his superiors; at one point he added, curiously, "Sycophants can only rise to a certain level." Whether that was an unintentionally prophetic observation now depends largely on you and your newly empowered, but apparently not yet emboldened, fellow Democrats.

Yours truly,

Ray McGovern
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H.W. Bush.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111106A.shtml .........

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Will Rumsfeld's reforms last?
America's military is more high-tech now, but it's not clear how that's helping to win in Iraq.
By
Keith S. Collins | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON
Donald Rumsfeld's efforts as secretary of Defense to modernize the US military helped make American fighting forces more lean and muscular. He envisioned a military powered by information and relied on technology to deliver a more effective, more dominant, and more connected armed forces.

But not all experts believe the transformation has been helpful in the war on terror, and the sustainability of many of his reforms may ultimately depend on the ability of people to rise above intense negative feelings about him and see beyond his failings in the Iraq war.

"Rumsfeld made an impressive start [on military transformation]," says Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "He set out to restructure global basing posture and succeeded. He enlarged special operations. We have a strong precision-strike capability now."

From the beginning of his tenure in early 2001, Rumsfeld aimed to create a military firmly planted in the 21st century. He insisted that orders for powerful but, in his view, outdated weapons systems, such as the Comanche helicopter and the Crusader artillery, be canceled. He felt the 70-ton Crusader system, for example, was too cumbersome for the kind of rapid deployment needed in modern battlefield situations. After a bruising battle with Congress, he was able to kill the program in 2002.

Mr. Rumsfeld's intent was to change what he believed were old ways of thinking. Peter Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says Rumsfeld wanted to send a message as much as to cancel programs. "He was telling the [armed] services: 'You have to have a new operating mentality,' " he says.

The military got the message. Discussions over designing the military of the future were once confined to universities and think tanks. But, Rumsfeld brought the debate to the Pentagon. Now, each branch of the military analyzes new ways to grow.

To help give his reforms momentum, Rumsfeld opened the Office of Force Transformation in late 2001, and he pushed the concept of "networkcentric warfare," the theory that a military can gain battlefield advantage through information advantage. The purpose, according to the Pentagon document "Elements of Defense Transformation," was to create "networked forces that operate with increased speed and synchronization and are capable of achieving massed effects, in many situations without the physical massing of forces required in the past."

Networkcentric warfare has been on display in Iraq. Singer points to a tale of marines under mortar fire during the second US offensive on Fallujah in November 2004. The soldiers' call for help went not to fellow marines but to an office in Nevada, which was controlling an unmanned Predator drone in the skies above Iraq. The "pilot" in Nevada steered the drone over the area and launched a missile that took out the mortar.

But not everyone was buying into Rumsfeld's vision. Fighting today's wars, some experts say, is not just about smarter technology but about smarter ways of handling people. Jim Dobbins, director of the RAND Corp.'s Security and Defense Policy Center and the Bush administration's first special envoy to Afghanistan, believes Rumsfeld's efforts at transforming the military are "largely irrelevant" to the counterinsurgency efforts in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and in fact may be destructive.

Mr. Dobbins acknowledges that at the tactical level, networked weapons systems can be helpful. But computers can not gauge collateral damage. The drone's missile may take out the mortar, but it may also take out the entire house.

"If you substitute firepower for manpower, you kill innocent people and antagonize the population you are trying to help," Dobbins says.

The unexpected difficulties of the Iraq war ultimately soured many people on the value of Rumsfeld's reforms. Pinpoint attacks can effectively take out tanks and missile silos. But lightning strikes don't work in house-to-house raids or when rooting out guerrillas in caves. Those scenarios require manpower.

Rumsfeld's management style, often described as arrogant, also raised resistance to his ideas.

In some ways, the fate of many of Rumsfeld's reforms has already been determined.

"He was so preoccupied with transformation and wrong about Iraq, I don't think most of his concepts will be realized," predicts Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a think tank on military issues. "He had two [unsuccessful] challenges on his watch: finding Al Qaeda's leaders and the war in Iraq. So his achievement will be discredited."

Will the new nominee for Defense secretary, Robert Gates, continue with Rumsfeld's reforms? "My impression is that Gates is being hired to deal with Iraq," says Mr. Krepinevich. "I don't see him giving high priority to transformation."

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links]

from the November 13, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1113/p03s03-usmi.html XXXXX

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In Gates, caretaker or agent of change?
By Peter Grier and Rick Whittle
WASHINGTON
If confirmed as secretary of Defense, Robert Gates is likely to manage the Pentagon with more grace and less conflict than his assertive predecessor, say some who know the new nominee.

And in this case, a change in style might result in a change in substance. Skilled at building consensus, a realist who adapts to conditions as he finds them, Mr. Gates might find it easier to urge a change in course in Iraq than did Donald Rumsfeld - who was a chief architect of the administration's Iraq policies, after all.

Gates's appointment might yet turn out to be merely symbolic. President Bush, not his secretary of Defense, is the ultimate arbiter of US strategy. But at the moment it appears the administration is more open to a fresh perspective on Iraq than at any time since a US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein 3-1/2 years ago.

"The war's going the wrong way," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general who also served as President Clinton's drug czar. "This is a terrific choice to help think through what are we actually going to do."

Unlike Mr. Rumsfeld, Gates spent decades working his way up through Washington's national security bureaucracy. He has been both an entry-level employee and director at the Central Intelligence Agency, for instance. He worked at the National Security Council (NSC) under the first President Bush, where one of his colleagues was current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Thus he understands the process of developing policy, and may have a realistic regard for the strengths and weaknesses of those under him.

"He was very well regarded in government as someone who can get things done," says Robert Hutchings, a diplomat-in-residence at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School who worked for Gates on the NSC staff from 1989-92.

Gates is collegial by nature, and has worked with Vice President Dick Cheney in the past, as well as Secretary Rice, points out Dr. Hutchings.

Alluding to Rumsfeld's efforts to exert influence over the intelligence community, Hutchings adds that Gates "probably will be disinclined to set up rival ... intelligence units that serve up what the Pentagon leadership wants to hear."

Gates is currently president of Texas A&M University. That job is more analogous to secretary of Defense than one might think, says Robert McTeer, Texas A&M chancellor. For one, faculty members and senior military leaders may hold similar attitudes toward institutional leadership. Both groups believe they're running things, says Mr. McTeer. Both also need to be consulted and brought to consensus before major decisions are made.

"Being a college president is a very delicate thing, because ... you have to get buy-in from the faculty," says McTeer.

But even if welcomed by senior military leaders, Gates might have trouble instituting Pentagon change, say others. By the time he leaves office, Rumsfeld is likely to be the longest-serving US secretary of Defense. He has had a lot of time to institutionalize his attitudes toward military transformation and budgeting, and to promote his allies, both civilian and military, into top department positions.

Gates has been out of government for years, says Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute, a Washington think tank. "It will take him six months," he says, "just to figure out where the bathrooms are in the remodeled Pentagon."

With only two years left in Mr. Bush's term, his new Defense secretary might best be seen as a caretaker on both military and Iraq policy, says Mr. Goure. Gates "accepted the job, I think, with the clear message from the president that it ain't over 'til we win," he says.

Democrats, for their part, say they will use their newly won congressional majorities to press for more changes in security policy than mere personnel replacements.

They might get their opportunity even before the new Congress is sworn in next year. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner (R) of Virginia plans an Iraq hearing for next week, with top military and intelligence officials set to appear. Senator Warner also says he wants to hold Gates's confirmation hearings this year - which could become a forum exploring all aspects of the Iraq conflict.

Next year Democrats are likely to push legislation calling for a yet-unspecified troop withdrawal from Iraq. They may add bills calling for more money for veterans and special forces, and for the repair of military equipment damaged in Iraq fighting.

Such moves will signal unhappy US voters, and Iraqis, that the US intends for the Iraqis to take greater responsibility for their fate, say Democratic leaders.

• News wires were used in this report.

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from the November 10, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1110/p01s02-usfp.html :: :: :: :: ::

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Among US troops in Iraq, mixed reviews of Rumsfeld's resignation
By
Scott Peterson and Tom Peter
BAGHDAD
The two US Army soldiers were shocked when the morning paper was delivered Thursday to their sand-enclosed checkpoint in Baghdad.

"Rumsfeld Resigns," blared the headline in "Stars and Stripes," the military's newspaper. There was surprise. Then uncertainty. Then a return to realities that include an Iraqi death toll of more than 2,500 each month despite the US presence.

"I always backed the president and Rumsfeld ... but ... they misunderstood what Iraq was going to be," says a bulky soldier, keeping his rifle trained down a busy road. He spoke on condition of anonymity. "The situation is such that if we left now, it would be even more [screwed] up."

"I don't think anything is going to change," says the private first class. "I was reading [in Stars and Stripes] ... about, if you go into someone's house and mess it up, you've got to do the cleanup."

"There's no sense getting excited about [politics]," he adds, "because there is nothing you can do."

Reactions to the Democrats' sweep of Congress and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation ran the gamut among some of the 144,000 US troops in Iraq who have seen popular support for the war slide in recent months.

Iraqis widely favor the change, pinning more blame for every US mistake - from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to allowing insurgency and sectarian violence claim tens of thousands of Iraqi lives - on Mr. Rumsfeld than on President Bush.

"I think this country is beyond help," says 1st Lt. Jeremiah Parker, from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Taji, in an e-mail. He made clear he was speaking as a private individual, and not as a representative of the US Army. "From my experience as a platoon leader ... patrolling the neighborhoods, talking to locals, I think this country will not see peace unless it is under some sort of dictator," says Lt. Parker, who is in the final stages of a recently extended 16-month deployment.

"I think the divisions between the ethnic and religious groups are far too long-existing to bridge with a fledgling democracy. I think the country will devolve into chaos for awhile and then a dictator will emerge and bring some semblance of order," writes Parker. "The [US] soldiers over here are the best in the world and will do whatever you tell them to do, but I know that many, and I would say most, that these people need to fix their own situation."

"I am very pleased with [Rumsfeld's] resignation," Parker adds, writing that increasing reliance on high tech and not "on actual people" means less funding that "impacts ... the counterinsurgency fight."

Not all troops are critical of Rumsfeld, despite a recent chorus of complaints from former senior generals, and an editorial last week in four privately owned military trade newspapers, including Army Times, that called for Rumsfeld's removal.

"I am disappointed that Rumsfeld will go down in history as a villain," says Army Spc. Michael Sanchez, based in Ramadi, in restive western Iraq, in an e-mail. "Instead of offering honest discourse on his positions ... the media crucified him and manipulatively pointed to the broad and dark negativity of war as a sign of his allegedly poor leadership."

"I doubt Rumsfeld's resignation will result in the expedition of withdrawal," he writes. "[That would] have devastating consequences.... We are still making headway; drifting too far off course may cause a crash."

"I am not sure if a new secretary of Defense will improve the situation," adds Specialist Sanchez. "A revised strategy may be more beneficial than new leadership."

At the Baghdad checkpoint, a sergeant contemplated the early stages of his second year-long tour. "I'm not going to comment," he says, holding up the newspaper. "I don't watch the news, because I'm in the news. I'm here to do my job."

"I don't really follow that stupid political [stuff]," says Mark, a specialist based near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, who gave only his first name. "I like to keep things that closely impact me close, and things that I really have no control of out of my way."

"I never entirely agreed with Rumsfeld, i.e., his plans for a more mobile, faster infantry, which would result in the loss of our body armor and other key equipment," writes another Army specialist. He adds: "I can see some radical Democrats trying to pull funding for troops in Iraq, which will result in more deaths here, and an eventual withdrawal. Rumsfeld I don't think would have altered that."

Much will depend, these troops say, on Robert Gates, the former CIA chief nominated to replace Rumsfeld.

"The situation will improve dependent upon Mr. Gates's willingness ... to listen to the advice of his generals and admirals," writes Parker. "I do think the mere fact that the president has chosen a new 'secdef' indicates he is now willing to recognize more than one side of the argument."

And there is much to improve. Another car bomb in central Baghdad killed six, raising Thursday's death toll to 27. Some 66 bodies were found Wednesday around Iraq. The parliament has extended for 30 days a state of emergency, as it has done each month for the past two years.

An Army PFC at Camp Liberty near Baghdad says in an e-mail he is "disappointed" at Rumsfeld's exit, but adds that "a new viewpoint would be insightful."

When asked if he thought this might result in an earlier withdrawal from Iraq, the soldier replied: "I hope so."

• Mr. Peter conducted all e-mail reporting from Kuwait City. Mr. Peterson reported from Baghdad, and wrote this article.

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from the November 10, 2006 edition
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1110/p11s01-usmi.html [B]lllllll

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Washington shake-up, Part 2: Rumsfeld departs
Bush announced his intent to replace the controversial Defense secretary with Robert Gates, a former CIA director.
By
Peter Grier
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON
By changing the leadership of the Department of Defense, President Bush has not necessarily changed his policies in Iraq. But he may have changed the tone of Washington's debate about Iraq, at least for now.

It's not yet clear whether Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld chose to leave on his own, or whether he was pushed. It's quite possible that it was a mutual decision, as Mr. Bush implied in his press conference Wednesday afternoon.

But Secretary Rumsfeld, a pugnacious former wrestler and fighter pilot, has long been a symbol of intransigence to the administration's critics. Now, newly empowered Democrats won't have him to kick around during any oversight hearings into the preparation for, and conduct of, the Iraq conflict.

"Don Rumsfeld has been a superb leader during a time of change," said Bush in announcing the change. "Yet he also appreciates the value of bringing in a fresh perspective during a critical period in this war."

From the outset, Rumsfeld was a controversial choice to lead the Pentagon. His abrasive style did not sit well with many in the military, including some of the nation's top uniformed generals and admirals. Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," contains a scene in which Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when asked how to decode his new boss, simply lays his head down on his desk in frustration.

Rumsfeld was not a secretary the military could easily distract by dispatching him to foreign bases on goodwill tours. His "snowflakes" - short action memos or questions about a particular subject - drifted through Pentagon offices by the dozens, causing many to work late as they drafted replies.

Critics said that Rumsfeld's views on the need for the military to transform itself into a light, lightning-strike force led to the US becoming embroiled in Iraq with too few troops. Rumsfeld himself disputed this notion, saying that he listened to his generals when it came to troop levels, and that if they had asked him for more, he would have provided them.

Initial reaction from Democrats on Rumsfeld's departure was positive, with Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, among others, saying that Bush had "taken a step in the right direction."

Senator Reid went on to call for a rethinking of the administration's overall approach to Iraq, however. There is no indication yet whether that is in the works.

Given the timing of Rumsfeld's departure, it is difficult to see it as anything less than a concession on Bush's part to the results of Tuesday's Democratic victories. "The American people have spoken," says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "President Bush has listened, and Mr. Rumsfeld is gone."

Robert Gates, the man Bush intends to nominate as Rumsfeld's replacement, is perhaps a more restrained personality. Currently president of Texas A&M University, he was a longtime Washington intelligence and security-affairs official.

Mr. Gates directed the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1993, having risen through its ranks from an entry-level position. He had joined the agency during the Vietnam War, straight from Indiana University.

He is not a Rumsfeld-level thrower of bombs. He served at the CIA under Stansfield Turner, for instance, whom he later criticized for not cultivating enough of a constituency for the changes at the agency that Mr. Turner wanted to make.

He has been serving as a member of the commission on Iraq policy that includes former Secretary of State James Baker III, among others. That commission is expected to report its findings and possible recommendations for changes in policy to the president in coming weeks.

Robert Gates
Former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1991-93) and president of Texas A&M University since 2002.
Career:
•CIA intelligence analyst (1966-74)

•National Security Council staff (1974-79)

•Returned to CIA in 1979, holding various positions, including deputy director of central intelligence (1986-89)

•Acting director of the CIA (1986-87). Withdrew his first nomination as director after senators questioned his insistence that he was kept in the dark about the Iran-Contra affair despite his high position in the intelligence community.

•Assistant to the president and deputy for national security affairs (1989)

•Deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs (1989-91)

•Became CIA's youngest director (1991) and only career officer to rise to the post from entry-level employee. During nomination, a record number of senators - 31 - voted against him. On eve of first Iraq war, met with Saudi King Fahd and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss removing Saddam Hussein from power.

•Interim dean, George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M (1999-2001)

Outside activities:

•Chairman of the independent trustees of the Fidelity Funds

•Member of executive committee of the American Council on Education, national executive board of the Boy Scouts of America, and board of directors of NACCO Industries, Brinker International, and Parker Drilling Company

Notes:

•Awarded the National Security Medal, Presidential Citizens Medal, National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice), and the CIA's highest award, Distinguished Intelligence Medal (three times).

•Born 1943 in Wichita, Kan. Married with two adult children.

Education:

•BA in history, College of William and Mary

•MA in history, Indiana University

•PhD in Russian and Soviet history, Georgetown University

Sources: CIA, Texas A&M University, and Current Biography Yearbook 1992

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Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
from the November 09, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1109/p25s03-uspo.html XXXXX

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Marines’ Reaction to the News: ‘Who’s Rumsfeld?’
Joao Silva for The New York Times
(Go on-site for photo's, maps, and numerous links as well as the articles related to this one).
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: November 10, 2006
ZAGARIT, Iraq, Nov. 9 — Hashim al-Menti smiled wanly at the marine sergeant beside him on his couch. The sergeant had appeared in the darkness on Wednesday night, knocking on the door of Mr. Menti’s home.

Sgt. Michael A. McKinnon talked with Mr. Menti on Wednesday. (Go on-site for photo)

Joao Silva for The New York Times
A marine scanned the countryside from the roof of a house in Zagarit, Iraq, Thursday. The owner of the house, Hashim al-Menti, updated the marines about the week’s political news.


The New York Times
The marines were looking for insurgent activity in Zagarit.
When Mr. Menti answered, a squad of infantrymen swiftly moved in, making him an involuntary host.

Since then marines had been on his roof with rifles, watching roads where insurgents often planted bombs.

Mr. Menti had passed the time watching television. Now he had news. He spoke in broken English. “Rumsfeld is gone,” he told the sergeant, Michael A. McKinnon.

“Democracy,” he added, and made a thumbs-up sign. “Good.”

The marines had been on a continuous foot patrol for several days, hunting for insurgents. They were lost in the hard and isolating rhythms of infantry life.

They knew nothing of the week’s news.

Now they were being told by an Iraqi whose house they occupied that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, one of the principal architects of the policies that had them here, had resigned. “Rumsfeld is gone?” the sergeant asked. “Really?”

Mr. Menti nodded. “This is better for Iraq,” he said. “Iraqi people say thank you.”

The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.

“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.

Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.

If history is any guide, many of the young men who endure the severest hardships and assume the greatest risks in the war in Iraq will become interested in politics and politicians later, when they are older and look back on their combat tours.

But not yet. Marine infantry units have traditionally been nonpolitical, to the point of stubbornly embracing a peculiar detachment from policy currents at home. It is a pillar of the corps’ martial culture: those with the most at stake are among the least involved in the decisions that send them where they go.

Mr. Rumsfeld may have become one of the war’s most polarizing figures at home. But among these young marines slogging through the war in Anbar Province, he appeared to mean almost nothing. If he was another casualty, they had seen worse.

“Rumsfeld is the secretary of defense,” Sergeant McKinnon said, answering Lance Corporal Davis’s question.

Lance Corporal Davis simply cursed.

It did not sound like anger or disgust. It seemed instead to be an exclamation about the irrelevance of the news. The sergeant might as well have told the squad of yesterday’s weather.

Another marine, Lance Cpl. Patrick S. Maguire, said the decisions that mattered here, inside Company F, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines, were much more important to them than those made in the Pentagon back home.

There are daily, dangerous questions: When to go on patrol, when to come back, which route to take down a road, which weapon to carry, and, at this moment, which watch each marine would stand, crouched up on the roof, in the cold wind, exposed to sniper fire.

His grandfather fought at Iwo Jima, he said, and his father was a marine in Vietnam. This was his second tour in Iraq. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Someone points a finger at you, and you go.”

“The chain of command?” he added. “You know how high I know? My battalion commander is Lt. Col. DeTreux. That’s how high I know.”

And so between the marines and Mr. Menti and his family, the split reactions to news of Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation made for surreal scenes.

Mr. Menti, 50, a radiologist by training, spent part of the afternoon trying to impress the meaning of the news on the young sergeant beside him on the couch.

The war policy was soon to change, he said.

“I think in one year you return to America,” he said.

The sergeant sat implacably.

“This is good for you,” Mr. Menti said. “No?”

He spoke of years of fear. Under Saddam Hussein, he said, they were afraid. Now, with the American troops and insurgents fighting in Anbar, they are still afraid. He returned to the news of Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation.

“People in America are very happy,” he said. “I saw this on TV. And I am very happy. Thank you, American people.”

He pointed at the young marines before him, smoking on his couches, drinking his hot, sweetened tea. “These soldiers, in Iraq, they make freedom?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sergeant McKinnon said.

“What kind of freedom?” he asked.

He had been talking about the living conditions in the province since the night before, when the marines appeared at his door.

There are almost no schools, he said. There is almost no medicine. There is little food, and no electricity except from generators. The list went on. No water. No work. Violence. Abductions. Beheadings. Explosions.

His son-in-law had been kidnapped by insurgents seven months ago, he said, and a note the insurgents left said he was abducted for being friendly with American troops. He has not been seen since.

In Baghdad, he said, Iranian-backed death squads were killing Sunni citizens. The country was falling apart.

“You like freedom?” he asked the sergeant. “This kind? This way?”

“No,” Sergeant McKinnon said.

“I think you and I and many people do not like freedom in this way,” he said. “I believe this. I am sure.”

“It is wrong, the American Army coming here. It is wrong.”

He looked at Sergeant McKinnon, who is younger than many of his 14 children. He was trying to draw him out.

“If American Army came here for three months, four months, O.K.” Mr. Menti said. “But now is four years.”

If there were no American military presence in Iraq, he said, there would be no insurgents. One serves as a magnet for the other.

Mr. Menti spoke to the sergeant as if he were an American diplomat, as if he had some influence over the broad sweeps of American foreign policy. The sergeant remained quiet and polite.

“I don’t think he realizes that we’re trying to make this country safer for him,” he said to Lance Corporal Maguire.

“I think he realizes that we’re trying to make it safe, but that the more we stay here the more people come in and make it worse,” Lance Corporal Maguire replied.

They went upstairs, to pack their gear for the next move, planned for after dark, to another house and another night of looking down on the roads, waiting for an insurgent with a bomb to step within range of a rifle shot.

Sergeant McKinnon spoke of the squad’s isolation. “I only found out yesterday that the Saddam trial was over,” he said. “Another Iraqi told me that.”

He turned to the task of planning for the night’s fire support.

Up on the roof, Lance Corporal Maguire mused about the news. Whatever Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation might eventually mean, it did not matter here yet, and it would not keep them alive tonight.

Another marine, Lance Cpl. Randall D. Webb, was scanning traffic through his rifle scope, worried that they had been spotted and the insurgents would soon know where they were.

“I think they see us,” he said.

“Man, they all see us,” Lance Corporal Maguire said, and lighted another cigarette.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world/middleeast/10marines.html?ei=5094&en=e2b42fbea8b9beb7&hp=&ex=1163221200&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1163191087-EO/sc+wK0KJ9kMTnXwsQrw XXXXX

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*A newsletter I just received:

********************************
The Humane Society of the United States

URGENT ALERT:
URGE CONGRESS TO REJECT ANIMAL ENTERPRISE TERRORISM ACT
http://www.hsus.org/legislation_laws/federal_legislation/animals_in_research/animal_enterprise_terrorism.html

********************************
Call Representative Walden at
(202) 225-6730 right now and express your opposition
to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (S. 3880). (Call your own represenative)
********************************

Dear Saundra R.,

We're asking you, as one of our best advocates, for help on an
urgent matter that has just come up. Earlier you heard from us
about our campaigns to end horse slaughter, animal fighting, and
the brutal Canadian seal hunt. What would you say if I told you
that our rights to advocate on behalf of these issues were in
serious jeopardy?

In a shocking move, the "Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act" (AETA)
has been placed on the Congressional fast track and may be voted
on tonight. The Humane Society of the United States strongly
opposes violence, and has condemned groups and individuals who
engage in threats of violence, harassment, vandalism, and other
illegal acts. But the AETA goes too far, and threatens
legitimate tactics of law-abiding groups, such as boycotts,
investigations, and whistle-blowing. Here is a fact sheet with
more information on this dangerous legislation:
http://www.hsus.org/web-files/PDF/109_AETA_factsheet.pdf

Please call Representative Greg
Walden today at (202) 225-6730 and urge
your representative to oppose this vague and overbroad bill. All
you need to say is:

"My name is [your name] and I'm calling from [your city or town]
to urge Representative Walden to oppose the
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (S. 3880). I oppose violence,
but this bill goes too far and could threaten legal citizen
actions such as boycotts, investigations, and whistle-blowing.
Thank you."

I hope you don't mind this extra email today. But on an issue
this important, I had to get this news to you right away. Thank
you for your continued commitment to taking action on behalf of
animals.

Sincerely,
Wayne Pacelle
President & CEO, The Humane Society of the United States

P.S. Did you have trouble with any of the links in this
morning's campaign update on horse slaughter, animal fighting
and the seal hunt? Due to extensive activity, our online
capacity was stretched to the limit. I'm so sorry for the
inconvenience. Here are the direct links if you were unable to
take action before.

CALL TODAY TO SAVE AMERICA'S HORSES
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[Saundra Hummer]

..............
Are Democrats Turning A Blind Eye to Civil Liberty?

Paul Craig Roberts

11/13/06 "Information Clearing House" --- - Unless November’s new blood improves the Democratic Party’s civil liberties pedigree, the Democrats will have failed even before they are sworn in next January.

In its disregard for truth, public opinion, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, the US Constitution and statutory law, the Bush administration has been more of a regime than an administration. The Bush/Cheney executive branch has operated independently of all the constraints that provide accountability and prevent despotism.

The Bush regime was able to evade these restraints, because Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and because Republicans wielded 9/11 as a weapon to forestall political opposition.

With signing statements and other unilateral declarations of presidential authority, the Bush regime asserted executive branch powers beyond the reach of Congress and the judiciary.

The Bush regime was a coup d’etat against the Bill of Rights and the jurisdictions of Congress and the courts. Unless Democrats roll back this coup, Americans have seen the last of their civil liberties.

Judging by Democrats’ statements in the flush of their electoral victory, Democrats have little, if any, awareness of this critical fact. Democrats are anxious to get on with their agendas and have shown no recognition that the first order of business is to repeal the legislation that permits torture, warrantless detention and domestic spying.

If Bush threatens to veto the resurrection of US civil liberty, the Democrats can impeach Bush as a tyrant as well as for pushing America into an illegal and catastrophic war on the basis of lies and deception.

Bush is the most impeachable president in American history. However, the incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has declared impeachment to be “off the table.” Obviously, this means that Bush will not be held accountable and that the Bill of Rights is a casualty of the vague, undefined, and propagandistic “war on terror.”

Do Pelosi and the incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have the intellect and character to deliver the leadership required for Americans to remain a free people? Instead of bemoaning the damage Bush has done to civil liberty, Democrats are up in arms over one child in five being raised in poverty. The more important question is whether children are being raised as a free people protected by civil liberties from arbitrary government power.

Do Democrats share the delusion of Bush supporters that it is only Middle Eastern terrorists who are deprived of the protection of the US Constitution? One can understand the reluctance of Americans to extend constitutional protection to terrorists who are trying to kill Americans. However, without these protections, there is no way of ascertaining who is a terrorist.

Currently, a “terrorist” is anyone given that designation by any of a large number of unaccountable government officials and military officers. No evidence has to be provided in order to detain a designated suspect. Moreover, designated suspects can be convicted in military tribunals on the basis of secret evidence not made available to them or to any legal representation that they might be able to secure. In other words, you are guilty if charged.

As the case of US citizen Jose Padilla makes clear, these gestapo police state proceedings apply to Americans. Padilla was declared to be an “enemy combatant.” He was held in a US prison for three and one-half years with no charges and no warrant. He was kept in isolated confinement, tortured, and denied legal representation.

In order to avoid US Supreme Court jurisdiction over the case, the Bush regime filed charges after stealing three and one-half years of Padilla’s life. However, the charges have no relationship to the Bush regime’s original allegations that Padilla, an Hispanic-American, was an al Qaeda operative who was going to set off a radioactive dirty bomb in an American city. The US government no longer designates Padilla as an “enemy combatant.” The dirty bomb charge has disappeared, and US Federal District Judge Marcia Cooke has criticized the government’s indictment as vague with sketchy evidence “weak on facts.”

The reason that the Bush regime wants to detain people indefinitely without evidence is that it has no evidence. The reason the Bush regime passed torture legislation is in order to produce the missing evidence by torturing a suspect into self-incrimination. “Evidence” procured by torture has been illegal in civilized societies for centuries. But the Bush regime has resurrected the medieval rack and substituted it for the Bill of Rights.

If Democrats cannot bring themselves to rectify the inhumane and barbaric practices that now pass for US justice, then they, too, have failed the American people.

Go on-site for this article and other related ones, comments, etc. and any available links:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15597.htm
.........

[Saundra Hummer]

XXXXXI suppose this is what armed and combat ready navy's do, follow each other around with their fingers at the ready. Lets hope our leaders are such that they aren't itching to prove themselves and aren't itching to rule the world, a world in which a nuclear winter is a distinct possibility. These are strange times we're witnessing, so let's hope they don't become even stranger.

The Kitty Hawk has been the command center for Naval operations for several years now. That must be a concern for our navy, and it's security, manuvers wise and covertly. It would worry me; it does worry me, not knowing anymore that I do. Perhaps my concerns are unwarranted ones. Hope so.

Check out this article. Go on-site for links and photo's:

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/chinese-submarine-stalked-us-aircraft/20061113012809990009?ncid=NWS00010000000001Updated : 06:18 PM EST

Chinese Submarine Stalked U.S. Aircraft Carrier
AP and Reuters, AOL Wire Services

WASHINGTON (Nov. 13) - A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and was undetected until it surfaced within firing range, The Washington Times reported on Monday.

Kim Jae-Hwan, AFP / Getty Images

Go on-site to view

Report say a Chinese Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine was seen within five miles of the carrier Kitty Hawk, above, and its accompanying warships on October 26.

The Chinese Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine was seen within five miles of the carrier Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships on October 26, the newspaper said, citing defense officials.

The surfaced submarine was spotted by a routine surveillance flight by one of the U.S. carrier group's planes, the report said.

A Navy spokeswoman in Washington had no comment on the report.

Disclosure of the surprise encounter comes as the commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, Adm. Gary Roughead, was making his first visit to China which began over the weekend, The Washington Times said.

The four-star admiral was scheduled to meet senior Chinese military leaders during the weeklong visit, the paper said.

"When asked if the PLA navy is a threat, I've been on the record as saying no," Roughead told reporters. "But I really would like to know what the intent is in some of the developments that I see in the PLA navy."

Washington, which has long complained of a lack of transparency in China's military modernization, has been pressing Beijing to reciprocate by giving U.S. forces more access to Chinese military exercises and sites.

11-13-06 18:03 EST

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. XXX

[Saundra Hummer]

:: :: :: :: ::Kill the Messenger:
How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy
Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
(A book review Paperback)
Nick Schou,
With an Introduction by Charles Bowden

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
"This is the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. It was his 1996 Dark Alliance series--published by the San Jose Mercury News--on the so-called CIA/crack cocaine connection that created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media.

Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's exposé. Drawing on exhaustive research and personal interviews with Webb's family, colleagues, and both supporters and critics, Kill the Messenger argues convincingly that Webb's editors betrayed him despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. Schou examines what Webb's death and Dark Alliance's aftermath says about journalism in America."

America's mainstream media ganged up and destroyed Gary Webb because he dared to report the truth: that the CIA was turning a blind eye to the U.S. government facilitated transportation of cocaine into the U.S. marketplace (the streets) in return for arming the Nicaragua Contras.

Webb should have become another Woodward or Bernstein when his "Dark Alliance" series was published in the San Jose Mercury Press in 1996. Instead the establishment press destroyed him and discredited the story, which was true but for some minor points.

"Gary Webb was the epitome of journalistic guts, but instead of winning a Pulitzer he was betrayed by his employers and slandered by his profession. Here is the true story, brilliantly if sadly told, of the reporter who unmasked one of the most evil conspiracies in American history." -- Mike Davis
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
Go on-site to view photo's and to access articles and other book reviews, just click on the following link:

http://www.buzzflash.com/ :: :: ::

[Saundra Hummer]

~~~~~~~~~Tomgram: Klare, Bush Goes Over to Imperial Defense
In September 2002, Arab League head Amr Mussa warned that an invasion of Iraq would "open the gates of Hell" in the Middle East. Four years later, with those gates -- at least in Iraq -- open wide enough to drive a tank through, the look of the Bush administration is suddenly in rapid flux. (The neocons, having ushered in Hell, are being ushered out the door; while the first President Bush's "realists" and their followers are heading in.) Given the nominee to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Gates of Hell may soon have a new meaning. Right now, despite all the anticipation about future Iraq policy changes, the good news that accompanies the nomination of former CIA Director (and, as president of Texas A&M, keeper of the Bush family flame) Robert Gates has little to do with Iraq and lots to do with Iran.

In these early post-election days, the Iran rhetoric at the White House has, in fact, remained at the boiling point. As last week ended, White House spokesman Tony Snow labeled Iran and Hezbollah a "global nexus of terrorism." (Paul Woodward, editor of the War in Context website, commented: "The administration is no longer served by playing to the Christian Right, so its out with religious ‘evil' and in with a much more sophisticated, secular, and no doubt bi-partisan, "global nexus of terrorism.") Then, on Monday, the President himself, in a press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, called for the global "isolation" of Iran and essentially rejected an opening of any sort to that country. ("f the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them a way forward, and that is for them to verify -- verifiably suspend their enrichment activities.").

None of this sounds like good news; but, despite the rhetoric, the Gates appointment certainly lessens the possibility of an air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities early next year (as well as any campaign to "decapitate" the Iranian regime). This had clearly been one of the (mad) policy options that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were entertaining.

Like James A. Baker, co-head of the Iraq Study Group, Gates believes in negotiating with Iran. In the summer of 2004, with former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, he co-chaired a task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations that argued for opening a dialogue with Iran. Its report, "Iran: Time for a New Approach," contended that the lack of American engagement with Iran had harmed American interests and advocated direct talks with the Iranians. ("Just as the United States has a constructive relationship with China [and earlier did so with the Soviet Union] while strongly opposing certain aspects of its internal and international policies, Washington should approach Iran with a readiness to explore areas of common interests while continuing to contest objectionable policy.")

In addition, Gates -- like Baker one of Daddy Bush's boys -- has clearly been brought in to help clean up Sonny's Iraq mess. Being sane and hard-headed, he knows perfectly well that stirring up a hornet's nest in neighboring Iran is hardly a way to tackle the almost insurmountable Iraqi crisis.

Gates offers another advantage for those who prefer not to go to war again. The American high command (despite the fantasies of some administration critics) would never refuse a direct order from the commander-in-chief to bomb the gates of Hell out of Iran. However, a civilian Secretary of Defense (whose reputation is at stake) might. So the replacement of Rumsfeld is also significant in this way.

Throw in a new Democratic Congress that, as Juan Cole has written, is less likely to grant the necessary funds for such a war (though Time's Tony Karon at his Rootless Cosmopolitan website disagrees), and you have the potential for a genuine ebbing of tensions in the one area where the rash acts for which the Bush administration is by now well known could literally wreck the global economy in a matter of days. For this, a small sigh of relief is in order. Now, let Michael Klare, author of the ever more relevant book Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum, explain the larger picture. Tom
...
The Meaning of Gates
From Imperial Offense to Imperial Defense
By Michael T. Klare

There are many reasons why President George W. Bush might have wanted to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with Robert M. Gates: To distance himself from the current military disaster in Iraq, to make the adoption of a new Iraqi strategy easier, to prevent further disunity within the military, or to clear the path for a revival of Republican fortunes in the 2008 elections. All of these may, in fact, have been contributing factors in Gates' appointment; yet, on a deeper level, the move can also be read as signaling a momentous shift in America's global posture -- from imperial offense to imperial defense.

For the past six years, the top officials in charge of American foreign and military policy have known how to play rough-and-tumble offensive football, but were simply clueless when it came to defense. However, just as every football team must, at some point, surrender possession of the ball and bring in its defensive specialists to stop the other team from scoring a touchdown, so the President has evidently at long last called for a changing of the guard. Far too late in the game, he's finally decided to send the defense onto the field for Team America. This is Bob Gates' historic mission.

After all the setbacks and spilt blood in Iraq, it's nearly impossible even to recall those heady days in late 2001 when President Bush and his acolytes announced that we were entering a new epoch of enduring American greatness -- a golden era in which the United States would use its overwhelming military might to spread its divinely-inspired values to the rest of the world.

This vision of American beliefs carried to the far ends of the earth at the point of a sword (or, at least, the modern Cruise and Hellfire-missile-armed equivalents thereof) was first concocted in right-wing think-tanks and talk-shops like the Project for the New American Century during the second Clinton administration. It was then quietly incorporated into the Bush campaign of 1999-2000. In perhaps the most evocative, if not yet fully militarized, expression of this messianic prospect, then-Governor Bush told an appreciative audience at the Citadel on September 23, 1999 that, in rebuilding the U.S. military after the supposed neglect of the Clinton years, his goal would be "to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity -- given few nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America's peaceful influence, not just across the world, but across the years."

To achieve such a grandiose vision, as its planners imagined it, required a substantial expansion of the military's capacity to "project power" to remote areas of the developing world, far from the existing Pentagon infrastructure in Europe and the Pacific. "We must be able to project our power over long distances, in days or weeks," Bush explained at the Citadel. "Our forces in the next century," he added, "must be agile, lethal, readily deployable, and require a minimum of logistical support." Here, the football analogy was already unmistakably present. Surely, the President was describing a swift, no-huddle, run-and-pass offense. To captain this offense-oriented outfit, Bush chose Donald Rumsfeld, a true fellow-believer, who would oversee the "transformation" of the U.S. military from a stodgy, ponderous Cold War relic into a fleet, agile, "readily deployable" tool capable of sustaining his global crusade.

Then came September 11. In its wake, the President and his Secretary of Defense added a new element to their global agenda: the preemptive emasculation of hostile states deemed capable of posing a future threat to American dominance. This new policy -- quickly dubbed the "Bush Doctrine" -- was first spelled out in a June 2002 commencement speech Bush gave at West Point. "The war on terror will not be won on the defensive," he exclaimed. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge."

This, of course, required yet another expansion of U.S. military capabilities, focusing again on America's capacity for power projection to distant lands. In the view of Bush, Vice President Cheney, and his close pal Rumsfeld, as well as the neoconservative punditry, it also required a willingness to employ force in a muscular and conspicuous manner, so as to intimidate potential rivals into submission. "In the world we have entered," Bush declared at West Point, "the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act."

It was this aggressive impulse more than anything else that tipped the balance toward war with Iraq. "At the extreme," commented John Ikenberry of Georgetown University, these newly introduced notions formed "a neo-imperial vision in which the United States arrogates to itself the global role of setting standards, determining threats, using force, and meting out justice."

And so began the rush to war with Iraq -- with visions of victory not just in Baghdad but subsequently in Tehran, Damascus, and who knows where else dancing in the minds of the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush backfield, their various offensive linemen, and a bevy of overly enthusiastic cheerleaders on the sidelines. A few months before the onset of hostilities, the administration adopted a new National Security Strategy document enshrining the Bush doctrine as formal U.S. policy and indicating a readiness to conduct any number of "preventive" assaults on potential adversaries. "The publication of the strategy was the signal that Iraq would be the first test [of the new doctrine], not the last," a high official involved in its drafting told David E. Sanger and Steven E. Weisman of the New York Times after the attack on Iraq had commenced."

As we now know, the "agile, lethal, readily deployable" force assembled by Donald Rumsfeld in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein did a remarkable job of penetrating Iraqi defenses and scoring the touchdown that the elder President Bush had passed up in Baghdad twelve years earlier, but has proved wholly incapable of defending the capital and vital U.S. interests in Iraq ever since. If George Bush goes down in history as a failed president, it will be for this. After it became inescapably evident that American forces needed to shift quickly to a defensive strategy and put in place leadership better suited to manage such a shift -- a point reached well before the end of 2004 in Iraq -- Bush chose to cling to the old strategy as well as the old leadership, and simply go on hallucinating about a last-second miracle touchdown that would avert certain defeat. It took a while, but the American public finally grasped the insane folly of this stance and voted for change on November 7.

Of course, the President -- his approval rating in the latest Newsweek poll at 31%, a personal low -- was not up for reelection on November 7, or he too would be out of a job. Still, having dimly perceived the true nature of America's existential predicament, he did the next best thing, and finally began to replace his top imperial team with defensive specialists. This is not to suggest that Gates and his patron, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, are any less dedicated imperial managers than Cheney and Rumsfeld. Far from it: they are just as committed to some form of perpetual American global supremacy -- but they seem to have some grasp of the actual limits of American power, as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the neocon appointees under them never did.

Cheney and Rumsfeld thought that there was endless stretch to imperial overstretch and, as a result, managed to push American power (military and economic) so hard in the service of their dreams of global dominion that the actual imperial might of the United States began to crack and give way under the strain. Gates is all too aware of the vulnerabilities this opens up -- like a football coach whose team has suddenly found itself deep in its own territory. That's the moment, of course, when you need to pay closer attention to your adversaries; you need to psych out their strategies and tactics; you have to be able to play defense and give up some yards when endless blitzes of the other team's quarterback prove futile; you have to establish fall-back positions you can hold onto. Rumsfeld could never master those skills; Gates, with his long experience in the intelligence community, already has. It is for this reason, more than any other, that he was chosen at this pivotal moment in American history.

It is too early to foresee what particular course Gates and his soon-to-be-selected associates will adopt in their effort to refashion American strategy in light of current international realities. But any notion of emerging triumphant from Iraq will now be abandoned, and the search will be on for a strategy that would allow the United States to extricate itself from the Iraqi morass while retaining its dominant position in the greater Persian Gulf region. This has become the overarching objective.

Such a withdrawal will require the tacit acquiescence of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria, both of which have a stake in the outcome of the Iraqi imbroglio and possess an ability to frustrate any American plans that run counter to their fundamental interests. Hence, these nations must be consulted as part of the process, a move expected to be advocated by the Iraq Study Group (of which Baker is co-chair and Gates was, until recently, a member). This, in turn, will require that talk of air strikes against Iran or of "regime change" in Damascus be muzzled in Washington, at least for the time being.

From a long-term strategic perspective, the most serious task facing the new imperial cadre is to rebuild American ground forces after three years of relentless combat in Iraq. The lean, agile machine envisioned by Bush and Rumsfeld before 2001 was never designed for the sort of brutal urban warfare it has been exposed to in Baghdad. ("Why carry heavy armor? It only slows you down" was the prevailing Pentagon attitude back then.) It will take several hard years and a great deal of money to restore the Army and Marines to any sort of combat proficiency.

Messrs. Gates, Baker, and Associates understand full well that a vision of enduring U.S. supremacy will continue to govern American political thinking -- and that there will be many tests of American hegemony to come. But more than others in and around the White House, they recognize that this is a time for adopting a defensive stance if the United States is ever to go on the offensive again.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).
posted November 14, 2006 at 4:16 pm

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=140248
[I]~~~~~
Go on-site for the numerous links for a more indepth look at this article and the history surrounding it. It gives one pause, that's for certain.
~~~~~

[Saundra Hummer]

~~~~~~~“The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.”

Michael Parenti political scientist, author

~~~

"A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts."

Euripides

~~~

"Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty."

Anne Louise Germaine de Stael - (1766-1817) French author

~~~

"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. "

Thomas Paine Common Sense, January 1776
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/sense1.htm
~~~~~

[Saundra Hummer]

XXXXX
Baghdad: The New Saigon?

By Patrick J. Buchanan
11/14/06 "WND" --- - It appears the Beltway bombing halt agreed upon at the Bush-Pelosi summit is over.

The incoming chairmen of the Senate’s armed services and foreign affairs committees, Carl Levin and Joe Biden – and Majority Leader Harry Reid – say a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will be their first priority. Troop redeployment, says Reid, “should start within the next few months.”

White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton counters: “I don’t think we’re going to be receptive to the notion there’s a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out, because that would be a true disaster for the Iraqi people.”

John McCain says we need more troops to crush the Mahdi Army and militias, and achieve victory. If we set a deadline for withdrawal, said McCain, we risk a Saigon ending, with Americans being helicoptered off the roof of the U.S. embassy. McCain appears to be adopting the George Wallace stance of 1968 – “Win, or Get Out!”

And so we come to the endgame in a war into which we were plunged by Bush Republicans and those neoconservatives now scurrying back to their think tanks, and the Clinton-Kerry-Edwards-Biden-Reid-Daschle Democrats, who voted Bush a blank check in October 2002 to get the war issue “out of the way” before the elections.

America has been horribly served by both parties. And as the Democrats have now captured Congress, they assume co-responsibility for the retreat from Mesopotamia. Which is as it should be.

While our leaders never thought through the probable result of invading an Arab nation that had not attacked us, we had best think through the probable results of a pullout in 2007.

We are being told that by giving the Iraqis a deadline, after which we start to withdraw, we will stiffen their spines to take up greater responsibility for their own country. But there is as great or greater a likelihood that a U.S. pullout will break their morale and spirit, that the Iraqi government and army, seeing Americans heading for the exit ramp, will collapse before an energized enemy, and Shias, Sunnis and Kurds will scramble for security and survival among their own.

Arabs are not ignorant of history. They know that when we pulled out of South Vietnam, a Democratic Congress cut off aid to the Saigon regime, and every Cambodian and Vietnamese who had cast his lot with us wound up dead, in a “re-education camp” or among the boat people in the South China Sea whose wives and children were routinely assaulted by Thai pirates.

In that first year of “peace” in Southeast Asia, 20 times as many Cambodians perished as all the Americans who died in 10 years of war.

In Iraq, a collapse of the government and army in the face of an American pullout, followed by a civil-sectarian war, the break-up of the country and a strategic debacle for the United States – emboldening our enemies and imperiling our remaining friends in the Arab world – is a real possibility.

Yet what Edmund Burke said remains true: “[N]o war can be long carried on against the will of the people.” And the American people are losing, if they have not lost, the will to continue this war. They are weary of the daily killing and dying, and of the endless talk of “progress” when all they see is death. They believe the war was a mistake, and they want to come home.

Our hawkish elites bemoan the fact that Americans seem ready to give up on Iraq when U.S. casualties are not 10 percent of those we took in the Korean War. That is because they do not understand the nation.

Americans are not driven by some ideological vocation to reform mankind. We do not have the patience or perseverance of great imperial peoples. If an issue is not seen as vital to our own liberty and security, we will not fight long for some abstraction like democracy, self-determination or human rights.

It is a myth that we went to war to save the world from fascism. We went to war in 1941 because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That Hitler had overrun France, booted the British off the continent and invaded Stalin’s empire was not a reason to send American boys across the ocean to die.

In 1990, Americans were not persuaded to throw Iraq out of Kuwait until Bush 1 got to talking about Saddam’s nuclear weapons. Even after 9-11, Americans were skeptical of marching to Baghdad until we were told Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction and probably intended to use them on us. Americans have often had to be lied into war.

Democrats are probably reading the country right. Americans will not send added troops to Iraq, as McCain urges. They want out of this war and are willing to take the consequences.

But those consequences are going to be ugly and enduring. That is what happens to nations that commit historic blunders.
All Rights Reserved. WorldNetDaily.com Inc.

Go on-site to view comments:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15614.htmXXX

[Saundra Hummer]

:: :: :: :: :: :: ::
Al Qaeda Leader: Materials Smuggled Across Border

Terrorists trying to blend in with Mexican culture.

A News Channel 5 Investigation

11/02/06 "News Channel 5" -- - investigation reveals what the feds don't want you to know. Suspected terrorists are hiding inside the U.S. and they got here by sneaking across the Mexican border.

Press Play To View Video Report

Go on-site to view by clicking on the following link:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15611.htm

What we've been reporting for more than a year has been confirmed by a government report just released. (Click here to download the report.)

And a brand new interview by Pakistani investigative reporter Hamid Mir is bringing in more information.

Mir has interviewed some of America's most dangerous terrorist enemies. This time the Al Qaeda commander he talked to gave a grim warning that another attack on America is coming very soon.

"We can attack America anytime," says Abu Dawood during the interview. He also told the reporter that Muslims must leave America.

Mir says, "Abu Dawood told me, 'We are determined to attack America again and that attack will be bigger than 9/11."

The Al Qaeda commander says the attack will be led by Adnan El Shukrijumah. He goes by many aliases but is called Brother Adnan by his terrorist friends.

Brother Adnan is wanted by the feds for possible terrorist threats against the U.S. He's considered armed and dangerous

According to the Pakistani reporter, Dawood said Brother Adnan "had smuggled some dangerous materials from the Mexican border to inside the United States of America."

"It's the kind of scenario that worries everybody," says Fred Burton, a former special agent for the U.S. State Department.

Burton spent much of his federal career studying terrorists, predicting their next move. He now does the same thing at Stratfor, a private intelligence agency in Austin.

NEWSCHANNEL 5 asked Burton about the threat.

"I think it has to be viewed credible, until proven otherwise," he says.

The former special agent tells us the U.S. government is well aware Al Qaeda's been working hard to get a dirty bomb into the country, an explosive packed with nuclear materials small enough to carry in a suitcase.

Smugglers have been caught 300 times in the past four years trying to sneak in radioactive material, which could be used to make a dirty bomb.

That's what the International Atomic Energy Agency told the London Times last month.

But Burton says, "I think if Al Qaeda has a dirty bomb, we would have seen it by now." He says a chemical attack is more likely and the Valley could be a launching ground.

Burton says there are several specific locations in Houston, which if hit, could carry out a devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

However Burton also says if Al Qaeda really does have a dirty bomb, border cities are much more vulnerable to attack, because he says terrorists don't want to get caught.

"You'd want to bring that in right across the border, and you'd want to detonate that as soon as you can," he explains.

We asked who would be at risk.

"You would look at cities such as El Paso or Brownsville," he replied.

For law enforcement, it's a very big worry, says Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr.

He testified to lawmakers in Washington about the dangers of terrorists and terrorist weapons getting smuggled in through South Texas.

The sheriff tells us his biggest fear is that something could go wrong with a bomb.

"We're not prepared," he says.

The possible dangers are also a concern to U.S. Congressman Solomon Ortiz. He was among the first in Washington to sound the alarm about dangers at the border.

Ortiz says, "The biggest threat is people coming in and we don't know who they are."

The government does know terror groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah are active in Latin America. In fact, members of Hezbolla are already inside the U.S., coming in through the Mexican border.

We're also learning these Middle Easterners are changing their Islamic names to Hispanic names, buying fake documents, learning Spanish and posing as Hispanic immigrants.

Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo says there's even a training camp in Brazil teaching Middle Easterners how to blend in to the Mexican culture.

According to government intelligence, Middle Eastern aliens from countries known to harbor terrorists are smuggled to staging areas in places like Venezuela and the tri-border region between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Then they're smuggled again through Mexico and our border right into the U.S.

There's a big payoff for those who sneak them in. Mexican illegals pay smugglers an average of $2,000. Middle Easterners pay as much as thirty times that amount, up to $60,000!

"I don't think they really care who they're bringing across, as long as they get paid for it," says Texas Congressman Michael McCaul. He put out the report, which also says Islamic terrorist groups may be using Mexico as a refuge.

During our investigation, we found out a lot of people from suspicious countries are crossing right here in South Texas. Since 9/11, literally hundreds of illegal aliens have been caught here from places like Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan.

Federal law enforcement estimates only ten to thirty percent of illegals who cross are actually caught.

Governor Rick Perry says, "To think that international terrorists have not already exploited our border is naive."

Copyright 2006 Mobile Video Tapes, Incorporated

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Netanyahu: Iran Preparing Another Holocaust
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006 1:21 p.m. EST
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu says Iran’s nuclear goals, and the fanaticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pose a threat not only to Israel, but to the entire Western world.

The former prime minister compared the growing threat of Iran to the rise of Nazism before World War II, and he wonders why no one seems to be taking the threat seriously.

"It’s 1938, and Iran is Germany,” Netanyahu said, "and Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.” Haaretz newspaper reports that Netanyahu repeated that line as a chorus during an address Monday to the United Jewish Communities General Assembly.

Netanyahu’s address came in response to repeated threats by Ahmadinejad to "eliminate the Zionist regime” and "remove Israel from the face of the earth.”

Netanyahu says the threat cannot be taken lightly and that Ahmadinejad is "preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state” through the force of nuclear weapons.

"Believe him and stop him,” Netanyahu said of Ahmadinejad. "This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this.”

Iran’s nuclear goal, says Netanyahu, "goes way beyond the destruction of Israel — it is direct to achieve world-wide range. It’s a global program in the service of a mad ideology.”

Israel should be joined by the United States in assuring that Iran does not gain the capability to create nuclear weapons, and he supports the Bush administration’s goal to isolate the Iranian threat.

" . . . Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iran’s tour of destruction, but at the planned production rate of 25 nuclear bombs a year . . . [the arsenal] will be directed against ‘the big Satan,’ the U.S., and the ‘moderate Satan,’ Europe,” Netanyahu said.

Iran can be stopped, Netanyahu added, but good nations must take action against evil ones to ensure that Jews in Israel and the West will not be subject to another Holocaust.

"No one will defend the Jews if the Jews do not defend themselves,” he said. "Iran’s nuclear ambitions have to be stopped.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/11/14/133625.shtml?s=ic

Go on-site for any links and other articles, as well as comments ~~~~~

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Blair tells US panel Iran is 'strategic threat' to the region
UPDATE
11.14.2006, 12:42 PM
AFX News Limited

LONDON (AFX) - Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Iraq Study Group that Iran was a 'strategic threat' to the Middle East that had to be confronted with the choice of helping to secure peace 'or face isolation', his spokesman said.

Speaking via video link to Washington from Downing Street, Blair called for a solution to the Palestine/Israel impasse, which in turn would stop moderate muslims being 'exploited' by 'extreme elements around the region'.

Blair told the US panel that 'the biggest single factor in getting moderate muslim countries to support a new Iraq would be if there was a proposal on Israel and Palestine as part of a strategy for the Middle East as a whole'.

'The way to stop the radicalisation of moderate muslim opinion was to have a positive strategy resolving the issue,' the spokesman cited Blair as saying.

'Only that way could you put it up to those who have opposed our position, such as Iran, who he described as the strategic threat to the region,' the spokesman said.

'The way to deal with Iran was not to back down on our demands, but to take away their ability to exploit muslim opinion and to confront both it and Syria with a strategic choice of whether to be part of the solution or face isolation.'

The ISG is led by former US Secretary of State James Baker, and forms part of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), an independent organisation funded by the US Congress.

newsdesk@afxnews.com

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Livni: Iran nearing 'point of no return'

amir mizroch,
THE JERUSALEM POST
Nov. 13, 2006

The United Jewish Communities General Assembly [GA] opened here Sunday evening with a resolute Tzipi Livni saying that the time has come for the international community to put aside its financial interests in Iran and work together to stop Teheran's drive to attain nuclear capability.

"Iran denies the Holocaust and seeks the weapons to perpetrate one. If the promise of 'Never Again' supersedes the price of oil then the time for international indifference and hesitation in the face of the Iranian threat has long passed," the Foreign Minister said. Livni received a standing ovation by GA delegates at the conclusion of her remarks.


Olmert-Bush meeting to focus on Iran

JPost.com special: GA 2006

China and Russia have substantial, and growing, financial deals with Iran: Russia is building the Bushehr nuclear reactor, and China has recently signed a multi-billion dollar petroleum acquisition contract with Iran to power its booming industrial development. Both nations have steadfastly blocked US efforts in the Security Council to impose harsh sanctions on the Iranian regime in light of its rejection to halt uranium enrichment.

"Last summer, we experienced a confrontation between Israel and Iran. Though the war took place in Lebanon, it was the case of a rogue state, Iran, and its proxy, the Hizbullah, abusing a weak state, Lebanon, to advance a radical and hate-filled agenda," Livni said.

At a briefing with Israeli journalists following her speech, Livni told The Jerusalem Post that Iran was less than two years away from reaching the point where it could enrich uranium, what she, and others, have termed "the point of no return" where Iran would need no outside technical or material assistance to produce nuclear weapons. The point of no return, in Israel's case, is not when Iran "gets the bomb", but when it has reached the capability of producing one.

Israel was also worried that possible Security Council sanctions on Iran won't be effective enough to make Teheran change course and cease enrichment, Livni added.

Several Israeli ministers are in attendance at this year's GA, who's theme is "Together On The Front Line: One People, One Destiny." The message from the ministers, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog and Education Minister Yuli Tamir, will first and foremost be one of thanks to US Jewry for their financial, physical, and moral support during and after the latest war in Lebanon. "I came here to say thank you. It is important for us to know that we are not alone. During the war we saw our Jewish brothers and sisters stepping up to help - organizing rallies, coming on solidarity missions, university scholarships for students called up for army duty, air-conditioners for bomb shelters, camps for the children of the North and so much more, contributing with extraordinary generosity and thoughtfulness - with unconditional kindness," Livni said.

The foreign minister also addressed the issue of ties between Israel and the Diaspora, saying there was a need to foster the relationship and not take it for granted.

"As an Israeli, I have to ask myself whether we are not in danger of creating a new Israeli identity that feels removed from its Jewish heritage, and a result, from the Jewish Diaspora. I am sure too that you ask yourselves whether there is a risk that Jewish identity in the Diaspora is evolving in such a way that the deep connection to Israel may, in time, no longer be one of its central pillars. I believe strongly that we share a responsibility to prevent a rift developing between Israeli identity and Jewish identity. Together, we need to ensure that Jewish children throughout the Diaspora see Israel as their home, just as the Jewish children of Israel must see you as their family," Livni said.

Livni also wished all the newly elected and returning members of Congress "Mazal Tov" and said the special relationship between Israel and the United States crosses party lines.

Also speaking at the event, Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielsky said US Jews "were there for us when we needed you." Bielsky added that due to financial assistance from the Jewish Federations, and through the UJC, the Jewish Agency was able to evacuate 40,000 Israeli children from "the line of fire in the North" to the center of the country.

Bielsky added that there were plans in the works to provide scholarships to students wishing to study in educational institutions in northern Israel. "Our priority now is to strengthen the Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem," Bielsky said.

The UJC managed to raise $342 million for the Israel Emergency Campaign during the war.

The plenary session drew 2,600 of 5,000 GA participants, and culminated with a stirring recital of "Hatikvah," Israel's national anthem, by a jazz saxophonist, that brought the crowd to its feet, singing.

The plenary also featured an array of political and public leaders and entertainment figures, including actors Jeff Goldblum, Mare Winningham and Jon Voight; screenwriter and filmmaker Dan Gordon; musicians Debbie Friedman, Mike Burstyn, Julie Silver and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

This article can also be read at:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378384729&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - [url]http://www.jpost.com/

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info [I]~~~~~

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C.I.A. Tells of Bush’s Directive on the Handling of Detainees

By
DAVID JOHNSTON
November 15, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects.

The C.I.A. referred to the documents in a letter sent Friday from the agency’s associate general counsel, John L. McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union.

The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is “a directive signed by President Bush granting the C.I.A. the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees,” the A.C.L.U. said, based on its review of published accounts.

The second document, according to the group, is a Justice Department legal analysis “specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda members.”

A.C.L.U. lawyers said they would urge public disclosure of the contents of the documents. “We intend to press for release of both of these documents,” Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the group, said in a statement. “If President Bush and the Justice Department authorized the C.I.A. to torture prisoners, the public has a right to know.”

A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to discuss the matter.

The documents had been sought by the A.C.L.U. in a suit filed in a New York federal court under the Freedom of Information Act. The suit has previously led to the disclosure of thousands of documents from the Pentagon, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and other agencies.

In the past, C.I.A. lawyers have sought to avoid any discussion of whether the agency had documents related to its interrogation and detention practices, the A.C.L.U. said. The group added that the agency had said national security would be jeopardized if it were compelled to disclose in any way its involvement in interrogations.

In the C.I.A. letter, Mr. McPherson confirmed the existence of the documents but declined to release them, saying that essentially all of their contents were exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act because release would damage national security and violate attorney-client privilege.

“The documents are withheld in their entirety because there is no meaningful nonexempt information that can be reasonably segregated from the exempt material,” he wrote.

The A.C.L.U. sought the documents based on references to them in various news accounts. While both documents have been written about before, the C.I.A. had not previously acknowledged their existence.

The directive from Mr. Bush is thought to have been issued shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Justice Department memo about a year later. The administration has acknowledged the agency’s role in handling detainees.

Mr. Bush said in September that 14 high-level terrorism suspects had been moved from secret prisons overseas to the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Go on-site to access links in this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/washington/15intel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin :: :: :: :: ::

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This is Encouraging to say the least

Stem cells help dogs with dystrophy
By
MALCOLM RITTER,
AP Science Writer
2 hours, 6 minutes ago

In promising new research, stem cells worked remarkably well at easing symptoms of muscular dystrophy in dogs, an experiment that experts call a significant step toward treating people.

"It's a great breakthrough for all of us working on stem cells for muscular dystrophy," said researcher Johnny Huard of the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved in the work.

Sharon Hesterlee, vice president of translational research at the Muscular Dystrophy Association, called the result one of the most exciting she's seen in her eight years with the organization. Her group helped pay for the work.

She stressed that it's not yet clear whether such a treatment would work in people, but said she had "cautious optimism" about it.

Two dogs that were severely disabled by the disease were able to walk faster and even jump after the treatments.

The study was published online Wednesday by the journal Nature. It used stem cells taken from the affected dogs or other dogs, rather than from embryos. For human use, the idea of using such "adult" stem cells from humans would avoid the controversial method of destroying human embryos to obtain stem cells.

The Nature paper focuses on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle-wasting genetic disorder that occurs in about 1 in every 3,500 male births. It's the most severe and most common childhood form of muscular dystrophy and the best-known. In theory, the stem cell treatment might also help other muscle dystrophies or even age-related muscle wasting, Hesterlee said.

Children with the disorder have trouble walking as early as preschool, and nearly all of them lose their ability to walk between ages 7 and 12. Typically, they die in their 20s because of weakness in their heart and lung muscles. There is no known cure.

The dog study was done by Giulio Cossu, director of the stem cell institute at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, with colleagues there and elsewhere.

"We do not know whether this will work in patients," Cossu said in a telephone interview. He said he hopes to start a small experiment in children in the next year or two.

The scientists worked with golden retrievers that suffer a crippling form of dystrophy very much like the human one. Researchers studied the effect of repeated injections into the bloodstream of a kind of stem cell extracted from blood vessel walls.

The best results appeared when the cells were taken from healthy dogs. But Cossu said scientists should pursue the possibility of genetically manipulating a patient's own cells and using them instead. That way, patients wouldn't have to undergo lifelong treatment to avoid rejection of donated cells.

In one of several experiments, three dogs that had not yet shown impairment in walking were injected five times, a month apart, with cells taken from other dogs.

One dog completely avoided symptoms and continued to walk well even five months after both the injections and the anti-rejection therapy were stopped.

A second dog also did well initially but died suddenly of a heart problem after just two months on the treatment. It's not clear whether the problem had anything to do with the treatment, or whether the initial good result would have continued, Cossu said.

The third dog showed partial protection, being able to walk and even run with a limp, but then progressively lost walking ability within a few days after the anti-rejection treatment was stopped.

The researchers also treated two dogs that were severely impaired by the disease. Both gained the ability to move much faster and to jump, and one was even able to run, although neither could use the hind legs normally.

One of these dogs rapidly lost walking ability when the anti-rejection treatment was stopped, but the other continued to walk well for five months until succumbing to pneumonia. That's a common fate for dogs with the genetic condition because of weakness in breathing muscles.

Cossu said he believed that a human treatment could be directed more at breathing muscles than it was in the dogs.

The cells helped strengthen muscle by fusing with regenerating muscle fibers and pumping out a protein that's missing in dogs with the disease.
On the Net:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Muscular Dystrophy Association: http://www.mda.org

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ~~~

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Walking through the Gates of a well-laid trap
Sean Gonsalves - Cape Cod Times
11.13.06 - "Stay the course": a played-out phrase that's become synonymous with the Bush administration bungling of Iraq.

Bogged down in a guerrilla war to which there is no military solution short of genocide, the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld was supposed to be a signal from President Bush that he's finally listening -- that the thumpin' the Grand Ol' Party took in the mid-term elections was supposed to signal an end to stay-the-course-ness.

Then he goes and nominates Robert Gates to be the new Defense Secretary. It's a pretty clever desperation move -- a trap really. Rumsfeld is gone. Bush comes off as a lot more humble in his press conferences. He's talking bipartisanship.

But, peep the trap.

Gates and Rummy sip from the same ideological Kool-Aid jug. And if the Dems shoot down the nomination, Bush and wounded Republicans can accuse Democrats of not acting in a spirit of "bipartisanship." Even worse, should the Democrats not confirm Gates, they would be -- are you ready for this -- "playing politics" with the all-important position of Secretary of Defense during a war! Voila -- the stage for the 2008 presidential race is set.

Brilliant, in a Machiavellian kind of way.

Now, if you really do want to see a change of course, you have to be asking: Gates? Are you serious?

Gates joined the CIA in the late 1960s but left to serve on the staff of the National Security Council in 1974. He went back to the CIA in late 1979 and worked his way up the ranks, serving as deputy director from April 1986 to March 1989.

He was nominated to become the head of CIA in 1987, but withdrew his name after it became clear the Democratically-controlled Senate would reject the nomination because of his role in the Iran-Contra affair.

Gates was nominated again for CIA director in May 1991. The second time was the charm. He was confirmed, despite questions about his alleged role in giving intelligence to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war.

Two years later, Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair, issued his final report. Gates wasn't indicted but he wasn't exactly exonerated either. Walsh wrote that he was skeptical of Gates' repeated denials. "In blunt terms," journalist James Ridgeway reported for Mother Jones, "Walsh thought Gates was a liar. It was only for a lack of evidence that he eventually gave up trying to indict him."

It would be worth asking Gates now if he thinks his efforts to overthrow a democratically-elected government in Nicaragua were successful given Daniel Ortega's recent comeback. And why does he think he'll fare better with Iraq?

But these aren't the only questions hanging over Gates. According to investigative reporter and author Robert Parry, who tracked the CIA in the 1980s, Gates was involved in "a special team to push through another pre-cooked paper arguing that the KGB was behind the 1981 wounding of Pope John Paul II," despite evidence that CIA analysts knew that the claim was bogus.

No surprise, then, that it was on Gates' watch that the CIA failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union -- probably the most embarrassing moment in CIA history.

This politicizing of intelligence is what led Sen. Tom Daschle, in the 1991 confirmation hearings, to say: "My questions regarding whether or not Robert Gates participated in the politicization of intelligence culminate in my deep concern about what we can expect from Robert Gates if he is confirmed as the next director of Central Intelligence.

"Again, I ask my colleagues," Daschle continued, "if Robert Gates cooked the books to advocate the ideological position of the administration while serving as deputy director for intelligence and deputy director of Central Intelligence, is it possible that U.S. intelligence under his guidance will continue to politicize intelligence? My answer is, 'We cannot afford to take that chance.'"

Rumsfeld was also criticized for distorting reality and only wanting to hear intelligence that suited his narrow ideology.

Bush says he's in a bipartisan listening mood, but nominates Rumsfeld's ideological body-double? A well-laid trap for staying the course.
(c) 2006, Cape Cod Times

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21635 XXX

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Now they're all for bipartisanship
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate
11.14.06 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Having watched election coverage nonstop all week, I sometimes wake screaming, "Bipartisanship!" and scare myself.

Of all the viral members of the media who have been suggesting that the Dems cooperate with their political opponents, the one who rendered me almost unconscious with surprise was Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich, the Boy Scout. Newt Gingrich, the man who sat there and watched Congress impeach and try Bill Clinton for lying about having an extramarital affair while he, Newt Gingrich, was lying about having an extramarital affair. (This all took place during his second marriage. The first one ended when he told his wife he was divorcing her while she was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment.)

This is the level of Republican hypocrisy that reminds us all how far the Dems have to go. I tell you what. Let's all hold hands together and sing, "Oh the Farmers and the Cowboys Should Be Friends!" Just not, please, Newt Gingrich, the man whose contribution to civility was to recommend that all Democrats be referred to with such words as cowards, traitors, commies, godless, liars and other such bipartisan-promoting terms.

Please, anyone but Newt.

Now, from my hours spent battered and half brain dead listening to the fatuous, self-important commentators of our nation, I learn that the people of this country did not elect liberals to Congress last week. Nope, they elected populists! Well, gosh all hemlock. I'll be go to hell. Populist! I AM one. Honest -- been a populist so long I'm on my third bottle of Tabasco.

Who knew? I thought all said I was chopped liver. Populist. Like Tom Frank of "What's the Matter With Kansas?" fame. Jim Hightower. We can even draw our lines of political genealogy -- via Ralph Yarborough and Bob Elkhart.

A populist is pretty much for the PEOPLE and generally in this case exactly the same as a liberal -- we just put the em-PHA-sis on a different syl-LA-ble. We also tend to be more fun. We do not vote to hurt average Americans, even if the corporate payoff is really big. Even if it's just a little bit -- like the bankruptcy bill.

We tend to focus less on social issues and more on who's gettin' screwed and who's doin' the screwin'. In my opinion, Americans are not getting screwed by the Republican Party. They are getting screwed by Large Corporations that bought and own the Republican Party.

The word populist was misused, abused and co-opted by right-wingers for years, ever since we were all forced to read Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Bad history can do a powerful amount of damage. Most of us stopped at the painful news that Tom Watson, leader of the late-19th century populism, went on to become a raging racist bigot. Populism itself took on the connotation of bile and nastiness, a la Father Coughlin.

If you read back to the beginning of the populist movement, however, you will find Andy Jackson and the West set against all those dreary snobs of the East. When Andy opened up the White House and let in the people, all the snobs had the fantods.

OK, it's not the 19th century anymore, but it is always the right time to point out the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Honest. There stands George W. Bush, buck nekkid. We want to help him out of this fix because he's dragging the whole Army, the country and the world down with him. But don't ask us to call those clothes.

(c) 2006 Creators Syndicate

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21640
***

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“They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”

Eugene Victor Debs

~~~

"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own"

Aldous Huxley - English novelist and critic, 1894-1963

~~~

“Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that The State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”

Arthur Miller playwright


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"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."

George Bernard Shaw

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“With Great Power…”

By Rick Banales

11/13/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- -I watched the returns come in Tuesday night the way I watch a scary movie – through the fingers of my hand. And as the evening went on, it seemed like the shift that we had all hoped that the country would take was finally happening, like all of a sudden the people who were too busy, scared or brainwashed to listen were all seeing what we had been seeing for years – the flag-draped caskets, the dismantling of the Constitution, the use of interrogation techniques that would have shamed the Spanish Inquisitors.

So today, Congress is in the hands of another party. We have to remember we have all been here before – this point of seeing a new direction in America, the unobstructed panoramic view that begins to get cloudier and more cluttered as the days go on. We all had high hopes for the country after Clinton was elected – it was surprising to me that he ended up being just a kinder and gentler Republican in Dem clothing.

I think the difference now is that we have all seen the brink – we have all been Frodo at the fiery mouth of Mount Doom. We have all seen how unchecked and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And we all have to look at this new change in the wind as a commitment to do the work we are called to do – to help make peace in the world.

We have recently heard from two women who, even with this new perspective in the land, are still out trying to make change, still out working to make peace a reality.

Sara Rich has had to deal with not only sending her daughter Suzanne Swift to war, but with the degrading, humiliating, and unconscionable way the modern Army treats its female soldiers.

Patricia Isasa was one of Argentina’s ‘disappeared’ – kidnapped and tortured as a 16-year old high school student. Instead of silently suffering her abuse, she initiated an investigation into the kidnapping that has culminated with eight suspects in jail and awaiting trial in Argentina.

Sara and Patricia are both asking the same questions – who is accountable? Who is holding the mantle of responsibility, who will have to give testimony?

We have to be as vigilant as Sara and Patricia – the country spoke this week, and it said in a loud and common voice that they do not trust this administration – not with their money, their oil, their children, the accused, the ballot box, Social Security, Medicare, bankruptcy protection…and they certainly don’t trust this Administration to come up with a half-reasonable reason to go to war.

There is a very well-known quote from the Marvel Comic Spiderman – an admonition spoken to Peter Parker by his grandfather: With great power comes great responsibility. Our mission is to make sure that the gains we have seen in the last week become real changes for the citizens of this country, and consequently the world at large. We have shown that we are the mainstream, and that we reflect the wishes and dreams that people voted for in droves.

The worst thing that could happen in a situation like this is for us to become complacent, to expect that people who were saying very recently that they would fight a better and more efficient war on terror will go anywhere near stopping this war mindset on their own unless we bombard them with the truth.

We have a group of people we have to deal with now in Washington who are just as in debt and beholden to the corporatocracy as anyone there before – our mission now is to use this springboard to make sure that they understand who elected them. It was NOT General Electric, it was NOT Halliburton, it was NOT FOX News – it was the people who expect that our representatives will listen to us, work for us, and make change for us.

We have to remind these people that health care, whether we are talking about community medical centers, Medicare Reform or Universal Health Care, is the responsibility of our elected officials to deliver – not the wishes of the Hospital, Insurance or Pharmaceutical industries.

We must let them know that a populace empowered with the truth is a great force, and that reinstation of the Fairness Doctrine, the return to actual journalism, and a quest to report the unfettered truth will only be a benefit to their own job experience and the American public as a whole.

We must remind these people that until we have the 900-year-old principle of Habeas Corpus returned in this country – whole, undiluted, for citizen and non-citizen alike, we really do not live in America.

And we must be vigilant in letting them know that war is a failure of the human condition – it is a failing of intelligence, of morality, of compassion, and of maturity. Not only do we need to stop this ugly war in Iraq, we must let them know that war is never an option in the future – this country needs to get on the track of speaking eloquently and clearly to the world at large so we can all get to the important work of beating our swords into plowshares.

We can all be proud of the work we did to make this past Tuesday a reality, and I look forward to pushing forward with you all.

Rick Banales is a member of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (Los Angeles)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15594.htm .........

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***Center For Constitutional Rights
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=zQrItml3Gv&Content=845ATTORNEYS FOR GUANTANAMO DETAINEES COULD BE DETAINED AS ENEMY COMBATANTS UNDER NEW LEGISLATION
.....
President Given Undue Power to Silence Critics

Synopsis
On September 26, 2006, attorneys for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) determined that what appears to be the final version of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 could allow the government to detain the attorneys themselves as 'enemy combatants.' CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman said: "This ominously broad definition of enemy combatants would mean that almost anyone who actively opposes the President or the government could be locked up indefinitely. This bill makes a mockery of the rule of law."

The current version of the Military Commissions redefines an "unlawful enemy combatant" (UEC) so broadly that it could include anyone who organizes a march against the war in Iraq. The bill defines a UEC as "a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or anyone who "has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense of the United States." The definition makes no reference to citizenship and therefore could be read to include any number of individuals, including:

CCR attorneys and other habeas counsel, Federal Public Defenders and military defense counsel for detainees at Guantánamo Bay
Any person who has given $5 to a charity working with orphans in Afghanistan that turns out to be associated in some fashion with someone who may be a member of the Taliban
The bill also currently includes provisions so sweeping that they strip U.S. courts of jurisdiction over habeas petitions by any non-citizen detained by the government anywhere. Because there is no geographic limitation in the bill's language, it would allow the President to detain any non-citizen without their ever having the chance to challenge their detention in court: "No court... shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." Examples of people who could be detained indefinitely with no access to a court include:

A foreign tourist wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt at the Statue of Liberty
A protester at an immigration rally who has lived in the U.S. since she was six months old and is a lawful, permanent resident
CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren said: "This new version of the legislation grants the President frightening power to silence his critics. Habeas corpus is, like voting, one of the fundamental rights of democracy. The President's efforts to exercise the privilege of kings must be turned back, before the so-called 'war on terror' turns on our own citizens."
Go on-site to access their other articles, programs, Action Center, etc. *****

[Saundra Hummer]

XXXA Newsletter I receive:

http://www.davenetics.com
Side-Swiped

I am now officially against oversized SUVs. It's not the climate change thing, although that should be reason enough. And it's not the dependence on foreign oil thing, although that should qualify as a reason. It's mostly because I was side-swiped by a giant SUV last night. Notice I didn't say my car was side-swiped. I was.

I was getting out of my car (luckily, in terms of the tone of this story, I was driving a hybrid) and handing the key to a friendly valet parker when a massive, white SUV ran into my person. Fortunately, it just hit my arm and side (collapsing its side mirror). And I am pretty big dude. For most of you, this would be the equivalent of getting run into by Segway.

Anyway, I stayed on my feet, and inspired by the Cheerleader on Heroes I showed no signs of weakness in response to shocked looks and queries coming for the valet team.

Anyway, long story short, I am now strongly in favor of compact cars. What can I say? All politics are local.

The World's Worst Traffick Jam
According to a spokesperson, the Vatican views today's human trafficking and forced enslavement as being worse than during the African slavery of past centuries. It makes one wonder about the whole good v evil line we've been fed over the past few years. How is this not on the national radar?

Working on Commissions
From Michael Kinsley: "It's a nutty, and not very attractive, idea to turn an urgent issue of war and peace over to a commission. Commissions have usually been trotted out for long-run social problems: immigration, debt, health care. Going to war is something that ought to be decided by the people we elect. Congress in recent decades has virtually abandoned its duty under the Constitution to make the decisions about when American soldiers are sent to kill and die."

The Nasty Web
According to a recent study, about 1 percent of all web content is adult in nature and about six percent of all queries at the major search engines draw dirty results.

I wonder what would happen if you took into account all searches across Bittorrent sites and P2P networks. I'd be surprised if you ended up with 6 percent of non-dirty searches.

O.J. "If I Did It"
In what could be the most offensive reality show in history, the Juice will be describing how he would have carried out the double murder if he had been the one to do it. Wait. Wouldn't that have to be classified as a re-run?

Dems Unifying?
Are the Dems on the road towards party unification heading into '08? Not so far. There is already infighting about the second spot in the House following Pelosi's odd decision to back a horse in the race. Meanwhile, the GOP has put Trent Lott back into a power position. It's just more proof that while times and politics can change, bad hair never dies.

+

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me now features a daily news quiz online.

The Daily Melt

Bears Can't Sleep in Russia and you can take a more comfortable swim in the North Sea.

and...

Slate asks: We mated with Neanderthals. Can we breed with other animals, too? (God I miss college) ... Nuns Who Blog ... Clooney Still Hot ... From Mile High Club to Doing Time Club? ... San Francisco outlaws Styrofoam and Decriminalizes Pot (This is the greatest place on earth for just about everyone other than those who love smoking Styrofoam) ... Why do men die quicker than women when they have the same diseases? ... Hitchens on Borat (The cage match everyone secretly longs for...)...

Back at you manana....Davenetics*

Go on-site to view complete articles with their links and side bar issues as well. Click on the link at beginning of letter.

The Official Newsletter of the Next Five Minutes.
by Dave Pell, dave {at} davenetics.com

Daventics.com/Newsletter : Subscribe Here

All comments above are solely those of Davenetics

Please forward any or all of the newsletter only with a link and an atttibution

Copyright 2006. All Rights Reserved.

[Saundra Hummer]

~~~~~~~

“Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. ‘We have a single system,’ he wrote, and ‘in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.’”

Gore Vidal - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire


~~~


“If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the umpire — ‘Here is $1,000.’ What would we call that? We would call that a bribe. If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and said, ‘Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my client, here is $1,000.’ What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.

“But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe.”

Janice Fine - Dollars and Sense magazine



~~~~~

[Saundra Hummer]

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Family Feud: Little Bush Hits Back at Daddy
By Chris Floyd
Bush Initiates Iraq Policy Review Separate From Baker Group's (Washington Post...- ...Go on-site to access this link.)
Excerpt: President Bush formally launched a sweeping internal review of Iraq policy yesterday, pulling together studies underway by various government agencies, according to U.S. officials. The initiative… parallels the effort by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to salvage U.S. policy in Iraq, develop an exit strategy and protect long-term U.S. interests in the region…The White House's decision changes the dynamics of what happens next to U.S. policy deliberations. The administration will have its own working document as well as recommendations from an independent bipartisan commission to consider as it struggles to prevent further deterioration in Iraq.
11/15/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- When I saw the Newsweek cover featuring Big Daddy Bush muscling toward the front with a diminished little Dubya skulking in the background, my first thought was: How is Junior going to react to this? Bush II's resentment toward his father is well-known -- a resentment no doubt compounded by his lifelong, abject dependence on Daddy's financial and political pull -- and I knew that Little Bush would not simply accept this media humiliation and move on.

Because for all his vaunted (and totally mendacious) "unconcern" with opinion polls and popularity ("Ah just do whut muh gut tells me is right"), Little Bush is actually one of the most vain and insecure men ever to sit in the White House; only Nixon can match him in this regard. Why else would he need to have his authority bolstered in such ludicrous ways -- such as all those little "Commander-in-Chief" and "President of the United States" tags embossed onto his fancy quasi-military jackets and his running gear and belt-buckles and boots -- and probably his toilet paper as well? At every turn, he feels the anxious need to remind others, and himself, that he really is the president, he's the decider, he's the commander: "See, it says so right here on muh jacket!" (Meanwhile, the exaggerated swagger he affects -- a labored caricature of stereotypical masculinity -- bespeaks other sorts of insecurities prowling in the presidential psyche, but we won't go into that here.)

Bush has also taken every opportunity during his tenure to diminish, downplay or even belittle his father's personal influence and political record. He evinces far more personal animosity toward his father than, say, Bill Clinton, his supposed political bête noire. Thus the Newsweek cover was probably a greater humiliation for Bush than the election results themselves. Indeed, the latter only confirmed his contempt for the American people, as he made clear in his post-election press conference with his casual put-down of voters: "I thought when it was all said and done, the American people would understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security." The not-so-subtle implication here is that the American people were too stupid to understand how good they've got it under his glorious reign.

Bush's reaction to the Newsweek cover –and the whole gamut of high-profile media stories pushing the line that Daddy's men are moving in to take over the government and rescue Junior from the mess he's made – was not long in coming: just a week after the election. The Washington Post nailed it – then very curiously buried it on page 16, perhaps because it contradicts the new conventional wisdom about the return of Bush I (the ditheringly incompetent, deeply corrupt, sinister covert operator suddenly transformed into a wise, moderate, accomplished elder statesman) and the Baker-Gates salvage operation.

What we are seeing today with Bush II's petulant pushback against the Baker Commission is part of what was earlier described here as a "war in Heaven" – an ongoing move by parts of the American Establishment to rein in the worst excesses of the Bush Faction before they kill the golden goose that keeps the elite ensconced in power and privilege. As I noted here in September (in a look at Bob Woodward's latest book):

His new book, State of Denial, is a stinging attack on the Bush-Cheney Faction… and the presence of "Bandar Bush," the Saudi royal, and Scowcroft, the Bush Senior courtier, among Woodward's main sources tells us that Daddy Bush has reverted back to the old-line, white-bread, "Eastern Establishment" in a move against the Sunbelt oil men, crank pseudo-Christians and Nixonian diehards like Cheney and Rumsfeld that Junior Bush has thrown in with….

Bush Junior …is a true scion of the predatory elite that has served as America's aristocracy for generations...And that's why it will never come to impeachment or resignation [as it did with the lowborn bagman, Richard Nixon]; such things would reflect too badly on the elite itself, not least on Daddy Bush, one of its leading lights. But some strong shots across the bow, some public humiliation, something to get Bush and Cheney to alter the disastrous course in Iraq – that's fair game, and that's what we're seeing today from some of the old-line Establishment factions.

(Note: is not the destruction of constitutional liberties that concerns these factions and brings them out against Bush, of course. They could care less about that – in fact, it's yet another good argument to them for keeping the Bush Faction in power, albeit chastened somewhat on the military aggression front. Not that these elite players don't hold the same ideal of American domination of global affairs that drives the Bush Faction; they do, in spades. But they recognize that after a certain point you get more buck for less bang. As the Emperor Tiberius used to tell his satraps when he sent them out to govern the conquered lands: "I want my sheep shorn, not shaved.")

…For make no mistake: what we are seeing is a "war in heaven," an intramural struggle between elites, a falling out among thieves, and, literally, a family quarrel in the imperial house. It has nothing to do with the welfare of the American people, or the restoration of democracy. The "consent of the governed" will play no part in how the affairs of the state are finally ordered by the exalted ones.

Little Bush's suddenly conceived internal Iraq policy review is just another salvo in this ongoing struggle. The Cheney militarists will certainly not give up without a fight, even after the "Gray Hawk Down" disaster of Rumsfeld's resignation. Bush Junior will certainly not keep swallowing Daddy's cod liver oil without throwing a fit now and then. American policy will continue to drift back and forth between Junior's hyper-aggressive corporatist militarism and Daddy's slightly less aggressive corporatist militarism (which is pretty much the default "bipartisan" foreign policy of the past 60 years).

The comforting storyline that the "grownups" are stepping in to set things to right is the usual dangerous, reductive nonsense of the corporate media worldview. Daddy's men and Junior's men are all part of the same political network (or crime family, if you prefer). There may be power struggles between them over certain issues, personality conflicts, policy disagreements, but they are all ultimately working for the same mutual interest: their own aggrandizement (in various forms – power, honors, riches, ideological triumph, etc.).

The "war in heaven" is real, but there will be no actual losers amongst the combatants. Loss of face is the worst punishment the vanquished will endure; even if they're booted from public office, like Donald Rumsfeld, they simply return to their private world of vast personal fortunes, corporate directorships, and backroom sway. Until the political winds shift again, and they're back in the saddle once more – like Robert Gates, returning to office 14 years after his shadowy service for Reagan and Bush; or indeed, like Rumsfeld himself, who went a quarter of a century without official title between his Nixon-Ford tenure and his restoration by Junior Bush. The profitable, bloodsoaked game goes on, regardless of elections and internal squabbles.

Where does that leave the rest of us? Not as citizens in control of our political fate, but more like Kremlinologists, trying to discern through opaque and oblique signs what is really going on with our masters. Or like the "birds i' the cage" of King Lear's vision, prisoners who:

…hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon us the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.
***
Copyright Chris Floyd. Visit his blog www.chris-floyd.comhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15620.htm

[Saundra Hummer]

XXXXXU.S. funds for democracy in Cuba spent on cashmere
By Adriana Garcia
Wed Nov 15, 2006 10:42 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. funds intended to promote democracy in Cuba have been used to buy crab meat, cashmere sweaters, computer games and chocolates, according to a U.S. congressional audit published on Wednesday.

The survey by the Government Accountability Office found little oversight and accountability in the program, which paid out $76 million between 1996 and 2005 to support Cuban dissidents, independent journalists, academics and others.

It also found that 95 percent of the grants were issued without competitive tenders.

To protect recipients from prosecution, none of the money from the U.S. Agency for International Development or State Department is paid in cash to people in Cuba. A Cuban law sends citizens to jail for receiving money from the U.S. government.

Instead, the funds are distributed to Cuban-American groups in Miami, the heartland of opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro, and in Washington, and used to buy medicines, books, shortwave radios and other goods that are smuggled into Cuba.

President George W. Bush has proposed increasing spending on Cuba-related programs, including propaganda transmissions by Radio and TV Marti, by $80 million over the next two years.

Critics have long charged the grants are aimed more at winning votes in Miami than triggering political change on the communist island, where the now-ailing Castro has ruled since his 1959 revolution.

Out of 10 recipients of public money reviewed by the auditors, three failed to keep adequate financial records, the Government Accountability Office said. A lot of the money was used to pay smugglers, or "mules, to avoid U.S. restrictions on taking goods to Cuba.

'THEY THINK IT'S NOT COLD THERE'

The auditors questioned checks written out to some staff members, questionable travel expenses and payments to a manager's family. One group acknowledged selling books it was supposed to distribute under the democracy-promoting program.

One grantee "could not justify some purchases made with USAID funds, including a gas chain saw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and Godiva chocolates," the report said.

The auditors did not identify the recipients.

Juan Carlos Acosta, executive director of Miami-based anti-Castro group Cuban Democratic Action, told the Miami Herald he sent those items to Cuba, apart from the chain saw.

"These people are going hungry. They never get any chocolate there," Acosta said, according to the newspaper.

He said he bought the jackets and sweaters at a sale.

"They (the auditors) think it's not cold there (in Cuba)," Acosta said. "At $30 it's a bargain because cashmere is expensive. They were asking for sweaters, from Cuba."

Acosta did not immediately return a phone call from Reuters.

The audit was ordered by U.S lawmakers opposed to the 44-year-old U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, and they said the findings confirmed the need for a thorough review of U.S. policy.

"Let me just say that, to continue a current level of funding, given the results and given the disarray this program seems to be in, would be a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars," Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, told reporters in Washington.

(Additional reporting by Michael Christie in Miami)
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.

[Saundra Hummer]

.............
FBI Warns of 'Jury Duty' Scam
Maggie Burbank Reports:
November 15, 2006 3:49 PM

The FBI says victims around the country are falling prey to an identify theft scam that uses false threats of missed jury duty.

Authorities say scam artists, posing as court officers, are calling unsuspecting people to tell them they have failed to report for jury service and that there is a warrant out for their arrest.

The victim is then told that everything can be cleared up if personal information, such as a social security number, birth date and credit card number, is provided. People who reported getting such calls have later found new credit card accounts opened in their name.


The FBI says the scam has seen a resurgence this year, and complaints have been reported in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon and Virginia. The federal court system has also issued an alert on the scam and has urged people to contact their local District Court office with complaints.

Jay Foley, Executive Director of the Identity Theft Resource Center, tells ABC News to be cautious of anyone calling you on the telephone saying they represent any government agency asking for personal information.

In addition to the jury duty story, other scams involve people calling about your taxes or problems with your bank account. Foley says, "Never give out personal information over the phone unless you know darn well who the caller is. I don't care if they say they are a police officer, FBI agent or the President of the United States."

Read the FBI alert on jury duty scams.

THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS
E-mail Scam: 'Elizabeth Taylor' Needs Your Help
Identity Theft: D.C. Style
Click Here to Check Out the Brian Ross Investigates Webcast on the Brian Ross Page

(Check out the air marshall article, and view comments, it's interesting. SRH)
.......
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/11/fbi_warns_of_ju.html XXX

[Saundra Hummer]

:: :: :: :: ::
Feds in New Jersey Serve Subpoenas on Senator's Associates

Richard Esposito Reports:
November 16, 2006 10:59 AM
Federal agents have served a second round of subpoenas in the investigation of financial transactions involving newly elected Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), senior law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

ABC News first reported on the expected new round of subpoenas last Friday.
They are the second set in a probe involving Sen. Menendez's financial relationship with a community organization that received federal funding with Menendez's help.


The case, according to investigators, centers on $329,000 in rent payments made to then-Congressman Menendez from the New Jersey community group at the same time he helped the group obtain federal funding.

A first round of subpoenas for financial records was served on the not-for-profit North Hudson Community Action Corp. in early September.

"We reached out to the U.S. Attorney's Office some time ago to ask them if they needed any information at all from the senator," Matt Miller, a spokesman for the senator told ABC News last week. "They told us that not only did they not need any information but that he has no status [in the investigation] at all."

Miller had nothing additional to add at this time, he said.

Menendez had said that he received informal approval in 1994 from the House Ethics Committee before entering into the lease arrangement with the community group.

"It is standard practice for members to seek and rely upon oral guidance given to them by House Ethics Committee staff. I am not aware of any instance where a House member received oral guidance from the House Ethics Committee staff and was later subject to discipline by the House Ethics Committee," said Marc Elias, counsel for Sen. Menendez, told ABC News Friday.

Menendez's attorney said that at this time there was nothing to add to the remarks he made to ABC News last week when he commented on the ethics of any transactions.

The rent payments, over a period of nine years, were for a three-story brick house owned by Menendez in Union City, N.J. The group continued to rent the building from the new owners after Menendez sold it.

"We are confident that when the U.S. Attorney's Office completes its review, they will come to the same conclusion as the House Ethics Committee that this transaction was completely appropriate," Miller said.

The U.S. Attorney would neither confirm nor deny subpoenas were served.
THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS
To the Victors, Go the Subpoenas: Feds Continue New Jersey Probe
Abramoff Reports to Prison; Officials Focus on Reid, Others
Click Here to Check Out Brian Ross Videos on Our Homepage
Sen. Menendez is not considered a formal "target" of the federal investigation at this point, according to investigators who describe him only as "a person of interest."

While on-site, check out Abramoffs new digs. Looks more like a summer camp for children than a prison, no prison fencing, 6 bed dorms, etc.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/11/index.html :: :: ::

[Saundra Hummer]

~~~~~~~Abramoff Reports to Prison; Officials Focus on Reid, Others

Brian Ross
and
Rhonda Schwartz Report:
November 15, 2006 1:23 PM

As convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff reported to federal prison today, a source close to the investigation surrounding his activities told ABC News that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was one of the members of Congress Abramoff had allegedly implicated in his cooperation with federal prosecutors.

A spokesperson for Reid, elected yesterday as the Senate Majority Leader, said the senator had done nothing illegal or unethical.

"We have no idea what Abramoff is telling prosecutors to save his skin, but I do know that these kind of old allegations are completely ridiculous and untrue," Sen. Reid's spokesman Jim Manley told ABC News.

A source close to the investigation says Abramoff told prosecutors that more than $30,000 in campaign contributions to Reid from Abramoff's clients "were no accident and were in fact requested by Reid."

Abramoff has reportedly claimed the Nevada senator agreed to help him on matters related to Indian gambling.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to the tribes that had contributed money to his campaign.

Reid has denied there was any connection between the letters and the contributions and has said he is a longtime opponent of certain kinds of Indian reservation gambling.

The AP reported that Reid acknowledged "routine contacts" with Abramoff's lobbying partners and intervening to block rival tribal casinos.

The AP also reported that Abramoff's billing records showed extensive contact with Reid's office over a three-year period in which Reid collected more than $68,000 from Abramoff's firm, partners and clients.

Prosecutors have said that Abramoff's cooperation is essential to the corruption investigation, but, so far, they have brought only one prosecution against a member of Congress connected to Abramoff, Republican Bob Ney of Ohio, who resigned.

The source said prosecutors do not intend to rely solely on Abramoff's account of events, and his allegations against Reid and others will not necessarily result in criminal charges.

Sources close to the federal investigation say Abramoff has offered testimony about his contacts with "six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators" and an ever larger number of Republican members of Congress.

In addition to Reid, the sources say Abramoff has been most closely questioned about his contacts with Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who was defeated in last week's election.

"Being defeated may have been one of the best things that ever happened to Burns," said a source close to the investigation. "There is much more interest in members of Congress who are still in office," the source said.

Burns, who received more than $150,000 in Abramoff-connected campaign contributions, has strongly denied any wrongdoing and returned the money.

Sen. Reid has been an outspoken critic of the connections between Abramoff and Republican legislators.

In a speech earlier this year, Sen. Reid described it as "a program where the lobbyists paid and the Republican members of Congress played."

The Justice Department said it would have no comment on the ongoing Abramoff investigation.

THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS
Convicted Lobbyist Abramoff Reports to Prison
Photos Abramoff Scandal Spins Out of Control
Click Here to Check Out Who's Blowing Hot, Cool and Smoke Today on the Brian Ross Page

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/11/index.html
~~~~~

[Saundra Hummer]

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Tomgram: Will Daddy's Boys Extend the War?

No Exit?
What It Means to "Salvage U.S. Prestige" in Iraq

By
Tom Engelhardt

Things are always complicated. In the Washington Post, for instance, James Mann, author of Rise of the Vulcans recently suggested that it was far "too simplistic" to claim "the appointment of Robert M. Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld [represents] the triumph of Bush the Father's administration over Bush the Son's."

Still, I prefer the analysis of Washington Post reporter (and author of Fiasco) Thomas Ricks. When asked by the Post's media columnist Howard Kurtz whether a Newsweek headline, "Father knows best," was just "an easy, cheap Oedipal way for the press to characterize what's going on," Ricks replied: "Well, just because it's easy and cheap doesn't mean it's wrong."

At a moment when every version of the dramatic arrival of James A. Baker III and Robert Gates on the scene -- and the scuttling of Rumsfeld's Titanic -- is at least suspect, it's still worth considering the bare bones of what can be seen and known -- and then asking what we have.

Sooner or later, failure has a way of stripping most of us of our dreams and pretensions. So let's start with a tiny history of failure. George W. Bush's life trajectory of failing upward has had a rhythm to it -- and a rubric, "crony capitalism." Daddy's friends and contacts helped him into and -- after he failed -- out of the oil business, into and out of the baseball business, into and now, it seems, out of the failed game of global politics. His is, as the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish and John Aloysius Farrell put it back in 2002, "the story of a man who struck out numerous times before being bailed out by big hitters who often were family members, friends, or supporters of his father."

It's appropriate, then, that the man who bailed him out in Florida when he essentially lost the presidency in 2000, Bush family consigliere James A. Baker III, would reappear six years later, in the wake of another failed election, to bail him out again now that he's screwed up the oil heartlands of the planet. Daddy -- we're talking here about former President George H.W. Bush -- has three adopted boys: His former National Security Advisor (and alter ego) Brent Scowcroft, who went into opposition to the younger Bush's Iraq policy even before the invasion of 2003 and now lurks quietly in the wings; his former CIA Director Robert Gates; and Baker.

Like Daddy, Gates was deeply involved in, but never indicted for his dealings in the scurrilous Iran-Contra affair; was later involved in the tilt toward and arming of Saddam's Iraq against Khomeini's Iran, pioneered fertile territory in the late 1980s in terms of manipulating intelligence in the debate over the nature of Gorbachev's Soviet Union, had a hand in the first Gulf War, and most recently held the presidency of Texas A&M, where he was the keeper of the flame for Daddy's library. Could you ask for a better insider CV for taking over the Pentagon from one of Bush elder's rivals in the Gerald Ford era, Donald Rumsfeld.

We don't know how all this happened, but a little speculation never hurt anyone. Congress mandated the Iraq Study Group (ISG) to come up with some new recommendations for Iraq policy last March. Baker and co-chair Lee Hamilton began work in April. Iraq has been in an ever more horrific and bloodthirsty spiral downward ever since. Yet the ISG has still delivered nothing but promises of recommendations -- which Baker and others continue to swear will be no "magic" or "silver" bullet -- sometime in December or even January. Back in March, Baker insisted on getting the President, who initially seemed reluctant, to sign on personally. But the question is: What happened over the last 8 months as Iraq boiled? I think we have to assume -- and a cover piece in Time seems to confirm this -- that Baker, a distinctly hard-nosed guy, never intended to present a bunch of suggestions that Donald Rumsfeld could simply shoot out of the skies and so was stalling until his departure. (Time quotes a "Gates aide" as saying, "Baker wasn't going to let his report come out, so that Rummy could stomp all over it.")

Assumedly, he knew that, if his group took long enough, Rumsfeld would be gone and a secretary of defense more to his liking in place. Hence, the distant date for delivering "solutions." It's been, in essence, a stall. Everyone involved has claimed, of course, that Father Bush had nothing directly to do with all this and that Baker didn't even know, until the last second, that Rumsfeld was about to fall like a brick. I'd be surprised if that story lasted out the month.

In fact, what we're seeing undoubtedly adds up to something more than Iraq policy recommendations -- possibly even a genuine purge of most of the remaining neocons and their allies (who are also in the process of, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern has written, eating their own). At the Pentagon, rumor has it, the leftover neocons, many of them allies of Vice President Cheney, are just waiting for their pink slips when Gates steps aboard. All this seems aimed at leaving the Vice President's office increasingly isolated and Cheney himself sidelined.

Someday, when the full story is in, we're bound to be riveted. After all, Baker has managed in these months to gather in the wings something like an alternative State Department/National Security Council/CIA-in-waiting in the shell of the Iraq Study Group, which is filled with old movers and shakers going back to the Reagan administration. (He's even begun to conduct something akin to his own foreign policy, meeting with the Syrian foreign minister and Iran's ambassador to the UN, both no-nos for this administration.) The ten key ISG members, in fact, are largely not military strategists or geopolitical thinkers of a sort who might be expected to offer Iraq solutions. They are instead a who's who of establishmentarianism, extending back to the Reagan era.

Is this a major shift in Washington? You bet. How big remains to be seen. But here's the real question: Can the new crowd -- even if the President bows down to Daddy's Boys, which is hardly a given -- get us out of Iraq? Do they even want to? At a moment of such flux, with a new Democratic Congress and growing public pressure for a genuine Iraq exit strategy, what kind of gates will the Gates nomination actually open?

When Is an "Exit" Not the Way Out?

Let's start with one sure side effect of the Gates nomination and the extended delivery schedule of the Iraq Study Group. It buys time from election-driven pressure for whatever administration is in formation. We now have to wait for the Gates confirmation hearings; the ISG recommendations (and possibly those from an alternate White House version of the same); endless consideration of them; and, barring an unlikely flat turn-down from an increasingly cornered administration, the time to implement those policies and check out the results (which are guaranteed to be deeply disappointing, if not disastrous). Six months to a year could easily pass before it becomes obvious to Americans that we're not really heading out those Iraqi gates.

If you happen to have lived through the Vietnam era, then think of this as the beginning of the season of non-withdrawal withdrawal gestures. The key word right now is "redeployment," something Senator Carl Levin, who will soon take over the Armed Services Committee, is pushing hard. His modest drawdown plan, however, is not even meant to begin for another four to six months and offers no timetable or any particular end in sight. Levin does, however, make it clear that redeployment and departure are two different creatures. In the form of some kind of military advisory group (not to speak of our massive new embassy in the heart of Baghdad and a few of the massive bases we've built), he expects us to be in Iraq into the distant future.

We don't, of course, know exactly what plan the Iraq Study Group will offer, but all reports on its deliberations suggest that, while public expectations are soaring, the actual recommendations "may sound familiar." Actually, they may sound that way because the proposals the group seems to be considering are indeed remarkably familiar. These range from a bulking up of U.S. troop strength by 10,000-40,000 more soldiers to a far more likely scenario described by Neil King Jr., Yochi Dreazen, and Greg Jaffe in the Wall Street Journal just two days after the election. This would involve a long-term drawdown of American forces to the 50,000 level -- still 20,000 more than Rumsfeld and pals hoped to leave in-country only months after the taking of Baghdad. Assumedly, these would largely be pulled back into those permanent bases we've built.


"The new defense secretary is more likely to oversee a shift of the U.S. effort away from providing security in urban areas such as Baghdad to a more advisory role… In such a scenario, the Pentagon would turn big U.S. units into quick reaction forces to bail out Iraqi soldiers and advisers who get overrun. Teams of American advisers who live and work with Iraqi units would increase in number."

Recently, Julian Borger of the British Guardian summed up what's known this way: "[The ISG] is also looking at various types of troop deployment. Most probably it will suggest pulling US forces out of the urban patrolling that causes most of the casualties and regrouping in bases in Iraq or in neighbouring countries."

Along with this would go various forms of pressure on the Iraqi government to step up ("benchmarks," but not perhaps the dreaded "timetable" for withdrawal that the President opposes so vigorously). In addition, a regional conference of neighboring states, the Europeans, and the U.S. would be convened whose task would evidently be to draft Iran and Syria into the process of "stabilizing" Iraq. (Having played a high-stakes game of chicken with the Bush administration based on an assessment of American power and seemingly won, the Iranians, in particular, are unlikely to settle now for what little the Bush administration might offer in return for their help.)

Yes, the presidential idea of "victory" or "success" will be nowhere in sight, nor will an emphasis on fostering "democracy" in Iraq -- and further coup rumors may proliferate. But all of this, however palatable it may seem in Washington, will only add up to a series of tactical, not strategic readjustments -- most of which (minus that conference) have already been tried in Iraq and have only been so many benchmarks on the road to catastrophe.

Before the election, an upsurge in violence in Iraq was compared to the Tet Offensive "turning point" moment in Vietnam. In fact, the last weeks bear no particular relationship to that nationwide Vietnamese campaign that saw bitter fighting all over the country, even inside the American embassy compound in Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital. But let's remember another, more telling aspect of Tet. As a "turning point" in that conflict, it was still followed by another seven years of war. Almost as many Americans, and probably more Vietnamese, died in the period after Tet as before.

In the post-Tet period, we had to live through a Senator-Levin-style near complete withdrawal of American ground troops from Vietnam under the pressure of a disintegrating army and rising antiwar feeling at home, only to see the use of U.S. air power escalate dramatically to fill the power gap. Expect some modified, scaled-down version of this Nixon-era "Vietnamization" program in Iraq. As early as November 2005, Nixon's Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who claims full credit for the strategy (and still thinks it was a successful way to win the Vietnam War in the face of increasing public opposition at home), proposed a similar Iraqification plan in Foreign Affairs magazine. Now, its moment may be arriving.

Like almost all strategies floating around Washington at the moment, this is but another way to try to hang on to some truncated but permanent imperial presence at the heart of the oil lands of the planet -- and as such it is doomed to fail. Unfortunately, to make much sense of what an Iraqification policy might actually mean, you need to be able to assess two key aspects of our Iraqi venture that the mainstream media essentially have not cared to cover.

Permanent Facts on the Ground

As the New York Times revealed in a front-page piece by Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt on April 19, 2003, just after Baghdad fell, the Pentagon arrived in the Iraqi capital with plans already on the drawing board to build four massive military bases (that no official, then or now, will ever call "permanent"). Today, according to our former Secretary of Defense, we have 55 bases of every size in Iraq (down from over 100); five or six of these, including Balad Airbase, north of Baghdad, the huge base first named Camp Victory adjacent to Baghdad International Airport, and al-Asad Airbase in western Anbar province, are enormous -- big enough to be reasonable-sized American towns with multiple bus routes, neighborhoods, a range of fast-food restaurants, multiple PX's, pools, mini-golf courses and the like.

Though among the safest places in Iraq for American reporters, these bases have, with rare exceptions, gone completely undescribed and undiscussed in our press (or on the television news). From an engineering journal, we know that before the end of 2003, several billion dollars had already been sunk into them. We know that in early 2006, the major ones, already mega-structures, were still being built up into a state of advanced permanency. Balad, for instance, already handled the levels of daily air traffic you would normally see at Chicago's ultra-busy O'Hare and in February its facilities were still being ramped up. We know, from the reliable Ed Harriman, in the latest of his devastating accounts of corruption in Iraq in the London Review of Books, that, as you read, the four mega-bases always imagined as our permanent jumping-off spots in what Bush administration officials once liked to call "the arc of instability" were still undergoing improvement.

Without taking the fate of those monstrous, always-meant-to-be-permanent bases into account -- and they are, after all, just about the only uniformly successfully construction projects in that country -- no American plans for Iraq, whatever label they go by, will make much sense. And yet months go by without any reporting on them appearing. In fact, these last months have gone by with only a single peep (that I've found) from any mainstream publication on the subject.

The sole bit of base news I've noticed anywhere made an obscure mid-October appearance in a Turkish paper, which reported that the U.S. was now building a "military airport" in Kurdistan. A few days later, a UPI report picked up by the Washington Times had this: "Following hints U.S. troops may remain in Iraq for years, the United States is reportedly building a massive military base at Arbil, in Kurdish northern Iraq."

Kurdistan has always been a logical fallback position for U.S. forces "withdrawing" from a failed Iraq. But so far nothing more substantial has been written on the subject.

There is, however, another symbol of American "permanency" in Iraq that has gotten just slightly more attention in the U.S. press in recent months -- the new U.S. embassy now going up inside Baghdad's well-fortified Green Zone and nicknamed by Baghdadis (in a sly reference to Saddam Hussein's enormous, self-important edifices) "George W's Palace." It's almost the size of Vatican City, will have its own apartment buildings (six of them) for its bulked-up "staff" of literally thousands and its own electricity, well-water, and waste-treatment facilities to guarantee "100 percent independence from city utilities," not to speak of a "swimming pool, gym, commissary, food court and American Club, all housed in a recreation building" and it's own anti-missile system. Ed Harriman tells us that it's a billion dollar-plus project -- and unlike just about every other construction project in the country, it's going up efficiently and on schedule. It will be the most imperial embassy on the planet, not exactly the perfect signal of a sovereign Iraqi future.

Again, few have had much to say about the embassy project here, a rare exception being an August Dallas Morning News editorial, "Fortress America: New Embassy Sends Wrong Message to Iraqis," that denounced the project: "America certainly needs a decent, well-defended embassy in Baghdad. But not as much as ordinary Iraqis need electricity and water. That our government doesn't seem to understand that reality could explain a lot about why the U.S. mission is in such trouble."

Of course, as we learned in Vietnam, even the most permanent facilities can turn out to be impermanent indeed and even the best defended imperial embassy can, in the end, prove little more than a handy spot for planning an evacuation. But if the Iraq Study Group doesn't directly confront these facts-on-the-ground (as it surely won't), whatever acceptable compromises it may forge in Washington between an embedded administration and a new Congress, things will only go from truly bad to distinctly worse in Iraq.

The Uncovered War

Here's another mystery of Iraq (and Afghani) coverage: The essential American way of war -- air power -- has long been completely MIA, except at websites like this one. There has been not a single mainstream piece of any significance on the air war these last years, with the single exception of journalist Seymour Hersh's remarkable December 2005 report, "Up in the Air," in the New Yorker. ("A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President's public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units.") It is, of course, an irony that the only American reporter to look up and notice all those planes, helicopters, and drones overhead has never been to Iraq.

Such modest coverage of the air war in Iraq as exists in our press generally comes in the form of infrequent paragraphs buried in wire service round-ups as in a November 14th Associated Press piece headlined, "U.S. General Confronts Iraqi Leader on Security":


"On Monday night, U.S. forces raided the homes of some Sadr followers, and U.S. jets fired rockets on Shula, their northwest Baghdad neighborhood, residents said. Police said five residents were killed, although a senior Sadr aide put the death toll at nine. The U.S. military said it had no comment.

This incident assumedly took place somewhere in the vast Baghdad slum of Sadr city. In other words, we're talking about American planes regularly sending rockets or bombs into relatively heavily populated urban areas. All you have to do is imagine such a thing happening in an American city to grasp the barbarism involved. And yet, over these years in which such targeting has been commonplace and, in larger campaigns, parts of cities like Najaf and Falluja have been destroyed from the air, hardly a single reporter has gone to an air base like Balad and simply spent time with American pilots.

Not surprisingly, this remains a non-issue in this country. How could Americans react, when there's no news to react to, when there's next to no information to be had -- which doesn't mean that information on our ongoing air campaigns is unavailable. In fact, the Air Force is proud as punch of the job it's doing; so any reporter, not to speak of any citizen, can go to the Air Force website and look at daily reports of air missions over both Iraq and Afghanistan. The report of November 15th, for instance, offers the following:


"In Iraq, U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18s conducted a strike against anti-Iraqi forces near Ramadi. The F/A-18s expended guided bomb unit-31s on enemy targets. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons provided close-air support to troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces near Forward Operating Base McHenry and Baqubah. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles provided close-air support to troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces near Baghdad.

"In total, coalition aircraft flew 32 close air support missions for Operation Iraqi Freedom. These missions included support to coalition troops, infrastructure protection, reconstruction activities and operations to deter and disrupt terrorist activities."


This was a pretty typical day's work in recent months; there were 34 strikes on November 14th, 32 on the 13th, and 35 on the 12th -- and note that each of the strikes mentioned was "near" a major city. These reports can be hard to parse, but they certainly give a sense, day by day, that the air war in Iraq is no less ongoing for being unreported.

Here's the crucial thing: American troop levels simply cannot be slowly drawn-down in Iraq without -- as in Vietnam -- some increase in the use of air power. And yet, you can look far and wide and find no indication of any public discussion of this at the White House, in Congress, or in what we know of the deliberations of the Iraq Study Group. And yet, as the Iraqi chaos and strife grows while the American public increasingly backs off, air power will be one answer. You can count on that. And air power -- especially in or "near" cities -- simply means civilian carnage. It will be called "collateral damage" (if anyone bothers to call it anything at all), but -- make no mistake -- it will be at the heart of any new strategy that calls for "redeployment" but does not mean to get us out of Iraq.

"A True Disaster for the Iraqi People"

On ABC's Sunday political talk show, "This Week," White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten had this to say: "I don't think we're going to be receptive to the notion there's a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out, because that could be a true disaster for the Iraqi people."

With hundreds of thousands of dead and more following daily, it makes you wonder exactly what it's been so far for the Iraqi people, as Bolten sees it. But perhaps he's right; perhaps the disaster behind us will be nothing compared to the disaster ahead, especially if Daddy's Boys, the Iraq Study Group, other Democratic and Republican movers and shakers, and all those generals and former generals floating around our world decide that this isn't the moment to rediscover a Colin Powell-style "exit strategy," but "one last chance" to succeed by any definition in Iraq. Then, god help us -- and the Iraqis. Sooner or later, we'll undoubtedly be gone from a land so determinedly hostile to being occupied by us, but that end moment could still be a long, long time in coming.

Here, for instance, is Robert Gates' thinking eighteen months ago in a seminar at the Panetta Institute at California State University in Monterey on "phased troop withdrawals" from Iraq:


"But Mr. Gates qualified his comments, noting it sometimes takes time to accomplish your goals. Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, ‘there are still American troops in Germany,' he noted. ‘We've had troops in Korea for over 50 years. The British have had troops in Cyprus for 40 years… If you want to change history, you have to be prepared to stay as long as it takes to do the job."

So hold onto your hats. Tragedy and more tragedy seems almost guaranteed, and the Pentagon has just submitted to Congress a staggering $160 billion supplemental appropriation request in order to continue its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

American Dignity

So far, what have the American invasion and occupation of Iraq led to -- other than a staggering bloodbath, killing fields galore, and a secret landscape of detention centers and torture chambers? As a start, an already badly battered Iraqi economy was turned into a looting ground for Bush administration crony corporations and thoroughly wrecked. (Tall Afar, for instance, is considered an American "success" story when it comes to security, though part of the city is now a "ghost town" of rubble and unemployment there is estimated at almost 70%.) The Iraqi education system is in tatters; the medical system in ruins; basic social and urban services almost undeliverable; oil production barely up to pathetic prewar levels (if present-day figures are even real, which is in doubt); the position of women now disastrous; child malnutrition on the rise; and well over a million Iraqis have fled their homes in a country of only 26 million people.

In addition, national sovereignty has been destroyed; the national police system is on its last legs, its ranks well-stocked with men loyal to various murderous Shiite militias; a Sunni insurgency rages ever more violently; a Kurdish form of independence seems ever more likely (though inconceivable to neighboring states); corruption is rampant; and a central government, whose sway doesn't reach most streets in its capital, is now considered "the least accountable and least transparent regime in the Middle East." (The Interior Ministry alone "reportedly employs at least a thousand ghost employees, whose wages amount to more than $1 million a month.")

Throw in the fact that the Iraqi Army the Bush administration has been so intent on "standing up" is largely a Shiite one (as the fine Knight-Ridder reporter Tom Lasseter discovered back in October 2005 and New York Times correspondent Richard A. Oppel found only last week in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad). So if the plan is to bulk it up further to create a modicum of "stability" before departure, forget it. By it's nature, such a training program, even if successful, is but a plan to generate an even more murderous civil war.

Now, add in endless months or years of non-withdrawal withdrawal plans, keep in mind the likelihood that American air power will be ratcheted up, and you have a formula for further carnage, collapses and disintegrations of every sort, coups, assassinations, civil war, and god knows what else.

In the Vietnam era, President Richard M. Nixon went on a well-armed, years-long hunt for something he called "peace with honor." Today, the catchword is finding an "exit strategy" that can "salvage U.S. prestige." What we want, it seems, is peace with "dignity." In Vietnam, there was no honor left, only horror. There is no American dignity to be found in Iraq either, only horror. In a Washington of suddenly lowered expectations, dignity is defined as hanging in there until an Iraqi government that can't even control its own Interior Ministry or the police in the capital gains "stability," until the Sunni insurgency becomes a mild irritation, and until that American embassy, that eighth wonder of the world of security and comfort, becomes an eye-catching landmark on the capital's skyline.

Imagine. That's all we want. That's our dignity. And for that dignity and the imagined imperial stability of the world, our top movers and shakers will proceed to monkey around for months creating and implementing plans that will only ensure further catastrophe (which, in turn, will but breed more rage, more terrorism that spreads disaster to the Middle East and actually lessens American power around the world).

Now, the dreamers, the greatest gamblers in our history, are departing official Washington and the "realists" have hit the corridors of power that they always thought they owned. It wouldn't hurt if they opened their eyes. Even imperial defenders should face reality. Someday, it's something we'll all have to do. In the meantime, call in the Hellfire-missile-armed Predator drones.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.

Copyright 2006 Tom Engelhardt

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=141003 lllllll

[Saundra Hummer]

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Tomgram: Plebiscite on an Outlaw Empire

Outlaw Empire Meets the Wave
5 Questions for Our Future

By
Tom Engelhardt

The wave -- and make no mistake, it's a global one -- has just crashed on our shores, soaking our imperial masters. It's a sight for sore eyes.

It's been a long time since we've seen an election like midterm 2006. After all, it's a truism of our politics that Americans are almost never driven to the polls by foreign-policy issues, no less by a single one that dominates everything else, no less by a catastrophic war (and the presidential approval ratings that go with it). This strange phenomenon has been building since the moment, in May 2003, that George W. Bush stood under that White-House-prepared "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared "major combat operations have ended."

That "Top Gun" stunt -- when a cocky President helped pilot an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto a carrier deck and emerged into the golden glow of "magic hour light" (as his handlers then called it) -- was meant to give him the necessary victory photos to launch his 2004 presidential reelection campaign. As it turned out, that moment was but the first "milestone" on the path to Iraqi, and finally electoral, hell. Within mere months, those photos would prove useless for anyone but liberal bloggers. By now, they seem like artifacts from another age. On the way to the present "precipice" (or are we already over the edge?), there have been other memorable "milestones" -- from the President's July 2003 petulant "bring ‘em on" taunt to Iraq's then forming insurgency to the Vice President's June 2005 "last throes" gaffe. All such statements have, by now, turned to dust in American mouths.

In the context of the history of great imperial powers, how remarkably quickly this has happened. An American President, ruling the last superpower on this or any other planet, and his party have been driven willy-nilly into global and domestic retreat a mere three-plus years after launching the invasion of their dreams, the one that was meant to start them on the path to controlling the planet -- and by one of the more ragtag minority rebellions imaginable. I'm speaking here, of course, of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, of perhaps 15,000 relatively lightly armed rebels whose main weapons have been the roadside bomb and the sniper's bullet. What a grim, bizarre spectacle it's been.

The Fall of the New Rome

But let's back up a moment. After such an election, a bit of history, however quick and potted, is in order -- in this case of the post-Cold War era of U.S. supremacy, now seemingly winding down. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, to be followed by the relatively violence-free collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a brief moment of conceptual paralysis among leadership elites in this country, none of whom had even imagined the loss of the "Evil Empire" (in President Ronald Reagan's famous Star Wars-ian phrase) until it suddenly, miraculously evaporated. In this forgotten moment, we even heard hopeful mutterings about a "peace dividend" that would take all the extra military money that obviously was no longer needed to defend against a missing superpower and use it to rebuild America.

A mighty country, soon to be termed a "hyperpower," straddling the globe alone and without obvious enemies -- that should have been a formula for declaring victory (as many Cold Warriors promptly did) and acting accordingly (which none of them did). It should have been the moment for the Long Peace.

But in an enemy-less world, there was a small problem called the Pentagon (and the vast military-industrial complex that had grown up around it). So, while the peace-dividend-that-never-was vanished in the post-Cold-War morning fog, some new, prefab enemies did make their appearances with startling speed. They essentially had to.

These new dangers to our country were termed "rogue states," an obvious step or two down from a single Evil Empire. They were, in fact, so relatively weak militarily that you needed to pile them up into a conceptual heap to get an enemy that would keep an empire and its global network of bases in military restocking mode. Not too many years down the line, the Bush administration would indeed pile three of them up in just this way into the gloriously labeled "axis of evil"; this was that old Evil Empire rejiggered for midget powers (or alternatively the Axis powers of World War II shrunk to Mini-Me standards).

Back in 1990, Saddam Hussein, our former ally in a Persian Gulf struggle with Iran for regional supremacy, invaded Kuwait and, voilà!, you had the first Gulf War. His military, already weakened by its eight-year bloodletting with Iran, was not exactly a goliath for a superpower to reckon with; but Americans took a tip from the dictator (who liked to see images of himself puffed to gigantic proportions everywhere in his land), blew his face up to Hitlerian size, and stuck it on every magazine and in every TV news report in town ("Showdown with Saddam"). His genuinely evil-dictator face took the place of a whole nuclear-armed Evil Empire, while American troops slaughtered helpless Iraqi conscripts, burying them alive in their own trenches or wiping them out from the air on the aptly named "Highway of Death" out of Kuwait City.

Not so long after, in 1992, under the aegis of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, a small group of unknown Defense Department staffers -- Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad – unveiled a new draft Defense Planning Guidance, a document for developing military strategy and planning Pentagon budgets. It was the first such since the Cold War ended and, leaked to the New York Times, it was denounced as an extremist vision and buried. As the website Right Web describes it, the document "called for massive increases in defense spending, the assertion of lone superpower status, the prevention of the emergence of any regional competitors, the use of preventive -- or preemptive -- force, and the idea of forsaking multilateralism if it didn't suit U.S. interests."

Sound familiar? No wonder. It was the very imperial program for eternal American dominance and endless war against the planet's rogue states that George W. Bush's administration would officially adopt. By then, Wolfowitz was the number two man at the Pentagon; Libby, the Vice President's good right hand; and Khalilzad was the new, post-invasion U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

In a post-9/11 atmosphere of belligerent fear, their program went mainstream. Having been attacked not by a rogue state but by a squad of 19 terrorists pledging allegiance to a stateless terrorist organization, we were "at war" with evil itself. By 2002, the administration had conducted a "successful" war in Afghanistan; the Taliban had been crushed; Osama bin Laden was MIA; and the neocons were riding high. The rest of us found ourselves in a Global War on Terror, or the Long War, or World War III, or even World War IV or whatever our rulers chose to call it that week. (As we would learn in Iraq, counting was not one of their skills.)

Dazzled beyond any reasonable imperial sense by the power to dominate that they believed American military superiority gave them, top Bush administration officials essentially proclaimed the U.S. an empire by fiat, a superduperpower the likes of which the world had never seen. In their infamous 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America (essentially the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document recycled), they swore that we would remain so forever and feed the Pentagon so much money that it would be bulked up into the distant future to suppress any potential superpower or bloc of powers that might emerge.

They insisted that we would go our own way, strike whomever we pleased, torture anyone we wished, and jail without recourse anyone we cared to sweep up or kidnap anywhere on Earth. The rest of the world could either approve or be damned, but it would be full speed ahead for us. Their acolytes in right-wing think tanks and lobbying outfits around Washington, along with Washington's assembled punditry (and some liberal tag-alongs) declared the world on the verge of a Pax Americana and this nation the globe's New Rome.

In the meantime, domestically, Karl Rove and his pals were working to ensure that the Republican Party would be dominant against all challengers for a generation or more. This was to be a domestic version of "full spectrum dominance." The two -- the global Pax Americana and the Party's Pax Republicana seemed joined at the hip back then, each reinforcing the unilateral, don't-tread-on-me, I'll-do-anything-I-wish dominance of the other. It was Rovian Abramoffism at home and Cheney-izing Wolfowitzism abroad.

How deeply they misunderstood the nature of power in our world, and how thoroughly they miscalculated the limited nature of the power of the New Rome! If you want to take the measure of how far we've come since then, consider the spectacle of this last election season. Take Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Like the President, deep into this September he was still excoriating the Democrats not just for their positions on the Iraq War, but for their "surrender" policies in the war on terror. As he put it in a PBS interview with Jim Lehrer on September 14th:


"I'd say, ‘Wake up, Harry Reid. Wake up, Harry Reid…' I think that [the president] has got it right, that we're not going to do what Harry Reid wants to do, and that is surrender, to wave a white flag, to cut and run at a time when we're being threatened… as we all saw just three or four weeks ago, in a plot from Britain that was going to send 10 airplanes over here."

He then characterized the Democratic Party as a group "who basically belittle in many ways this war on terror, who do want to wave this white flag and surrender."

By late October, however, according to Washington Post reporters Peter Slevin and Michael Powell, Frist had fully grasped that the global and domestic programs of dominance no longer were working together. So he offered the following succinct advice -- a flip-flop of the first order -- to congressional candidates: "The challenge is to get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues, and not on the Iraq and terror issue."

Just another "milestone" on the path to… well, that's the question, isn't it?

Oil Wars
After September 11, 2001, the President and his advisors were determined to run an invasion of, and war against, Iraq that would be the anti-Vietnam conflict of all time. From the draft to the body count, they were going to reverse all our Vietnam "mistakes." Above all, they were going to win quickly and decisively. The result? In no time at all, they had brought us deep into the Iraqi "big muddy" (as the Vietnam-era phrase went). Now, looming in the distance -- think of it as the dark at the end of this particular horror-fest of a tunnel -- is the worst Vietnam nightmare of all: defeat. Just check Juan Cole's Informed Comment website, for his "Top Ten Ways We Know We Have Lost in Iraq," if you don't believe me.

Unlike in Indochina, however, this time there's something essential at stake. Whatever we were doing in the largely peasant land of Vietnam, in terms of global wealth and resources, it was just what Henry Kissinger and other frustrated U.S. policy-makers of that era always called it, a third- or fourth-rate power of no real value to anyone (other, of course, than its own inhabitants).

In Iraq, where a continuing American presence only ensures a deeper plunge into chaos, mayhem, blood, and horror as well as fragmentation and potential dissolution, departure nonetheless remains largely inconceivable. After all, Iraq has something everyone desperately values: Oil. In quantity. A "sea" of oil in the words of former Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz. In a backhanded way, the President has finally acknowledged the obvious -- that his war in Iraq was, in significant part, an oil invasion, an oil occupation (remember it was only the Oil Ministry that we guarded in otherwise looted Baghdad), and so is also bound to be an oil defeat. As energy-obsessed Bush administration planners saw it, Iraq was to be the lynchpin -- hence those permanent bases that were on the drawing boards as American troops invaded -- of a Bush administration strategy for dominating the oil heartlands of the planet.

After Vietnam, the United States proved quite capable of putting itself back together (despite years of fierce culture wars). After Iraq -- and keep in mind that we undoubtedly have at least a couple of years of horror to go -- the question is whether the world will be similarly capable or whether the oil lands of the planet will lie in ruins along with the global economy.

Extremity on Display
So, just past the midterm election mark of 2006, what's left of the New Rome? You could say that George W. Bush's dark success story has involved bringing his version of the United States into line with the look of the "rogue" enemies and terrorist groups he set out to destroy. By the time Americans went to the polls on November 7th, 2006 to repudiate his policies, he had given our country the ultimate in makeovers, creating the look of an Outlaw Empire.

We now have our own killing fields in Iraq where, the latest casualty study tells us, somewhere between 400,000 and 900,000-plus "excess Iraqi deaths" have occurred since the 2003 invasion. And do you remember Saddam's "torture chambers" (which the President used to cite all the time)? Now, we are the possessors of our own global prison system, our own (rented, borrowed, or jerry-rigged) torture chambers, our own leased airline to transport kidnapped prisoners around the planet, and a Vice President who has openly lobbied Congress for a torture exemption for the CIA and spoke glibly on the radio about "dunking" people in water. And, thanks to a supine Congress, we have the laws to go with it all.

The administration went after the right to torture or treat captives any way its agents pleased in places not open to any kind of oversight remarkably quickly after the September 11th attacks. By late 2001, Donald Rumsfeld's office was instructing agents in the field in Afghanistan to "take the gloves off" with a captive. (Inside the CIA, as Ron Suskind has told us in his book The One Percent Doctrine, Director George Tenet was talking even more vividly about removing "the shackles" on the Agency.) Inside the White House Counsel's office and the Justice Department, administration lawyers were already hauling out their dictionaries to figure out how to redefine "torture" out of existence. But why such an emphasis on torture (which is largely useless in the field, as everyone knows)?

What administration officials grasped, I believe, is this: If you could manage to get the right to legally employ extreme (and normally repugnant) acts of torture, then you would have in your possession the right to do anything. Think of the urge to abuse as the initial extreme expression of this administration's secret obsession with the creation of a "wartime" commander-in-chief presidency which would leave Congress and the courts in the dust.

If you want to measure where this has taken Bush officialdom in five years, consider their latest legal defensive measure. According to the Washington Post, the administration has just gone to court to declare American "alternative interrogation techniques" -- which simply means "torture" -- as "among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets." It is trying to get a federal judge to bar "terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons" from even revealing to their own lawyers details about what was done to them by American interrogators. In other words, torture is now to be put in the secrecy vault like a national treasure. Next thing you know, we'll be sending it to the Smithsonian.

Reflected in this desperate maneuver, you can catch a glimpse of an administration driven to the extremity of going to courts it despised -- and thought it had cut out of the process of foreign imperial governance -- simply to bury its own extreme misdeeds. You can feel the fear of the docket (and perhaps of history) in such a stance.

Another example of the extremity into which this administration has driven itself and the rest of us lies in an editorial published in the four main (officially private) military magazines, the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times, on the very eve of the midterm elections. It called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation just after the President had given him his vote of confidence once again. Realistically speaking, this can only be seen as an extreme military intervention in the American electoral process.

In so many ways, the American Constitutional system has been shredded and this -- whether we are to be an outlaw empire (and a failing one at that) -- is what Americans were voting about this last Tuesday (though it was called "Iraq").

The Wave
The history of recent American politics at the polls might be seen this way: Not so long after he declared the successful completion of his Iraqi dreams, George W. Bush found himself, to the surprise of his top advisors and supporters, hounded by Iraq's Sunni insurgency. He essentially raced not John Kerry (who recently offered yet another example of his special lack of dexterity on the campaign trail) but that insurgency to the finish line in November 2004. With a little help from his friends in Ohio and the Rove smear-and-turnout operation, he managed to squeak by. Then, in another of those milestone moments on the way to disaster, he declared that he had "political capital" to spare and would spend it.

The next summer, two storms hit the endlessly vacationing President in Crawford, Texas -- Hurricanes Cindy and Katrina. Cindy Sheehan tore away the bloodless look of casualty-lessness in Iraq (where body counts, body bags, and the return of the dead to these shores was being hidden away from both cameras and attention). She gave a mother's face to a son's death and to a nation's increasing frustration. Katrina revealed to many Americans that the Bush administration had been creating Iraq-like conditions in the "homeland." And that was more or less that. The President's approval rating plunged under 40% and has (a few momentary blips aside) bounced around between there and the low 30s ever since. By election 2006, presidential "capital" was a concept long consigned to the dustbin of history.

Imagine where that "capital" will be by 2008. Our President has been wedded to his war of choice in a way unimaginable since Lyndon Baines Johnson quit the presidential race after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Based on what's happened so far, there's every reason to believe that, in 2008, he will still be wedded to it (as would potential Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain) and his approval ratings may be bouncing in the 20%-30% range by then.

So what part of the 2001 dream team and its "vision" of the world are we left with? To answer this, you first have to realize that yesterday's electoral "wave" of repudiation is hardly an American phenomenon. It's global and, if anything, we were way late into the water. All you have to do is look at the latest polling figures (which are but extensions of previous, similar polls) to see that wave in country after country. The most recent international survey of opinion -- in Britain, Canada, Israel, and Mexico -- found that Bush's America is viewed as "a threat to world peace by its closest neighbors and allies." In Britain, the land of the "special relationship," only Osama bin Laden outranks our President as a global "danger to peace." While he comes in a dozen points behind bin Laden, he does manage to best Kim Jong Il, North Korea's grim leader, as well as those shining stars of the diplomatic firmament, the President of Iran and the leader of Hezbollah. And these are the countries most likely to have positive views of the U.S.

As hectorer-in-chief, George W. Bush has, hands down, used the word "must" more than any combination of presidents in our history. Only recently, he repeatedly told the North Koreans that they must not develop (and then test) nuclear weapons; he told the Iranians that they must halt their nuclear program; and his minions told the Nicaraguans that they must not vote for former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. The results: The North Koreans tested a weapon; the Iranians went right on enriching uranium; and the Nicaraguans, poverty-stricken and threatened with nothing short of economic ruin if their democratic vote went into the wrong column, simply ignored him.

All these decisions were based on assessments of the limits of power that had been revealed by the desperate acts of a failing empire stretched to its military and economic limits. If these are the "rogue" parts of the global wave, all you have to do is look at Russia's reassertion of interest and power in its old energy-rich Central Asian bailiwick (much coveted by the Bush administration); or the expansion of Chinese economic power in Southeast Asia and energy power in Africa to see other aspects of the global wave of reassessment under way.

In fact, the global part of the election was long over by November 7, 2006. For vast majorities abroad, the vision of the U.S. as an Outlaw Empire is nothing new at all. The wave here has perhaps only begun to rise, but here too those presidential "musts" (along with the President's designation of the Democrats as little short of "enemy noncombatants") have begun to lose their effect. Hence the presidential plebiscite of yesterday. No matter what else flows from it, the fact that it happened is of real significance. A majority of the American people -- those who voted anyway -- did not ratify Bush's Outlaw Empire. They took a modest step toward sanity. But what will follow?

Here, briefly, are five "benchmark" questions to ask when considering the possibilities of the final two years of the Bush administration's wrecking-ball regime:

Will Iraq Go Away? The political maneuvering in Washington and Baghdad over the chaos in Iraq was only awaiting election results to intensify. Desperate call-ups of more Reserves and National Guards will go out soon. Negotiations with Sunni rebels, coup rumors against the Maliki government, various plans from James Baker's Iraq Study Group and Congressional others will undoubtedly be swirling. Yesterday's plebiscite (and exit polls) held an Iraqi message. It can't simply be ignored. But nothing will matter, when it comes to changing the situation for the better in that country, without a genuine commitment to American withdrawal, which is not likely to be forthcoming from this President and his advisors any time soon. So expect Iraq to remain a horrifying, bloody, devolving fixture of the final two years of the Bush administration. It will not go away. Bush (and Rove) will surely try to enmesh Congressional Democrats in their disaster of a war. Imagine how bad it could be if -- with, potentially, years to go -- the argument over who "lost" Iraq has already begun.

Is an Attack on Iran on the Agenda? Despite all the alarums on the political Internet about a pre-election air assault on Iran, this was never in the cards. Even the hint of an attack on Iranian "nuclear facilities" (which would certainly turn into an attempt to "decapitate" the Iranian regime from the air) would send oil prices soaring. The Republicans were never going to run an election on oil selling at $120-$150 a barrel. This will be no less true of election year 2008. If Iran is to be a target, 2007 will be the year. So watch for the pressures to ratchet up on this one early in the New Year. This is madness, of course. Such an attack would almost certainly throw the Middle East into utter chaos, send oil prices through the roof, possibly wreck the global economy, cause serious damage in Iran, not fell the Iranian government, and put U.S. troops in neighboring Iraq in perilous danger. Given the administration record, however, all this is practically an argument for launching such an attack. (And don't count on the military to stop it, either. They're unlikely to do so.) Failing empires have certainly been known to lash out or, as neocon writer Robert Kagan put the matter recently in a Washington Post op-ed, "Indeed, the preferred European scenario [of a Democratic Congressional victory] -- 'Bush hobbled' -- is less likely than the alternative: ‘Bush unbound.' Neither the president nor his vice president is running for office in 2008. That is what usually prevents high-stakes foreign policy moves in the last two years of a president's term." So when you think about Iran, think of Bush unbound.

Are the Democrats a Party? If Rovian plans for a Republican Party ensconced in Washington for eons to come now look to be in tatters, the Democrats have retaken the House (and possibly the Senate) largely as the not-GOP Party. The election may leave the Republicans with a dead presidency and a leading candidate for 2008 wedded to possibly the least popular war in our history; the Democrats may arrive victorious but without the genuine desire for a mandate to lead. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats in recent years were not, in any normal sense, a party at all. They were perhaps a coalition of four or five or six parties (some trailing hordes of pundits and consultants, but without a base). Now, with the recruitment of so many ex-Republicans and conservatives into their House and Senate ranks, they may be a coalition of six or seven parties. Who knows? They have a genuine mandate on Iraq and a mandate on oversight. What they will actually do -- what they are capable of doing (other than the normal money, career, and earmark-trading in Washington) -- remains to be seen. They will be weak, the surroundings fierce and strong.

Will We Be Ruled by the Facts on the Ground? In certain ways, it may hardly matter what happens to which party. By now -- and this perhaps represents another kind of triumph for the Bush administration -- the facts on the ground are so powerful that it would be hard for any party to know where to begin. Will we, for instance, ever be without a second Defense Department, the so-called Department of Homeland Security, now that a burgeoning $59 billion a year private "security" industry with all its interests and its herd of lobbyists in Washington has grown up around it? Not likely in any of our lifetimes. Will an ascendant Democratic Party dare put on a diet the ravenous Pentagon, which now feeds off two budgets -- its regular, near-half-trillion dollar Defense budget and a regularized series of multibillion dollar "emergency" supplemental appropriations, which are now part of life on the Hill. What this means is that the defense budget is not what we wage our wars on or pay for a variety of black operations (not to speak of earmarks galore) with. Don't bet your bottom dollar that this will get better any time soon either. In fact, I have my doubts that a Democratic Congress with a Democratic president in tow could even do something modestly small like shutting down Guantanamo, no less begin to deal with the empire of bases that undergirds our failing Outlaw Empire abroad. So, from time to time, take your eyes off what passes for politics and check out the facts on the ground. That way you'll have a better sense of where our world is actually heading.

What Will Happen When the Commander-in-Chief Presidency and the Unitary Executive Theory Meets What's Left of the Republic? The answer on this one is relatively uncomplicated and less than three months away from being in our faces; it's the Mother of All Constitutional Crises. But writing that now, and living with the reality then, are two quite different things. So when the new Congress arrives in January, buckle your seatbelts and wait for the first requests for oversight information from some investigative committee; wait for the first subpoenas to meet Cheney's men in some dark hallway. Wait for this crew to feel the "shackles" and react. Wait for this to hit the courts -- even a Supreme Court that, despite the President's best efforts, is probably still at least one justice short when it comes to unitary-executive-theory supporters. I wouldn't even want to offer a prediction on this one. But a year down the line, anything is possible.

So we've finally had our plebiscite, however covert, on the failing Outlaw Empire of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But what about their autocratic inclinations at home. How will that play out?

Will it be: All hail, Caesar, we who are about to dive back into prime-time programming.

Or will it be: All the political hail is about to pelt our junior caesars as we dive back into prime-time programming? Stay tuned.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.

Copyright 2006 Tom Engelhardt

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=138154
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The Truth? 'Nuclear is Not the Answer'
by Leon Gettler
Published on Thursday, November 16, 2006
by The Age / Australia

Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming, says one of the world's most celebrated climate change campaigners, former US vice-president Al Gore.

Mr Gore also shrugged off Prime Minister John Howard's recent claim that his film An Inconvenient Truth showed "a degree of the peeved politician".

"It may be one of those elements that's in the eyes of the beholder," he told The Age yesterday.

Mr Gore said nuclear power was unlikely to play a significantly bigger role in the climate change battle. "Even if you set aside the problem of long-term waste storage and the danger of operator accident and the vulnerability to terrorist attack, you still have two others that are more difficult," he said.

The first problem was one of economics.

"Nuclear power plants are the costliest to build and they take the longest time and at present they come in only one size — extra large."

The second was nuclear weapons proliferation. "For eight years when I was in the White House, every problem of weapons proliferation was connected to a reactor program," he said.

The Prime Minister has recently talked up the prospects of nuclear power plants being built in Australia, arguing the country could not afford to "sacrifice rational discussion on the altar of anti-nuclear theology and political opportunism".

Next week an inquiry into nuclear power headed by former Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski is due to deliver its findings.

Mr Gore said it was extremely important that Mr Howard had now acknowledged the damage from carbon dioxide emissions.

"Let me say I want to be respectful of the Prime Minister's change in rhetoric.

"It's not easy to do something like that and … this position might be a way station for him on the real road to Damascus where he actually joins the world community," he said.

"And he may. I don't know, I can't look into his heart."

Mr Gore said that Australia and the US should sign the Kyoto Protocol but he acknowledged that this presented Mr Howard and US President George Bush with big political problems given that they had previously "demonised" it.

Of Australia's promotion of a new global climate change pact he said: "Obviously neither Australia nor the United States can write its own little treaty and be separate from the rest of the world."

But there was, he said, a third path: "To join the world discussion now in Nairobi on how to strengthen Kyoto and how to make whatever changes Prime Minister Howard wants to advocate and join the rest of the world community. That's the test."

Mr Gore, now chairman of investment firm Generation Investment Management, yesterday met with Premier Steve Bracks and his deputy John Thwaites. He described Victoria as forward thinking on climate change and said he would take a number of local initiatives back to the United States.

He was particularly impressed with the Bracks Government's "black balloons" advertising campaign, which links household energy usage with the amount of carbon dioxide it releases into the air.

"I'm going to take that ad back and show it to some folks there, maybe put it on YouTube," he said.

With MATHEW MURPHY and LIZ MINCHIN

Copyright © 2006. The Age Company Ltd.

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines06/1116-01.htm
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Ali Gee Whiz?
In a rare out of character interview Sacha Baron Cohen describes his surprise that some folks don't seem to get the point of Borat:

"I was surprised, because I always had faith in the audience that they would realize that this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices. And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about, so we could essentially play on stereotypes they might have about this ex-Soviet backwater. The joke is not on Kazakhstan. I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist - who believe that there's a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine and the age of consent has been raised to nine years old...

"I think part of the movie shows the absurdity of holding any form of racial prejudice, whether it's hatred of African-Americans or of Jews ... Borat essentially works as a tool ... By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism..."

This all makes perfect sense and it's clearly a laudable goal. But are you surprised that Cohen was surprised?

Isn't a given that there is absolutely no way that most viewers understand what Borat is getting at? In a world where half the people still think Saddam was behind 9-11, you think we have a lot of folks capable of understanding that Borat is not making fun of Kazakhstan but rather those people who believe such a place exists?

Almost every article (including the one referenced above) on the man behind Borat goes to great lengths to describe his own pretty serious level of Judaism and his efforts to keep a kosher diet. Again, will people who don't know the name Sacha Baron Cohen is Jewish get the subtleties beneath the surface of his over the top humor?

I suppose one has to make the joke and hope people will understand its gist. Perhaps it would've been better, in retrospect, to give Borat's fictional homeland a fictional name as well?

Ultimately, one doesn't want to limit humor to the lowest common denominator of those people who will get the joke - otherwise, there would be a lot less Borat and a lot more Two and a Half Men and no one wants that. I'm pretty sure Sacha Baron Cohen is a comedic genius. I just hope the widespread swath of viewers can rise to his level. I guess if they can't, the jokes on them, eh?
Go on-site for this and other topical stories and viewpoints at:

http://www.davenetics.com/news/archive/06.11.16.html***

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*********Hubble telescope makes new discovery
By
MATT CRENSON,
AP National Writer
35 minutes ago

The Hubble Space Telescope has shown that a mysterious form of energy first conceived by Albert Einstein, then rejected by the famous physicist as his "greatest blunder," appears to have been fueling the expansion of the universe for most of its history.

This so-called "dark energy" has been pushing the universe outward for at least 9 billion years, astronomers said Thursday.

"This is the first time we have significant, discrete data from back then," said Adam Riess, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University and researcher at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute.

He and several colleagues used the Hubble to observe 23 supernovae — exploding white dwarf stars — so distant that their light took more than half the history of the universe to reach the orbiting telescope. That means the supernovae existed when the universe was less than half its current age of approximately 13.7 billion years.

Because the physics of supernova explosions is extremely well-known, it is possible for the astronomers to gauge not just their distance, but how fast the universe was expanding at the time they went off.

"This finding continues to validate the use of these supernovae as cosmic probes," Riess said.

He and his colleagues describe their research in a paper that is scheduled for publication in the Feb. 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal.

The idea of dark energy was first proposed by Einstein as a means of explaining how the universe could resist collapsing under the pull of gravity. But then Edwin Hubble — the astronomer for whom the NASA telescope is named — demonstrated in 1929 that the universe is expanding, not a constant size. That led to the big-bang theory, and Einstein tossed his notion on science's scrap heap.

There it languished until 1998, when astronomers who were using supernova explosions to gauge the expansion of the universe made a shocking observation. It appeared that older supernovae, whose light had traveled a greater distance across space to reach the Hubble telescope, were receding from Earth more slowly than simple big-bang theory would predict. Nearby supernovae were receding more quickly than expected. That could only be true if some mysterious force were causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate over time.

Cosmologists dubbed the force "dark energy," and ever since they've been trying to figure out what it is.

"Dark energy makes us nervous," said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the supernova study. "It fits the data, but it's not what we really expected."

Answers may come once NASA upgrades the Hubble Space Telescope in a space shuttle mission scheduled for 2008. NASA and the Department of Energy are also planning to launch an orbiting observatory specifically designed to address the mystery in 2011.

Dark energy could be some property of space itself, which is what Einstein was thinking of when he proposed it. Or it could be something akin to an electromagnetic field pushing on the universe. And then there's the possibility that the whole thing is caused by some hitherto undiscovered wrinkle in the laws of gravity.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061116/ap_on_sc/dark_energy&printer=1 *******

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"No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies."

by: Salvador de Madariaga - (1886-1978 ), Spanish writer, diplomat, and historian, noted for his service at the League of Nations
~~~

“...free enterprise, a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.”

Noam Chomsky

[I]~~~
"Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort."

Marshall McLuhan - (1911-1980)
~~~~~

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Violence in Iraq at almost satanic levels, says CIA director

In the United States, the top spy says violence in Iraq has reached almost satanic levels, and he fears the Iraqi Government is not capable of bringing it under control.

Broadcast
- 11/16/06 -
ABC - Australia - \
The World Today

CLICK PLAY TO LISTEN: Go on-site to access link to the audio, etc.:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15632.htm

.....

This is a transcript from The World Today. The program is broadcast around Australia at 12:10pm on ABC Local Radio.
Reporter: Michael Rowland

ELEANOR HALL: In the United States, the top spy says violence in Iraq has reached almost satanic levels, and he fears the Iraqi Government is not capable of bringing it under control.

General Michael Hayden, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave a grim assessment of the security outlook in Iraq during an appearance before a key Senate committee in Washington.

But while he's worried about the big increase in killings, General Hayden says the situation will get much worse if US troops start leaving the country.

Washington Correspondent Michael Rowland reports.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: At a time when the Bush administration is reviewing its limited options in Iraq, General Michael Hayden has delivered a reality check.

MICHAEL HAYDEN: In Iraq today there is criminality and lawlessness on a broad scale. In Iraq today there are rival militias competing for power.

Any Iraqi leader, no matter how skilful, is going to be hard-pressed to reconcile the divergent perspectives that I've mentioned. Divergent perspectives that Shi'a and Sunnis and Kurds bring to the table and also unfortunately very often bring to the streets.

And to deal with that, against a backdrop of an intentional al-Qaeda campaign of almost satanic terror.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: The CIA chief believes progress is being made in Iraq, but the gains are very slow.

Any positive political developments are usually drowned out by the violence on the streets.

General Hayden was one of several top military and intelligence figures appearing today before the Senate's powerful Armed Services Committee.

It was the first public hearing on the war since the Democrats' big win in last week's congressional elections, a victory helped in large part by intense anger over the war.

Earlier in the day, the top US military commander in the Middle East, General John Abizaid told the committee the security situation in Iraq, while still bad, had improved in recent months.

Lieutenant General Michael Maples, the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, told the Senators the outlook was still exceedingly grim.

MICHAEL MAPLES: Despite ongoing Iraqi Government and Coalition operations against terrorists, Sunni Arab insurgent groups and Shi'a militias, violence in Iraq continues to increase in scope, complexity and lethality.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: Democrat Senators pressed the intelligence chiefs on the likely fate of the US mission in Iraq.

Deputy Chairman Carl Levin had this telling exchange with General Maples.

CARL LEVIN: What is your current assessment of the course that we're on? Are we on a course of success currently in Iraq?

MICHAEL MAPLES: A very difficult question because it's a very complex, a very complex issue and there are many variables that will determine our success or failure, I think, in Iraq.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: One of the big variables is the ability of al-Qaeda to make life even more dangerous for US and Coalition troops.

CIA Director Michael Hayden says the terror group has proven itself to be enormously resilient.

MICHAEL HAYDEN: The loss of a series of al-Qaeda leaders since 9/11 has been substantial, but it's also been mitigated by what is frankly a pretty deep bench of low-ranking personnel capable of stepping up to assume leadership positions.

Although a number of these people are new to the senior management, they're not new to jihad.

My point here, Senator, is this threat has taken a long time to build. It will take some time to unravel it.

MICHAEL ROWLAND: As if to underscore the point, the US military announced six more American soldiers had been killed in Iraq.

The US death toll since the March 2003 invasion now stands at 2,859.

In Washington this is Michael Rowland reporting for The World Today

© 2006 ABC

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What Rumsfeld knew
Interviews with high-ranking military officials shed new light on the role Rumsfeld played in the harsh treatment of a Guantánamo detainee.

Editor's note: The interview with Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt is available here; the interview with Gen. James T. Hill is available here (both PDF files).
Go on-site to access any links by clicking on the following this article.

By
Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin

11/14/06 "Salon" -- -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the controversial commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

During the same period, detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani suffered from what Army investigators have called "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved. Kahtani was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform "dog tricks" on a leash. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days.

Little more than two years later, during an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, Rumsfeld expressed puzzlement at the notion that his policies had caused the abuse. "He was going, 'My God, you know, did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head?'" recalled Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, an investigator who interviewed Rumsfeld twice in early 2005.

These disclosures are contained in a Dec. 20, 2005, Army inspector general's report on Miller's conduct, which was obtained this week by Salon through the Freedom of Information Act. The 391-page document -- which has long passages blacked out by the government -- concludes that Miller should not be punished for his oversight role in detainee operations, a fact that was reported last month by Time magazine. But the never-before-released full report also includes the transcripts of interviews with high-ranking military officials that shed new light on the role that Rumsfeld and Miller played in the harsh treatment of Kahtani, who had met with Osama bin Laden on several occasions and received terrorist training in al-Qaida camps.

In a sworn statement to the inspector general, Schmidt described Rumsfeld as "personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was "talking weekly" with Miller. Schmidt said he concluded that Rumsfeld did not specifically prescribe the more "creative" interrogation methods used on Kahtani. But he added that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the abusive conduct to take place. "Where is the throttle on this stuff?" asked Schmidt, an Air Force fighter pilot, who said in his interview under oath with the inspector general that he had concerns about the length and repetition of the harsh interrogation methods. "There were no limits."

Schmidt also saw close parallels between the interrogations at Guantánamo, and the photographic evidence of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "Just for the lack of a camera, it would sure look like Abu Ghraib," Schmidt told the inspector general, in the interview that was conducted in August 2005. At the direction of Pentagon officials, Miller led a mission to Iraq in August 2003 to review detainee operations at Abu Ghraib -- a visit that critics say precipitated the abuse of prisoners there.

In April 2005, Schmidt completed his report on detainee abuse at Guantánamo, which he co-authored with Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow. They recommended that Miller be "admonished" and "held accountable" for the alleged abuse of Kahtani. But that recommendation was rejected by Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the current head of the Southern Command, who said Miller had not violated any law or policy.

On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld approved 16 harsher interrogation strategies for use against Kahtani, including the use of forced nudity, stress positions and the removal of religious items. In public statements, however, Rumsfeld has maintained that none of the policies at Guantánamo led to "inhumane" treatment of detainees. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told Salon Thursday that Kahtani was an al-Qaida terrorist who provided a "treasure trove" of still-classified information during his interrogation. "Al-Kahtani's interrogation was guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," Gordon said in an e-mail statement. "Nothing was done randomly."

Miller -- who has invoked his right against self-incrimination in courts-martial of Abu Ghraib soldiers -- said that he did not know all the details of Kahtani's interrogation. But Schmidt told the inspector general that he found that claim "hard to believe" in light of Miller's knowledge of Rumsfeld's continuing interest in Kahtani. "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the interrogation of one person, and the entire General Counsel system of all the departments of the military," Schmidt said. "There is just not a too-busy alibi there for that."

The harsh interrogation of Kahtani came to an abrupt end in mid-January 2003. Gen. James T. Hill, Craddock's predecessor as the head of Southern Command, recalled in his interview with the inspector general that he received a call from Rumsfeld on a January weekend asking about the progress of Kahtani's interrogation. "Someone had come to him and suggested that it needed to be looked at," Hill said of Rumsfeld. "He said, 'What do you think?' And I said, 'Why don't [you] let me call General Miller.'"

According to Hill's account of that call, Miller advised that the harsh interrogation of Kahtani should continue, using the techniques Rumsfeld had previously approved. "We think we're right on the verge of making a breakthrough," Hill remembered Miller saying. Hill said he called Rumsfeld back with the news. "The secretary said, 'Fine,'" Hill remembered.

Nonetheless, several days later Rumsfeld revoked the harsher interrogation methods, apparently responding to military lawyers who had raised concerns that they may constitute cruel and unusual punishment or torture.

"My attitude on that was, 'Great!'" said Hill. The general recalled thinking about Rumsfeld and the decision to halt the harsh interrogation, "All I'm trying to do is what you want us to do in the first place and doing it the right way."

The harsher methods were not approved again.

Copyright ©2006 Salon Media Group, Inc

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15631.htm .....

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*******
Netanyahu cries: "Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!"
By Evan Derkacz
Posted on November 17, 2006, Printed on November 17, 2006
URL: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/44439/

Israel's former (and possibly future) right wing Prime Minister, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is not the kind of person you want to make decisions about what to eat for dinner or which shirt to wear, let alone foreign policy.

This week, according to Ha'aretz, Netanyahu said [VIDEO]:Go on-site to view, just click on the URL above.

"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs," Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly, repeating the line several times, like a chorus, during his address. "Believe him and stop him," the opposition leader said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this."

While the Iranian president "denies the Holocaust," Netanyahu said, "he is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."

Wow, that IS scary. Except for a few problems. Like Netanyahu's predilection for...

Hitler/Nazi comparisons with respect to nations that don't have anything to do with Nazis or Hitler or prewar Europe or National Socialism... Let's start there.

In a 2002 Wall St. Journal Iraq War promotional extravaganza, the former Prime Minister wrote:

This is a dictator... who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do. For Saddam's nuclear program has changed. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country -- and Iraq is a very big country. Even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death.

We now know that had the democracies taken pre-emptive action to bring down Hitler's regime in the 1930s, the worst horrors in history could have been avoided. And we now know, from defectors and other intelligence, that had Israel not launched its pre-emptive strike on Saddam's atomic-bomb factory recent history would have taken a far more dangerous course.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Netanyahu was wrong then and there's no reason to listen to him now. Your integrity and credibility are blown, sir.

As for the second part of his most recent statements about the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."

That's more interesting, actually, as it betrays one of the great myths peddled by conservative Jews and their allies who seek war with Iran: that Ahmadinejad has anything approaching the power to do harm to Israel or the U.S. First off, and I apologize in advance for the caps, but this is a mistake echoed by everyone from Fox News to the NY Times: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "the highest state authority after the Supreme Leader," who "is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, controls the military intelligence and security operations; and has sole power to declare war."

Here's the Times, letting Olmert have his way with pro-war talking points:

"The fact that the leader of a nation such as Iran can threaten the very existence of another nation, as he does towards Israel," Mr. Olmert said of the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "is not something that we can tolerate or would ever tolerate."

Iranian media on Monday quoted Mr. Ahmadinejad saying of Israel, "We will soon witness its disappearance and destruction."

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, no friend to Western freedom to be sure, isn't a bombastic bonehead like Ahmadinejad. He doesn't have to cater to the lowest common denominator to maintain popularity (such as it is...). Khamenei speaks little of Israel and has even issued a fatwa: "forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons."

In fact, not only doesn't Iran have a nuclear weapon but, according to Israeli experts, it's many years away from the ability to acquire one...
Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/44439/ *****

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:: :: :: :: ::
Will Dems Protect Americans' Right to Sue?

By
Stephanie Mencimer, TomPaine.com
Posted on November 17, 2006,
Printed on November 17, 2006
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story/44299/

The midterm election returns were barely in before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce started running ads encouraging Democrats to take up where Republicans left off. Their issue wasn't a business staple like lower taxes, smaller government or even illegal immigration. Instead, the nation's biggest business lobby was calling on Democrats to fix "America's lawsuit crisis." The ads promoted the chamber's latest poll, which claimed that 85 percent of people who voted in the midterm elections think frivolous lawsuits are a serious problem and want the next Congress to do something about it. Helpfully, the ad suggests Democrats could improve their standing with swing voters by embracing this "bipartisan" issue.

The ads were just a sign that as much as the election changed the political climate, many things will stay the same. Restrictions on lawsuits, or "tort reform," have been a staple of Republican politics since the 1994 Contract with America. In the past two years, the GOP-led Congress has passed restrictions on class-action litigation and immunized favored industries from fast food companies to gun manufacturers to protect them from lawsuits. At the same time, state legislatures have capped awards in malpractice lawsuits and Republican state court judges have all but eliminated punitive damages in many states.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Democratic takeover of Congress and many state capitals threatens to bring all that "reform" to a grinding halt. The conventional wisdom, though, doesn't take into account just how many lobbyists have come to depend on this issue living another day. Consider that in 2005, more than 100 big corporations employed 475 lobbyists -- nearly one for every member of Congress -- to pass the Class Action Fairness Act, which forced most class actions into federal court where business thought they'd get more favorable treatment. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce alone spent $60 million lobbying for the bill. With that kind of money at stake, the tort reform industrial complex is likely to ensure that while the battle over medical malpractice lawsuits might go dormant, the larger movement to restrict lawsuits -- and bash the lawyers who bring them -- will not go away.

A few legal reform think-tankers, like the Manhattan Institute's Walter Olson, believe it's possible that some issues -- such as the creation of an asbestos victims' trust fund that would end asbestos litigation -- might fare better in the Democratic Congress than it did under a Republican one. Other legal reform issues will also find a friendly audience among Democrats. Big businesses have already hired a handful of veteran and Democratic tort reform lobbyists to push for legislation that would cap damages and force the loser to pay the other side's legal bills in patent infringement lawsuits. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer has indicated sympathy for more legislation restricting shareholders' litigation. Of course, these bloodless battles rarely generate the emotional fights like those over medical malpractice lawsuits or product liability litigation. Nonetheless, they'll ensure that legal reform lobbyists won't have to give up their skyboxes at FedEx field just yet.

Just because Democrats have retaken Congress doesn't mean that the attacks on consumer legal rights will disappear, either. They may just come in different packages. For instance, mortgage lenders have been pushing federal legislation that, on its face, looks like a measure to crack down on predatory lending. In fact, it's simply designed to overrule stricter state laws that allow victims to sue over abusive mortgage practices. Democrat Barney Frank has already suggested he would support such a bill.

Despite large Democratic gains, most state legislatures probably haven't seen the last of the tort reformers, either. Indeed, the American Tort Reform Association recently launched its latest campaign against "abusive state consumer protection laws." These "abusive" statutes enable individuals to sue over relatively small amounts of money by allowing plaintiffs to win treble damages and attorneys fees in consumer protection lawsuits. Notably, these unfair and deceptive trade practices laws have provided the basis for some big lawsuits, such as those against tobacco companies for fraudulently marketing "light" cigarettes as safer than regular ones. Tobacco companies have been one of association's major funders.

Whether the campaign will get much traction among Democrats remains to be seen. One thing is certain, though: So long as Americans continue to exercise their right to sue when they've been injured, financially or otherwise, the folks on the receiving end will continue fighting to restrict those suits, regardless of who's in charge.

Stephanie Mencimer is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly. She was previously an investigative reporter for The Washington Post and a staff writer for Legal Times. She now blogs about tort reform issues at TheTortellini.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/44299/ :: :: ::

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Top 10 People Most Affected by Election 2006
By
Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on November 17, 2006,
Printed on November 17, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/44358/

The following is author Nomi Prins's list of 10 people most affected by election 2006:

1) Rummy, a.k.a. the Donald.

It's tough to take the fall for the damage you caused, but somebody has to be responsible for your actions -- it might as well be you. Since the Iraq War began, which Bush & Co. still consider a positive endeavor, despite all contrary evidence, more soldiers have been killed than people in the WTC attacks, not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqi's. You can run, but you can't hide. So, it might be too late for the man that CNN's Jack Cafferty called a 'war criminal' to hide from a possible surge of investigations.

2) Paris Hilton.

How did Bush help Paris? Well, the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy screwed up the US economy in a bad way. Separately, the GOP voted down every minimum wage increase, while, Congress voted itself 8 raises, but who's counting? This continued until the last time the minimum wage came to the Floor this fall, during which the soon-to-be fired GOP said they'd consider approving an increase IF the Dems would repeal the estate tax -- a tax that would allow Paris (and Tori Spelling) to keep more of her father's fortune, after any inheritance kicks in. Hopefully, the estate tax repeal goes the way of her ex's.

3) Kevin Federline.

Who knew Britney Spears had more foresight than Bush? Britney kicked K-Fed's butt out for good, filing for divorce on Election Day. This gave Bush the confidence to kick Rummy out, which was actually the biggest news of Election Day -- the Dems winning Congress was second. Kevin Federline might find his future prospects as bright as Rummy does (see #1 above.) Britney on the other hand, showed that proper foresight (like creating an airtight pre-nup) is a skill that Bush lacked with the Iraq War and all of his other decisions.

4) Jeffery Kindler, CEO of Pfizer

Why does the government keep giving so much money to drug companies? Jeffrey Kindler, CEO of Pfizer was hoping to hit the lottery. His predecessor, Hank McKinnell, made it to Forbes richest lists. But, Jeff may not do so well. The Dems will hopefully take a good look at the dumbest Drug Bill EVER (that would be Medicare Part D -- D for Dumbest Drug Bill EVER), and ask -- why give so much money to drug companies (besides the fact that it's a way to steal from Medicare patients to give to CEOs?) And why didn't we retain the ability to negotiate drug prices, as opposed to say, letting drug companies charge whatever the hell they wanted? No good answer = less money for Jeff.

5) Nancy Pelosi's fashion consultant.

Okay, there is no such person, that's clear given her clothing style. But, here's the thing; Ms. Pelosi is going to be getting more photo-ops as the first female Speaker of the House than Jennifer Anniston. Maybe not on the front of In Touch Magazine, but still, a lot of them. The right may consider her a staunch liberal, but the truth is, they're quite a few centrist positions in her closet. And all closets need a thorough cleansing and editing now and then. And everything's better with a good wardrobe behind you.

6) Dave Lesar, CEO of Halliburton.

Between Cheney in the Whitehouse and troops in Iraq, Halliburton stock had a great ride during the past few years. Lesar banked around $100 million since the war began. Halliburton's contracting arm, KBR, booked $16 billion in Iraq contracts. If Representative Henry Waxman, (D-CA) becomes chair of the Reform committee, he's gonna rip into them big-time. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, whose Halliburton options increased 3,281% (no, that's not a typo) since 2004, might need some better investments. He evaded disclosing whatever he was doing as head of the Energy Policy Task Force, yet as per Rummy -- you can run, but you can't hide.

7) Quail.

Dick Cheney may need to lighten up on those hunting and leisure trips (ok, he took a vacation day on Election Day -- but it's hard to fit everything into your schedule, and the idea of the election, or democracy, or voters stressed him out, it's understandable). With Bush in lame duck territory, Cheney may find enough fowl at the White House to keep him occupied. Or find himself wishing for the good ole days when he could shoot his friends, instead of dealing with Waxman investigations. All of which is good news for the quail community, and Cheney's friends.

8) MBNA.

The credit card company was the biggest donor to Bush's first term presidential run, and creator (with friends) of the worst bankruptcy bill EVER. MBNA and others led an attack on consumers in Congress, stressing that all those dead-beats who weren't keeping up with their 30% interest payments on plasma TV screens would have to face the fact: They're screwed. They should stop dodging payments to those card companies making $16 billion a year off people's late fees. Some Dems helped the Act pass on Tax Day, 2005 -- but, time to re-think it. Or we're sending in Waxman after them, too.

9) Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon-Mobil.

Yes, Exxon posted its largest profit EVER last quarter, and yes, it was the second highest profit of any publicly traded company EVER -- but it's time to be afraid, very afraid. Wind fall taxes are coming hopefully, as Nancy promised. Sure, they stressed they shouldn't be taxed on excess profits because they need that money for the hard times -- like when they paid former CEO, Lee Raymond a $400 million exit package -- but, we never believed their times were ever that hard. Now, we need faith in the Dems to divert windfall profits into renewable energy sources, and roll back the $5 billion in tax breaks the GOP gave the oil and gas industry.

10) Joe Lieberman.

It's bad when the left and right sides of your brain are at odds. It's worse when your personalities are duking it out in your head. But that's a situation Joe Lieberman got over years ago. He was a Democrat in name-only. The Dems knew it. The Liberals knew it. The Republicans knew it -- that's why more Republicans voted for him than the Dems did. You got to give him credit for staging his comeback to Congress after being sideswiped by Ned Lamont and his entire party. But, now that Joe's back, he's got scores to settle. Payback's a beotch. The Senate may seem tidily under Dem control, but if Joe's got a memory -- specifically of his own personality -- it may be less clear-cut.

Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and author of Other People's Money and Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (Whether you voted for them or not).

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/44358/ :: :: ::

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Is Robert Gates a Well-Laid Trap?
By
Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet
Posted on November 15, 2006, Printed on November 17, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/44314/
Stay the course: a played-out phrase that's become synonymous with the Bush administration's bungling of Iraq.

The resignation of Donald Rumsfeld was supposed to be a signal from President Bush that he's finally listening -- that the thumpin' the GOP took in the mid-term elections was supposed to signal an end to stay-the-course-ness.

Then he nominates Robert Gates to be the new Defense Secretary. It's a pretty clever desperation move -- a trap really. Rumsfeld is gone. Bush comes off as a lot more humble in his press conference. He's talking bipartisanship.

But, peep the trap.

Gates and Rummy sip from the same ideological Kool-Aid jug. And if the Dems shoot down the nomination, Bush and wounded Republicans can accuse Democrats of not acting in a spirit of ''bipartisanship.'' Even worse, should the Democrats not confirm Gates, they would be -- are you ready for this -- ''playing politics'' with the all-important position of Secretary of Defense during a war! Voila -- the stage for the 2008 presidential race is set.

Brilliant, in a Machiavellian kind of way.

Now, if you really do want to see a change of course, you have to be asking: Gates? Are you serious?

Gates joined the CIA in the late 1960s and worked his way up the ranks, serving as deputy director from 1986-89. He was nominated to become the head of CIA in 1987, but withdrew his name after it became clear the Democratically-controlled Senate would reject the nomination because of his role in the Iran-Contra affair.

Gates was nominated again for CIA director in1991. He was confirmed, despite questions about his alleged role in giving intelligence to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war.

Two years later, Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair, issued his final report. Gates wasn't indicted but he wasn't exactly exonerated either. Walsh wrote that he was skeptical of Gates' repeated denials. ''In blunt terms,'' journalist James Ridgeway wrote in Mother Jones, ''Walsh thought Gates was a liar. It was only for a lack of evidence that he eventually gave up trying to indict him.''

It would be worth asking Gates now if he thinks his efforts to overthrow a democratically-elected government in Nicaragua were successful given Daniel Ortega's recent comeback. And why does he think he'll fare better with Iraq?

But these aren't the only questions hanging over Gates. According to investigative reporter and author Robert Parry, who tracked the CIA in the 1980s, Gates was involved in ''a special team to push through another pre-cooked paper arguing that the KGB was behind the 1981 wounding of Pope John Paul II,'' despite evidence that CIA analysts knew that the claim was bogus.

No surprise, then, that it was on Gates' watch that the CIA failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union -- probably the most embarrassing moment in CIA history.

This politicizing of intelligence is what led Sen. Tom Daschle in the 1991 confirmation hearings to say: ''My questions regarding whether or not Robert Gates participated in the politicization of intelligence culminate in my deep concern about what we can expect from Robert Gates if he is confirmed as the next director of Central Intelligence.

''Again, I ask my colleagues,'' Daschle continued, ''if Robert Gates cooked the books to advocate the ideological position of the administration while serving as deputy director for intelligence and deputy director of Central Intelligence, is it possible that U.S. intelligence under his guidance will continue to politicize intelligence? My answer is, 'We cannot afford to take that chance'.''

Rumsfeld was also criticized for distorting reality and only wanting to hear intelligence that suited his narrow ideology.

Bush says he's in a bipartisan listening mood, but nominates Rumsfeld's ideological body-double? A well-laid trap for staying the course.

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff reporter and a syndicated columnist.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/44314/ Go on-site to view the numerous comments, the few I did read seem well informed and not radical as in some comment sections on other web sites. XXX

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~~~~~~~~~
"The Hell with Red/Blue; People Want Out of Iraq and Solutions"

By
Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
Posted on October 25, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/43188/

This isn't a new article, but in retrospect, it is a good read and the comments by some of the viewers are interesting in themselves. Just go on site to access them and links within the story.
I'm out on the political trail, rambling back and forth across America in support of good grassroots groups, good issues, and a surprising number of good populist candidates. I spent practically all of September on the hustings, beginning with a two-day, five-city barnstorming tour across the Hawkeye State to support a savvy and scrappy coalition called Sensible Iowans (a redundancy if ever I heard one), and I ended the month at a spirited rally with a large crowd of feisty Democrats in (of all places) Kennebunkport, Maine -- yes, right in the home nest of the plutocratic Bush clan! No doubt Homeland Security upped the local color code to "Bright Red" for that one!

I'll be crisscrossing the country again this month through Election day, from New Hampshire to California and all sorts of places in between. Since I'm literally a rambling man these days, I offer some random political thoughts, observations, and tidbits from my travels.

The political climate
Among the political cognoscenti, it's fashionable these days to dis the body politic -- aka, you and me. We are disparaged as being a bunch of clueless and malleable rubes who care more about who wins the latest "Survivor" matchup than who wins Congress. Of course, these pundits, consultants, lobbyists, and politicos spend way too much of their time in cocktail chit-chat rooms inhaling each others' hot breath.

From my viewpoint out here in the hinterland, it's the cognoscenti who are the clueless ones. The people of America are soooooo much bigger than the politics that are being served up to us by the elites. I find that people everywhere are fed up with the red-state/blue-state hokum that passes for political discourse in our country, and they're in something of a purple rage about the system's abject failure to address the BIG matters that are on people's minds, particularly such populist issues as:

Falling wages and falling middle-class opportunities.

Lousy health care, or none at all.

A collapsing national infrastructure, from water systems and roads to school buildings and parks.

Corporate greed unleashed.

Money-corrupted politics and government.

The death of the Common Good.

Mainstream polls confirm that these are big worries for the majority of folks, and that the public is growing more and more alienated from the economic and political elites in charge. Sixty-three percent of Americans now say that our country is "off on the wrong track" (APIpsos poll), 67 percent are "dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S." (Gallup Poll), and 51 percent expect that the next generation will be worse off economically.

People are aching for a politics that matters to them and offers a path to an America in which they matter again. That would be Big Politics. But this year we're mostly getting another campaign of small-ball and low-ball politics, featuring such manipulative mindlessness as the Bushites trying to label all of their war critics "appeasers."

War whoops
Tony Snow, Bush's PR flak, tried to do a mini-McCarthy on the war issue by declaring in September that there are "some" in the Democratic party "who say that we shouldn't fight the [terrorists]; we shouldn't apprehend al Qaeda; we shouldn't detain al Qaeda, we shouldn't question al Qaeda; and we shouldn't listen to al Qaeda." Goodness gracious, Tony, give us the names of these traitorous Democrats so we can hunt them down like the filthy varmints they are!

Alas, poor Tony could not produce a single name.

And then Dick Cheney was unleashed. Snarling and snapping at Democrats who're calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the Veep flashed his crooked sneer and barked that these dastardly Democrats are out to "validate the al Qaeda strategy and invite more terrorist attacks" on America. Thank you, Dick. Now go back to your dungeon.

Next up was Donnie Rumsfeld. What a sputtering old goose he's become! The Pentagon chief is all honked off that we plebes have dared to criticize his handling of the war on terrorism, especially his disastrous diversion into Iraq. So, he has resorted to questioning our patriotism. Last month, he petulantly referred to us dissenters as people who always "blame America."

No, Rummy, we blame you! Indeed, we dissenters areAmerica-- 61% of the people now oppose your Iraq war, 58% say it has not been worth the lives we've lost, and 75% say Iraq has deteriorated into civil war. We the People blame you, George, "Buckshot" Cheney, and the entire Bushite menagerie of warmongers, ideological nutballs, war profiteers, and chickenhawks for squandering American lives, treasury and reputation. It's time to say the obvious -- our so-called "leaders" are losers.

Think about it: First they lost Osama. They almost won Afghanistan, but they got distracted and lost it, too. Then they lost Iraq to civil war and theocracy. Here at home, they lost New Orleans. Hell, they even lost Pluto -- one-ninth of our solar system is gone!

The poor GOP
I'm actually feeling a twinge of compassion for the Repubs. Poor babies, they're trying to run this year with a Gibraltar of weighty political negatives piled on their backs, including Iraq, Halliburton, Iran, congressional corruption, oil profits, CEO pay, corporate scandals, minimum wage, off-shored jobs, trade scams, rising poverty, Katrina, health care, prescription drugs, Social Security privatization, tax boondoggles, national debt, torture, NSA spying, secret prisons, and "signing statements."

Most GOP congressional candidates who are in competitive races are scampering as fast as they can to get away from the Bush-Cheney-Rummy troika, which is about as popular this fall as E. coli spinach. Bush's approval rating is still stuck down at 37 percent (even after his September "Blitz of Fear" designed to spook voters into going Republican).

A new Associated Press-Ipsos survey of Southern women, a group that has backed George since 2000 because of his "religious values," finds that Bush's war is trumping his purported religiosity. Only 32 percent of women in the region still support his handling of both Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, three out of five Southern women say they'll vote for Democrats next month. An indication of how Bush has fallen from favor with these ladies comes from a Georgia mother of three, Barbara Knight, who has been a Republican since birth. "I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant," she said. Oh, that stings! In the deep South, you can't fall any lower than Grant.

The Republicans, however, do have one secret weapon they're counting on to maintain their control of the House and Senate: Democrats.

Where's the spark
This should be an easy year for Dems, a landslide year, but -- with important exceptions -- they continue to practice the politics of equivocation. Take health care. A Zogby poll taken in May in the swing state of Pennsylvania asked if the government should assure that every working American has health coverage. Sixty-nine percent shouted "Yes!" Yet when Sen. Hillary Clinton announced in June that she was going to tackle the health-care issue, she limited her bill to a minimalist, incremental, convoluted approach that would reach only low-income children, leaving more than 40 million Americans uncovered. She meekly mumbled that she can only "do what the political reality permits me to do… what the body politic will bear."

Yoo-hoo, Hillary, the body politic is so far ahead of you that it's pathetic -- as is your gutless bill.

Most appalling is the overall failure of today's Democrats to claim their historic roots as the Party of the People. The issue of class makes these delicate Dems queasy, so they give up the huge political advantage that could be theirs simply by being Democrats -- by taking on Bush Incorporated.

The Democratic wussiness, of course, is the direct result of their leaders' thirst for corporate campaign funds. Indeed, the party has shown little willingness to take a swing at public financing of elections -- the one reform that would take the big, corrupting money out of politics, putting regular folks on a more level playing field with the special interests. Several states already have public financing of their elections, and Zogby's Pennsylvania poll found that applying this approach to congressional elections is favored by 52 percent of Americans. The unavoidable truth is that too many of the party's lawmakers have become upscale "New Democrats," more comfortable with CEOS than working stiffs and perfectly content to go along with the contrived corporate wisdom on everything from globalization to privatization. Few have the stomach to go after the "economic royalists," as FDR branded the money powers of his day. They roundly castigated Roosevelt, a man who was born to wealth, as a traitor to his class. Asked if the enmity of his peers perturbed him, he fired right back, "I welcome their hatred." We could use some of that rousing populist spark.

Consider, too, the example of another unabashed Democrat, Harry Truman. At the start of his 1948 presidential race against Republican Robert Taft, he was given no chance to win. Undaunted, he went to the people with his cross-country whistle-stop tour, taking on Wall Street, calling for national health care, and becoming "Give ‘em Hell" Harry. As he began this historic trip, he told his sister, "It will be the greatest campaign any president ever made. Win, lose or draw, people will know where I stand and a record will be made for future action by the Democratic party."

Scary tidbit
Florida's infamous Katherine Harris, now running for the U.S. Senate, has claimed that "God is the one who chooses our rulers." Good Lord! God chose her? And Dick Cheney? And Tom DeLay? Surely there can't be a god as mean and vindictive as that.

Scarier tidbit
One of the most frequent questions I'm asked on the road is whether Bush/Rove will push us into a war with Iran as an "October Surprise" to goose up GOP election chances. Doing so would seem insane, since our country's military, treasury, and patience are stretched to the breaking point… but insanity is no longer out of reach for this bunch. Indeed, Time reported late last month that the Pentagon's chief of naval operations has asked admirals to review plans for blockading two key Iranian ports, and a covey of minesweepers and other ships have received a "Prepare to Deploy" order for the west coast of Iran. Stay tuned.

The mayor speaks
The hottest, most honest speech I've heard from a Democrat in a long time came a month ago from a place deep in the red heart of Bush country: Utah.

The day before Bush was to speak to a carefully chosen group of military officers in Salt Lake City, some 4,000 Utahns poured into that city's Washington Square for an anti-war rally. Standing with them was Salt Lake City's two-term Democratic mayor, Rocky Anderson. He delivered a stemwinder, blistering the Bushites and inspiring "little d" democrats to stand tall:

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism. A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, warmongering, human-rights-violating president. That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience -- a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid -- afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

And that was just for openers! You can read the whole speech here:

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/970

Making votes count
In my rambling around, I've noticed a positive electoral phenomenon: In several states, including Minnesota, Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada, progressives are running for secretary of state, the office that runs the election process.

Nothing is more basic to democracy than the vote itself. Yet the unchecked spread of corporateowned machines has reduced the ballot in many places to a "faith-based" exercise! Also, there are organized campaigns to intimidate and harass voters and to create needless legal barriers to voter participation. All this in a country with a president piously preaching democracy to others around the world.

So the race is on! Reformers are vying to bring these offices back to their nonpartisan function of enhancing voter registration and participation while instilling confidence in the accuracy and fairness of the results. In each case, the reformers are promising a verifiable paper trail for all voting machines, public access to the computer programs that control the machines, and audits of the results posted by the machines. They also support aggressive efforts to assure maximum civic participation in our elections, including putting a stop to voter intimidation.

To learn more about the issues and candidates in these races, visit the independent Secretary of State Project at www.secstateproject.org.
Fighting Bob
On September 9, I took part in what I think is the Best Little Political Event in America -- though it's no longer little. It's the annual "Fighting Bob Fest," named for the old-time progressive leader Fighting Bob LaFollette, and held at the county fairgrounds in Baraboo, Wisconsin. It's a day-long, family-friendly mix of hell-raising speeches, foot-stomping music, hands-on political workshops, savory food, grassroots-organizing sessions, great local beer (it always help to lubricate the movement!), some 100 activist organizations…and just plain fun.

Organized by Ed Garvey -- a dynamic and jocular prairie populist from Madison -- Bob Fest drew some 6,000 people from a four-state area. Among the speakers were Granny D, Tom Harkin, Amy Goodman, John Nichols, Tammy Baldwin, John Stauber, and Greg Palast. Plus a few words from yours truly.

There have now been five Bob Fests, and I've been to four. I go because it's thoroughly enjoyable, engaging, and energizing. People love it because it "puts the party back in politics" and is a highly productive day of down-home democracy in action.

The beauty of Bob Fest is that it's a moveable feast -- you can team up with others to create your own version of it in your state or city. Go to www.fightingbobfest.org to learn about it. If you get serious about putting together such a "county fair" of activism and fun in your area, the good folks at Bob Fest are willing to give you some tips and to share their experiences. Let the good times roll… and let democracy flow!

Final tidbit
The latest New York Times/CBS poll of registered voters finds that Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-led Congress, with only 25 percent approving of the way it is doing its job. Seventy-seven percent (including 65 percent of Republicans!) say that Congress members do not deserve re-election and that it's "time for new people" to be in charge.

From "The Hightower Lowdown," , edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, September 2006. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of "Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time to Take It Back."

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/43188/ ***

[Saundra Hummer]

*******Man Stopped at Port of Entry With Large Cash Sums and Laptop With Nuclear Information
November 16, 2006 3:35 PM

Pierre Thomas and Jason Ryan Report:
A U.S. citizen of Ethiopian descent was arrested as he came into the U.S. on a flight from Amsterdam on Tuesday.

Sisayehiticha Dinssa was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after he was flagged for secondary inspection on entry to the U.S. at the Detroit Airport and was found to be carrying more than $78,000 in cash. Customs officials became suspicious of Dinssa when a narcotics dog signaled the scent of drugs on the money in his possession.

Customs officers also discovered that Dinssa was in possession of a laptop computer for which he had no power source. During an initial look at the computer, "Inspectors discovered some files that had been downloaded with information about cyanide and nuclear materials," an affidavit from an ICE agent filed in the U.S. District Court in Detroit noted.

According to two senior U.S. government officials briefed on the matter, the files appear to be beyond what someone would normally download from the Internet. According to U.S. officials, Dinssa may have been researching the materials extensively.

Dinssa had claimed he was only carrying $18,000. It is undetermined if this is an alleged smuggling case or potentially something more sinister.

According to federal law enforcement sources, U.S. intelligence agencies and counterterrorism officials have been tasked to run down any leads on Dinssa in their databases. According to the court records, when questioned about the information on his laptop, Dinssa said that he was "interested in learning about cyanide and nuclear materials."

FBI agents and investigators from the U.S. Attorney's Office are expected to obtain a search warrant and examine the hard drive of the computer to determine the nature of the computer files. The Justice Department has asked that Dinssa be held in custody until he makes an appearance Monday in federal court for a detention hearing.

Calls by ABC News to a lawyer representing Dinssa have not been returned.
Read the criminal complaint againt Dinssa. Go on-site to access this link, just click on the following URL:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/11/man_stopped_at_.html
THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS
Close But No Terrorist
Click Here to Check Out Who's Blowing Hot, Cool and Smoke on the Brian Ross Webpage *****

[Saundra Hummer]

~~~~~~~

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

~~~
"We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.'

Desmond Tutu

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"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."

Frederick Douglass - [Frederick Baily] (1818- 1895), Escaped slave, abolitionist, author, editor of the North Star and later the New National Era

~~~
"Man's character is his fate."

Heraclitus - (c.540-480 BC) Greek philosopher


~~~~~

[Saundra Hummer]

:: :: :: :: ::
British Police Probe Ex-Spy's Poisoning
By
TARIQ PANJA, AP
Updated: 05:40 PM EST

LONDON (Nov. 19) - A former Russian spy poisoned in Britain and now gravely ill and under guard in the hospital may have been targeted for his outspoken criticism of former colleagues in Moscow, fellow dissidents said Sunday.

Watch Video: Spy Plot to Poison Russian Defector: Go on-site to access link to video and the picture of the fellow.

Col. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB and Federal Security Service (FSB) agent, told reporters earlier this week that he fell ill on Nov. 1 following a meal with a contact who claimed to have details about the slaying of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was gunned down last month in her Moscow apartment building.

A doctor treating Litvinenko told the British Broadcasting Corp. that tests showed that he was the victim of poisoning by thallium - a toxic metal found in rat poison. He is under armed guard at University College Hospital in London.

"He's got a prospect of recovering, he has a prospect of dying," said Dr. John Henry, a clinical toxicologist who treated Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004 after he was poisoned during his presidential election