Justice Served with Libby Commutation
by Dan Proft

President George W. Bush possesses a quality scarce in the world of politics. That quality is unyielding loyalty to his friends and to his convictions.

The President’s over-reliance on that core value has resulted in catastrophic personnel misjudgments -- the names Michael Brown, Harriet Miers, and Alberto Gonzales spring to mind -- and an anemic effort to communicate his “vision thing” to the American people on issues both foreign and domestic.

However, that same moral certitude has also been at the heart of Bush’s successes including his defeat of two effete, elitist liberals for the Presidency.


Bush’s courage to do what is right in the face of popular opinion was on display at its best on Monday with his decision to commute the 30-month prison sentence of former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Not only was the punishment meted out for Libby’s perjury conviction “excessive” as Bush so described, the prosecution of Libby by Chicago’s very own Patrick Fitzgerald, who served as special prosecutor in the case, was a politicized star chamber proceeding.

Fitzgerald sailed into Washington on the tailwinds of liberal, anti-war bloviations about an illegal Bush administration conspiracy to blow the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame for the alleged purpose of discrediting Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, a vocal, if not accurate, critic of the War on Terror in Iraq.

After hauling one journalist to jail and intimidating others into divulging their sources (I thought liberals were categorical defenders of a free press?) what Fitzgerald found instead was that Libby was not the leaker, that no such conspiracy was afoot, and, most importantly, that no law was broken relative to the disclosure of Ms. Plame’s identity.

Got all that?

Here’s the bottom line: Libby was about to be sent to the federal hoosegow for 2.5 years for lying about how he had learned about Plame’s identity, even though said lies were not in furtherance of any criminal act and -- since he was not the leak in the first place -- even though his lies ultimately had nothing to do with the stated purpose of the investigation in the first place.

Our justice system relies on persons to abide their oath to tell the truth and perjury requires punishment in proportion to the offense. Our justice system also relies on the good faith that prosecutors, backed by the virtually limitless power of the state, will resist the temptation to venture on political witch hunts.

Bush struck the proper balance of these competing public goods in response to this twisted affair with his commutation of Libby’s prison sentence while allowing the conviction, probation and $250,000 fine to stand.

For Americans tempted to use this as one more reason to capitulate to Democrat ascendancy in 2008, you might think twice.

Hillary Clinton wailed that the Bush decision “sends the clear signal that…cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.” This from one half of a tandem that spent their last days in the White House selling Presidential pardons to the highest felonious bidders to finance the Yosemite Sam wing of the Clinton Library in Little Rock.

And in case you thought Barack Obama was prepared to take off his training wheels, Obama referred to Libby as a “man who compromised our national security.”

Senator Obama is either confused as to the established facts of this case or he has committed political perjury in promising voters to lead the nation with his “new kind of politics” where such rhetorical excesses and ad hominem attacks were no longer a part of our national discourse.

Luckily for Obama, Fitzgerald has not yet devised a way to make campaign promises subject to legal sanction.

Bush’s action does not represent a failure to believe in our justice system, as his political opponents and certain corporate editorial boards around the nation suggest.

Rather, Bush’s decision reflects his recognition of the limitations of our justice system, particularly when partisan politics is the driver of an investigation.

If this argument as to the limitations of our fallible justice system sounds familiar, it should. It is the same argument used by the same liberals caterwauling about Libby to defend their opposition to the death penalty -- and, incidentally, I agree with them on that matter.

I guess Libby is not the only one in Washington who can’t get his story straight.


Mr. Proft is a Principal of Urquhart Media LLC, a Chicago-based public affairs firm and political commentator for the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show (5-9 a.m.) on Chicago's number one news talk radio station, WLS-AM 890. He can be reached at dan@urqmedia.com. For other Dan Proft commentaries (radio & print), please visit: .

Sponsored By:
July 5, 2007
Washington, DC
Vol. 42, No. 14a

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Bush commutes Libby's sentence, is criticized by the right and the left

Libby Commutation: President Bush's commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence pleased conservatives if it did not fully satisfy them. It positively enraged his liberal critics. Libby himself can breathe a sigh of relief that he does not have to serve prison time, but hardly anybody else is all that happy.

The conviction of Libby on perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case has taken on overriding symbolic implications. Libby, as Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief-of-staff, is seen by Bush's enemies as typifying deception that led the U.S. into war in Iraq. His conviction was seen by conservatives as part of the bitter assault on the Bush Administration, targeting Cheney in particular.

By standing apart from the Plame affair and the Libby affair, Bush has subjected himself to abuse from both sides. Bush is blamed by friends of Libby for losing control of the Plame investigation by putting it in the hands of a special prosecutor -- the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald. The abuse from the left certainly will expand thanks to his decision Monday, while praise from the right is muted.

The word from the White House had been that Bush was not likely to pardon Libby, even on his way out of the Oval Office in January 2009. But more recently, Bush aides began spreading the word that there was no chance that Libby would do any jail time. When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused Monday to review Libby's 30-month jail sentence, Bush's only recourse, short of a pardon, was to commute Libby's sentence.

The unique aspect of the Libby conviction was that there was no underlying crime whose prosecution he is accused of obstructing. Fitzgerald determined that no federal statute was broken when then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revealed that Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA. But Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby for allegedly not telling the truth in the course of the investigation.

Republicans have raised millions of dollars for Libby's defense, painting him as the victim of prosecutorial abuse and the criminalization of politics. Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), a leading prospect for the Republican presidential nomination, has been calling for a pardon. While welcoming Bush's action, Thompson said he still would have issued a pardon. By endorsing the jury's verdict and not criticizing Fitzgerald, Bush makes it difficult to issue a subsequent full pardon, although the President on Tuesday hinted at an eventual pardon.

The commutation of Libby's sentence does not save Bush severe attacks from Democratic critics. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the President's action "disgraceful," linking it to what he called Bush's manipulation in sending the country to war in Iraq. Reid's complaint: Libby was the person convicted what he views as a criminal conspiracy around Bush, and now he is not going to prison. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was already flogging the pardon story to raise money the morning after it was announced.


Sincerely,
Robert D. Novak

Mr. Novak is a syndicated columnist and editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report, a political newsletter he founded in 1967 with Rowland Evans. Click here to get a free subscription.

Al-Qaeda's new talent in Afghanistan
By Michael Scheuer

Al-Qaeda's late-May naming of Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid as the "general leader" of the group's activities in Afghanistan shows that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri believe that helping the Taliban win the Afghan war is a top priority.

It also suggests that the al-Qaeda chieftains think the path to victory in Afghanistan is set solidly enough that Abu al-Yazid can manage the organization's Afghan affairs while the group turns to other aspects of the jihad outside Afghanistan.

Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid was born in Egypt's al-Sharqiyah governorate in the Nile Delta on December 17, 1955, and in his youth he became a member of the country's radical Islamist movement. Abu al-Yazid was somehow involved in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, he spent three years in prison after being convicted, and at some point he became a member of Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

He has been convicted in absentia in several trials in Egypt, and has been sentenced to both life imprisonment and the death penalty. According to Interpol, his pseudonyms include Sheikh Sa'id al-Misri, Mustafa Abu Yazid, Sa'ad Abu Shayama, Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad, and Said Uthman. He appears to be best known in al-Qaeda circles as Sheikh Said.

Abu al-Yazid left Egypt for Afghanistan in 1988, and he is reported to have been a founding member of al-Qaeda in the same year. He accompanied bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991, and while there he served as the accountant for bin Laden's Sudan-based businesses - including his flagship company Wadi al-Aqiq.

He also may have arranged the funding for the failed June 1995 assassination attempt by Egypt's Islamic Group against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa.

Abu al-Yazid apparently returned to Afghanistan with bin Laden in 1996. By that time, he was a confidant of bin Laden, a senior al-Qaeda leader, a member of its Shura Council, and a continual key manager of the organization's finances.

Abu al-Yazid is reported to have supplied the requisite funding for Muhammad Atta - the leader of the September 11, 2001, attackers - and to have received from Atta the return of surplus funds just before the attacks occurred. In 2002, the US government placed Abu al-Yazid's name on the list of terrorists and organizations subject to having their financial accounts frozen.

Despite his having been involved in jihadist activity for nearly a quarter-century, few personal facts about Abu al-Yazid are known; indeed, his first media appearance occurred in May in a 45-minute interview produced by al-Qaeda's Al-Sahab media group after he was named the "official in general charge of the al-Qaeda organization in Afghanistan".

Based on his financial duties for al-Qaeda, it is fair to speculate that he may have had schooling in economics or business management, and several reports claim that he received military training in Afghanistan but has never had responsibilities as an al-Qaeda military leader.

The Lahore Daily Times reported in December 2004 that Abu al-Yazid had some unspecified duties in maintaining the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Abu al-Yazid also appears to have some talent for clandestine international travel. He is reported to have arranged the financing for the September 11 attacks from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and veteran Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir recently said Abu al-Yazid had just returned to Afghanistan from a two-year "jihadi mission" in Iraq.

Given Abu al-Yazid's skill set, he probably assisted al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the nascent Islamic government of which it is a part, in strengthening their logistical, financial, media and administrative systems.

Abu al-Yazid is reported to be a man of "noble character" who is trusted by al-Qaeda's different national and ethnic groups, as well as a person who is trustworthy, displays fine manners and is amiable at all times. He is said to have a large family consisting of "two wives, sons and daughters" and is one of the few senior al-Qaeda lieutenants who has lived along both the Pakistan-Afghanistan and Iran-Afghanistan borders.

One of his daughters married the son of the incarcerated Egyptian Islamic Group spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman. The daughter and her husband, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman, were captured by US forces in Afghanistan in early 2003.

Significance of Abu al-Yazid's appointment
The appointment of Abu al-Yazid underscores the importance to al-Qaeda of re-establishing a Taliban government in Afghanistan. As an al-Qaeda founder and a member of its Shura Council, Abu al-Yazid brings great prestige to the group's support for the Taliban, and - like bin Laden and Zawahiri before him - he pledged personal allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the "Commander of the Faithful" in his first Al-Sahab interview.

Abu al-Yazid's stature in al-Qaeda also will cause his appointment to be viewed among Islamists as a complement to the Taliban and Mullah Omar. This is a direct effort to ensure that the insurgency is seen by the traditionally insular Afghans as being led by Afghan mujahideen and not by "foreign Arabs". In essence, it is the same kind of keep-the-locals-in-the-lead effort that al-Qaeda undertook after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had broken with al-Qaeda's locals-first doctrine by behaving as the foreign leader of Iraq's Sunni insurgents.

The installation of a financial and logistics manager like Abu al-Yazid clearly suggests that Mullah Omar, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri believe that the mujahideen are well on the way toward defeating the US-led coalition.

In his Al-Sahab interview, Abu al-Yazid made clear that his job would be to help manage the overall war effort. He said that rank-and-file manpower was not a problem for the mujahideen - there being plenty of Afghan and Arab fighters - but that they needed more money for insurgent attacks and suicide bombings.

"So funding is the mainstay of jihad," Abu al-Yazid said, and indicated that much of his time would be spent in fundraising, which, as noted above, has long been his forte. [1] He also said he would seek to acquire Arab specialists to assist the Afghan insurgency "in all spheres: military, scientific, informational, and otherwise" - a goal that is reminiscent of bin Laden's successful effort to bring Arab economic, agricultural and managerial specialists to assist the Taliban in governing the country in the late 1990s.

From al-Qaeda's perspective, the assignment of Abu al-Yazid must be seen as a move that keeps a strong, talented and respected hand managing the organization's activities in Afghanistan and one that simultaneously allows bin Laden, Zawahiri and other senior leaders to devote more thought and time to projects elsewhere in the world. With their Afghan program in a steady-as-she-goes mode, bin Laden and his associates will turn to the more direct management of al-Qaeda's already expanding reach from Iraq into the Levant, Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula as well as preparations for the group's next attack inside the United States.

Note
1. Public statements by al-Qaeda leaders that stress shortages of money should always be taken by Western analysts with a large grain of salt. Al-Qaeda's chiefs are completely familiar with the US and Western fixation on "terrorist finances" and the Western assessment that Islamic militancy and violence can be suppressed by governmental actions that prevent the flow of money to the mujahideen. Indeed, Abu al-Yazid is intimately familiar with this Western strategy as he himself is on one of the US government's lists of terrorist financiers. In the current case, the immense oil profits currently accruing to the mujahideen's traditional donors and the accelerating pace of the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies - in each of which al-Qaeda is a full participant - tend to make Abu al-Yazid's claim of a funding shortfall look more than a bit like disinformation.

Michael Scheuer served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the US Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is now a senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation.

(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)

(Copyright 2007 The Jamestown Foundation.)

Depends on meaning of 'unpardonable'
By Richard B. Schmitt and James Gerstenzang
The commutation of Libby's sentence sparks a war of words between the White
House and the Clintons.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBS...Io30G2B0IjVA0Er

Shame on Bush -- and us
By Rosa Brooks
Ignoring the Constitution, lying, hypocrisy? Yes, but it didn't happen in a
vacuum.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBS...Io30G2B0IjVR0EA

Charles Levinson: Quote of the Day
"The Arabs went to Afganistan and got a masters in violent Jihad, but in Iraq they’re all getting PhDs." What, now they're overly theoretical, bitter, in debt,and unemployable?

A Farewell to Arms Control

AP Photo / Ajit Kumar, File

Indian officers show off a nuclear-capable missile. With nuclear proliferation running amok in recent years, from India and Pakistan to Iran and North Korea, Scott Ritter argues that highly trained U.N. disarmament experts should be cultivated and deployed.

By Scott Ritter

The organization that was at the center of the maelstrom of the Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco, responsible for bringing the world to the brink of war on no fewer than a half-dozen occasions during the 1990s, and then unable to prevent a war in March 2003, has departed the global scene. It left not with a dramatic flair befitting its former status, but rather with barely a whimper, reduced to nothing more than a historical footnote in the grand tragedy that has become Iraq. The United Nations Monitoring and Verification Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), successor to its more accomplished parent, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), was found to be redundant by an act of the United Nations Security Council, which created its disarmament mandate over 16 years ago when it passed Security Council Resolution 1687 in April 1991. The United States and Great Britain had been trying to close down the weapons inspection operation since the invasion of Iraq, citing the demise of Saddam Hussein and the occupation of Iraq by coalition forces as evidence that the U.N.-mandated inspection process was now moot.

In a way, the U.S.-British position has merits, as I for one, having led numerous inspections inside Iraq from 1991 to 1998, would have a hard time imagining the inspection teams operating in a safe and effective manner inside the insurgent-ridden Iraq of today. But the issue of the ongoing relevance of U.N. weapons inspections goes far beyond a simple matter of inspector security. What really galled the U.S. and British officials were the inconvenient truths about Iraq’s disarmed status, something a continued viable inspection operation would officially register in politically damaging fashion. The lies and distortions concerning the threat posed by Iraqi WMD promulgated by the governments of George W. Bush and Tony Blair have been blasted into the background of domestic discourse in both the United States and Britain by the ongoing cacophony of violence exploding from occupied Iraq today, more than four years after the invasion.

While the ongoing violence is widely seen by most rational humans as a tragedy of enormous proportions, for those who lied their way into this illegitimate war by fabricating a nonexistent threat the continued surge of violence in Iraq provides a welcome buffer from any probing into the corrupt foundation of fabrication and deceit upon which the precarious structure of this pre-emptive war of aggression continues to be constructed. With the U.S. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, growing increasingly discontent with the status quo in Iraq, anything that prompted a renewed examination of why America and its few remaining allies are trapped in the quagmire would be most unwelcome. This is the true reason behind the demise of UNMOVIC—politics, nothing more or less.

The reality was, and is, that nothing could have been done to save UNMOVIC once Bush decided to activate his unilateral dream of regional conquest in the Middle East. Having made international law, and by extension the Security Council of the United Nations, irrelevant to U.S. foreign policy objectives, there was no chance that an organ of the Security Council—the weapons inspection process—could continue to be seen as relevant. Truth be told, UNMOVIC was always a red-headed stepchild in the world of disarmament affairs. It was born of illegitimacy, derived from a political need on the part of the United States to be seen as promoting U.N.-mandated disarmament in Iraq even after orchestrating the demise of UNMOVIC’s predecessor, UNSCOM. When a major candidate for national office in the United States, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, can claim that the reason the United States found itself in Iraq in 2003 was that the government of Saddam Hussein had barred the UNMOVIC inspectors from entering Iraq, and not be held accountable for his ignorance—willful or otherwise—it only underscores the continued denigration of the U.N. inspectors that has occurred throughout their long and labored tenure.

Republicans are not the only ones guilty of misrepresenting the truth regarding Iraq and weapons inspections; President Bill Clinton had the gall to claim that Saddam Hussein had refused to cooperate with weapons inspectors in December 1998, evicting the WMD sleuths from Iraq on the eve of the 72-hour bombing campaign known as Desert Fox. Clinton knew full well that his administration had deliberately created a provocation against the Iraqis, seeking to inspect a Baath Party headquarters, and once it became clear the Iraqis would accede to this outrageous demand, it was Clinton, not Saddam, who ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, seeking to cover his tracks with a bombing campaign that ostensibly targeted “WMD sites,” but which in reality was a thinly disguised assassination attempt against the Iraqi president. A leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton, continues to uphold the fiction of her husband’s policy in Iraq, much to the detriment of truth.

Weapons inspectors have always found themselves aware of an all too inconvenient reality, one that postulated the possibility of a compliant Iraq, disarmed in accordance with the mandate set forth by the Security Council, and as such ready to rejoin the family of nations as intended by all Security Council resolutions passed on the subject. It was the unilateral policy objectives of the United States, centered as they were on regime change in Baghdad, which made the realization of Iraq’s disarmed status undesirable. Truth, in the form of a verifiable report regarding the ultimate disposition of Iraqi WMD, was the enemy of a policy that hinged on the maintenance of the perception of Iraqi noncompliance regarding its disarmament obligations. UNSCOM was in a position to issue such a report by 1996, but American intransigence prevented that from happening. UNMOVIC could have pushed for a similar closure in early 2003, but it too found that the truth of Iraq’s WMD was not a message anyone, least of all the United States, was prepared to receive.

In true, the weapons inspectors were more often than not their own worst enemy when it came to making a clear presentation of the facts. The successful infiltration of the weapons inspection process by American and British officials tasked with shaping a picture of Iraqi WMD that dovetailed with the notion of a recalcitrant and dangerous Saddam meant that even while UNSCOM inspectors on the ground were collecting and certifying the data that pointed toward the truth, the inspectors’ leadership in New York was successful in navigating the inspection vehicle in a completely different direction: The establishment of fact would have little bearing on a process in which proving the negative had become the standard for any final judgment. It was all fine and dandy for the inspectors to document what they knew about Iraq’s WMD programs; the problem came when they were called upon to bring to closure that which they did not know, and given the timely insertion of fabricated intelligence into the system by the United States and others, there was a considerable body of unknowns from which to draw upon when making the case that the inspectors’ work had not yet run its course. “Proving the negative” became a disease which infected the entire process, casting doubt where once there existed certainty and clouding over any logical interpretation of the available facts with shadows and whispers of conspiracy and subterfuge.

This disease consumed UNSCOM in its final days, and went on to infect UNMOVIC as well. Even now, with the nails all but hammered in place on UNMOVIC’s coffin, the head of UNMOVIC, Demetrius Perricos, continues to point to a “residue of uncertainty” about Iraq’s disarmed status, saying there are people, material and intellectual know-how which still need to be monitored. One would expect the Bush administration and its defenders to leap on any suggestion by a senior U.N. official that Iraq was somehow not disarmed. Yet not even Bush and his coterie of blood-stained warmongers will breathe credibility into the fanciful mental meanderings of a captain whose ship has already sunk.

History has certified the work of the inspectors as being technically brilliant, and politically disastrous. Two things can be said of the U.N. inspection experience in Iraq. First, international inspections, properly led and equipped, can achieve meaningful disarmament results even under the most arduous of conditions. The second is that multilateral inspection regimes will always fail if the entirety of the body mandating the inspections fails to come to a singular agreement on the scale and scope of the disarmament mission. American (and to a lesser extent British) embrace of regime-change policies which were not contained in the U.N. mandate regarding Iraq meant the political death of the inspections. These are pure truths which need to be recognized and acted upon if any future multilateral international approach to disarmament and arms control is ever to reach fruition. So long as the United States continues to behave as if it has sole authority to deviate from the framework of international law set forth by the United Nations, there can be no hope for any meaningful progression in the field of threat reduction born of arms control and disarmament. Indeed, the opposite will occur—a world grown wary of American treachery will seek to acquire the means to deter, and perhaps even push back, what it sees as an American unilateral domination of the globe.

While it is difficult to predict the future, what can be said with absolute certainty is that the passing of UNMOVIC represents far more than a political stain on those who claim to embrace global nonproliferation but in reality smother it. The political aspects of the aggregate of failure which combined to sink UNMOVIC have been underscored above. The true tragedy of UNMOVIC’s demise rests not with bad policy, but rather with the loss of irreplaceable technical expertise. I do not refer to the library of inspection data derived from the 16-year disarmament saga in Iraq; this data is tainted by the political corruption of the inspection process. What I lament is the passing of potential, both realized and future, represented by the proactive work of some of the world’s greatest nonproliferation minds.

For the past seven years, UNMOVIC, led by the intrepid Russian weapons inspector Nikita Smidovich, has built an unprecedented program of training of international weapons inspectors. The qualification standards certified through this comprehensive training process has led to the creation of a cadre of international experts in the field of nonproliferation. Smidovich created a network of training opportunities in facilities in Canada, Argentina, Switzerland, Germany, Russia and Britain, to name a few. The hundreds of inspectors who have completed this training stood ready to go anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice to investigate whether a given manufacturing process was legitimately utilized or instead covertly diverted for illegitimate use. This inspection capability far exceeded anything the world would ever need in Iraq, and had great potential for pre-emptive application in any number of proliferation trouble spots, from Iran to North Korea and beyond. For an annual cost of a few million dollars, the inspection potential created by Smidovich and others, operating under the umbrella of UNMOVIC, had the potential to prevent conflicts costing untold billions.

This capability is now forever lost with the demise of UNMOVIC, proof positive that the real problems confronting the world’s collective peace and security continue to be undermined by an American administration willing to exact any price in order to win cheap political points. Americans rightly measure the cost of the Iraq war in terms of dead and wounded American service members. Some even spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties. But scant few will reflect on the potential harm done to future generations of Americans, and others around the world, as we bid a silent farewell to meaningful arms control.

Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books. His latest is “Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement” (Nation Books, April 2007).

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_f_...anthrax_att.htm

July 6, 2007

Were the Anthrax Attacks on Congress the act of the U.S. Government?

By F. Vyan Walton

According to a report from a government Insider currently posted on AfterDowningStreet.org, the Anthrax attacks on Senators Daschle and Leahy in 2001, just weeks after 9-11, may have been launched not by foreign or even domestic terrorists, unless (like Rosie O'Donnel) you count members of the U.S. Government as potentential members such a group.

Francis A. Boyle, an international law expert who worked under the first Bush Administration as a bioweapons advisor in the 1980s, has said that he is convinced the October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the later Military Commissions Act.

I admit I am wary of what might seem a bit of tin-foil habberdashery, but then again - we just had a President commute the sentence of someone who lied to protect the Vice President from possible Treason charges. We've seen our racial discrimination at the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ. Just how much lower can the Bush/Cheney Government go?

Based on what Dr. Boyle has to say it just might be that we haven't even begun to completely plumb the true depths of BushCo.

"At the time I myself did not know precisely what was going on, either with respect to September 11 or the anthrax attacks, but then the New York Times revealed the technology behind the letter to Senator Daschle. [The anthrax used was] a trillion spores per gram, [refined with] special electro-static treatment. This is superweapons-grade anthrax that even the United States government, in its openly proclaimed programs, had never developed before. So it was obvious to me that this was from a U.S. government lab. There is nowhere else you could have gotten that."

At the time of the attacks the Senate was contempating the original version of the Patriot Act, which at the time included a complete striping of Habeas Corpus. Senator Leahy was one of the leading opponents of the bill.

Following the attacks, much of that opposition faded and the bill - with some modifications - was passed. Leahy even voted for it.

Boyle who had worked for years on Bioweapons and had been responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which passed both Houses and was signed into law by George Herbert Walker Bush.

But wait, the plot sickens...

After realizing that the type and quality of the Anthrax used against Sen. Daschle indicated that it had to have been developed by U.S. Scientists, Boyle contacted the FBI and spoke with Agent Marion "Spike" Bowman.

Boyle and Bowman had met at a terrorism conference at the University of Michigan Law School. Boyle told Bowman that the only people who would have the capability to carry out the attacks were individuals working on U.S. government anthrax programs with access to a high-level biosafety lab. Boyle gave Bowman a full list of names of scientists, contractors and labs conducting anthrax work for the U.S. government and military.

Well, you'd expect that armed with this knowledge, trusty Agent Bowman would be after his man/men immediately? Well, not so much.

Bowman then informed Boyle that the FBI was working with Fort Detrick on the matter. Boyle expressed his view that Fort Detrick could be the main problem.

Fort Detrick recieves it's cultures for bioweapon analysis and development from Ames, Iowa - but not long after these events the cultures at Ames were ordered destroyed by ... wait for it ... the FBI.

The alleged destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, Iowa, from which the Fort Detrick lab got its pathogens, was blatant destruction of evidence. It meant that there was no way of finding out which strain was sent to whom to develop the larger breed of anthrax used in the attacks. The trail of genetic evidence would have led
directly back to a secret government biowarfare program.

"Clearly, for the FBI to have authorized this was obstruction of justice, a federal crime," said Boyle. "That collection should have been preserved and protected as evidence. That's the DNA, the fingerprints right there. It later came out, of course, that this was
Ames strain anthrax that was behind the Daschle and Leahy letters."

It's not like Agent Bowman hasn't dropped the ball before. It was he along with FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael Maltbi who decided it wasn't even worth trying to file a FISA warrant the contents of Zacarias Moussaoui's computer hardrive.

<>The Judiciary Committee has been investigating FISA problems at the FBI, including holding closed hearings where Mr. Bowman and others were questioned about the Moussaoui case.

<>Mr. Grassley said a 26-page electronic communication from the Minneapolis agents contained information that "a reasonable person would have concluded" was sufficient to obtain a FISA warrant.

He said the application should have gone forward to the Justice Department and the FISA court.

Instead, he said, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael Maltbie concluded there was not enough information and that Mr. Bowman agreed, although he was aware Mr. Maltbie had "removed certain information before making a presentation of questionable accuracy and length to the national security law unit."

Mr. Grassley said if the application had gone forward and a warrant issued, the agents would have found information in Moussaoui's belongings linking him both to a major financier of the hijacking plot and to an al Qaeda boss who met with at least two other hijackers while under surveillance by intelligence officials.

After his stellar work on the Moussaoui case, Bowman was naturally given a Presidential Rank of Meritorious Service award. I suppose a fresh new Medal of Freedom wasn't available at the time.

It should also be noted that there are others with a different opinion and view of the source of that Anthrax used in that fateful 2001 attack. From the WaPo Sept 2006

What was initially described as a near-military-grade biological weapon was ultimately found to have had a more ordinary pedigree, containing no additives and no signs of special processing to make the anthrax bacteria more deadly, law enforcement officials confirmed. In addition, the strain of anthrax used in the attacks has turned out to be more common than was initially believed, the officials said.

As a result, after a very public focus on government scientists as the likely source of the attacks, the FBI is today casting a far wider net, as investigators face the daunting prospect of an almost endless list of possible suspects in scores of countries around the globe. "There is no significant signature in the powder that points to a domestic source,"

You wonder if any of these people have ever watched an episode of CSI and know what DNA is? Whether cultures from the Ames lab were or weren't a source for the Anthrax is now only a matter of speculation and supposition since the originals have been destroyed. Preserving them would have gone a long way to helping establish that Ft. Detrick or any other U.S. lab as suspected by Dr. Boyle clearly were not involved in the Attack.

So if it wasn't "weaponsized" could it still have come from an Defense Lab or was it just run of the mill anthrax, the kind you find at your local Walmart? (More from Wapo)

Whoever made the powder produced a deadly project of exceptional purity and quality -- up to a trillion spores per gram -- but used none of the tricks known to military bioweapons scientists to increase the lethality of the product. Officials stressed that the terrorist would have had to have considerable skills in microbiology and access to equipment.

So who are the terrorist with "considerable skill in microbiology and access to equipment" - are they hiding out in the caves of Afghanistan or maybe they're somewhere North, South, East and slightly West of Tikrit by now? The lack of "additives" may not neccesarily mean that the Anthrax wasn't made at someplace like Ft Detrick, it simply means that additives that would have given it a more unqiue and distinctive signature weren't added (yet). Particular when the point of the Attack clearly wasn't to maximize leathality, it was to foment fear and help shift U.S. policy to a more fascist stance.
<>But again, this is mere speculation - proof one way or the other seems to be in short supply.

One may or may not believe Dr. Boyle, one may or may not feel that his cause for alarm and claims that this smacks of a "deliberate cover-up" are legitimate, I for one certainly have my doubts, but....

One thing is certain, in the wake of 5 Million Missing Emails, you just have to wonder...

UPDATE: As pointed out by a DKOS commenter - this doesn't have to be a "conspiracy" for Boyle to be largely correct about the possible source of the Anthrax. All it takes is one nutball with access to materials and the will to use them. Again from the WaPo.

"In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them," said Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998. "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."

Instead, suggested Spertzel and more than a dozen experts interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks, investigators might want to reexamine the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism, or try to determine whether weaponized spores may have been stolen by the attacker from an existing, but secret, biodefense program or perhaps given to the attacker by an accomplice.

Whether this was the act of one lone nut, followed by a botched investigation or something more sinister and deliberate - many questions remain and deserved to be answered.

Vyan




Authors Website: http://www.truth2powerproject.com

Authors Bio:

Born and Bred in South Central LA. I spent 12 years working in the IT Dept. for federal contractor Northrop-Grumman on classified and high security projects such as the B2 Bomber. After Northrop I became an IT consultant with the state of California in Sacramento and worked on projects with the Dept of Consumer Affairs and CalTrans, as well as projects for Kaiser Permanente in Oakland. Now living in Los Angeles on my own independant web design company.

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OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_da...cheney_impe.htm

July 6, 2007

54% Want Cheney Impeached

By David Swanson

By David Swanson

A new poll conducted by http://www.americanresearchgroup.com finds that 54% of American adults want the US House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney, including 76% of Democrats, 17% of Republicans, and 51% of Independents. The same poll found 46% of voters in favor of the same thing for President George W. Bush, including 69% of Democrats, 13% of Republicans, and 50% of independents.

The poll also asked about Bush's commuting of I Lewis Scooter Libby's sentence, and found that 31% of Americans approve, and 11% would approve of a full pardon.

The details are available at http://www.americanresearchgroup.com

Past polls on impeachment of Cheney and Bush are available at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/polling

A growing movement for the impeachment of Cheney hopes to build on the current majority and released a new video by Robert Greenwald on Friday at http://impeachcheney.org





Authors Website: http://www.davidswanson.org

Authors Bio: DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997. Back

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jo...pecter_figh.htm July 6, 2007

Senator Specter Fights for Constitution

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

On the Friday before July 4 Republican Senator Arlen Specter showed his respect for the U.S. Constitution and his anger about President Bush's repeated pissing on it by introducing the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007. What happens to this crucial bill will test both congressional integrity and courage.

Specter had the honesty to call President Bush's abuse of signing statements an "unconstitutional attempt to usurp legislative authority." "The president cannot use a signing statement to rewrite the words of a statute nor can he use a signing statement to selectively nullify those provisions he does not like," said Specter.

"Presidential signing statements can render the legislative process a virtual nullity, making it completely unpredictable how certain laws will be enforced. This legislation reinforces the system of checks and balances and separation of powers set out in our Constitution," said Specter.

Commenting on the legislative process, Specter noted: "This is a finely structured constitutional procedure that goes straight to the heart of our system of check and balances. Any action by the president that circumvents this finely structured procedure is an unconstitutional attempt to usurp legislative authority. If the president is permitted to rewrite the bills that Congress passes and cherry-pick which provisions he likes and does not like, he subverts the constitutional process designed by our framers." Subversion of our Constitution – pissing on it: that's what Bush has gotten away with. Bush-the-ruler has made a mockery of our sacred rule of law.

This bill would prevent the president from issuing a signing statement that alters a statute's meaning by "instructing federal and state courts not to rely on presidential signing statements in interpreting a statute."

This is Specter's second attempt at preventing Bush and any future president from disrespecting the Constitution. His similar bill in 2006 went nowhere. But he had some support. Senator Patrick Leahy said: "I have long objected to this President's broad use of signing statements to try to rewrite the laws crafted and passed by the Congress, because I firmly believe that this practice poses a grave threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances. ... These signing statements are a diabolical device and the President will continue to use and abuse them, if Congress lets him."

From a historical perspective, Specter noted that "while signing statements have been commonplace since our country's founding, we must make sure that they are not being used in an unconstitutional manner; a manner that seeks to rewrite legislation, and exercise line item vetoes." An unconstitutional manner is exactly what Bush is guilty of.

In 2006 the Congressional Research Service came up with these summary statistics on constitutional objections in signing statements: Reagan 26 percent, Bush I 68 percent, Clinton 27 percent, and George W. Bush the winner at 86 percent. But the way the current president has used signing statements to nullify laws is unique.

Many people have said that Bush's use of signing statements allows him and federal agencies to blatantly ignore provisions of laws and congressional intent. The Government Accountability Office found in mid-June that in several cases the administration did not execute laws as Congress intended when Bush attached a signing statement to them. GAO found that the statements have the effect of nullifying the law in question in about 30 percent of cases. In July 2006, a bipartisan task force of the American Bar Association described the use of signing statements to modify the meaning of duly enacted laws as "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." And still Congress has not acted to stop this behavior!

The New York Times in 2006 editorialized about Bush's use of signing statements: And none have used it so clearly to make the president the interpreter of a law's intent, instead of Congress, and the arbiter of constitutionality, instead of the courts. Indeed, what Bush has done (and gotten away with) is unprecedented in American history.

Let's be clear. There is no constitutional provision, federal statute, or common-law principle that explicitly permits or prohibits signing statements. But two constitutional provisions are pertinent. Article I, Section 7 (in the Presentment Clause) empowers the president to veto a law in its entirety, or to sign it. And many aspects of Bush's signing statements amount to line item vetoes. The Supreme Court has held that line item vetoes are unconstitutional. In 1988, in Clinton v. New York, the Court said a president must veto an entire law. And Article II, Section 3 requires that the executive "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Thus, the Bush style of signing statement has no constitutional support.

Interestingly, Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, when a staff attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, wrote a 1986 memorandum making the case for "interpretive signing statements" as a tool to "increase the power of the Executive to shape the law." Alito warned that "Congress is likely to resent the fact that the President will get in the last word on questions of interpretation."

Here is another dimension to Bush's scummy behavior: ''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," noted Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio professor who studies executive power. Phillip Cooper, a leading expert on signing statements, has called Bush's signing statements "excessive, unhelpful, and needlessly confrontational." Legal scholar Lawrence Tribe wrote that what is objectionable is "the president's failure to face the political music by issuing a veto and subjecting that veto to the possibility of an override in Congress."

Famed attorney John W. Dean has added yet another reason to question Bush's behavior: "The frequency and the audacity of Bush's use of signing statements are troubling. Enactments by Congress are presumed to be constitutional - as the Justice Department has often reiterated. For example, take what is close to boilerplate language from a government brief (selected at random): 'It is well-established that Congressional legislation is entitled to a strong presumption of constitutionality. See United States v. Morrison ('Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt.').'" But Bush puts himself above the Constitution, Supreme Court and the law.

Will Specter's second attempt succeed in a Democrat controlled Congress? And if so, will Bush sign it into law – without using a signing statement to refute its meaning and intent? Though it should be a no-brainer for every American that respects our Constitution, I bet that neither Congress nor Bush will come through and quickly make Specter's bill law of the land.

If it does not become law, common sense says it should be considered as a possible constitutional amendment. In fact, it is a perfect illustration of why more politically engaged Americans should support the national campaign to obtain the nation's first Article V convention for proposing amendments. When good and necessary laws cannot be obtained through the normal but untrustworthy legislative process, then lawmaking through constitutional amendments is absolutely necessary and appropriate. Our Framers knew what they doing when they created the Article V convention option. Learn more about it at www.foavc.org.



Authors Website: www.delusionaldemocracy.com

Authors Bio: Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government (www.delusionaldemocracy.com). His current political writings have been greatly influenced by working as a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress and for the National Governors Association. He advocates a Second American Revolution, beginning with an Article V Convention to propose constitutional amendments.

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FCNL: Senate Panel Passes Far-Reaching Export Restrictions on Cluster Munitions
The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved legislation that would effectively ban the U.S. from exporting cluster bombs.
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_i...mp;issue_id=138

Host (or Find) a Screening of “War Made Easy”
Powerful documentary based on Norman Solomon’s book about how mass media helped get us into war.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/warmadeeasy.html

Just Foreign Policy Estimates Iraqi Deaths Due to U.S. Invasion
Most Recent Estimate: 969,038
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

Ask your Representative to co-sponsor the McGovern bill to restrict cluster bombs
HR 1755, to limit the use, sale, and transfer of cluster munitions.
Call:
Capitol switchboard, 1-202-224-3121
Write:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/clusterban.html

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fu...kgroundid=00192

'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them
COMMENTARY | July 05, 2007
By William E. Odom

Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to "support the troops."

Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what "supporting the troops" means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.

No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called "post-traumatic stress disorders." In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don't seem to occur during the first half of a unit's deployment in Iraq.

After the first year, following a few months back home, these same soldiers are sent back for a second year, then a third year, and now, many are facing a fourth deployment! Little wonder more and more soldiers and veterans are psychologically disabled.

And the damage is not just to enlisted soldiers. Many officers are suffering serious post-traumatic stress disorders but are hesitant to report it – with good reason. An officer who needs psychiatric care and lets it appear on his medical records has most probably ended his career. He will be considered not sufficiently stable to lead troops. Thus officers are strongly inclined to avoid treatment and to hide their problems.

There are only two ways to fix this problem, both of which the president stubbornly rejects. Instead, his recent "surge" tactic has compelled the secretary of defense to extend Army tours to 15 months! (The Marines have been allowed to retain their six-month deployment policy and, not surprisingly, have fewer cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.)

The first solution would be to expand the size of the Army to two or three times its present level, allowing shorter combat tours and much longer breaks between deployments. That cannot be done rapidly enough today, even if military conscription were restored and new recruits made abundant. It would take more than a year to organize and train a dozen new brigade combat teams. The Clinton administration cut the Army end strength by about 40 percent – from about 770,000 to 470,000 during the 1990s. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld looked for ways to make the cuts even deeper. Thus this administration and its predecessor aggressively gave up ground forces and tactical air forces while maintaining large maritime forces that cannot be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, the lack of wisdom in that change in force structure is being paid for not by President Bush or President Clinton but by the ordinary soldier and his family. They have no lobby group to seek relief for them.

The second way to alleviate the problem is to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as possible and as securely as possible. The electorate understands this. That is why a majority of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq.

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine "supporting the troops" as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for "not supporting the troops" where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.

Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that "de-authorizes the war in Iraq." That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.

The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years.

To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. As Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988, he was responsible for the nation's signals intelligence and communications security. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer.

From 1977 to 1981, General Odom was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. As a member of the National Security Council staff, he worked upon strategic planning, Soviet affairs, nuclear weapons policy, telecommunications policy, and Persian Gulf security issues. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1954, and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1970.

General Odom’s latest book, America’s Inadvertent Empire, co-authored with Robert Dujarric, was published in early 2004 by Yale University Press. His previous book, Fixing Intelligence For a More Secure America, was published in January 2003 (Yale University Press). His book, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (Yale University Press, 1998), won the Marshall Shulman Prize. General Odom has also written America's Military Revolution: Strategy and Structure After the Cold War (American University Press, 1993); Trial After Triumph: East Asia After the Cold War (Hudson Institute, 1992); On Internal War: American and Soviet Approaches to Third World Clients and Insurgents (Duke University Press, 1992); and The Soviet Volunteers (Princeton University Press, 1973). He coauthored Commonwealth or Empire? Russia, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus with Robert Dujarric (Hudson Institute, 1995).

General Odom has published articles in Foreign Affairs, World Politics, Foreign Policy, Orbis, Problems of Communism, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly, Military Review, and many other publications. A frequent radio and television commentator, he has appeared on programs such as "The PBS News Hour," CNN, ABC's "Nightline", NBC News, C-Span, and BBC's "The World Tonight." He also is a periodic contributor to the op-ed pages of The NewYork Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others.

New Iran Regime-Change Think Tank Opens in DC
By Spencer Ackerman
TPM Muckraker

Friday 06 July 2007

Meet Mahtaub "Mattie" Hojjati. A well-connected government and business consultant Hojjati is about to embark on a new career: revolutionary provocateur. She has two missions: to hasten the overthrow of the Iranian regime, and to convince the American public to support her.

Under the byline of Mattie Fein - her husband is Bruce Fein, the prominent Reagan-era Justice Department lawyer last seen calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney - Hojjati penned an op-ed in the Washington Times last week heralding the creation of a new think tank, known as the the Institute for Persian Studies, devoted to pushing the regime over the abyss. From her perspective, the nearly 30-year old Iranian Revolution is in a terminal phase. "The cue that most of the population is looking for is international support," she tells TPMmuckraker, "but right now, they're getting mixed signals."

Exile politics played a crucial role in getting the U.S. into the Iraq war. From the late 90s until the invasion of Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi persuaded many in Washington that deposing Saddam Hussein and imposing a democratic regime in its place would be relatively cost-free. (The cooked WMD and terrorism propaganda didn't hurt, either.) While Hojatti balks at a U.S.-Iranian war - something Chalabi embraced - her project bears some similarity to prewar Iraq exile politics in D.C. She's not pushing any dubious intelligence. But she does want to "reeducate" the American public as to why "Iran is so critically important in a geopolitical sense, why they should care." Caring, in this sense, means supporting the overthrow of the Iranian theocracy - with air strikes, if necessary, Hojjati says.

Hojjati is in the early stages of rolling out her think tank. As she tells it, the IPS will grow from its current humble beginnings - it's just Hojjati right now and a non-informative website - into a platform for the Iranian diaspora in the U.S. and Europe to coalesce behind a secular, democratic agenda. Currently, the largest organized force in the Iranian diaspora is the cultish Mojaheddin e-Khalq, a terrorist entity formerly associated with Saddam Hussein.

Hojjati returned this week from a trip to Paris, where she encountered diaspora Iranians who told her they associate with the MEK only because they're the only game in town. Conversations like those, she said, reinforced her belief in what might be called a "diaspora-first" strategy for regime change: uniting Iranians outside of Iran on a practical, specific agenda for post-Islamic Republic governance.

"We have to be able to have people say, 'this is the plan.' They don't know what happens in Iran after the regime falls," Hojjati says. That's where the IPS comes in. Over the next few months, Hojjati intends to unveil a constitution promising democracy and the total separation of Islam from the public sphere, so that Iranians will have a blueprint for what comes after the mullahs. "It's going to fill a void," she says. "Right now, no one's saying anything further than 'regime change.'" It's a deliberate response to the compounded mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which suffered from uncertainty over what political structure followed the destruction of the Saddam and Taliban regimes.

Filling that void means personal sacrifice. Hojjati is going to scale back her consulting work at the Lichfield Group, a boutique image-management firm that boasts of "high level connections with the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Central Intelligence Agency" and the media. She's already sold some of her prize possessions to finance the IPS, which she plans to incorporate as a 501 c3 nonprofit. Already, she expressly forswears seeking any U.S. government funding. "It is extremely important that (Iranians) see the institute as free of ulterior motives for it to achieve and sustain legitimacy," she says.

Whether that happens is a big question mark. The regime has used connections with the U.S. - real or imagined - to persecute and discredit human-rights activists and dissidents. Some, like journalist Akbar Ganji, have refused to take U.S. aid, and warn well-intentioned Americans against tainting anti-regime activists by association. Even though Hojjati herself won't accept money from the Bush administration, for her, the thorny question of U.S. involvement comes down to timing and savvy.

"Would they be upset if it was the right time? No. They understand that the international community or the U.S. can push (the regime) over the edge," she says. "It's also the way the U.S. is going to handle this. They need to look at who is the leadership, who's willing to be the leadership - who has the legitimacy to cultivate and the platforms to speak." That, however, doesn't really address the fears of Ganji and others: that any association with the U.S. is an inescapable drain on internal legitimacy.

It's hard to predict where the Iran debate is going. The Bush administration has, on one hand, bolstered its naval forces in the Persian Gulf and accused the Iranians of killing U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; on the other, it has opened limited, direct talks with the Iranians in Baghdad and shut down an interagency working group dedicated to regime change. Even if the administration opts for confrontation, the public is clearly weary from two debilitating wars, and hardly eager to involve itself in a third.

Hojjati emphasizes that she doesn't want war. But what she wants even less - and what her think tank is designed to fight against - is for the U.S. to acquiesce to the Iranian regime remaining in power.

Bush's Real Fourth of July Message to Nation: Unprintable
By Elizabeth de la Vega
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor Friday 06 July 2007

Knowing I could not listen to President Bush's actual voice on what is supposed to be a fun holiday, I turned to the White House web site to find his Fourth of July greeting. We continue to be, the president assures us, steadfastly committed to "America's founding truths" - including, of course, liberty and equality. I think it was the word "equality" that caused me to start choking on my corn on the cob.

Maybe there was some mistake. This web site posting did not even come close to reflecting the president's real Fourth of July message to the nation. That had been quite effectively delivered earlier in the week when Bush announced he was commuting I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence from thirty months to zero months. Apparently confusing his duties as president of the United States with those of a behind-the-plate umpire, President Bush called Libby's sentence "excessive" and threw the prison time out, as casually as if he were calling balls and strikes in a game of sandlot baseball. In so doing, President Bush sent a message to the American people that is as unambiguous as it is unprintable. Expressed verbally, the real message Bush was sending to the people of the United States could have been sent with just two words (the second of which is "you"); expressed physically, Bush's underlying message could have been conveyed with just one finger.

Either way, President Bush has again made it as clear as a Wisconsin lake that he has nothing but contempt for equality and the "rule 'a law" he is so fond of championing. Yes, a president has the constitutional power of clemency. He may pardon a criminal defendant, thereby wiping out the entire conviction and its consequences, or commute the sentence, thereby lessening it to some degree or entirely. But even this power, broad as it is, can be abused and, in the case of United States v. Libby, President Bush has done just that.

Just how egregious was the president's unapologetic and cavalier act of favoritism for a wealthy and powerful friend? To ask the question is to answer it, but to fully appreciate the extent of corruption inherent in the president's recent shameless exercise of noblesse sans oblige, one needs to know a bit about Bush and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

In the spirit of full disclosure, let me say that I, along with many others who have worked in the federal criminal justice system, have never been a fan of the sentencing guidelines. Formulated by a commission that was, in turn, created by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, the guidelines were specifically intended to promote fairness and remove unwarranted sentencing disparities. In practice, however, particularly in drug cases, application of the guidelines has led to draconian sentences - an inequity that federal judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys have attempted to address by applying various factors that could justify a downward departure from the prescribed range.

But, up until July 2, 2007, when he decided to take the law into his own hands, President Bush loved the sentencing guidelines. Bush and the Republicans have, for years, been insisting that the guidelines be applied rigidly - the president was simply not going to have any of this unseemly leniency that was beginning to infect the federal system under his watch. Indeed, in 2003, during the very same period that Bush, Cheney, Libby and the gang were scrambling to squelch the ever-increasing revelations about the president's fraudulent case for war, Bush's Justice Department, then under the leadership of John Ashcroft - and a posse of conservative Republican members of Congress - decided to take on these wimpy judges and make sure that neither they, nor any equally wimpy prosecutors, could exercise any discretion whatsoever with regard to sentencing. Tom DeLay told judges, "We are watching you" and the Bush administration tacked onto a child pornography law an amendment that required every downward departure from the guidelines to be reported to Congress.

Not surprisingly, this amendment, called the Feeney Amendment in honor of its titular sponsor, Representative Tom Feeney (R-Florida), caused a huge uproar, but its spirit lives on in the Department of Justice today. Right now, in July of 2007, prosecutors are required to oppose virtually all downward departures from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, except those based on substantial assistance to the government. If a judge does grant a downward departure that was not sought by the government, the prosecutor has to report that to DoJ's appellate division for consideration of an appeal.

What does this mean in the context of the Libby case? With due consideration to the high likelihood that some of the people reading this may have had an extra beer or two the day before, I am going to make it very simple:

Scooter Libby was sentenced in accordance with the sentencing guidelines, to which President Bush has been insisting that prosecutors and judges slavishly adhere ever since he arrived in the White House. The sentencing range required by case law that Bush's own DoJ attorneys have routinely argued for, in cases throughout the country, was 30 to 37 months. Judge Reggie Walton gave Libby the lowest sentence within that range. Legally, the only way the judge could impose a sentence less than 30 months would have been if he had granted Libby's motion for downward departure. Libby had not provided substantial assistance to the government. Therefore, under the rules currently in effect within Bush's Justice Department, Libby had no legitimate ground for downward departure, and Patrick Fitzgerald was required to oppose his motion. If Judge Walton had actually departed downward based on any of these unapproved grounds, Fitzgerald would have been required, per the United States Attorneys' Manual, to report the downward departure so that issue could be evaluated for appeal.

So, forgive me if I started choking on my blueberry cobbler when I read Tony Snow's July 3 statement to reporters: "The President spent weeks and weeks consulting with senior members of this White House about the proper way to proceed, and they looked at a whole lot of options, and they spent a lot of time talking through the options and doing some very detailed legal analysis." Bush, we know, never spoke to any of the legal experts on the case, including, most notably, the prosecutor - even though Department of Justice clemency procedures call for such a consultation. He may well have spent "weeks and weeks" consulting with Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and their ilk in order to decide how to handle "the Libby issue," but they were only talking about how to sell an act of clemency ... what their talking points would be. Bush's statement betrays not a shred of legal analysis, which is not surprising, since there is none available to justify his decision.

The bottom line is that Bush's commitment to equality, the rule of law and uniform sentencing under the federal guidelines fizzled like a Fourth of July sparkler when it came to his friend.

Even more important, Bush, of course, never intended to allow Libby to go to prison at all. Indeed, his original plan was to avoid any investigation whatsoever into the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Wilson's identity as a CIA agent. The president could have, and should have, begun an internal investigation when Robert Novak's column exposed the existence of the leak on July 14, 2003. He didn't; he waited. Once the investigation was announced in late September 2003, Bush was still constitutionally required to ferret out the miscreants in his shop, but he did not do so. Instead, he professed cooperation with the investigation in one breath, but undermined it in the next, commenting famously that he didn't think the leakers would ever be found. And then, most cynically, Bush used the criminal proceedings as a shield to avoid questions about the White House's conduct, a technique that served him well through two national election cycles.

The president of the United States watched and waited as an entire team of federal prosecutors, investigators and support personnel spent years and millions in taxpayers' dollars on an entirely justified and legitimate grand-jury investigation into whether members of that president's own White House had violated the laws of the United States. He watched and waited, hoping there would be no charges, as two grand juries (a total of about 40 US citizens) spent months of their valuable time listening to the evidence.

President Bush watched and waited, hoping the case would be dismissed, as millions of additional federal dollars and limited US District Court resources were expended on extensive pretrial litigation.

Hoping next - probably by this time praying - that Libby would be acquitted, the president watched and waited during a six-week trial that consumed additional court time and took twelve additional US citizens away from their daily lives. He watched and waited for the lengthy sentencing process to play out, and then, once the sentence had been imposed, he allowed additional federal resources - including the valuable time of three Court of Appeals judges - to be expended on Libby's motion for release on bond pending appeal.

In other words, well-knowing, despite his repeated assurances to the contrary, that he would never respect any adverse outcome of the criminal case against his and Vice President Cheney's top adviser and friend, the president simply and cravenly waited to reveal his true intentions to the American people until he could wait no longer, all the while hiding behind that very same criminal case.

This extended course of deception does not end the story: The statement Bush made when he emerged briefly from his Kennebunkport estate to issue a reprieve for the wealthy and powerful criminal defendant who happened to be his friend, was, of itself, a multilayered fraud. In his July 2 message, Bush, suddenly Solomon-like, attempted to convince the public that the matter he had been avoiding for four years on the ground that it was a pending legal case is, in fact, nothing more than a political dispute to be resolved through compromise. Clemency, Bush would now have us believe, is a decision to be made by weighing the arguments of "critics" and "supporters" of the investigation as if a pending criminal case could be decided by referendum, or maybe a call-in vote, the way we choose the American Idol. Working from this deliberately false premise, the president then purports to "weigh," as if they were equivalent, the arguments of Libby's defense team, which had already been rejected by Judge Walton and found insubstantial by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, against the actual facts and law of the case.

Bush's decision to commute Libby's sentence was not a compromise between the positions of critics and supporters of the case. The president was not settling a dispute between those who wanted the sentence to stand and those who wanted a pardon. He was simply doing what he intended to do all along - keeping Libby out of jail. The only reason Bush did not pardon Libby was because he wanted Libby to be able to continue to plead his fifth amendment privilege not to testify against himself - most particularly before Congress - based on the fact that the case was still before the Court of Appeals.

From the beginning, with regard to the CIA leak investigation, the president has deceived the American people and abused his power in a manner and to a degree that would be awe-inspiring if it were not so disgraceful. His conduct has been a study in perfidy and disregard for the law - the willful betrayal of the confidence and trust of the American people. These are the very definition of impeachable offenses. It is not enough for Congress to ask the public to send petitions and call the White House to "send a message" that the president's conduct will not be tolerated. It is up to Congress to deliver that message, and they know exactly what they have to do.

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and chief of the San Jose Branch of the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in The Nation, the Los Angeles Times and Salon. She writes regularly for Tomdispatch.com. She is the author of "United States v. George W. Bush et al." which has been optioned for a movie now in preproduction. (www.USvBushmovie.com). She may be contacted at ElizabethdelaVega@Verizon.net.

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=3912

July 6, 2007

The al-Zawahiri Syndrome

By Russ Wellen

Al Qaeda needs a woman's touch.

::::::::



By all accounts, the attempted London and Glasgow bombings were an Islamist plot. But because of the eight arrested, seven are doctors or medical students and one a lab technician (two more doctors have been detained for questioning in Australia), we wonder if there's another phenomenon at work here.

Sure, they appear to follow in the footsteps of bin Laden's right-hand man Dr. al-Zawahiri. But Islamism may be a cover. Perhaps, instead of seeking to redress societal grievances, they're acting out a psychological disorder. . . such as misogyny.

Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens commented that one of the car bombs "might have been parked outside a club in Piccadilly because it was 'ladies night'."

"The murderers," he speculates, "did not just want body parts in general but female body parts in particular."

Yes, but doctors?

Conservative blogger Dr. Sanity explains. "In the case of doctors, it is. . . those cruel and often sadistic impulses existing within us all," she writes, "that gives them the ability to deal with other people's pain and suffering without diminishing their ability to. . . remedy it. It is a delicate balancing act. . . and things can get greatly out of balance by a variety of individual, cultural and environmental factors."

In other words, a doctor may have more in common with a terrorist than we think -- they're both ticking time bombs. Let's call it the al-Zawahiri Syndrome.

Looks like the phrase "at least do no harm"* -- rendered obsolete by Nazi doctors and, of late, American doctors enabling torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay -- won't be returning to the medical lexicon anytime soon.

*Not actually from the Hippocratic Oath, as commonly thought, but from Hippocrates's page-turner Epidemics.





Authors Bio: Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also a columnist and editor at Freezerbox.com.

"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth."
-- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jo...till_lacks_.htm

July 7, 2007

America Still Lacks Thing I Long For, He Said....

By John E. Carey

By John E. Carey
July 6, 2007

I have known Habib for some time. He works hard, keeps to himself, obeys the speed limit and loves his family.

You have already probably made a judgment or two about Habib, maybe. You think you might know what region of the world he comes from and what religion he follows.

Yet Habib, though an immigrant, is an American citizen who loves his new home. He votes and pays his taxes. His children go to the American public school and not “The Arab School” as some around here call it.

An educated man, he is familiar with the teachings of both Islam and Buddhism. I spent some time taking Habib to lunch, and slowly, as if prying open a can of tuna with a mall screwdriver, I started to learn more about the man, and, I dare say, the world.

Once Habib began to speak, his enlightened thought process amazed me. He said, “Americans are moving further and further away from Human Spirit.”

“What the heck does that mean?” I asked.

“In the Qur'an,” he began, “Allah said that He is a hidden treasure longing to be known. Allah made man so that He himself, Allah, would be known and appreciated.”

In my naivety I asked, “And Allah is God?”

“Allah is God,” he said. “Allah teaches that death is only another chapter. Not a beginning or an end but a passage.”

“And between the beginning and the end we must seek peace and tranquility and happiness.”

Between the beginning and the end, I thought, we make money. He with the most toys at the end wins. But I quickly buried this thought.

After an awkwardly long silence, I again chimed in perhaps from ignorance or naivety, “How about the suicide bombers?”

“They have bastardized a great religion, a great way of life and happiness,” said Habib.

May