<h1 align="left">An Interview with Noam Chomsky</h1> <h1 align="left">On Responsibility, War Guilt and Intellectuals</h1>

































Nuremberg is an interesting precedent.

The Nuremberg case is a very interesting precedent. Of all the tribunals that have taken place, from then until today Nuremberg is, I think, the most serious by far. But, nevertheless, it was very seriously flawed. And it was recognized to be. When Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor, wrote about it, he recognized that it was flawed, and it was so for a number of fundamental reasons. For one thing, the Nazi war criminals were being tried for crimes that had not yet been declared to be crimes. So, it was ex post facto. ‘We’re now declaring these things you did to be crimes.’ That is already questionable.

Secondly, the choice of what was considered a crime was based on a very explicit criterion, namely, denial of the principle of universality. In other words, something was called a crime at Nuremberg if they did it and we didn’t do it.

So, for example, the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on -- those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defense a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved. And that’s the way it ran through. Now, that’s a very serious flaw. Nevertheless, of all the tribunals, that’s the most serious one.

When Chief Justice Jackson, chief counsel for the prosecution, spoke to the tribunal and explained to them the importance of what they were doing, he said, to paraphrase, that: ‘We are handing these defendants a poisoned chalice, and if we ever sip from it we must be subject to the same punishments, otherwise this whole trial is a farce.’ Well, you can look at the history from then on, and we’ve sipped from the poisoned chalice many times, but it’s never been considered a crime. So, that means we are saying that trial was a farce.

Interestingly, in Jackson’s opening statement he claimed that the prosecution did not wish to incriminate the whole German for the crimes they committed, but only the “planners and designers” of those crimes, “the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and lawlessness … of this terrible war.”

That’s correct. And that’s another principle which we flatly reject. So, at Nuremberg, we weren’t trying the people who threw Jews into crematoria; we were trying the leaders. When we ever have a trial for crimes it’s of some low-level person like a torturer from Abu Ghraib, not the people who were setting up the framework from which they operate. And we certainly don’t try political leaders for the crime of aggression. That’s out of the question.

The invasion of Iraq was about as clear-cut a case of aggression than you can imagine. In fact, by the Nuremberg principles, if you read them carefully, the U.S. war against Nicaragua was a crime of aggression for which Ronald Reagan should have been tried. But, it’s inconceivable; you can’t even mention it in the West. And the reason is our radical denial of the most elementary moral truisms. We just flatly reject them. We don’t even think we reject them, and that’s even worse than rejecting them outright.

If we were able to say to ourselves, ‘Look, we are totally immoral, we don’t accept elementary moral principles,’ that would be a kind of respectable position in a certain way. But, when we sink to the level where we cannot even perceive that we’re violating elementary moral principles and international law, that’s pretty bad. But, that’s the nature of the intellectual culture--not just in the United States--but in powerful societies everywhere.

You mentioned Doenitz escaping culpability for his crimes.

Two who didn’t escape punishment and were among the most severely punished at Nuremberg were Julius Streicher, an editor of a major newspaper, and -- lso an interesting example -- Dr. Wolfram Sievers of the Ahnenerbe Society’s Institute of Military Scientific Research, whose own crimes were traced back to the University of Strasbourg. Not the typical people prosecuted for international war crimes, it seems, given their civilian professions.

Yes; and there’s a justification for that, namely, those defendants could understand what they were doing. They could understand the consequences of the work that they were carrying out. But, of course, if we were to accept this awful principle of universality, that would have a pretty long reach, to journalists, university researchers, and so on.

Let me quote for you the mission statement of the Army Research Office. This “premier extramural” research agency of the Army is grounded upon “developing and exploiting innovative advances to insure the Nation’s technological superiority.” It executes this mission “through conduct of an aggressive basic science research program on behalf of the Army so that cutting-edge scientific discoveries and the general store of scientific knowledge will be optimally used to develop and improve weapons systems that establish land-force dominance.”

This is a Pentagon office, and they’re doing their job. In our system, the military is under civilian control. Civilians assign a certain task to the military: their job is to obey, and carry the role out, otherwise you quit. That’s what it means to have a military under civilian control. So, you can’t really blame them for their mission statement.

They’re doing what they’re told to do by the civilian authorities. The civilian authorities are the culpable ones. If we don’t like those policies (and I don’t, and you don’t), then we go back to those civilians who designed the framework and gave the orders.

You can, as the Nuremberg precedents indicated, be charged with obeying illegal orders, but that’s often a stretch. If a person is in a position of military command, they are sworn, in fact, to obey civilian orders, even if they don’t like them. If you say they’re really just criminal orders, then, yes, they can reject them, and get into trouble and so on. But, this is just carrying out the function that they’re ordered to carry out. So, we go straight back to the civilian authority and then to the general intellectual culture, which regards this as proper and legitimate. And now we’re back to universities, newspapers, the centers of the doctrinal system.

It’s just the forthright honesty of the mission statement which I think is also very striking.

Well, it’s like going to an armory and finding out they’re making better guns. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Their orders are, ‘Make this gun work better.’ and so they’re doing it. And, if they’re honest, they’ll say, ‘Yes, that’s what we’re doing; that’s what the civilian authorities told us to do.’

At some point, people have to ask, ‘Do I want to make a better gun?’ That’s where the Nuremberg issues arise. But, you really can’t blame people very severely for carrying out the orders that they’re told to carry out when there’s nothing in the culture that tells them there’s anything wrong with it. I mean, you have to be kind of like a moral hero to perceive it, to break out of the cultural framework and say, ‘Look, what I’m doing is wrong.’ Like somebody who deserts from the army because they think the war is wrong. That’s not the place to assign guilt, I think. Just as at Nuremberg. As I said, they didn’t try the SS guards who threw people into crematoria, at Nuremberg. They might have been tried elsewhere, but not at Nuremberg.

But, in this case, the results of the ARO’s mission statement in harvesting scholarly work for better weapons design, it’s professors, scholars, researchers, scientific designers, etc., who have these choices to do intellectual work and to be so used for such ends, and who aren’t acting necessarily from direct orders but are acting more out of free will.

It’s free will, but don’t forget that there’s a general intellectual culture that raises no objection to this.

Let’s take the Iraq war. There’s libraries of material arguing about the war, debating it, asking ‘What should we do?’, this and that, and the other thing. Now, try to find a sentence somewhere that says that ‘carrying out a war of aggression is the supreme international crime, which differs from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that follows’ (paraphrasing from Nuremberg). Try to find that somewhere. I mean, you can find it. I’ve written about it, and you can find a couple other dozen people who have written about it in the world. But, is it part of the intellectual culture? Can you find it in a newspaper, or in a journal; in Congress; any public discourse; anything that’s part of the general exchange of knowledge and ideas? I mean, do students study it in school? Do they have courses where they teach students that ‘to carry out a war of aggression is the supreme international crime which encompasses all the evil that follows’?

So, for example, if sectarian warfare is a horrible atrocity, as it is, who’s responsible? By the principles of Nuremberg, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice -- they’re responsible for sectarian warfare because they carried out the supreme international crime which encompasses all the evil that follows. Try and find somebody who points that out. You can’t. Because, our dominant intellectual culture accepts as legitimate our crushing anybody we like.

Take Iran. Both political parties and practically the whole press accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honorable, that ‘all options are on the table’, presumably including nuclear weapons, to quote Hilary Clinton and everyone else. ‘All options are on the table’ means we threaten war. Well, there’s something called the U.N. Charter, which outlaws ‘the threat or use of force’ in international affairs. Does anybody care? Actually, I saw one op-ed somewhere by Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist close to the government, who pointed out that threats are serious violations of international law. But that’s so rare that when you find it it’s like finding a diamond in a pile of hay. It’s not part of the culture. We’re allowed to threaten anyone we want--and to attack anyone we want. And, when a person grows up and acts in a culture like that, they’re culpable in a sense, but the culpability is much broader.

I was just reading a couple days ago a review of a new book by Steven Miles, a medical doctor and bioethicist, who ran through 35,000 pages of documents he got from the Freedom of Information Act on the torture in Abu Ghraib. And the question that concerned him is, ‘What were the doctors doing during all of this?’ All through those torture sessions there were doctors, nurses, behavioral scientists and others who were organizing them. What were they doing when this torture was going on? Well, you go through the detailed record and it turns out that they were designing and improving it. Just like Nazi doctors.

Robert Jay Lifton did a big study on Nazi doctors. He points out in connection with the Nazi doctors that, in a way, it’s not those individual doctors who had the final guilt, it was a culture and a society which accepted torture and criminal activities as legitimate. The same is true with the tortures at Abu Ghraib. Just to focus on them as if they’re somehow terrible people is just a serious mistake. They’re coming out of a culture that regards this as legitimate. Maybe there are some excesses you don’t really do but torture in interrogation is considered legitimate.

There’s a big debate now on, ‘Who’s an enemy combatant?’; a big technical debate. Suppose we invade another country and we capture somebody who’s defending the country against our invasion: what do you mean to call them an ‘enemy combatant’? If some country invaded the United States and let’s say you were captured throwing a rock at one of the soldiers, would it be legitimate to send you to the equivalent of Guantanamo, and then have a debate about whether you’re a ‘lawful’ or ‘unlawful’ combatant? The whole discussion is kind of, like, off in outer space somewhere. But, in a culture which accepts that we own and rule the world, it’s reasonable.

But, also, we should go back to the roots of the intellectual or moral culture, not just to the individuals directly involved.

At my school, the University of Arizona, there are courses in bioethics -- required ones, in fact, to hard scientific undergraduates (I took one, out of interest)-- which mostly just discuss scenarios in terms of ‘slippery slopes’ and hypothetical questions within certain bounds. There are l none at all in the social sciences or humanities. Do you think there should be? Would that be beneficial?

If they were honest, yes. If they’re honest they’d be talking about what we’re talking about, and doing case studies. There’s no point pontificating about high minded principles. That’s easy. Nazi doctors could do that, too.

Let’s take a look at the cases and ask how the principles apply - to Vietnam; to El Salvador; to Iraq; to Palestine -- just run through the cases and see how the principles apply to our own actions. That’s what is of prime importance, and what is least discussed.

As a note to end on, There seems to be some very serious aberrations and defects in our society and our level of culture. How, in your view, might they be corrected and a new level of culture be established, say, one in which torture isn’t accepted? (After all, slavery and child labor were each accepted for a long period of time and now are not.)

[font="Verdana Arial Helvetica sans-serif"][size=-1]Your examples give the answer to the question, the only answer that has ever been known. Slavery and child labor didn’t become unacceptable by magic. It took hard, dedicated, courageous work by lots of people. The same is true of torture, which was once completely routine.

Report: Court Secretly Struck Down Bush Spying

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. intelligence court earlier this year secretly struck down a key element of President George W. Bush's warrantless spying program, The Washington Post reported in its Friday edition.

The decision is one reason Congress is trying to give legal authorization to the spying program in fevered negotiations with the Bush administration this week, the Post reported.

The intelligence-court judge, who remains anonymous, concluded that the government had overstepped its authority by monitoring overseas communications that pass through the United States, the Post said, citing anonymous government and congressional sources.

The Bush administration expanded its surveillance efforts after the September 11, 2001, hijacking attacks, without court oversight. The court was allowed to review the program in January.

The surveillance court judge's ruling has prevented the National Security Agency from monitoring foreign telephone calls and e-mails that travel through the United States, the Post reported.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, mentioned the court setback on Fox News on Tuesday, drawing a rebuke from House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emmanuel.

A Boehner spokesman said he did not reveal classified information.

The Democratic-led Congress hopes to reach a deal with the White House in the next few days that would expand the government's power to eavesdrop on telephone calls and e-mail from abroad.

The effort would modernize the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court approval to monitor communications with people inside the United States.

The White House wants to bypass the court when spying on overseas foreigners, whether they are communicating with a U.S. citizen or not. Democrats object.

International Herald Tribune
The wrong way to contain Iran
By Karim Sadjadpour
Friday, August 3, 2007

WASHINGTON:

The announcement this week that the United States plans to sell over $20 billion worth of weaponry to Arab allies in order to counter Iran's ascendance in the Middle East appears to take a page out of Ronald Reagan's Cold War playbook: Simultaneously attempt to contain Iran and force it to spend money on an arms race instead of developing its moribund economy, intimidating it into bankruptcy.

One major flaw in this approach, however, is that it doesn't recognize that Iran's growing influence is due not to its impressive military force or expenditures (Saudi Arabia already spends four times as much as Iran), but rather its use of soft power and militias throughout the region in order to undercut the vastly superior hard power of the United States and Israel. Further arming Iran's Arab neighbors with billions of dollars of high-tech equipment (much of which they won't know how to use) does nothing to remedy this conundrum.

In the Cold War paradigm invoked by some Bush administration officials, Iran is the new Soviet Union and Iranian-backed extremists are the new Communists. While such an approach overstates Iran's global power and influence, on a regional level there are indeed Cold War parallels. Tehran and Washington both openly aspire to change the Middle East with competing ideologies, and both view conflicts in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and the Gulf as fronts in a larger war for the soul of the region.

Similar to Moscow, Tehran has generously armed and funded militant groups ever since the country's 1979 Islamic revolution. As opposed to the Soviet Union, however, today Iran's preferred vehicle of choice to spread its power and influence throughout the Middle East is, ironically, democratic elections. Though Iran's clerical rulers refuse to hold free and fair elections at home, the strong electoral showings of Hamas in Palestine, the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Shiite co-religionists in Iraq, has Tehran confident that their Islamist friends have won the battle for the region's hearts and minds, while Western-oriented liberals are in retreat. In the words of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, "Today, if a referendum is held in any Islamic country, the people will vote for individuals supporting Islam and opposing the United States."

Khamenei has a point. Opinion polls conducted among Arabs frequently rank Iran's firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahamdinejad, Hezbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and the Hamas leader Khaled Mish'al as the three most popular political figures in the region. These same surveys show nearly 80 percent of Egyptians and Jordanians have an unfavorable view of the United States. While the alarming depth of anti-Americanism in the Arab world could in the past be dismissed as a societal affliction with little tangible political costs, by pushing a democratic agenda in the Middle East the Bush administration has provided a concrete outlet for this rage.

But Iran's ambitions to be the vanguard of the largely Sunni Arab Middle East will ultimately be undermined by the fact that it is Shiite and Persian. Apart from the growing Sunni-Shiite rift, Muslim solidarity has never transcended the Arab-Persian divide. Moreover, despite popular admiration for Ahmadinejad, further probing usually reveals that the Arab street admires Iran much the same way that Latin Americans once romanticized Castro's Cuba: a defiant political order they praise from afar, but which they do not wish upon themselves.

Opinion polls show the Middle Eastern nation where Arabs most aspire to live is not the Islamic Republic of Iran or religiously austere Saudi Arabia, but economically thriving, socially lax and internationally integrated Dubai.

In an ideal world, Washington and Tehran would each do away with their grandiose ambitions for the region and reach a diplomatic accommodation, recognizing they have important overlapping interest in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan and combating Al Qaeda. But 28 years of deep-seated mutual mistrust and ill-will combined with the hubris of Bush and Ahmadinejad's administrations have effectively created a glum scenario whereby few good options exist: Iran's regional influence cannot be effectively contained nor militarily confronted, and similar to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, neither side believes the other is a genuine "partner for peace."

Given that neither side can achieve a decisive victory, a continued U.S.-Iran proxy war for hegemony in the Middle East will likely produce the same results witnessed in Lebanon last year: no clear winners, unnecessary and excessive civilian casualties, and more fertile ground for radical Sunni groups violently opposed to American, Iranian and Shiite influence. The standoff will continue to generate even greater civilian casualties in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, and, in the event of a U.S.-Iran military confrontation, oil-rich Gulf countries, causing significant upheaval to the global economy.

In this context, an additional $20 billion of military sales to the region will only make it more, not less, combustible, and does nothing to undermine Iranian soft power. The United States would be better suited selling $20 billion worth of education and economic infrastructure to the Middle East, helping to create flourishing societies and markets like Dubai, where young Arabs are talking about Islamic bonds rather than Islamic bombs, and Iran's Islamic Republic is not a noble regime worthy of admiration, but a failed political experiment which should be avoided, not replicated.

Formerly based in Tehran, Karim Sadjadpour is an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and director of the Carnegie Iran Initiative.

International Herald Tribune Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

India not to follow US on Iran
Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:10:19
Source: Press TV and Agencies

An Indian diplomat has said New Delhi would not obey Washington's policies on Iran in return for the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement.

Indian Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen, who is a leading member of the Indian negotiating team with the US on the agreement, added that linking this agreement with any other issue will be counter-productive, the United News of India (UNI) said.

It would never be acceptable to expect a large and democratic country such as India to give up its independence of judge and action, he said.

The pact, which has not been ratified by the US Congress yet, would prepare ground for India's access to the US nuclear fuel and equipment for the first time over the past 30 years.

Both parties of the US Parliament have firmly supported the pact but certain lawmakers have expressed concern over India's amicable relations with Iran.

The Indian diplomat has expressed his strong opposition to Washington's policy on Iran, saying no pressures should be imposed on India to make a decision.

SF/RA


© Press TV 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Turkey bids for Iran's oil projects
Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:05:31


The Turkish Ofisi Petrol Company has announced that it is willing to participate in Iran's oil exploration and extraction projects .

A statement released at Istanbul Stock Exchange said that Petrol Ofisi has signed a deal with Iran's PetroPars and Austria's OMV.

According to the inked document, the Turkish Company is authorized to submit proposals to participate in bids on Iran's oil projects.

Austria's largest Oil Co., OMV, NIOC subsidiary, PetroPars, and the Turkish Petrol Ofisi have formed a tripartite consortium dealing with oil exploration and production in Iran.

"Upon approval of NIOC, the consortium would be allowed to bid for oil projects in Iran and Petrol Ofisi's share will be 33 percent," added the statement.

Petrol Ofisi is one of the oldest oil enterprises in Turkey whose shares have gradually been transferred to the private sector.

MPR/HGH/RA

© Press TV 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Turkey ready for Kurdish tug-of-war
As the new Turkish parliament gets ready to convene on Saturday, rising tensions about Kurdish activities in northern Iraq will be high on the agenda as 22 members of the pro-Kurdish DTP sit around the table.

By Yigal Schleifer for EurasiaNet (03/08/07)


Amidst rising tensions about Kurdish activities in northern Iraq, the new Turkish parliament, which will convene for the first time on 4 August, will offer a sharp - if not potentially combustible - study in contrasts.

In one section will be the 22 members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), among them a lawyer who once represented jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, one of the most reviled figures in Turkey.

Meanwhile, not far from the DTP parliamentarians will be sitting the 70 members of the right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP), a hardline group that openly declared during the recent election campaign that, upon election, it would bring back capital punishment and hang Ocalan, who headed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Although its 14 percent of the vote was less than some polls had predicted, the nationalist MHP is now the third largest party in Turkey's parliament, behind the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which will control the body with 341 seats and the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP), which has 71.

During the politically turbulent 1970s, the party was known for its fascist leanings and street gangs, known as the Grey Wolves, who engaged leftist groups in running battles. Some 5,000 people died in the political violence, which ultimately led the military to seize power in 1980 in order to assert control.

Under its current leader, though, a former economics lecturer named Devlet Bahceli, the party has tried to clean up its image, kicking out many of its radicals and reining in its youth wing, which was responsible for the street gangs.

Observers say the party has pulled itself from the fringes of Turkey's political spectrum and closer towards the right side of the Turkish center, which many see as itself shifting to the right, increasingly defined by more open expressions of religious belief and nationalism.

"The MHP is trying to claim the center. As long as they don't represent a kind of extremism, which is what the MHP did in the 70’s with its armed street gangs, they will be in the center," said Umut Ozkirimli, a an expert on nationalism at Istanbul's Bilgi University.

In the days following Turkey's 22 July parliamentary vote, Bahceli and other party members have already tried to portray the MHP as a responsible player, announcing it would not oppose the AKP's choice for a new president, and also promising they will not provoke the DTP parliamentarians.

"As long as they don't challenge us, there won't be any fight," Bahceli said in a recent speech at the MHP's Ankara headquarters.

But the potential for conflict still remains. This time, between members of the DTP and the MHP, over the government's Kurdish policy.

The MHP's priorities in parliament all circle around questions related to the Kurdish issue. Gunduz Aktan, a respected former diplomat who is one of the new MHP parliamentarians, lists the party's main concerns as preventing the formation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, eliminating the presence of the PKK in northern Iraq and making sure that the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk does not fall under the control of the Kurdish administration there.

"These are the most significant issues for Turkey right now," Aktan said, adding that he would not feel "very comfortable sitting together with people who do not condemn the PKK and did not do so in the past."

At the same time, they also seem to be increasingly critical concerns for Turkey's military and government. Government officials have expressed concern that insufficient attention is being paid to PKK activities in northern Iraq. Reports have also circulated of a troop buildup on the border with Iraq.

That common ground could put the ruling AKP in a tricky situation. "The basic challenge is that the MHP and CHP will always provoke the AKP, so that they would have to ally themselves with the Kurds in parliament, which would make the government look bad in terms of where it stands on Turkish nationalism," commented Volkan Aytar, a researcher at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, an Istanbul-based think tank.

Running a campaign that tapped into fears over the surging number of attacks by Kurdish rebels in Turkey's southeast and a growing public perception that Turkey is not being dealt with fairly by the EU, which it hopes to join, the MHP was able to reenter parliament after being shut out in the previous election.

Analyst Aytar, however, contends that the party does not have the votes to block reforms that the Justice & Development Party needs to pursue for Turkey's chance at EU membership.

MHP parliamentarian Aktan says his party does not oppose Turkey's drive to join the EU, only the way some European countries - such as Germany and France - and leaders have treated Ankara's membership bid.

"They are still expecting a privileged partnership for Turkey, rather than full membership, and Turkey can never accept that. They are constantly dragging their feet on everything. They are doing this so that we don't have a hope for full membership," he said.

"Under these conditions, I can’t imagine why we should insist on membership."

As with the Kurdish question, for now, outside observers can only watch and see.

Editor’s Note: Yigal Schleifer is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Istanbul.



EurasiaNet provides information and analysis about political, economic, environmental, and social developments in the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as in Russia, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. The website presents a variety of perspectives on contemporary developments, utilizing a network of correspondents based both in the West and in the region. The aim of EurasiaNet is to promote informed decision making among policy makers, as well as broadening interest in the region among the general public. EurasiaNet is operated by the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute.

Bush criticizes talk of U.S. strike on Pakistan: govt
Fri Aug 3, 2007 7:35PM EDT

By Zeeshan Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday described the prospect of U.S. strikes against al Qaeda in Pakistan as "unsavory," saying Washington respected its ally's sovereignty, the Pakistani government said.

It said Bush made the comments to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a telephone call to congratulate Pakistanis ahead of the 60th anniversary of their independence on August 14.

Bush's comments followed a statement by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama this week that the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, a view Bush himself had earlier publicly espoused.

A Pakistani Foreign Ministry statement said, "President Bush stated that the United States fully respected Pakistan's sovereignty and appreciated Pakistan's resolve in fighting al Qaeda and other terrorist elements.

"He (Bush) said that such statements were unsavory and often prompted by political considerations in an environment of electioneering," the statement added, without making direct reference to Obama.

"He agreed that such statements did not serve the interests of either country."

In an interview with CNN in September 2006, Bush was asked if he would order U.S. forces to go after Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan if he received good intelligence on the fugitive al Qaeda leader's location. "Absolutely," he said.

"We would take the action necessary to bring him to justice," Bush said.

His Homeland Security adviser, Fran Townsend, confirmed that position on July 17: "There's no question the president has made perfectly clear if we had actionable targets anywhere in the world, putting aside whether it was Pakistan or anyplace else, we would pursue those targets."

LAWLESS TRIBAL REGIONS

Obama said on Wednesday if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government.

Pakistan's lawless tribal regions have long been used as a safe haven by al Qaeda and Taliban militants, and Islamabad is under growing pressure from the United States to do more against militant cells there.

A bill Bush is expected to sign ties Pakistan aid to progress against the militants.

Pakistan says its forces are capable of dealing with militants and has repeatedly rejected the idea of U.S. strikes on its territory.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Friday that Pakistan would not allow militants to use its territory against other states, and would not allow foreign forces to operate on its soil.

"The truth is Pakistan, being a sovereign country, will never allow any country to send troops to its territory for any purpose," he told reporters in remarks broadcast by state-run Pakistan Television.

Analysts say unilateral U.S. action in Pakistan could pose a major risk for its ally Musharraf, who is experiencing the weakest period in his eight-year rule after the reinstatement of the country's top judge, whom he had tried to sack.

He also faces a growing militant backlash after an army assault on Islamabad's Red Mosque, a radical Islamist bastion, last month.

More than 200 people, mainly police and soldiers, have been killed in attacks across Pakistan since the mosque assault. The government says 102 people died in the assault.

Last month, militants also scrapped a peace pact with the government in North Waziristan, a known safe haven for al Qaeda fighters and their Taliban allies.

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.

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

August 3, 2007

The Likelihood of a Republican President in 2009

By David Swanson

By David Swanson

America is quite likely to elect a Republican president in 2009. The first reason is that Republican election fraud has been well established since 2000. Bush and Cheney lost Florida, and therefore America, according to the recount completed by major media outlets after it was officially blocked by the Supreme Court. And they almost certainly would have lost by a much larger margin if not for the illegal purging of the rolls engaged in by Republicans. We've seen a growing array of tactics employed in several states in 2002, 2004, and 2006 to suppress and not count Democratic votes. Bush and Cheney clearly did not win in 2004, yet they are in office. And they have turned the U.S. Department of Justice into a wing of the Republican National Committee.

But a Republican could win in 2008 honestly if the Democrats nominate the wrong sort of candidate and if the Democratic Congress makes the wrong moves in the next year and a half. Remember, as unpopular as Bush is, the Democratic Congress is even more unpopular. The most important issue in this election, as in other recent elections, will be Iraq. It will be even more important than in the past, and the public is even more in support of withdrawal. Because of this, it would be very, very difficult for Hillary Clinton or John Edwards to win the election. The Republicans can be expected to air on our televisions over and over and over again the choicest bits of the speeches these two Senators made when authorizing Bush to attack Iraq. They professed to believe the whole litany of lies about WMDs. A video interspersing these speeches with clips of Clinton or Edwards later denouncing Bush and Cheney's lies would make the Democratic nominee look unprincipled and dishonest. Sean Hannity of Fox News recently brought just such a video to a debate he took part in with Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.

Now, Edwards may not be entirely unprincipled and dishonest. He has apologized for his war vote and advanced progressive majority positions on a variety of issues. Sadly, that does not change the fact that it will be virtually impossible for him, having given that speech, to win this election.

I don't think Clinton has ever been hampered by any principles or honesty. You can take footage of her speeches from any given week and edit together bits of her passionately contradicting herself. Most recently she is decisively both for and against speaking to hostile foreign leaders. Clinton cannot possibly win an election. Once you factor out the states that are unlikely to vote for a woman, even a brave and principled woman much less someone like Clinton, this is a tough climb. When you then factor out those on the left who will actively campaign against her or stay home, it begins to look impossible. If you then consider the way in which Clinton will galvanize those on the right who despise her, it's all over.

The Democrats in Congress are opposed to impeachment, in part because Clinton is opposed to it, and in part because they think she'll solve our nation's woes once elected. But they're also opposed because they think impeachment would galvanize their opponents. Nothing would do that as well as nominating Clinton. In contrast, forcing the Republicans to defend Bush and Cheney for the next year and a half would actually benefit the Democrats tremendously. Meanwhile, Clinton is not only unlikely to win, but has already committed to keeping the occupation of Iraq going until the end of her second term. Force her to admit that again in October 2008, and you can start singing the Republican Homeland National Anthem.

Now, Barack Obama did not vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq. But he has voted many times to fund the occupation. He has given speeches in support of doing so. He supports keeping open the possibility of aggressively attacking Iran, including with nuclear weapons. He has proposed launching an illegal aggressive attack on Pakistan. He, like Clinton and Edwards, does not favor a swift and complete end to the occupation of Iraq. The peace activists already planning to protest the Democratic Convention will only be energized if the nominee is Obama. Numerous researchers and scholars are already predicting a Democratic loss if the Democratic Party does not take a strong stand for getting out of Iraq. Obama will not do that. And, on top of this, he'll lose the white-racist vote.

Obama, unlike Clinton and Edwards, is not hopelessly handicapped, but he will not win if the direction he pursues resembles even remotely the path he has been taking for the past several months.

But if all of this is as obvious as I am suggesting, why, then, are these candidates ahead in the polls? Well, the other candidates who have announced thus far, and some of those still rumored to be considering jumping in, are not without their own shortcomings. And those with the best records on Iraq, like Congressman Dennis Kucinich, are effectively shut out by the media. There is a pattern well established in this country of the corporate media working very hard to nominate Democrats destined to lose. This is not all a conscious conspiracy. The media does simply favor those Democrats who most resemble Republicans. The problem is that voters don't share this taste. The Democrats' base prefers strong and principled Democrats to Republican-lite. And that tiny sliver of voters who swing between parties also prefers candidates with strong principles who stand up for what they believe in. Less important is what specifically they are standing up for.

Those Democrats who vote in primaries are very obedient to the media's dictates. But general election voters are not voting as strategists and pundits. They're voting as citizens. And the biggest determining factor is whether they stay home or are motivated to go and vote.

Democrats could win in 2008 by taking the following steps:

Requiring paper ballots in every election, and election oversight by non-partisan officials.

Impeaching and removing Alberto Gonzales, and establishing strict oversight of the Justice Department.

Taking strong and swift action on Iraq and impeachment. Over three-quarters of Democrats want Cheney impeached, and the demand for Cheney and Bush's impeachments will only grow over the coming year and a half if not answered. When the Democrats moved to impeach Nixon they then won the biggest victories in recent history. When they took the impeachment of Reagan off the table, they lost. 230 years of impeachment efforts tells the story. It always benefits a political party to push for impeachment, successfully or otherwise. The only exception is the Clinton impeachment, which was unique in terms of the public's opposition to it, which was apparent from the start. Even so, the Republicans held onto both houses of Congress and the White House. And Al Gore was so put on the defensive that he chose Lieberman as a running mate and campaigned as if he'd never met Bill Clinton.

The Democratic leadership in Congress should announce immediately that because all useful bills are vetoed, they are going to solve our nation's problems by other means:

First, they should announce that there will be no more bills to fund the occupation of Iraq. Then, unless Bush chooses to fund the occupation illegally, he will need to bring all troops and mercenaries and contractors home. He already has much more than enough funding to do that.

Second, Congressional leaders should announce the immediate opening of hearings investigating the grounds for impeaching Bush and Cheney. *

Third, they should pick a viable candidate to run for president, which means quite obviously someone who has never supported the invasion or occupation of Iraq, and someone who favors ending the occupation completely and immediately.

These steps would boost Congress's approval rating dramatically. No, not among Republicans. But if Democrats don't start focusing soon on winning the votes of Democrats, they are going to find out yet again that elections are determined by turnout, not by turncoats.

____________

* FOOTNOTE:

The impeachments should focus on these themes:

BUSH:

1. Refusal to comply with subpoenas (not disputable, and passed by the Judiciary Committee against Nixon)

2. Routine violation of numerous laws, preceded by announcement of intention to do so in signing statements (White House website and GAO study)

3. Violating U.S. law and the Constitution through widespread wiretapping of the phone calls and emails of Americans without a warrant. (Confessed to.)

4. Commuting the sentence of I Lewis Scooter Libby. (Both Madison and Mason argued at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that impeachment would protect against a president pardoning someone for a crime that he himself was involved in).

5. Violating the United Nations Charter by launching an illegal "War of Aggression" against Iraq without cause, using fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public, and misusing government funds to begin bombing without Congressional authorization.

6. Violating U.S. and international law by authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in dozens of deaths, and keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

7. Violating the Constitution by arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel.

8. Violating the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.

9. Violating U.S. law by using paid propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and exposing the identity of a covert CIA operative working on sensitive WMD proliferation for political retribution.

10. Violating U.S. and state law by obstructing honest elections in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006.

11. Gross negligence in failing to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina.


CHENEY:

1. Refusal to comply with subpoenas.

2. Creating and advocating the "Unitary Executive Theory" which is used by the White House to defy laws duly enacted by Congress and thereby justify dictatorial action. Cheney's office has drafted many if not all of the signing statements.

3. Cheney played a key role in setting up illegal spying programs.

4. Coordinating campaign to obstruct the investigation of Patrick Fitzgerald.

5. Coordinating a campaign of retribution against whistleblower Joseph Wilson, including the outing of a covert CIA operative.

6. Leading efforts to institute routine use of torture.

7. Leading campaign to manipulate pre-war intelligence.

8. Creating secret Energy Task Force which operated in defiance of open-government laws.

9. Directing massive no-bid contracts to his company, Halliburton, and profiting from the same illegal war he defrauded the American public to launch.

10-12 from H Res 333:
Cheney has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit….

Cheney purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit….

Cheney has openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States, to wit….

National Intelligence Estimate lacks supporting evidence, possibly politicized, intelligence officials say
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Wednesday July 25, 2007

Iran may be focus of Hezbollah spotlight

Current and former intelligence officials say the Bush Administration's National Intelligence Estimate regarding terrorist threats to the United States does not provide evidence to support its assertions and may have inflated the domestic threat posed by the Lebanese political and military group Hezbollah, perhaps because it receives financial support from Iran.

According to the report, Hezbollah – a Shi'a Muslim group with ties to Iran that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States – may target the US domestically if the US poses a serious threat to Iran. But sources say the allegations about Hezbollah were simply "thrown in."

Speaking under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, several intelligence officers asserted that the report was sloppy and lacked supporting evidence. "The NIE seems… fiddled [with]," regarding Hezbollah, one high-ranking CIA official said. "Whether it is or isn't is not really the point. The point is that nobody is ready to believe it."

"As regards to the Hezbollah 'threat,'" the official added, "they just threw that in. "Nobody in CIA talks to Hezbollah, and they're living off their assessments from back in the 80s, which they really never got right anyway."

An individual close to the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research told RAW STORY the document's assertions are not backed up by empirical or external evidence even in the classified version. In addition, this official explained, the information lacks context and does not prioritize threats.

Released last week, the NIE is a consensus view from all sixteen intelligence agencies and departments, compiled by the National Intelligence Council and signed off on by the agencies involved as well as by the Director for National Intelligence. The document represents the "official" intelligence community view on any issue related to national security.

Intelligence officials would not confirm whether the classified version contained dissenting views. However, several expressed concern that parts of the report may have been politicized.

"Perceived threat" or attack?

Sources familiar with the classified document take issue with the general wording regarding what Hezbollah might "perceive" as "posing a direct threat to the group or Iran." Both in its classified and declassified form, sources say, the NIE does not offer support for the assertion of a "perceived threat" and does not mention the possible use of US military force against Iran, which the White House has mulled for several years.

In a conversation with RAW STORY Tuesday, spokeswoman for the Director of National Intelligence Vanee Vines said "the key judgments of the NIE speak for themselves."

"It is a consensus view and a stand-alone document," Vines added.

The main analysis of the report focuses on the rise and resurgence of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Most sources interviewed for this article agreed with the general assertion provided in the analysis – that Pakistan is harboring al Qaeda and has a record of support for terrorism.

However, there are concerns about the way the report has been compiled. One former intelligence official says that the report is sloppy and that it would be "a mistake to read too much into it."

During a July 17 press briefing, Edward Gistaro, key drafter of the NIE and the national intelligence expert for transnational threats at the National Intelligence Council, said that the reason for considering Hezbollah as a potential source of real domestic threats comes "partly out of what we saw last summer in Lebanon where Hezbollah publicly said that they saw a U.S. hand in the conflict there."

But others – both current and former senior intelligence officials and case officers – find the threat of a domestic strike by Hezbollah very unlikely and question the reasoning behind including such a bold assertion in the NIE without context.

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer – a 20-year intelligence professional with expertise in the Middle East on whose book See No Evil the award winning film Syriana was based – is skeptical that Hezbollah will launch domestic attacks on US soil.

"Hezbollah had all the opportunity and motivation to [attack the U.S] during the last 24 years," Baer said in a conversation with RAW STORY last Friday. "Why in god's name would Hezbollah resort to terrorism against the west when it got what it wanted?"

"You'll know there's a Hezbollah domestic threat when the FBI makes a serious arrest" in relation to a terrorist plot.

In addition, the US has posed a "real external threat" to Iran for some time. Last year, RAW STORY revealed that the Bush Administration had begun using proxy groups to commit acts of terrorism within in Iran via a secretive Pentagon office authorized by the Office of the Vice President. Once such group, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world.

"They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all," one intelligence source said at the time.

The response from Hezbollah to these "threats" – including a US naval build up near Iranian waters – has been rather quiet.

Which agency contributed what analysis to the report?

All agencies claim to have contributed equally to the NIE, despite the fact that not all agencies have the same expertise or even the same scope of intelligence collection and analysis.

For example, the National Security Agency would likely have better source materials to back up assertions of cyber-terrorism than the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

RAW STORY asked the CIA to release a declassified raw version of their contribution to the NIE. The agency, which has commented in the past, has not replied.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that there are no declassified versions of each agency's raw report.

Is Hezbollah operating in the Americas?

The NIE does not specifically discuss if or how Hezbollah assets are operating in the Americas. But there have been allegations in the past of Hezbollah-affiliated individuals running "fund-raising" activities in the United States.

In 2000, for example, a grand jury in Charlotte, North Carolina indicted 25 men for various non-violent crimes, including money laundering, racketeering and related fraud charges. Investigators discovered a scheme whereby backers of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini planned to smuggle cigarettes from North Carolina, where taxes are lo, to be sold in Michigan, which has higher taxes.

There have been a number of such cases. Most focus on raising money to support Hezbollah-linked activities in the Middle East.

Some, however, appear more closely related to organized crime than to any Middle Eastern agenda. In a 2006 case, for example, an Israeli and a Lebanese were caught selling "Generation 3" night vision goggles to an undercover FBI agent. Although both pleaded guilty, an Israeli citizen working with a Lebanese national would suggest the motive was financial, not political.

Other profit-making scams and activities linked to Hezbollah have included drug trafficking, credit card fraud and counterfeit Viagra. These activities, however, mostly take place in Canada, Mexico and South America. None are known to have been violent, despite ample opportunity and "perceived" motive.

Professor of International Relations at Boston University Augustus Richard Norton, the author of a new book on Hezbollah titled Hezbollah: A Short Story, does not believe a Hezbollah-based attack on US soil is likely as long as the US does not attack Iran.

"The NIE language about the threat of an Hezbollah attack on the U.S. homeland basically states that it is conceivable that the group would attack in the US if the US attacked it or its sponsor, Iran," Dr. Norton wrote in an email to RAW STORY over the weekend.

"In contrast, al-Qaeda is accurately depicted as aggressively seeking to bring terrorism home to Americans," Norton added. "We may conceive of many unwelcome events, but the question is how likely is this to happen? Following the language of the NIE, I would argue that so long as the US does not pose an existential threat to Hezbollah, or to Iran, the likelihood of an attack by Hezbollah on U.S. soil is low."

Dr. Norton noted that, unlike Al Qaeda, Hezbollah is a group that does not act impulsively, focusing on the strategic rather than on the immediate.

"All in all, this is a rational group that does not flail blindly, and which clearly understands what a ladder of escalation implies," he said. "Personally, I will lose a lot more sleep worrying about what al-Qaeda might try to do in the USA than what Hezbollah might do under highly contingent circumstances. We need to keep our eye on the ball and not get diverted by relatively unlikely scenarios."

Is Intelligence politicized or just sloppy?

US foreign policy and its approach to terrorism are based on political decisions, which then trickle down inadvertently, or in some cases surreptitiously, into intelligence analysis.

According to the US State Department, only five countries are listed as sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Greece, and the Philippines – which have also supported terrorism – are not on the list.

According to a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service, the CIA has no proof of Cuba sponsoring terrorism.

"We have no credible evidence, however, that the Cuban government has engaged in or directly supported international terrorist operations in the past decade, although our information is insufficient to say beyond a doubt that no collaboration has occurred," the report says, citing a 2003 CIA statement.

The same report – while listing Iran, North Korea and Syria – puts priority on Pakistan, but provides sourcing and evidence for its assertions.

"In Pakistan, repeated assassination attempts on President Musharraf, allegations and admissions of nuclear assistance to North Korea, Iran, and Libya, and a continuous battle with terrorist elements within the country, have made Pakistan the most crucial node of the nexus of terrorism and WMD proliferation," the report says.

Pakistan is not on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Moreover, Pakistan receives US funding and is considered an ally in the US-led war on terror, which thus far has targeted Iraq, Afghanistan and, covertly, Iran.

Sources familiar with the information contained in the NIE have described what appears to be a myriad of allegations with little evidence to back up specific claims, including the assertions that Al Qaeda has regrouped and that it has spawned a sub-group called Al Qaeda in Iraq. While none claim the report is patently wrong, they take umbrage with the way the document was compiled.

During a Sunday television appearance, Department of Homeland Security Advisor to the President Frances Townsend claimed that, according to CIA Director General Hayden, nearly half of all of the sourcing in the classified version of the NIE came from interrogations.

"Look at the NIE, which you were just talking about, General Hayden tells me that nearly half of the references, what people might call footnotes in the NIE, came from detainee interrogation," Townsend remarked. "Nearly 100 people who have been through that program, only a third of them had had interrogation-enhanced techniques against them, and they generated 8500 terrorism intelligence reports."

Detainee interrogations have been broadly criticized. Information used at several military tribunals has been revealed as the product of finger-pointing by other detainees trying to curry favor with their US captors.

Is there a focus on terrorism funding?

Sources interviewed for this article would not comment on whether Saudi Arabia was discussed or if terrorism funding was addressed in the classified version of the report.

One former high-ranking CIA official believes that the funding of terrorism should be seen as a priority target. The official said, however, that instead of "following the money," law enforcement and counter-terrorism efforts should be aimed at "following the heroin," the single largest currency for the terrorist market.

According to the US Department of Justice, as of 2005, Afghanistan was the leading supplier of heroin in the world. Its rise to that position followed the US-Afghanistan War, after which the US largely abandoned Afghanistan to focus on Iraq.

Table 6. Potential Worldwide Heroin Production, in Metric Tons, 2001-2005
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Mexico 10.7 6.8 11.9 8.6 8.0
Colombia 11.4 8.5 7.8 3.8 *
Afghanistan 7.0 150.0 337.0 582.0 526.0
Burma 82.0 60.0 46.0 32.0 36.0
Laos 19.0 17.0 19.0 5.0 3.0
Pakistan 1.0 1.0 5.0 NA 4.0
Thailand 1.0 1.0 NA NA NA
Vietnam 1.0 1.0 NA NA NA
Guatemala NA NA NA 1.4 0.4
Total 133.1 245.3 426.7 632.8 577.4

White House again denies DeFazio's information request
Posted by The Oregonian August 02, 2007 17:00PM

WASHINGTON -- The White House formally declined Rep. Peter DeFazio's request to view the classified portion of a plan to operate the government after a catastrophe.

Last month the White House had said it would not provide the information to DeFazio, a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee. So DeFazio and two committee leaders wrote wrote a letter to White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend formally requesting he be provided access to the documents.

In a response dated Wednesday, Townsend wrote that the White House is "unable to share them with the membership and staff of the Committee."

Townsend's written response confirmed discussions that Homeland Security Committee staff had with White House staffers last month. The White House had initially said DeFazio could view the documents but later told committee staff that he would not be able to access them.

"I'm disturbed," DeFazio said in an interview this evening. "I thought that perhaps some knee-jerk lower-level functionary responding to their usual obsession with secrecy and exclusion had sent the verbal denial."

Members of the Homeland Security Committee sign an oath not to disclose classified information that they view as part of their committee work. They view documents in a secure room in the Capitol.

In her letter, Townsend cited the sensitive nature of the information.

"It has long been the policy of the executive branch -- predating the current Administration -- to treat specific continuity operational details as extremely sensitive," Townsend wrote. "Traditionally the executive branch has briefed the most senior congressional leadership on sensitive continuity information."

Before deciding his next step in attempting to view the information, DeFazio said he will investigate whether the House leadership has been briefed on the plan, as Townsend implied.

"There's some very vague assertion of some sort of offer to or briefing of congressional leaders," DeFazio said. "We're checking with the Speaker and Majority Leader."

-- Jeff Kosseff
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Bush Isn't Spying on al Qaeda ... He's Spying on You

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted August 4, 2007.

The extraordinary secrecy surrounding the spying operations revealed in Alberto Gonzales' Senate testimony is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.

The dispute over whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales committed perjury when he parsed words about George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance program misses a larger point: the extraordinary secrecy surrounding these spying operations is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.

There has never been a reasonable explanation for why a fuller discussion of these operations would help al-Qaeda, although that claim often is used by the Bush administration to challenge the patriotism of its critics or to avoid tough questions.

On July 27, for instance, White House press secretary Tony Snow fended off reporters who asked about apparent contradictions in Gonzales's testimony by saying:

"This gets us back into the situation that I understand is unsatisfactory because there are lots of questions raised and the vast majority of those we're not going to be in a position to answer, simply because they do involve matters of classification that we cannot and will not discuss publicly."

Discussion closed.

But al-Qaeda terrorists always have assumed that their electronic communications were vulnerable to interception, which is why 9/11 attackers like Mohamed Atta traveled overseas for face-to-face meetings with their handlers. They limited their phone calls to mostly routine conversations.

The terrorists also had no reason to know or to care that the U.S. government was or wasn't getting wiretap approval from the secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They simply took for granted that their communications could be intercepted and acted accordingly.

It never made sense to think that al-Qaeda terrorists suddenly would get loose-lipped just because the FISA court was or wasn't in the mix. The FISA court rubber-stamps almost all wiretap requests from the Executive Branch for domestic spying, and overseas calls don't require a warrant.

Can anyone really imagine a conversation like "Gee, Osama, since Bush has to get FISA approval, we can now call our sleeper agents and plan the next attack."

Similarly, there's no reason to think terrorists would change their behavior significantly if they knew that the U.S. government was engaged in massive data-mining operations, poring through electronic records of citizens and non-citizens alike.

The 9/11 attackers mostly stayed off the grid and many of their transactions, such as renting housing, would not alone have raised suspicions. Indeed, the patterns that deserved more attention, such as enrollment in flight-training classes and the arrival of known al-Qaeda operatives, were detected by alert FBI agents in the field but ignored by FBI officials in Washington -- and by Bush while on a month-long vacation in Texas.

The 9/11 attacks were less a failure of intelligence than a failure of political attention by Bush's national security team.

Americans in the Dark

So what's the real explanation for all the secrecy about the overall structure of the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program?

The chief reason, especially for the excessive secrecy around the data-mining operations, appears to be Bush's political need to prevent a full debate inside the United States about the security value of these Big Brother-type procedures when weighed against invasions of Americans' privacy.

Bush knows he could run into trouble if he doesn't keep the American people in the dark. In 2002, for instance, when the Bush administration launched a project seeking "total information awareness" on virtually everyone on earth involved in the modern economy, the disclosure was met with public alarm.

The administration cited the terrorist threat to justify the program which involved applying advanced computer technology to analyze trillions of bytes of data on electronic transactions and communications. The goal was to study the electronic footprints left by every person in the developed world during the course of their everyday lives -- from the innocuous to the embarrassing to the potentially significant.

The government could cross-check books borrowed from a library, fertilizer bought at a farm-supply outlet, X-rated movies rented at a video store, prescriptions filled at a pharmacy, sites visited on the Internet, tickets reserved for a plane, borders crossed while traveling, rooms rented at a motel, and countless other examples.

Bush's aides argued that their access to this electronic data might help detect terrorists, but the data could prove even more useful in building dossiers on anti-war activists or blackmailing political opponents. A targeted individual would have almost no privacy in the face of an all-knowing government.

Despite the administration's assurance that political abuses wouldn't happen, the capability would be a huge temptation for political strategists like Karl Rove who have made clear that they view anyone not supporting Bush's war on terror as a terrorist ally.

In 2002, the technological blueprint for this Orwellian-style project was on the drawing board at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon's top research and development arm. DARPA commissioned a comprehensive plan for this electronic spying -- and did so publicly.

"Transactional data" was to be gleaned from electronic data on every kind of activity -- "financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, critical resources, government, communications," according to the Web site for DARPA's Information Awareness Office.

The program would then cross-reference this data with the "biometric signatures of humans," data collected on individuals' faces, fingerprints, gaits and irises. With this knowledge at its fingertips, the government would have what it called "total information awareness" about pretty much everyone.

Masonic Eye

The Information Awareness Office even boasted a logo that looked like some kind of clip art from George Orwell's 1984. The logo showed the Masonic symbol of an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid peering over the globe, with the slogan, "scientia est potentia," Latin for "knowledge is power."

Though apparently unintentional, DARPA's choice of a giant white pyramid eerily recalled Orwell's Ministry of Truth, "an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air." The all-seeing Masonic eye could be read as "Big Brother Is Watching."

Former Vice President Al Gore and some civil libertarians noted these strange similarities both in style and substance to Orwell's totalitarian world.

"We have always held out the shibboleth of Big Brother as a nightmare vision of the future that we're going to avoid at all costs," Gore said. "They have now taken the most fateful step in the direction of that Big Brother nightmare that any president has ever allowed to occur."

Besides the parallels to 1984, the administration's assurances about respecting constitutional boundaries were undercut by its provocative choice of director for the Information Awareness Office. The project was headed by President Reagan's former national security adviser John Poindexter, who was caught flouting constitutional safeguards and federal laws in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s.

Poindexter was the White House official who approved the transfer of profits from the sale of missiles to Iran's Islamic fundamentalist government to Nicaraguan contra rebels for the purchase of weapons, thus circumventing the Constitution's grant of war-making power to Congress. Under U.S. law at the time, military aid was banned to both Iran and the contras.

In 1990, Poindexter was convicted of five felonies in connection with the Iran-Contra scheme and the cover-up. But his case was overturned by a conservative-dominated three-judge appeals court panel, which voted 2-1 that the conviction was tainted by congressional immunity given to Poindexter to compel his testimony to Congress in 1987.

Though Poindexter's Iran-Contra excesses in the 1980s might have been viewed by some as disqualifying for a sensitive job overseeing the collection of information about nearly everyone on earth, DARPA said it sought out such committed characters to run its projects.

"The best DARPA program managers have always been freewheeling zealots in pursuit of their goals," the agency's Web site said. [For more details on this and other Bush administration authoritarian-style projects, see our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]

'Scrapped' Program

When the "total information awareness" project was disclosed, public outrage forced the Bush administration into retreat, ousting Poindexter and supposedly scrapping the massive data-mining program.

What is now apparent, however, is that the Bush administration simply took many of these data-mining features and put them under the rubric of what's known generally as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or as administration insiders call it, "the TSP."

The data-mining component of the operation is considered so sensitive that in December 2005 when Bush acknowledged the TSP's warrantless wiretapping, he continued his silence about the data-mining aspect.

That distinction is at the heart of the dispute about Gonzales's testimony. The Attorney General told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no significant internal disagreement about the legality of the surveillance program undertaken by the National Security Agency, which is responsible for high-tech electronic spying.

However, senior senators -- after noting that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller recounted high-level threats to resign over the project's legality -- raised questions about whether Gonzales had committed perjury.

In a letter to senior members of the Judiciary Committee on Aug. 1, Gonzales acknowledged that he had parsed his words narrowly.

"I recognize that the use of the term Terrorist Surveillance Program and my shorthand reference to the 'program' publicly 'described by the president' may have created confusion, particularly for those who are knowledgeable about the N.S.A. activities authorized by the presidential order," the Attorney General wrote.

A day earlier, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell made a similar point in a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania. McConnell wrote that after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed a single executive order which authorized "a number of … intelligence activities."

Defending Gonzales's from perjury accusations, McConnell revealed that, in administration jargon, the Terrorist Surveillance Program is only "one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more." [Washington Post, Aug. 1, 2007]

Real Reasons

Yet, whether Gonzales's legalistic parsing crossed the line into perjury or not, the larger question is why the Congress and the American people have been kept so ignorant of these programs that the administration feels it can get away with playing word games.

Since al-Qaeda already assumes it's under tight scrutiny -- and since technical secrets of the surveillance program could still be legitimately classified -- there appears to be no compelling operational reason for blocking a more informed public debate that would weigh the proper balance between liberty and security in a democratic society.

Yet, because of the secrecy that Bush has pulled down around these operations, neither Congress nor the people can evaluate whether the trade-offs of liberty for security are worth it. Leading senators can't even make an informed judgment about whether Gonzales lied to them.

But that, of course, might be exactly the point. The real purpose of all the secrecy appears to be to enable the Bush administration to construct an authoritarian framework -- similar to the "total information awareness" concept -- without the American people knowing that their liberties are facing a draconian threat from intrusive government spying.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/58806/?page=1

Fight Looms over Construction of Huge Texas-Mexico Freeway

By Sterry Butcher, Texas Observer. Posted August 4, 2007.

The talk in West Texas this summer is La Entrada al Pacífico, and it's either a great opportunity to develop an international trade route, or it's a wretched plan that would ruin the pristine Big Bend region of Texas.



The talk in West Texas this summer is La Entrada al Pacífico, and it's either a great opportunity to develop an international trade route, or it's a wretched plan that would ruin the pristine and unique qualities of the Big Bend region on the Rio Grande border with Mexico. There's not much sentiment in between.

Both sides hope a study by the Texas Department of Transportation will clarify La Entrada's short- and long-term impacts. At the crux of the issue are three questions: Are the trucks coming, and if they are, how many, and when?

La Entrada's pitch goes like this. Cargo ships from Asia and overflow ship traffic from Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Seattle will put in at a deepwater port in Topolobampo, Sinaloa, on Mexico's Sea of Cortez. From there, merchandise will be loaded onto trucks and railcars and transported across the vertiginous Sierra Nevada and Copper Canyon, through Chihuahua City eastward until it crosses into the U.S. at Presidio. Then the trucks will rumble up U.S. Highway 67, through Shafter ghost town and by Chinati Peak. Past Donald Judd's concrete boxes outside Marfa, the trucks will hang a right at the town's single, blinking red light and head for Alpine, where they'll duck under a low train overpass and chug straight through downtown. A few miles out of town, it's a left turn to Fort Stockton, then on to McCamey before turning onto U.S. 385 to Midland and Odessa.

The Midland-Odessa area is known for oil rather than commercial shipping or distribution. La Entrada promoters have set out to change that. The notion of the Entrada corridor was born in the mid-1990s, when the price of crude was generally less than $20 a barrel and the Permian Basin's oil-driven economy wasn't as bullish as today. Launched by a group called the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance, or MOTRAN, and members of Chihuahua state's economic development department, La Entrada promised to lift northern Mexico and the Permian Basin out of economic doldrums, and diversify business and job opportunities.

Midland-Odessa may be 800 miles from the Pacific Ocean, but folks from the Permian Basin dream big. "We originally started looking at an extension of I-27 from Lubbock to Midland-Odessa," says Charles Perry, MOTRAN's founder and a current director. "It helped to anchor it with a route on into Mexico, because at that time, NAFTA had just passed, and there was a push for better connections to Mexico. The more we looked at it, the more it really made good sense."

Over the years, MOTRAN has successfully lobbied for state and federal funding to improve highway infrastructure around the basin; some of the roads are linked to Entrada's route for commercial traffic. And they're proud of the support they've had at home: MOTRAN's website prominently features a photo of then-governor George W. Bush, a Midlander, signing legislation naming La Entrada an official state corridor back in 1997. Bush was in office -- this time in the White House -- when La Entrada won its 2005 federal designation as a "high priority corridor" on the national highway system. The group helped push for federal designation of the route. Little green signs that read "La Entrada al Pacífico" dot sections of the highway.

Big Bend residents have kept a collective eye on La Entrada for years, especially because of Mexico's progress with its road upgrades. Mexico, it seemed, was eager to advance. A new bypass was engineered and built around the steep, winding Peguis mountain range between Chihuahua City and the border town of Ojinaga. Economic development and transportation officials from Sinaloa and Chihuahua told Texas transportation officials about specific plans for the Entrada route through their states. Many of those improvements still have a long, long way to go before they're completed, but dire predictions started appearing in West Texas about the anticipated increase in truck traffic on La Entrada. Freight traffic at the Presidio port of entry has risen in the last decade from 2,897 crossings in 1996 to 6,616 last year. Those numbers don't offer an accurate window into how future traffic may evolve. Traffic projections for Entrada so far are wildly variable.

"There have been published figures that go from 25 trucks a day both ways to 4,000 a day," says Don Dowdey, president of the very active Big Bend chapter of the Sierra Club. "People tell me they've seen 5,000 a day published."

A 2006 report by Texas Transportation Institute researcher William Frawley strikes Dowdey as more accurate than others he's seen. Frawley calculates that 35 to 292 trucks going both ways per day would be diverted to the Presidio port within about five years.

"He went to Chihuahua and talked to shippers there about what they'd be shipping," Dowdey says. "It's the only study I've seen based on real data. And that's still a very large gap."

The route's multiple logistical problems make it hard to answer the "if, how many, and when" questions. The port at Topolobampo needs significant improvement -- maybe two years of work that hasn't yet begun, says a Chihuahua official. It must be deepened to handle really large commercial ships, and no port management firm has signed on to oversee the facility. There's no highway built yet that could sustain semitrucks carrying goods across the Sierra Nevada. The tunnels for rail traffic through Copper Canyon are too low to double-stack container cars, and the grade is too steep in places for long trains. Commercial traffic is processed by customs and border-protection personnel from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., weekdays only, at Presidio's international bridge. A plan to allow Mexican trucks and drivers into the U.S. -- and U.S. drivers into Mexico -- is still pending. La Entrada's original proposal calls for a four-lane highway through communities now served only by two lanes. Those little towns, like Marfa and Alpine, are ill-equipped for a tremendous increase in traffic volume, and construction of more lanes or bypasses would be years away.

That's what makes the current TxDOT study, the first comprehensive look at the route, so important. MOTRAN lobbied for the $1 million in federal funds that were eventually set aside for the study; the state kicked in another $600,000.

"What we're looking at is determining the feasibility of a four-lane, divided highway between Midland-Odessa and Presidio," says Peggy Thurin, statewide planning coordinator for TxDOT. "We'll be looking at the nationally designated La Entrada route and also other potential routes that the public has identified and our data have identified."

Then there's the awfulness factor. The Big Bend is wide and empty and isolated and severe, and that's why people like it. The city of Presidio could use the economic boost additional truck trade could bring, but locals in the rest of the area worry that traffic from a four-lane highway would spoil the country, blacken the air, and thwart tourists who come by the thousands. There's more state parkland in Brewster and Presidio counties than in all the rest of the state, say conservationists. Big Bend National Park alone is 801,000 acres.

"We're a place you can come to and get away," says Fran Sage, a Sierra Club member from Brewster County. "For us, La Entrada would be the destruction of one of the last places you can go to live or visit and have a satisfying experience with other people and the land. Once you run trucks through this area, it will never be the same again. Once it's gone, it's gone."

Dowdey adds: "To say this is a special area and needs saving is not a radical idea at all."

The TxDOT study began last fall, and by this spring, it was time to hold public meetings. The audience at Alpine's meeting on March 13 was 400-strong. The school auditorium was too small to hold everyone, and the crowd spilled onto the sidewalk. Asked for a show of those in favor of La Entrada, one soul, a trucking operator from Presidio, raised his hand. There were passionate speeches and strong feelings. About 40 people spoke, bringing up concerns that ranged from health issues to the safety of Mexican trucks to the desire for peace and quiet. Some thought the route benefited Midland-Odessa at the expense of the Big Bend.

"It grieves me that our state leaders would sacrifice this region for a few people in Midland," says Bill Addington, an activist and Sierra Blanca resident.

Many at the Alpine meeting also attended similar gatherings in Fort Stockton and Midland.

"I was a little surprised at the number of people who were at the Alpine meeting," Thurin says. "I think it's great. What the whole process is about is to talk to folks -- and they were willing to talk."

To tackle issues involved in the trade route, the consulting firm working on the study with TxDOT is meeting this summer with small groups of stakeholders to focus on La Entrada. A second round of public meetings will be held in late August or early September. A third round occurs around the first of next year. The research involves traffic models, current traffic, and a forecast of traffic in 20 to 30 years, information gleaned in part from discussions with the Mexican side of the Entrada equation. The study will be complete in spring 2008.

"Generally, at the end of the feasibility study, the results are turned over to district engineers," Thurin says. "If we find a four-lane, divided highway isn't feasible, but that we may see quite a bit of traffic, say around Marfa, one of our recommendations may be to look at a relief route. From that point, the districts would still need route-location studies to pinpoint exactly where the route would go and find funding. It's not like at the end of the study we'd be throwing down pavement immediately."

She assured the Alpine crowd this spring that the study would have no foregone conclusions.

"This is not a done deal," she says. "A lot of people assume that because there's a designated corridor, that we're going through the motions. That's not what we're doing, I promise. We're giving a good, unbiased eye to the corridor and seeing what we find."

Thurin had never visited the Big Bend before the Entrada study. "It's beautiful out there," she says. "I can appreciate people wanting to protect it. But if you have a lot of trucks that are really coming, it's better to prepare to address those should that be the case."

But are they coming? Big Bend residents aren't waiting for solid numbers and traffic forecasts to tell TxDOT what they think of the Entrada corridor. They've responded to the study and its call for public comment with zeal. A blog called Stopthetrucks.org is now online. The group Stewards of the Big Bend has organized. Letter-writing campaigns have been carried out. Café workers wear "Stop La Entrada" shirts. Petitions about La Entrada circulate at Marfa's weekly farmer's market. Homemade "Stop La Entrada" signs have popped up.

Despite the percolating anti-Entrada vibe in the Big Bend, Perry remains a staunch booster. Commercial traffic, he says, is like water -- it will seek the path of least resistance. He believes truckers will look to Presidio to escape the snarled port at El Paso.

"Some locals don't want it," he says. "I try to tell them, whether this traffic comes is not my decision. Realistically, this route is easier than going through El Paso. We should get ready for what we think is coming in the future and not wait until someone is strangling with traffic. Let's get the bypasses built first so we don't disrupt the local communities. A truck is not going to be diverted by a T-shirt or a sign in the yard."


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Alternate routes have been floated at area commissioners' court meetings, though some don't seem too viable. One follows the Rio Grande through Candelaria and then up to Van Horn. Parts of it are difficult without a high-clearance vehicle, but the trucks would skip Marfa and Alpine entirely that way. Another would send trucks west from Marfa to Jeff Davis County, where they'd be shunted toward Interstate 10 at Kent on a section of a lovely, winding road known as the "Scenic Loop." The absolute shortest route from Presidio to I-10 goes through downtown Marfa and Fort Davis. It doesn't seem like there's a good alternative out there.

Unless you start thinking rail. It's possible that hundreds of trucks could be taken off the roads if their cargo containers were put on rail at Presidio. TxDOT owns the South Orient rail line from Presidio to San Angelo, and it's leased to a Mexican company called Texas-Pacífico. Here, too, are multiple problems: The track is decrepit in many places, and the speed on much of the line tops out at 10 mph. It would take many millions to get rail running, but according to one Chihuahua state official, rail is how the cargo will come -- if it comes.

"The road is not complete; there's still 250 kilometers to do on the road," says Armando Correa, an engineer for the Chihuahua state office of industrial development. "The highway at this moment is not possible because the Mexican government has no money to finance it. It's all mountain, it's too expensive, and we need the money for more uses than that road. The plan is to do it by rail. The railroad can only pull 20 cars; the most it can run is two runs per day, 40 cars. And we still have problems because the port has to be redone. We have a long way to go."

Correa points out that for Chihuahua, the goal of the Entrada corridor isn't simply to funnel goods to the U.S. "That's not the purpose of the corridor," he says. "If that were to be the case, there'd be no gain; we'd only see a train go by, and that would not give us any work. The purpose is to improve the conditions of the mountain region, which is very poor."

Once the shipping trade from Topolobampo gets going, he says, much of the merchandise would stay with Chihuahuan maquiladoras or be carried on to Juarez.

"Later on, maybe three, four, or five years, then some of the merchandise will go to Dallas," Correa adds.

While the Entrada corridor is being parsed here, some lively port planning is going on elsewhere. Government officials in Baja, California, this summer announced plans to open bids later this year for construction and development of a $9 billion "megaport" at Punta Colonet, south of Ensenada. The 6,200-acre megaport, which includes a rail component, will be adjacent to Baja's modern, transpeninsular highway that zips straight to San Diego two hours to the north. Promoters say it will be larger than the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports combined, handling 6 million to 8 million container units annually. Other Pacific port developments are ongoing at Lázaro Cárdenas and Manzanillo.

Perry is undaunted by the specter of competition. He maintains there's room for everyone.

"Topolobampo is a long-term deal," he says. "The ports at Long Beach and L.A. are going to continue to handle the traffic they can. With Topolobampo, we're talking years in the future, when they can no longer handle the traffic."

Still, the improvements needed at Topolobampo, the other ports in development, building the transmountain highway, constructing extra lanes or bypasses around Marfa and Alpine, pouring money into rail upgrades to the South Orient -- taken piece by piece, the logistics and cost of La Entrada seem nearly insurmountable, like maybe it won't happen.

"It will," Perry says. "When we started this, I said it would not happen in my lifetime. I'm 77, and it's not going to happen in my lifetime. We felt like this is a 40-year project, and it probably is. Over the next several years, we'll see steadily increasing traffic counts. As the congestion increases in the major areas like El Paso, then everybody is going to look for alternate routes to avoid that congestion. How do you stop it?"

http://www.alternet.org/environment/58669/?page=1

Can We Pursue Terrorists Without Becoming Like Them?

By John Feffer and John Gershman, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted August 1, 2007.

From torture to warrantless wiretapping, the Bush administration's approach to terrorism has defied legal standards at all levels.

Back in September 2002, Maher Arar was passing through JFK airport in New York. He was expecting a simple transit. A Syrian-born Canadian citizen and wireless technology consultant, Arar was traveling home to Ottawa after a vacation with his family in Tunis. The stopover in New York was the best deal he could get with his frequent flyer miles. He had no inkling of what would happen next. He didn't know that he would spend the next ten months being tortured in a secret jail.

At the airport immigration line, U.S. officials pulled Arar aside. They fingerprinted and photographed him. They didn't let him make any phone calls. They didn't let him contact a lawyer. Interrogated about his connections to another Syrian-born Canadian, a bewildered Arar did his best to answer the questions. The authorities were not satisfied. They transferred him to New York's Metropolitan Detention Center where he spent more than a week. Then, based on evidence that they would not share with him, U.S. immigration officials informed Arar that he would be deported to Syria. He objected that he was a Canadian citizen, that the United States couldn't just send him to another country, particularly not Syria, where they might well torture him. Heedless, U.S. officials loaded him onto a private plane and flew him to Jordan, where he was beaten before being driven across the border into Syria.

In Syria, Arar was imprisoned in a cell that was just large enough for him to stand. He was repeatedly tortured and forced to sign a false confession. Only as a result of outside pressure--by his wife, by human rights organizations, by the Canadian consulate--was he finally released and returned home. Two years later, a Canadian Commission of Inquiry cleared Arar of all charges of terrorism. Yet the United States still bars him from visiting the country. An innocent man caught up in the machinery of fear created by the U.S. "global war on terror," Arar will bear the scars of his experience for the rest of his life.

Maher Arar's story illustrates the key problems with the Bush administration's approach to terrorism and how it has defied legal standards at all levels. In the United States, the administration suspended key civil liberties. It imprisoned over 5,000 foreign nationals, subjected 80,000 Arab and Muslim immigrants to fingerprinting and registration, sent 30,000 "national security letters "every year to U.S. businesses demanding information about their customers, and justified the large-scale, warrantless wiretapping of citizens. It denied the right of habeas corpus to both American and non-American detainees and plans to continue to restrict the legal rights of terrorism suspects by trying them in military tribunals rather than civilian courts.

At the international level, the administration rationalized the use of torture and rendition. It presided over gross human rights violations in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Camp Delta at Guantanamo, Cuba, a series of rendition sites in Europe, and elsewhere. At the geopolitical level, it broke international law by pursuing a preventive war against Iraq. It failed to capitalize on the international goodwill directed at Washington after September 11 by brokering a broad, multilateral effort against terrorism. Instead, the United States ignored promising overtures from longstanding adversaries, rejected the advice of previously close allies, and set dangerous precedents that will haunt U.S. foreign policy for decades. Through it all, American policymakers either relied on or hid behind the excuse of faulty intelligence, which contributed to the failures to track the September 11 perpetrators prior to the attacks and continued to entrap innocent victims like Maher Arar in the post-September 11 era.

The "global war on terror" has been going on now for over six years. Its emphasis on military responses--in Afghanistan and Iraq--has only swelled the ranks of terrorist organizations. The erosion of civil liberties has undermined democracy at home and raised serious doubts abroad about U.S. credibility. The failure to put adequate funds into homeland security--particularly port and border protection--has put too great a burden on local governments. The hostility to international mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court has weakened the very institutions that can properly address terrorist organizations. And the refusal to address the root causes of terrorism--economic inequality, repressive regimes, foreign occupation--has ensured that the conditions continue to flourish that produce if not the terrorists themselves then the communities of anger and alienation that support terrorist organizations.

A just counter-terrorism policy would shift the focus away from military solutions, which have done so little to improve the security of the United States and have sent Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia into tailspins of insecurity. It would focus on strengthening homeland security and the international mechanisms that hold terrorists accountable. And it would attack the enabling conditions that are laid out in this document--economic inequality, the international health crisis, unjust dictatorships, and regional wars.

The Chinese have a saying: before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. The U.S. pursuit of vengeance, rather than justice, has been similarly self-defeating.

Core Misconceptions

Fear disables rational thinking. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes how rapid heartbeat and adrenaline rush distort the immediate perceptions of frightened people. They make mistakes. They see guns where there are no guns. They misread facial expressions. They come to the wrong conclusions.

Since September 11, the United States has been kept in an artificially prolonged state of fear. The Bush administration has used this fear to advance a fundamentally irrational and un-American agenda. As a result, America has misidentified terrorists, seen weapons of mass destruction where they don't exist, and supported quick-draw military solutions when diplomacy would have been more appropriate.

Such fear has paralyzed the U.S. system in the past--during the McCarthy period of the Cold War, during the Red Scare after World War I, in the era of Jim Crow legislation in the South, in 1798 when Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Today, by contrast, the paranoia behind the Bush administration's counter-terrorism campaign threatens to sustain a global crusade of unlimited scope and duration. Even during the Cold War, the United States negotiated with the object of its worst fears. The current regime of fear is more theological in nature. "We don't negotiate with evil," Vice President Dick Cheney famously remarked. "We defeat evil." In such a struggle against "evil," all means can be justified, as they were during the Crusades and the Inquisition. By putting the "fear of the Devil "into the American public, the Bush administration has acquired carte blanche to transform not only certain U.S. policies but the entire policy-making structure.

Congressional critics of the administration have challenged the worse excesses of this fearful crusade. There have been campaigns against torture, the abrogation of habeas corpus, and unlawful surveillance. But the opposition has been unwilling or unable to challenge the heart of the administration's terrorism policy. It, too, has been fearful--of being labeled "weak on terrorism." The administration and its mainstream critics still buy into several core misconceptions about terrorism: that we need a war in the first place, that terrorists represent a major threat to U.S. national interests, that terrorists are attacking "our "way of life.

Until we address these core misconceptions, workable alternatives cannot replace the current failed policies.

Misconception: Terrorism is the major threat to U.S. and global interests

The September 11 attacks were horrifying. So were the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Terrorist acts in Bali (2002), Istanbul (2003), Madrid (2004), London (2005), Delhi (2005), Amman (2005), Algiers (2007), and elsewhere have been equally without justification.

The world's major leaders have argued, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said, that terrorism is the greatest global threat of the 21st century. "No challenge is greater than the threat of terrorism," Australian Prime Minister John Howard proclaimed in 2006. "Terrorism is the greatest threat to world peace," said Vladimir Putin in 2000. In the United States, there is a bipartisan consensus around terrorism as a major threat. In its 2004 party platform, the Democratic Party, too, put winning "the global war on terror" as the top challenge facing the United States.

Terrorist acts, by claiming innocent lives, are indeed reprehensible. But does terrorism pose a major threat? We can measure the size of a challenge in several ways: the acuity of the threat, its scope, and its likely duration.

Measured in terms of acuity, terrorism pales in comparison to nuclear weapons and climate change. A nuclear exchange and several degrees of global warming threaten the existence of the entire planet rather than select targets on the surface. Terrorists have no interest in destroying the world, nor do they possess the means to end the human race. Their goals and capacities are considerably more circumscribed, and that applies even to al-Qaeda.

In terms of scope, the number of victims of terrorism remains relatively low compared to the casualty rates connected to disease, malnutrition, or conventional military conflict. The number of terrorist attacks has certainly increased since the invasion of Iraq. In 2001, the peak in terrorist fatalities to that time, international terrorist attacks killed 3,572 persons and injured 1,083. By 2006, those numbers had risen to 11,170 deaths and 38,191 injuries, approximately half occurring in Iraq alone. In contrast even to these higher numbers, however, more than 2,000 children die each day in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of malaria, a preventable disease. Several hundred thousand people died as a result of the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Nearly four million people have died as a result of the Congo conflict.

Finally, there is the question of duration. Al-Qaeda is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its concerns were originally quite specific--to compel the United States to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia. It was on the verge of extinction after the collapse of its patron, the Taliban, in Afghanistan in 2001. If approached with the appropriate legal mechanisms--and with the discriminate force associated with law enforcement undertaken with due respect for human rights --al-Qaeda will once again retreat into obscurity. Regional wars, by contrast, have been with us for millennia. Global inequalities have persisted since the age of colonialism. Though of more recent vintage, nuclear weapons will be very difficult to get rid of, and the half-life of uranium 235 is 700 million years. These are indeed durable challenges. In another decade, after appropriate counter-terrorism measures, the current "greatest threat to world peace" will likely be demoted in importance. Terrorism, after all, was at the top of Ronald Reagan's agenda when he took office in 1981. But as the number of attacks began to decline, particularly in the 1990s, so did the U.S. evaluation of the threat.

It can be plausibly argued that the symbolic nature of terrorist attacks far exceeds the number of casualties. The argument here is not to ignore terrorism but simply put it into perspective. To elevate terrorism to the status of a "major threat" is to give more power to the terrorists than they deserve.

Misconception: A "war" on terrorism is the only solution.

It is meaningless to say we are fighting a "war on terror." Terrorism is a particular tactic of political violence. Wars are conducted between states. Declaring a war on terror is like declaring war on serial murderers. War is what al-Qaeda wants. Such language elevates the terrorists to the level of warriors in a battle. The terrorists are criminals, not warriors, and should be treated accordingly.

Many of the real successes in combating al-Qaeda in the years since Sept. 11, 2001, have come from treating the terrorists as criminals. International cooperation on intelligence as well as police work and domestic investigations have been particularly helpful. War--the use of military force--has been counterproductive. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was falsely presented as part of the "global war on terrorism," in fact served as al-Qaeda's most effective recruitment campaign.

By enshrining preventive war as a policy doctrine in the national security strategy in general and for combating terrorism in particular, the Bush administration has actually reduced rather than increased U.S. security in several ways. It has reinforced the image of the United States as eager to use military force and willing to do so without regard for international law and legitimacy. This has led other countries to resist U.S. foreign policy goals more broadly, including efforts to fight terrorism. Advocating preemption also warns potential enemies to hide the very assets that Washington might wish to take action against. Finally, if the United States enshrines preemption as a core policy doctrine, it legitimates its adoption by other countries, which increases overall global instability and reduces security, as other countries are emboldened to justify attacks on their enemies as preemptive in nature.

The casting of counter-terrorism in the language of war has justified extraordinary means such as rendition, the seizing of terrorism suspects and transporting them to places where they can be interrogated and tortured. By resorting to these extralegal tactics, the United States sets dangerous international precedents. Citing the U.S. example, another country's secret service could abduct American tourists in Paris on suspicion of terrorism, transport them to a third country, and torture the suspects into confessing.

With the war on terrorism, the administration and Congress have given the Pentagon a blank check. Military spending has risen dramatically since 2001. In 2003, reflecting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military spending increased nearly 28% and passed the $500 billion threshold. For 2008, the administration has requested $623 billion.10 Not including funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon spending has increased 35% since 2001. Even after taking over Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats have not challenged the bloated military budget.

Finally, a "war" suggests that victory is possible and terrorism can be extinguished. But terrorist networks are decentralized, and new leaders emerge to replace older ones. Even if one group surrenders or disbands, it has no necessary influence on any other groups. Police never speak of ending crime, only controlling and reducing it. The same applies to terrorism. Perhaps acknowledging this basic insight, the House Armed Services Committee removed the phrase "Global War on Terror" from the 2008 defense budget.

Misconception: Terrorists are attacking "our" way of life.

Terrorists have traditionally pursued narrow political ends. The Irish Republican Army wanted to oust the British and unite Ireland. The Basque ETA, the Corsican FLNC, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Kurdish PKK all have wanted independence for their countries. Once these aims are achieved, the terrorist organizations either disappear or become official political entities. For instance, the Stern Gang, an Israeli terrorist organization, became absorbed in the Israeli army after the declaration of the country's independence.

Al-Qaeda, because of its transnational aspirations, is a new type of terrorist organization. It wants to awaken and inspire the Muslim world. While it envisions a long struggle against the West, its first targets are the Arab governments that have suppressed radical Islamic movements. Its final goal is to re-establish an Islamic caliphate or state.

This grand vision suffers from several problems. Al-Qaeda derives its strength from its narrow objectives of resisting the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The larger goal of establishing a caliphate motivates only a handful of people. Al-Qaeda is also not a centralized organization that can dictate policy to its members. Its more militant adherents are largely focused on resisting U.S. power projection in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Terrorists are, by and large, attacking the policies of the U.S. government, not a Western way of life. If these policies change, particularly in the Middle East, terrorist organizations would lose a major organizing tool. A change in U.S. policy in the Middle East--withdrawing from Iraq, providing more reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan, pressuring Arab allies to democratize, brokering a two-state peace deal between Israel and Palestine--would deprive al-Qaeda of its mobilizing symbols. Despite its myriad divisions, the Islamic world has united in opposition to current U.S. military policy. If U.S. policy changes, then diversity will return to the foreground, and the notion of an Islamic caliphate will become even more improbable a goal than it currently is.

The roots of terrorist support lie in despair. Poverty alone is not responsible for terrorism, or else Haiti and Burkina Faso would be terrorist strongholds. And oppressive state structures, too, are not sufficient, or else North Korean citizens would be among the ranks of the world's terrorists. Rather, the despair that generates terrorism derives from a combination of unjust economic, political, and geopolitical conditions. Prosperity and a greater degree of self-determination--which is, arguably, "our way" of life--is considerably appealing throughout the Muslim world, even among communities that today produce or support terrorist operations.

Finally, after September 11, the victims of terrorism have not been, by and large, Americans. Half the victims of terrorism in 2006 were Muslim and most were from Iraq. Only 28 U.S. citizens died in terrorist attacks in 2006. Indeed, as political scientist John Mueller has argued recently in Foreign Affairs, the terrorist threat to the United States has been greatly exaggerated. No terrorist attacks have taken place on American soil since 2001, and investigators have not turned up any real al-Qaeda cells in the United States. "The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11," Mueller writes, "may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists."

A Just Security Policy

Once we address the core misconceptions of U.S. counter-terrorism policy, the fear begins to lift. Terrorism is not the most important threat facing the world. Military tactics are largely counter-productive for they elevate the status of the terrorists and also create conditions that help spur recruitment. Terrorists are not bent on destroying "our" way of life but are animated by particular ideologies and derive their support from opposition to specific U.S. foreign policies. Only when we put terrorism in proper perspective can we start to think about appropriate solutions.

Four major building blocks support a just counter-terrorism policy: improving homeland security, strengthening legal systems, promoting democracy and human rights, and addressing the root causes of terrorism.

Terrorism is not the most important threat facing the world or Americans. But September 11 happened, and we must prevent another attack like it from happening again. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of the Bush administration's purported cure of a "global war." Prevention entails tightened border security, improved intelligence and oversight of intelligence agencies, strengthened protections for critical infrastructure, and denying terrorists access to weapons of mass destruction, conventional weapons, and other items that can be used as weapons. Mitigating the effects of terrorist attacks requires honing disaster preparedness and emergency response plans and strengthening the infrastructures and public services that might either be targets of an attack or that would be necessary to respond effectively to such an attack.

Law is ultimately a more effective method of ensnaring terrorists than military force. Osama bin Laden remains at large, and military campaigns have only swelled the ranks of his followers. A more effective response to terrorism requires strengthening the national and international legal infrastructure necessary to identify and prosecute the individuals and organizations that facilitate, finance, perpetrate, and profit from terrorism. A strengthened UN should be the primary instrument for pursuing this objective. Unilateralist elements within the U.S. Congress and a lack of enthusiasm by members of the administration have been major obstacles to a more sustained and constructive U.S. engagement with the UN system.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration made an apparent U-turn with respect to the UN, suddenly recognizing its importance in combating terrorism. But that momentary honeymoon ended with the invasion of Iraq and the administration's ongoing campaign to undermine the International Criminal Court. Such moves have weakened the international legal architecture that represents a globalization of America's firm principles and beliefs in the centrality of the rule of law. Revelations of torture sanctioned by Bush administration personnel and efforts to exempt U.S. troops from Geneva Convention restrictions in waging the "war on terrorism" have also raised legitimate questions over the seriousness of the Bush administration's commitment to international law.

In a just security approach, a balance between liberty and security need not require sacrificing the former for the latter. Such an approach would refuse to sacrifice the fundamental elements of transparency and accountability, which are necessary for democracy to remain vital. It would refuse to subject people like Maher Arar to unlawful detention and torture because of "security "interests.

The administration's approach to combating terrorism should embody respect for the very human rights that America defends and promotes at home. This means that citizens should loudly proclaim opposition to religious extremism and actions taken in its name, no matter the perpetrator. Citizens should also reject any policies that undermine human rights norms in the name of a "war" on terrorism, including those that inflict casualties on innocent victims, that lift restrictions on the CIA to allow assassinations, and that permit the hiring of human rights violators.

Finally, combating terrorism requires looking beyond any one terrorist event--horrific as it may be--to address the broader socioeconomic, political, and military contexts from which terrorism emerges. Because terrorism is a particular kind of violent act aimed at achieving a political objective, a preventive strategy must also address its political roots in occupation and oppression. The United States is a target of terrorist attacks "because we support governments and policies that are sources of their oppression," writes banker and former president of the New York Stock Exchange Richard Vague.14 Other root causes include failed and failing states, which provide terrorists with unregulated arenas for operations; economic inequality, which can enhance support for terrorist acts and provide a source of recruits, even though poverty itself does not cause terrorism; and efforts by one country to institutionalize a position of global dominance, including through alliances with repressive regimes. Addressing root causes is one way of insuring that the efforts of terrorist groups to mobilize support meet as inhospitable a social, economic, and political climate as possible.

In his 1941 State of the Union Address, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt talked about Four Freedoms. The first two--freedom of speech and religion--came directly from the U.S. constitution. The third, freedom from want, derived from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s. But the fourth one, freedom from fear, spoke to a public facing the escalation of a world war that would, before the year was out, engulf the United States.

Today, the U.S. government has forgotten that this fourth freedom is as precious as the other three. Fear created the "global war on terror." Fear propelled the invasion of Iraq. Fear plucked Maher Arar from the immigration line at JFK airport and consigned him to a year of torture and imprisonment.

Fear is the greatest weapon of terrorists. When it becomes our greatest weapon, too, what does that make us?

http://www.alternet.org/audits/56412/?page=1

2008 Democratic Candidates: Up Close, Unfiltered and Uncomfortable

Posted by Adam Howard at 4:02 PM on August 4, 2007.

Adam Howard: The Yearly Kos presidential forum exposed the candidates flaws and strengths like no debate I've seen previously.

I just saw the most entertaining 2008 Democratic debate so far.

Now maybe it was more exciting because I saw it in person but as many others pointed out at the Yearly Kos convention, this afternoon's debate was more like how the CNN/YouTube debate should have been. There was more audience interaction, a less obtrusive moderator and the candidates really had to be on their toes (they had to deal with boos on a regular basis). Before I go through the debate blow by blow, here are some quick thoughts on who appeared:

Hillary Clinton

By far the most polarizing attendee at the convention. She ruffled many feathers before she even arrived when an announcement was made that she would only be appearing in the candidates' forum not in an individual "breakout session" as had been previously promised. Now in her defense, this was supposedly communicated to the convention's organizers far in advance but as we all know politics is often about perception. It was perceived as yet another slight from a candidate seen as adversarial to the netroots, the Obama campaign pounced and suddenly Clinton was able to make to time to appear, albeit before the debate and in what I am told was a "very corporate, staged' sort of manner (but more on that later).

As in all previous debates, Clinton was very prepared, well spoken etc. but she really wasn't well prepared for this audience and generally came off as arrogant--as if she had the nomination in the bag and was simply paying her respects to the other candidates and to the audience. She got almost universal bad reviews from the people I spoke to. She likes to make it about Bush, never criticizes American policy or society in any way. It comes across as a message purely meant for a general election audience but what she fails to recognize is that she hasn't necessarily won over her own base yet.

John Edwards

In his case, I felt the pendulum swung way in the other direction from Hillary. While at first he was the most energetic and crowd pleasing of the candidates as the debate wore on he began to seem like he was simply pandering to what he knew was a left wing crowd and it appeared that he was making a lot of promises he couldn't back up in the hopes of just getting a big crowd response. His desperation showed and it also alienated some attendees.

Barack Obama

It was his birthday today and this is home town and it showed. He was a little shaky on his first question but then he seemed to settle comfortably in between Edwards and Clinton, not literally but figuratively. He took his time with his responses and had the audience on his side consistently. But what distinguished him from Clinton and Edwards was that his responses were often surprising, he would often raise issues that you just don't hear about or if you do you don't hear them expressed in this way. He seems more confident and he's chosen, I think a clever response when his judgment is questioned--which is that he rails against the "conventional wisdom" on foreign policy. It's a dig at Hillary but not as obvious as some of Edwards can be. He was clearly the biggest hit with the audience.

Chris Dodd

But not far behind was Chris Dodd who garnered a lot of good will with convention attendees with his terrific appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" where he defended the progressive blogosphere against O'Reilly's ridiculous attacks. When I watch him though I feel a sense of pity. He often has to follow a candidate like Edwards or Obama who he isn't that fundamentally different than but who's the bigger star or bigger attraction and he doesn't have much to build on. When he does grab a hold of a point that wins over the crowd he seems stunned to be receiving any kind of adulation at all so he lets his voice rise more and more until it becomes this indecipherable shout that can just be confounding. Still, he seems like a strong VP candidate right now, not a strong dark horse candidate.

Bill Richardson

Richardson seems to be filling that fourth choice role, at least that is if the polls are to be believed. Richardson had volunteers handing out cookies before the debate which I must admit weren't very good but I won't hold that against him. Richardson had some good lines and moments throughout but his "I was a governor" routine is just about as stale now as Hillary's "I've lived through this" routine. You've got to come with something more than experience to win over people. John Kerry was one of the most experienced people to run for president in the last 30 some years but it didn't matter to voters.

Mike Gravel

Gravel was pretty subdued compared to other debates but he did make a lot of really tough savage criticisms not so much on any candidate specifically but on politicians and our electoral system in general. I couldn't help being a little irritated to hear someone who's been a politician for far longer than I've been alive lecturing me on how corrupt and evil politicians are. I would love to ask Gravel why he chose this moment to get involved in politics again. Maybe it was the war--I've never heard an answer on this. I'd like to see him running for Senate again in Alaska where he could easily beat a Ted Stevens. Still, the man makes good points and he keeps the others honest so what can you do?

Dennis Kucinich

Which leads me to Kucinich who is definitely unafraid to call the other candidates out on their hypocrisy and spinelessness especially on the war. Still, he may have had the fewest real standout moments at the debate. He gets very worked up and passionate about the war and to a lesser extent health care and he got a big response to a quip about impeaching Bush and Cheney but for a candidate who probably represents the audiences beliefs more than any other onstage he didn't seem to provoke too much passion.

NOW as for the debate...

It was moderated pretty ably considering he's a print journalist by the New York Times' Matt Bai and was comprised by questions written by Yearly Kos attendees. A few times questions were asked by audience members themselves and the rest were handled by Bai and a co-host Joan McCarter. Candidates had 90 seconds to respond to direct questions and 45 for follow ups but this was largely, thankfully discarded early on and having the candidates sitting instead of standing behind podiums gave the whole thing a much more natural vibe.

Obama, Edwards and Dodd probably received the loudest ovations. Hillary got a smattering of applause and groans and then there was a small group of Hillary volunteers who appeared to have been shipped in who would go ape at random moments during the debate when Clinton made a remotely well-received remark. The debate was broken up in three sections. The first focused on domestic policy, the second foreign and the final on their personal philosophy and experience.

Right of the bat, the first question wasn't nice or polite or obvious.

McCarter took Richardson to task for saying he'd use the anti-Miranda rights Justice Byron White as a model for his Supreme Court appointments. Richardson smiled, but also seemed to acknowledge with his body language that this was not going to be like any previous debate. He said, 'I screwed that one up" and got a big laugh

He went on to say he would ask any Supreme Court contender, "do you consider Roe v. Wade to be civil, settled law?" and if the answer was no, he wouldn't appoint them. He also said he felt the Supreme Court would be the most careful, important appointment a president could make.

Dodd said he wouldn't support any other Bush Supreme Court nominee for the duration of his presidency because the president doesn't appoint people who uphold the constitution and he said nothing has disturbed him more about the Bush White House than their "trampling all over the constitution."

Hillary Clinton was asked about what she meant when she referred to "battle scars " from her attempts to reform health care in '93 and '94

Hillary called the fact that there were 44 uninsured Americans a disgrace and she highlighted the fact (that Edwards would later dispute) that all the candidates onstage were in favor of universal health care and that "universal health care is an American value worth fighting for." She said she couldn't tell you all the mistakes she made in the 90s in ninety seconds but she said that you do need a strategy not just a plan in order to fight the members of congress and the insurance companies who will be putting a lot of money behind spreading lies and myths about what universal health care would mean. She called this her "highest domestic priority."

Obama's first question was on budget deficits

He seemed a little rocky at first but he scored a big applause line where he said one major step would be to "not spend 275 million dollars every day in Iraq." Obama is learning quickly that he needs to keep hammering away on Iraq especially when he's right next to Sen. Clinton and he seems to have her beat on this issue every time or at least he did with the audience who respect his being against the war from the beginning stance.

On health care he made it clear he would tolerate some deficits because he was not going "to shortchange children on education or neglect Americans without insurance.

When the deficit question turned to Edwards he broke out in what felt like a really energetic newly formed stump speech. He said, "This is a room filled with people who want change" and said that this election should be about which candidate will really bring about change. He had a decent dig on Clinton who had implied that part of her strategy to promote universal health care would involve reaching out to the medical industry.

Edwards said, "I don't think oil and and insurance companies or going to compromise and give uo their power. You need someone who had fought these people their entire lives and has beaten them." The audience went nuts and it became clear from then on that a distinction was forming. Clinton's attitude seemed to be "you don't like me, I don't like you--but we're going to have to work together because I'm the inevitable nominee." Edwards seemed to be coming from a place of, "I know what you want to hear and I'm going to say it because I desperately need your vote and I desperately need to start making this feel like a real race." But I digress.

Richardson followed Edwards bombast with more droning on about he'd balanced five budgets while governor of New Mexico and one point drew some hisses and boos for calling for a balanced budget amendment but then he salvaged himself by saying he would go after corporate greed.

A question about the effects of media consolidation-which you'd never hear at a traditional debate came next

Chris Dodd got a huge ovation here, as expected, by mentioning his stand-off with Bill O'Reilly in defense of Yearly Kos. He also announced that he had called on the Justice Department to investigate Rupert Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones. "Media consolidation should be a major issue to every American," Dodd said, adding, "Thank the lord there is a Daily Kos."

Hillary's response on the question was in contrast pretty devoid of any passion. She never addressed Murdoch specifically, surprise, surprise and said something about the need for more competition.

Kucinich was asked was government programs need to be shut down

Kucinich's quick answer was "anything that perpetuates the nuclear power industry." He then changed subjects and began talking about he was for universal health care and how the "American people are already paying for a universal standard of care they're just not getting it." I scribbled in my notes that during this answer Hillary appeared to be nodding in agreement but also had an expression on her face as if she hadn't actually been listening to a word Kucinich said. It was a smiling politely but I've got the mute button on nod.

Edwards said that his first day as president (which is rapidly becoming a VERY busy day) he would shut down Guantanamo. "There will be no illegal spying, there would be no secret prisons. The government does not belong to the president of the united state it belongs to you," he said--which I thought was one of the best lines of the debate. He then moved on to an issue that he stuck to for the rest of the debate and for which he won a standing ovation--he called on all Democrats to reject lobbyist contributions, nothing that Obama has and hinting, correctly, without mentioned her name, that Hillary hasn't. This moment was striking because it really came across that Edwards knew his audience better than maybe anyone else on stage and he knew that he had trapped Hillary on a sticky point.

Mike Gravel was finally drawn into the debate on an unusual subject, his support for the abolition of the IRS and the institution of a 23 percent sales tax

This revelation was met with a few boos which Gravel seemed totally unaffected by and he even joked that his tax proposal would never have any chance of passing anyway. He talked about how while the candidates on stage were "all good people, they're part of a system that doesn't work." "What you've been hearing is what you heard four years ago, and eight years ago and you'll hear it twelve years from now.

Next came the foreign policy portion of the debate and Iraq was the first issue mentioned

Hillary patted herself on the back for voting against the last appropriations bill and pointed to her “careful” three-point plan to get us out of Iraq. “You can’t just wake up and say I want to move 160,000 troops,” a very reasonable point. What was irritating was that she came back to this “putting pressure of the Iraqis” bit that she’s been so fond of. “They have to step up,” she says.

Kucinich slammed the other Dems in congress for claiming they don’t have the resources to get the troops out. He says they should make Bush use the 97 billion they recently granted him to pay for troop withdrawal. “Tell the president to stop it now and if he doesn’t he ought to be impeached.” As I’m sure you can imagine, impeachment was very popular with the Yearly Kos crowd. Dodd argued, “I’d rather have 25 votes on something meaningful than 51 on something that doesn’t matter.”

Richardson got a nice laugh with his mention of a “One point plan to get us out of Iraq—get out and get out now with no residual forces.” What was refreshing was Richardson had a little bit more backup for this pledge than I’ve heard previously. He pointed out that “we moved 500,000 troops in a 4 month period during Gulf War I.”

Gravel got his biggest applause when he said the Senate should just repeatedly vote on cloture without an August recess until they get enough votes but suggested that the Democrats simply don’t have the will.

Next up, Obama was asked to address the terrorism issue

Obama talked about the need to continue pursuing the culprits of 9/11, “they weren’t in Iraq by the way.” He admitted that America has played a role in fanning anti-American sentiment and he railed against the “conventional thinking” on foreign policy in Washington. “We ought to double our foreign aid, we need to engage our foes as well as our friends.

When Edwards addressed terrorism he announced, “No we are not safer,” even though he wasn’t asked if he thought we were and then he went out of his way to say that Sen. Clinton thinks we are. Edwards said that “Bush had used the global war on terror to justify every bad thing hes done” and that we should not “accept George W. Bush’s framing on this issue.” He called the Bush foreign policy “a foreign policy of convenience and the American people have paid for it.”

Hillary weighed in next and was careful and gave yet another calibrated general election response which was, “I don’t feel there’s much anti-American sentiment as much as anti-Bush.” She said there was a global war on terrorists not terrorism, which is really a tactic.

Kucinich talked about his position as being “strength through peace”, where diplomacy and international law are the guiding principles.

Next Obama was asked about how he would deal with China

Sen. Obama got a strong response when he said, “Well, if China’s our banker we can’t exactly influence them.” He talked about China being a competitor but not necessarily an enemy. He believes that China’s “presence in the world has been as pronounced as out has been absent.” “We are neglecting the challenges around the world and China has taken advantage of that.”

Following Obama, Dodd spoke eloquently in favor of American embracing other languages and traveling the world to experience other cultures. He spoke of his time in the Peace Corps and said he would seek to expand it when elected president.

Pakistan was the next major country brought into the discussion

Edwards talked about this own personal experience meeting with Musharraf and argued that we need to invest in education for young people in that part of the world instead of spending 500 million in Iraq. Richardson complained that we’ve been appeasing Musharraf up until now.

Then the final part of the debate came about and for some reason—I thought this would be the most contentious, and I was right

The first question was sort of a fun one, all the ‘08 Democratic candidates were asked if they would have an official White House blogger while president. They all said yes, with Edwards saying he’d hire his wife Elizabeth for the job (which was wildly popular with the crowd) and Gravel saying he’d blog for himself.

Gravel was then asked about the corrupt politicians in Alaska, and this branched off into a more in depth discussions of the election challenges facing Democrats

“All politicians walk in the mud,” Gravel said, well, gravely. He talked about money being the corrupting agent in politics and how the media is run by five corporations.

Obama spoke up and gave one of my favorite remarks of the night when he said “the only way change is going to happen is if we attack the political map”, that we must get new voters into the system. He pointed out that the state of Mississippi is 40 percent black and could be put in play but only if the Democratic voter base is expanded. After these remarks Kucinich was surprisingly booed for saying that people aren’t coming out to vote because they don’t think the parties are any different.

Hillary was applauded for saying that “Howard Dean is exactly right” to employ a 50 state strategy and that she would do the same when she is the nominee. “I want to be the president of everybody,” she volunteered. She said she will go to so-called red states and say, “You may think you don’t want to vote for a Democrat but let’s have a conversation because I think we have a lot more in common than you think.” She tried to use her experience in New York state as an example of her success with this but I just don’t buy that because Clinton won over rural New York against the shittiest of opponents she will necessarily do the same in real red country.

Richardson pointed out that now five out seven southwestern governors are Democrats and called for verifiable paper ballots and an end to the suppression of minority voters by Republicans. It was around this time I became convinced that Richardson and Edwards, even if they were being sincere, appeared to be the most shameless about not addressing the specific question and just endorsing concepts that they knew the crowd would go wild for.

Speaking of which–this led to the most intriguing moment of the debate. Edwards renewed an earlier call to remove all lobbyist money from Democratic party politics. He called for “real change, real reform,” pointing out that he and and Obama never took money from lobbyist in Washington. This was clearly a challenge to Hillary. She badly bombed with her response.

"I don't think that based on my 35 years fighting for what I believe in, that anybody thinks I'm going to be influenced by a lobbyist."

Ok—there were several things that struck me about this answer. The whole “you gotta trust me” vibe to it. The condescending arrogance of it, like “uh you know I’m amazing so don’t even try it” and then the obvious refusal to just directly answer whether she would or wouldn’t stop accepting lobbyist money. It all felt similar to her attitude about apologizing for her Iraq vote.

Instead of taking a progressive stand she ended up defending lobbyists as having done some positive work for Americans and while there’s undoubtedly some truth to that it was an awkward position to choose: defender of lobbyists, especially in front of the Yearly Kos crowd. She tried to argue that she didn’t see why lobbyist contributions would or should influence her and then the boos came. Instead of handling it affably she seemed to show that the audience was getting under her skin and she made a remark implying she’d expected this and said, "This gives us a real sense of reality with my being here."

Dodd seized the moment and calling for public financing over lobbying and was met with a huge standing ovation. All the candidates said they ideally support public financing.

Obama then saw an opportunity for himself and criticized Hillary for implying that a senator wouldn’t be influenced by lobby contributions. He pointed out that insurance industry definitely has “an agenda”. He talked about passing the first campaign finance reform legislation in Illinois in the past 25 years, he talked about the ethics bill he passed with Feingold with a lot of Democratic resistance. I could feel the group seeing a rare opportunity to make Hillary look bad.

Edwards addressed the audience and asked if any of them had lobbyists working for them in Washington (a dig at Hillary’s suggestion that lobbyists were working for regular Americans) and when basically no hands went up he said, “You are not represented by Washington lobbyists.

Not so fast Edwards, Kucinich countered by saying Edwards takes money from hedge funds and Edwards became a little flustered. He refused to say he wouldn’t take money from Wall Street but he insisted he would never take from those who made a living lobbying in Washington.

The conversation then shifted to how the candidates would reform Homeland Security

Edwards again highlighted that Hillary Clinton thinks we’re safer and he does not and a few seconds later she took the bait. Richardson said he would put appointees in the Homeland Security Department who knew what they’re doing, close Guantanamo, take FEMA out of Homeland Security and respect the Geneva Conventions.

Obama said we need to worry about what we’re gonna do with the executive branch and that whoever his attorney general is they won’t “consider the constitution an inconvenience”.

Hillary argued that we are safer in that we are better prepared but the level of incompetence at the department of Homeland Security under Bush jeopardizes what progress we’ve made. She got a big laugh by referring to Cheney’s fourth branch of government claim and relented on the lobbying issue enough to say that she would work to introduce a constitutional amendment on public financing as president.

Richardson got the last laugh of the debate by saying his vice president would be a member of the executive branch.

Who won?

I don't know. I think Obama was actually the most poised and presidential and he had the most appreciation from the crowd on the whole. Edwards and Richardson probably got off the best red meat lines and seemed the most passionate about their positions. Dodd also seemed really sincere and may have won a few converts. Hilary, while as one attendee called her "a total pro", was the most awkward I've ever seen her in a debate and it made me nervous, that if indeed she does become the nominee, how well her personality will wear on people over time.

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_al...ies__2f_pat.htm

August 4, 2007

FACTS AND LIES / PAT TILLMAN CASE

By Teilhard

There comes a time when the lies become so blatant, so obvious that shock overcomes incredulousness and the deteriorating moral bearings of our once proud Republic are laid bare for all to see: Allen L Roland

[/color]The Pat Tillman case could bring down the Cheney/Bush Administration for every key top level official, both Pentagon and white House, is involved and they are all apparently lying. Let me lay it out for you. Here is the narrative that Rumsfeld and Myers offered last week ( under oath ) and let's look at this obvious deception in detail ~ together with the known facts ( courtesy of RJ Eskow, Huffington Post )

Then you decide ~ Was a deliberate execution ordered by higher ups of Tillman because he was about to go public with his anti-war views and support kerry in 2004 during a Presidential election campaign or were honest mistakes made by honest men ~ like Donald Rumsfeld ??

The Cheney/Bush administration stonewalled the 9/11 commission before reluctantly allowing it to go ahead but with their own people in charge and Cheney and Bush not having to testify under oath . What were they hiding ??

Pat Tillman's questionable death was stonewalled by top Pentagon Generals until the freedom of Information Act brought it to light . What were they hiding ??
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/07/28/state/n181202D33.DTL


Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/08/04.html



Truth About Tillman ... Murder's Not 'Friendly Fire'

RJ Eskow / Huffington Post / Excerpt / 1. Pat Tillman dies. Medical examiners request a fratricide investigation sometime thereafter. Their request is denied.

2. Gen. McChrystal sends a cable to Gen. Abizaid and another general on April 22 urging them to notify the President of this probable fratricide "in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause embarrassment if the circumstances of Cpl. Tillman's death becomes public."

3. Gen.Abizaid claims he didn't receive it for 10 or 12 days, because he was in Iraq. (They don't have email, or even secure pouches for urgent memos?) Defense Department records later show that Gen. Abizaid was not in Iraq, but was actually in Qatar and Afghanistan - where the killing occurred - during that 10 to 12 days.

4. Gen. Myers learns the true nature of Cpl. Tillman's death in late April, yet - according to his testimony - did not feel the need to inform either the Secretary of Defense or the President.

5. Military records show that dozens of officers knew of the true nature of the Lieutenant's death within days, yet senior officers and Pentagon officials still maintain they didn't know for weeks. (Surprisingly, they did not undertake a massive review of military procedures in order to determine how such a massive series of communications failures could occur - one that eerily affected every single senior officer with responsibility for this case simultaneously.)

6. The military continues to press the story that Tillman was killed while courageously leading a counterattack in an Afghan mountain pass. (Nice poetic touch, that "mountain pass" - good for recruitment.)

7. A national memorial service is held for Cpl Tillman several days later. The President and others talk about Cpl. Tillman's heroism in that mythical mountain pass - yet Gen. Myers, per his own testimony, still felt no need to inform either the SecDef or the President .

8. Rumsfeld says he was not told the truth until "some time after May 20," or approximately a month after Gen. Myers learned of the incident. Yet he seems strangely undisturbed to learn that the truth was known six weeks earlier and he wasn't informed.

9. Neither Rumsfeld nor the President felt the need to correct the record publicly upon learning the truth.

10. It wasn't until reporters filed a Freedom of Information Act that the following information became public on July 27: ""Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime."

Let's say it again, to be very clear: The White House and Pentagon withheld the facts about this killing until they were legally forced to reveal them months later by Freedom of Information laws. And they never ordered a criminal investigation.

As for the testimony by Myers and Rumsfeld: What they have described is a command structure that was brutally indifferent to the situation on the ground and uninterested in pursuing a murder. Gen. Myers, if he is to be believed, allowed the President and Secretary of Defense to pay tribute to a man as if he had died in combat, knowing full well their words were untrue.

Is that plausible, with everything we know about Rumsfeld? Remember, this is the micromanager who hectored generals on little details, arrogantly told them he knew more than they did about the military, and issued regular memos to a wide range of Pentagon personnel on a variety of topics, great and small.

We are also supposed to believe that Rumsfeld was so uninvolved in the human issues his troops faced that he wasn't informed of the facts on this case - and that once he found out, he was unconcerned about the delay in telling him the facts. And that the President wasn't disturbed enough to order an investigation into the killing. Nor did he or Rumsfeld inform the family, or the nation, that they had been misled - at a hero's funeral.

As the conservatives used to say in the 90's: Character matters. And that's if they're telling the truth ... Can you imagine what we could learn about their character if, as is very possible, they're still lying?

And make no mistake, the beat goes on:

[color="#000080"]Freelance columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments , interviews and speaking engagements ( allen@allenroland.com )



Authors Website: www.allenroland.com

Authors Bio: Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net

Toward a North American Union

By: Patrick Wood
Editor, The August Review

Good evening, everybody. Tonight, an astonishing proposal to expand our borders to incorporate Mexico and Canada and simultaneously further diminish U.S. Sovereignty. Have our political elites gone mad?
Lou Dobbs on Lou Dobbs Tonight, June 9, 2005

Introduction

The global elite, through the direct operations of President George Bush and his Administration, are creating a North American Union that will combine Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into a superstate called the North American Union (NAU). The NAU is roughly patterned after the European Union (EU). There is no political or economic mandate for creating the NAU, and unofficial polls of a cross-section of Americans indicate that they are overwhelmingly against this end-run around national sovereignty.

To answer Lou Dobbs, "No, the political elites have not gone mad", they just want you to think that they have.

The reality over appearance is easily cleared up with a proper historical perspective of the last 35 years of political and economic manipulation by the same elite who now bring us the NAU.

This paper will explore this history in order to give the reader a complete picture of the NAU, how it is made possible, who are the instigators of it, and where it is headed.

It is important to first understand that the impending birth of the NAU is a gestation of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, not the Congress. This is the topic of the first discussion below.

The next topic will examine the global elite's strategy of subverting the power to negotiate trade treaties and international law with foreign countries from the Congress to the President. Without this power, NAFTA and the NAU would never have been possible.

After this, we will show that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the immediate genetic and necessary ancestor of the NAU.

Lastly, throughout this report the NAU perpetrators and their tactics will be brought into the limelight so as to affix blame where it properly belongs. The reader will be struck with the fact that the same people are at the center of each of these subjects.

The Best Government that Money Can Buy

Modern day globalization was launched with the creation of the Trilateral Commission in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Its membership consisted of just over 300 powerful elitists from North America, Europe and Japan. The clearly stated goal of the Trilateral Commission was to foster a "New International Economic Order" that would supplant the historical economic order.

In spite of its non-political rhetoric, The Trilateral Commission nonetheless established a headlock on the Executive Branch of the U.S. government with the election of James Earl Carter in 1976. Hand-picked as a presidential candidate by Brzezinski, Carter was personally tutored in globalist philosophy and foreign policy by Brzezinski himself. Subsequently, when Carter was sworn in as President, he appointed no less than one-third of the U.S. members of the Commission to his Cabinet and other high-level posts in his Administration. Such was the genesis of the Trilateral Commission's domination of the Executive Branch that continues to the present day.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Trilateral Commission member George H.W. Bush was introduced to the White House as vice-president. Through Bush's influence, Reagan continued to select key appointments from the ranks of the Trilateral Commission.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush began his four-year term as President. He was followed by fellow Trilateral Commission member William Jefferson Clinton, who served for 8 years as President and appointed fourteen fellow Trilateral members to his Administration.

The election of George W. Bush in 2000 should be no surprise. Although Bush was not a member of the Trilateral Commission, his vice-president Dick Cheney is. In addition, Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, is also a member of the Commission in her own right.

The Hegemony of the Trilateral Commission over the Executive Branch of the U.S. government is unmistakable. Critics argue that this scenario is merely circumstantial, that the most qualified political "talent" quite naturally tends to belong to groups like the Trilateral Commission in the first place. Under examination, such explanations are quite hollow.

Why would the Trilateral Commission seek to dominate the Executive Branch? Quite simply - Power! That is, power to get things done directly which would have been impossible to accomplish through the only moderately successful lobbying efforts of the past; power to use the government as a bully platform to modify political behavior throughout the world.

Of course, the obvious corollary to this hegemony is that the influence and impact of the citizenry is virtually eliminated.

Modern Day "World Order" Strategy

After its founding in 1973, Trilateral Commission members wasted no time in launching their globalist strategy. But, what was that strategy?

Richard Gardner was an original member of the Trilateral Commission, and one of the prominent architects of the New International Economic Order. In 1974, his article "The Hard Road to World Order" appeared in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. With obvious disdain for anyone holding nationalistic political views, Gardner proclaimed,

"In short, the 'house of world order' would have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great 'booming, buzzing confusion,' to use William James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."1 [emphasis added]

In Gardner's view, using treaties and trade agreements (such as General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs or GATT) would bind and supercede constitutional law piece by piece, which is exactly what has happened. In addition, Gardner highly esteemed the role of the United Nations as a third-party legal body that could be used to erode the national sovereignty of individual nations.

Gardner concluded that "the case-by-case approach can produce some remarkable concessions of 'sovereignty' that could not be achieved on an across-the-board basis"2

Thus, the end result of such a process is that the U.S. would eventually capitulate its sovereignty to the newly proposed world order. It is not specifically mentioned who would control this new order, but it is quite obvious that the only 'players' around are Gardner and his Trilateral cronies.

It should again be noted that the formation of the Trilateral Commission by Rockefeller and Brzezinski was a response to the general frustration that globalism was going nowhere with the status quo prior to 1973. The "frontal assault " had failed, and a new approach was needed. It is a typical mindset of the global elite to view any roadblock as an opportunity to stage an "end-run" to get around it. Gardner confirms this frustration:

"Certainly the gap has never loomed larger between the objectives and the capacities of the international organizations that were supposed to get mankind on the road to world order. We are witnessing an outbreak of shortsighted nationalism that seems oblivious to the economic, political and moral implications of interdependence. Yet never has there been such widespread recognition by the world's intellectual leadership of the necessity for cooperation and planning on a truly global basis, beyond country, beyond region, especially beyond social system."3

The "world's intellectual leadership" apparently refers to academics such as Gardner and Brzezinski. Outside of the Trilateral Commission and the CFR, the vast majority of academic thought at the time was opposed to such notions as mentioned above.

Laying the Groundwork: Fast Track Authority

In Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, authority is granted to Congress "To regulate commerce with foreign nations." An end-run around this insurmountable obstacle would be to convince Congress to voluntarily turn over this power to the President. With such authority in hand, the President could freely negotiate treaties and other trade agreements with foreign nations, and then simply present them to Congress for a straight up or down vote, with no amendments possible. This again points out elite disdain for a Congress that is elected to be representative "of the people, by the people and for the people."

So, the first "Fast Track" legislation was passed by Congress in 1974, just one year after the founding of the Trilateral Commission. It was the same year that Nelson Rockefeller was confirmed as Vice President under President Gerald Ford, neither of whom were elected by the U.S. public. As Vice-President, Rockefeller was seated as the president of the U.S. Senate.

According to Public Citizen, the bottom line of Fast Track is that...

"...the White House signs and enters into trade deals before Congress ever votes on them. Fast Track also sets the parameters for congressional debate on any trade measure the President submits, requiring a vote within a certain time with no amendments and only 20 hours of debate."4

When an agreement is about to be given to Congress, high-powered lobbyists and political hammer-heads are called in to manipulate congressional hold-outs into voting for the legislation. (*See CAFTA Lobbying Efforts) With only 20 hours of debate allowed, there is little opportunity for public involvement.

Congress clearly understood the risk of giving up this power to the President, as evidenced by the fact that they put an automatic expiration date on it. Since the expiration of the original Fast Track, there been a very contentious trail of Fast Track renewal efforts. In 1996, President Clinton utterly failed to re-secure Fast Track after a bitter debate in Congress. After another contentious struggle in 2001/2002, President Bush was able to renew Fast Track for himself in the Trade Act of 2002, just in time to negotiate the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and insure its passage in 2005.

It is startling to realize that since 1974, Fast Track has not been used in the majority of trade agreements. Under the Clinton presidency, for instance, some 300 separate trade agreements were negotiated and passed normally by Congress, but only two of them were submitted under Fast Track: NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round. In fact, from 1974 to 1992, there were only three instances of Fast Track in action: GATT Tokyo Round, U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Thus, NAFTA was only the fourth invocation of Fast Track.

Why the selectivity? Does it suggest a very narrow agenda? Most certainly. These trade and legal bamboozles didn't stand a ghost of a chance to be passed without it, and the global elite knew it. Fast Track was created as a very specific legislative tool to accomplish a very specific executive task -- namely, to "fast track" the creation of the "New International Economic Order" envisioned by the Trilateral Commission in 1973!

Article Six of the U.S. Constitution states that "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Because international treaties supersede national law, Fast Track has allowed an enormous restructuring of U.S. law without resorting to a Constitutional convention (Ed. note: Both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski called for a constitutional convention as early as 1972, which could clearly be viewed as a failed "frontal assault"). As a result, national sovereignty of the United States has been severely compromised - even if some Congressmen and Senators are aware of this, the general public is still generally ignorant.

North American Free Trade Agreement

NAFTA was negotiated under the executive leadership of Republican President George H.W. Bush. Carla Hills is widely credited as being the primary architect and negotiator of NAFTA. Both Bush and Hills were members of the Trilateral Commission!
NAFTA Initialling

NAFTA "Initialing" Ceremony: From left to right (standing)
President Salinas, President Bush, Prime Minister Mulroney
(Seated) Jaime Serra Puche, Carla Hills, Michael Wilson.

With Bush's first presidential term drawing to a close and Bush desiring political credit for NAFTA, an "initialing" ceremony of NAFTA was staged (so Bush could take credit for NAFTA) in October, 1992. Although very official looking, most Americans did not understand the difference between initialing and signing; at the time, Fast Track was not implemented and Bush did not have the authority to actually sign such a trade agreement.

Bush subsequently LOST a publicly contentious presidential race to democrat William Jefferson Clinton, but they were hardly polar opposites on the issue of Free Trade and NAFTA: The reason? Clinton was also a seasoned member of the Trilateral Commission.

Immediately after inauguration, Clinton became the champion of NAFTA and orchestrated its passage with a massive Executive Branch effort.

Some Unexpected Resistance to NAFTA

Prior to the 1992 election, there was a fly in the elite's ointment -- namely, presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot, founder and chairman of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Perot was politically independent, vehemently anti-NAFTA and chose to make it a major campaign issue in 1991. In the end, the global elite would have to spend huge sums of money to overcome the negative publicity that Perot gave to NAFTA.

At the time, some political analysts believed that Perot, being a billionaire, was somehow put up to this task by the same elitists who were pushing NAFTA. Presumably, it would accumulate all the anti-globalists in one tidy group, thus allowing the elitists to determine who their true enemies really were. It's moot today whether he was sincere or not, but it did have that outcome, and Perot became a lightning rod for the whole issue of free trade.

Perot hit the nail squarely on the head in one of his nationally televised campaign speeches:

"If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature workforce - pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care - that's the most expensive single element in making a car - have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you didn't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south..."5 [emphasis added]

Perot's message struck a nerve with millions of Americans, but it was unfortunately cut short when he entered into public campaign debates with fellow candidate Al Gore. Simply put, Gore ate Perot's lunch, not so much on the issues themselves, but on having superior debating skills. As organized as Perot was, he was no match for a politically and globally seasoned politician like Al Gore.

The Spin Machine gears up

To counter the public relations damage done by Perot, all the stops were pulled out as the NAFTA vote drew near. As proxy for the global elite, the President unleashed the biggest and most expensive spin machine the country had ever seen.
NAFTA emblem
NAFTA/NAU Emblem

Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca was enlisted for a multi-million dollar nationwide ad campaign that praised the benefits of NAFTA. The mantra, carried consistently throughout the many spin events: "Exports. Better Jobs. Better Wages", all of which have turned out to be empty promises

Bill Clinton invited three former presidents to the White House to stand with him in praise and affirmation NAFTA. This was the first time in U.S. history that four presidents had ever appeared together. Of the four, three were members of the Trilateral Commission: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Gerald Ford was not a Commissioner, but was nevertheless a confirmed globalist insider. After Ford's accession to the presidency in 1974, he promptly nominated Nelson Rockefeller (David Rockefeller's oldest brother) to fill the Vice Presidency that Ford had just vacated.

The academic community was enlisted when, according to Harper's Magazine publisher John MacArthur,

...there was a pro-NAFTA petition, organized and written my MIT's Rudiger Dornbusch, addressed to President Clinton and signed by all twelve living Nobel laureates in economics, and exercise in academic logrolling that was expertly converted by Bill Daley and the A-Team into PR gold on the front page of The New York Times on September 14. 'Dear Mr. President,' wrote the 283 signatories..."6

Lastly, prominent Trilateral Commission members themselves took to the press to promote NAFTA. For instance, on May 13, 1993, Commissioners Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wrote a joint op-ed that stated:

"[NAFTA] would be the most constructive measure the United States would have undertaken in our hemisphere in this century."7

Two months later, Kissinger went further,

"It will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere." [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system."8 [emphasis added]

It is hardly fanciful to think that Kissinger's hype sounds quite similar to the Trilateral Commission's original goal of creating a New International Economic Order.
NAFTA Signing
President Clinton signing NAFTA
On January 1, 1994, NAFTA became law: Under Fast Track procedures, the house had passed it by 234-200 (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor) and the U.S. Senate passed it by 61-38.



That Giant Sucking Sound Going South

To understand the potential impact of the North American Union, one must understand the impact of NAFTA.

NAFTA promised greater exports, better jobs and better wages. Since 1994, just the opposite has occurred. The U.S. trade deficit soared and now approaches $1 trillion dollars per year; the U.S. has lost some 1.5 million jobs and real wages in both the U.S. and Mexico have fallen significantly.

Patrick Buchanan offered a simple example of NAFTA's deleterious effect on the U.S. economy:

"When NAFTA passed in 1993, we imported some 225,000 cars and trucks from Mexico, but exported about 500,000 vehicles to the world. In 2005, our exports to the world were still a shade under 500,000 vehicles, but our auto and truck imports from Mexico had tripled to 700,000 vehicles.

"As McMillion writes, Mexico now exports more cars and trucks to the United States than the United States exports to the whole world. A fine end, is it not, to the United States as "Auto Capital of the World"?

"What happened? Post-NAFTA, the Big Three just picked up a huge slice of our auto industry and moved it, and the jobs, to Mexico."9

Of course, this only represents the auto industry, but the same effect has been seen in many other industries as well. Buchanan correctly noted that NAFTA was never just a trade deal: Rather, it was an "enabling act - to enable U.S. corporations to dump their American workers and move their factories to Mexico." Indeed, this is the very spirit of all outsourcing of U.S. jobs and manufacturing facilities to overseas locations.

Respected economist Alan Tonelson, author of The Race to the Bottom, notes the smoke and mirrors that cloud what has really happened with exports:

"Most U.S. exports to Mexico before, during and since the (1994) peso crisis have been producer goods - in particular, parts and components sent by U.S. multinationals to their Mexican factories for assembly or for further processing. The vast majority of these, moreover, are reexported, and most get shipped right back to the United States for final sale. In fact, by most estimates, the United States buys 80 to 90 percent of all of Mexico's exports."10

Tonelson concludes that "the vast majority of American workers have experienced declining living standards, not just a handful of losers."

Mexican economist and scholar Miguel Pickard sums up Mexico's supposed benefits from NAFTA:

"Much praise has been heard for the few 'winners' that NAFTA has created, but little mention is made of the fact that the Mexican people are the deal's big 'losers.' Mexicans now face greater unemployment, poverty, and inequality than before the agreement began in 1994."11

In short, NAFTA has not been a friend to the citizenry of the United States or Mexico. Still, this is the backdrop against which the North American Union is being acted out. The globalization players and their promises have remained pretty much the same, both just as disingenuous as ever.

Prelude to the North American Union

Soon after NAFTA was passed in 1994, Dr. Robert A. Pastor began to push for a "deep integration" which NAFTA could not provide by itself. His dream was summed up in his book, Toward a North American Union, published in 2001. Unfortunately for Pastor, the book was released just a few days prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and thus received little attention from any sector.

However, Pastor had the right connections. He was invited to appear before the plenary session (held in Ontario, Canada) of the Trilateral Commission on November 1-2, 2002, to deliver a paper drawing directly on his book. His paper, "A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission", made several recommendations:

* "... the three governments should establish a North American Commission (NAC) to define an agenda for Summit meetings by the three leaders and to monitor the implementation of the decisions and plans.
* A second institution should emerge from combining two bilateral legislative groups into a North American Parliamentary Group.
* "The third institution should be a Permanent Court on Trade and Investment
* "The three leaders should establish a North American Development Fund, whose priority would be to connect the U.S.-Mexican border region to central and southern Mexico.
* The North American Commission should develop an integrated continental plan for transportation and infrastructure.
* "...negotiate a Customs Union and a Common External Tariff
* "Our three governments should sponsor Centers for North American Studies in each of our countries to help the people of all three understand the problems and the potential of North America and begin to think of themselves as North Americans"12 [emphasis added]

Pastor's choice of the words "Modest Proposal" are almost comical considering that he intends to reorganize the entire North American continent.

Nevertheless, the Trilateral Commission bought Pastor's proposals hook, line and sinker. Subsequently, it was Pastor who emerged as the U.S. vice-chairman of the CFR task force that was announced on October 15, 2004:

"The Council has launched an independent task force on the future of North America to examine regional integration since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement ten years ago... The task force will review five spheres of policy in which greater cooperation may be needed. They are: deepening economic integration; reducing the development gap; harmonizing regulatory policy; enhancing security; and devising better institutions to manage conflicts that inevitably arise from integration and exploit opportunities for collaboration."13

Independent task force, indeed! A total of twenty-three members were chosen from the three countries. Each country was represented by a member of the Trilateral Commission: Carla A. Hills (U.S.), Luis Rubio (Mexico) and Wendy K. Dobson (Canada). Robert Pastor served as the U.S. vice-chairman.

This CFR task force was unique in that it focused on economic and political policies for all three countries, not just the U.S. The Task Force stated purpose was to

"... identify inadequacies in the current arrangements and suggest opportunities for deeper cooperation on areas of common interest. Unlike other Council-sponsored task forces, which focus primarily on U.S. policy, this initiative includes participants from Canada and Mexico, as well as the United States, and will make policy recommendations for all three countries."14 [Emphasis added]

Richard Haass, chairman of the CFR and long-time member of the Trilateral Commission, pointedly made the link between NAFTA and integration of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.:

"Ten years after NAFTA, it is obvious that the security and economic futures of Canada, Mexico, and the United States are intimately bound. But there is precious little thinking available as to where the three countries need to be in another ten years and how to get there. I am excited about the potential of this task force to help fill this void,"15

Haass' statement "there is precious little thinking available" underscores a repeatedly used elitist technique. That is, first decide what you want to do, and secondly, assign a flock of academics to justify your intended actions. (This is the crux of academic funding by NGO's such as Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie-Mellon, etc.) After the justification process is complete, the same elites that suggested it in the first place allow themselves to be drawn in as if they had no other logical choice but to play along with the "sound thinking" of the experts.

The task force met three times, once in each country. When the process was completed, it issued its results in May, 2005, in a paper titled "Building a North American Community" and subtitled "Report of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America." Even the sub-title suggests that the "future of North America" is a fait accompli decided behind closed doors.

Some of the recommendations of the task force are:

* "Adopt a common external tariff."
* "Adopt a North American Approach to Regulation"
* "Establish a common security perimeter by 2010."
* "Establish a North American investment fund for infrastructure and human capital."
* "Establish a permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution."
* "An annual North American Summit meeting" that would bring the heads-of-state together for the sake of public display of confidence.
* "Establish minister-led working groups that will be required to report back within 90 days, and to meet regularly."
* Create a "North American Advisory Council"
* Create a "North American Inter-Parliamentary Group."16

Sound familiar? It should: Many of the recommendations are verbatim from Pastor's "modest" presentation to the Trilateral Commission mentioned above, or from his earlier book, Toward a North American Union.
SPP Summit
2006 SPP Summit in Cancun
Shortly after the task force report was issued, the heads of all three countries did indeed meet together for a summit in Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The specific result of the summit was the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPPNA). The joint press release stated

"We, the elected leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, have met in Texas to announce the establishment of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

"We will establish working parties led by our ministers and secretaries that will consult with stakeholders in our respective countries. These working parties will respond to the priorities of our people and our businesses, and will set specific, measurable, and achievable goals. They will outline concrete steps that our governments can take to meet these goals, and set dates that will ensure the continuous achievement of results.

"Within 90 days, ministers will present their initial report after which, the working parties will submit six-monthly reports. Because the Partnership will be an ongoing process of cooperation, new items will be added to the work agenda by mutual agreement as circumstances warrant."17



Once again, we see Pastor's North American Union ideology being continued, but this time as an outcome of a summit meeting of three heads-of-states. The question must be raised, "Who is really in charge of this process?"

Indeed, the three premiers returned to their respective countries and started their "working parties" to "consult with stakeholders." In the U.S., the "specific, measurable, and achievable goals" were only seen indirectly by the creation of a government website billed as "Security and Prosperity Partnetship of North America." (www.spp.gov) The stakeholders are not mentioned by name, but it is clear that they are not the public of either of the three countries; most likely, they are the corporate interests represented by the members of the Trilateral Commission!

The second annual summit meeting took place on March 30-31, 2006, in Cancun, Mexico between Bush, Fox and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. The Security and Prosperity Partnership agenda was summed up in a statement from Mexican president Vicente Fox:

"We touched upon fundamental items in that meeting. First of all, we carried out an evaluation meeting. Then we got information about the development of programs. And then we gave the necessary instructions for the works that should be carried out in the next period of work... We are not renegotiating what has been successful or open the Free Trade Agreement. It's going beyond the agreement, both for prosperity and security."18 [emphasis added]

Regulations instead of Treaties

It may not have occurred to the reader that the two SPP summits resulted in no signed agreements. This is not accidental nor a failure of the summit process. The so-called "deeper integration" of the three countries is being accomplished through a series of regulations and executive decrees that avoid citizen watchdogs and legislative oversight.19

In the U.S., the 2005 Cancun summit spawned some 20 different working groups that would deal with issues from immigration to security to harmonization of regulations, all under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (www.spp.gov). The SPP in the U.S. is officially placed under the Department of Commerce, headed by Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, but other Executive Branch agencies also have SPP components that report to Commerce.

After two years of massive effort, the names of the SPP working group members have not been released. The result of their work have also not been released. There is no congressional legislation or oversight of the SPP process.

The director of SPP, Geri Word, was contacted to ask why a cloud of secrecy is hanging over SPP. According to investigative journalist Jerome Corsi, Word replied

"We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public." 20

This paternalistic attitude is a typical elitist mentality Their work (whatever they have dreamed up on their own) is too important to be distracted by the likes of pesky citizens or their elected legislators.

This elite change of tactics must not be understated: Regulations and Executive Orders have replaced Congressional legislation and public debate. There is no pretense of either. This is another Gardner-style "end-run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece."

Apparently, the Trilateral-dominated Bush administration believes that it has accumulated sufficient power to ram the NAU down the throat of the American People, whether they protest or not.

Robert A. Pastor: A Trilateral Commission Operative

As mentioned earlier, Pastor is hailed as the father of the North American Union, having written more papers about it, delivered more testimonies before Congress, and headed up task forces to study it, than any other single U.S. academic figure. He would seem a tireless architect and advocate of the NAU.

Although he might seem to be a fresh, new name to in the globalization business, Pastor has a long history with Trilateral Commission members and the global elite.

He is the same Robert Pastor who was the executive director of the 1974 CFR task force ( funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations) called the Commission on US-Latin American Relations - aka the Linowitz Commission. The Linowitz Commission, chaired by an original Trilateral Commissioner Sol Linowitz, was singularly credited with the giveaway of the Panama Canal in 1976 under the Carter presidency. ALL of the Linowitz Commission members were members of the Trilateral Commission save one, Albert Fishlow; other members were W. Michael Blumenthal, Samuel Huntington, Peter G. Peterson, Elliot Richardson and David Rockefeller.

One of Carter's first actions as President in 1977 was to appoint Zbigniew Brzezinski to the post of National Security Advisor. In turn, one of Brzezinski's first acts was to appoint his protege, Dr. Robert A. Pastor, as director of the Office of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs. Pastor then became the Trilateral Commission's point-man to lobby for the Canal giveaway.

To actually negotiate the Carter-Torrijos Treaty, Carter sent none other than Sol Linowitz to Panama as temporary ambassador. The 6-month temporary appointment avoided the requirement for Senate confirmation. Thus, the very same people who created the policy became responsible for executing it.

The Trilateral Commission's role in the Carter Administration is confirmed by Pastor himself in his 1992 paper The Carter Administration and Latin America: A Test of Principle:

"In converting its predisposition into a policy, the new administration had the benefit of the research done by two private commissions. Carter, Vance, and Brzezinski were members of the Trilateral Commission, which provided a conceptual framework for collaboration among the industrialized countries in approaching the full gamut of international issues. With regard to setting an agenda and an approach to Latin America, the most important source of influence on the Carter administration was the Commission on U.S.-Latin American Relations, chaired by Sol M. Linowitz."21

As to the final Linowitz Commission reports on Latin America, most of which were authored by Pastor himself, he states:

"The reports helped the administration define a new relationship with Latin America, and 27 of the 28 specific recommendations in the second report became U.S. policy."22

Pastor's deep involvement with Trilateral Commission members and policies is irrefutable, and it continues into the present.

In 1996, when Trilateral Commissioner Bill Clinton nominated Pastor as Ambassador to Panama, his confirmation was forcefully knocked down by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), who held a deep grudge against Pastor for his central role in the giveaway of the Panama Canal in 1976.

The setback obviously did not phase Pastor in the slightest.

Where from here?

The stated target for full implementation of the North American Union is 2010.

"The Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity. We propose a community based on the principle affirmed in the March 2005 Joint Statement of the three leaders that 'our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary.' Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America." 23

Don't underestimate the global elite's ability to meet their own deadlines!

Conclusion

This paper does not pretend to give thorough or even complete coverage to such important and wide-ranging topics as discussed above. We have shown that the restructuring of the United States has been accomplished by a very small group of powerful global elitists as represented by members of the Trilateral Commission.

The Trilateral Commission plainly stated that it intended to create a New International Economic Order. We have followed their members from 1973 to the present, only to find that they are at the dead center of every critical policy and action that seeks to restructure the U.S.

Some critics will undoubtedly argue that involvement by members of the Trilateral Commission is merely incidental. However, the odds for their involvement at random is too large to be even remotely understandable; it would be like winning the lottery jackpot five times in a row, with the same numbers!

The credo of The August Review is "Follow the money, follow the power." In this view, the United States has literally been hijacked by less than 300 greedy and self-serving global elitists who have little more than contempt for the citizens of the countries they would seek to dominate. According to Trilateralist Richard Gardner's viewpoint, this incremental takeover (rather than a frontal approach) has been wildly successful.

To again answer Lou Dobbs question, "Have our political elites gone mad?" -- No Lou, they are not "mad", nor are they ignorant. To look into the face of these global elites is to look into the face of unmitigated greed, avarice and treachery.


Footnotes:

1. Gardner, Richard, The Hard Road to World Order, (Foreign Affairs, 1974) p. 558
2. ibid, p. 563
3. ibid. p. 556
4. Fast Track Talking Points, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen
5. Excerpts From Presidential Debates, Ross Perot, 1992
6. MacArthur, The Selling of Free Trade, (Univ. of Cal. Press, 2001) p. 228
7. Washington Post, op-ed, Kissinger & Vance, May 13, 1993
8. Los Angeles Times, op-ed, Kissinger, July 18, 1993
9. The Fruits of NAFTA, Patrick Buchanan, The Conservative Voice, March 10, 2006
10. Tonelson, The Race to the Bottom (Westview Press, 2002) p. 89
11. Trinational Elites Map North American Future in "NAFTA Plus", Miguel Pickard, IRC Americas website
12. A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission, Presentation by Dr. Robert A. Pastor, 2002
13. Council Joins Leading Canadians and Mexicans to Launch Independent Task Force on the Future of America, Press Release, CFR Website
14. ibid.
15. ibid.
16. Building a North American Community, Council on Foreign Relations, 2005
17. North American Leaders Unveil Security and Prosperity Partnership, International Information Programs, U.S. Govt. Website
18. Concluding Press Conference at Cancun Summit, Vicente Fox, March 31, 2006
19. Traditional Elites Map North American Future in "NAFTA Plus", Miguel Pickard, p. 1, IRC Website
20. Bush sneaking North American super-state without oversight?, Jerome Corsi,WorldNetDaily, June 12, 2006.
21. The Carter Administration and Latin America: A Test of Principle, Robert A. Pastor, The Carter Center, July 1992, p. 9
22. ibid. p. 10

http://www.augustreview.com/issues/general...CFQVxHgodtn37cQ

Published: Sunday, August 5, 2007

In Middle East arms bazaar, we're always thinking ahead

Rick Horowitz

"More weapons to Israel," says A, as the waiter refills the coffee cups. "And that's a good idea ... why?"

"It's obvious," says B.

The coffee is fresh, the morning is young. There's nothing else on A's schedule for hours. He can afford to be patient.

"Completely obvious," says B, punctuating his pronouncement with a long, slow swallow.

"Help me," says A.

"You give more weapons to Israel," B explains, as if to a large melon, "or they'll object to you giving more weapons to Egypt."

A brief silence, as A considers this new information. There's still something not quite right about it.

"So Rice is going to the Middle East - "

"And Gates, too - don't forget Gates."

"So Rice and Gates are both going to the Middle East, and the reason they're going to the Middle East is to give more weapons to Israel, and the reason they're doing that is so Israel won't be upset about us giving more weapons to Egypt."

"And the Saudis," says B.

"What about the Saudis?" says A.

"We're also selling more weapons to the Saudis. You wouldn't want Israel getting upset about that either."

"Of course not. But why - "

"And the Gulf States. You know - Bahrain and Qatar and ... those other ones."

"We're selling them more weapons, too?"

"That's what we're saying, anyway. We wouldn't be saying it if it weren't true."

The waiter is pouring again. They wait for him to finish, then carefully recalibrate their cream and sugar levels - dark but very sweet for A, lighter but barely sweet for B. Being a coffee drinker is harder than it looks.

"I don't know," says A when they've completed their calculations. "It's not like the Saudis have exactly been our best friends lately. How do we know they won't use these millions of dollars of - "

"Billions," says B. "It's probably billions."

"Great. So how do we know they won't use these billions of dollars of new weapons in some really dangerous way? Or give them to somebody else?"

"We don't know. We'll just have to - "

"Besides" - A is on a roll now - "isn't there enough tension in that part of the world already? Does it really make sense to pour billions of dollars of new weapons in there? Why would we possibly want to do that?"

"Iran," says B.

"Iran?" says A.

"Iran is starting to throw its weight around. We have to have a counterweight, or they could dominate the entire region."

"That wouldn't be good," says A.

"That would be terrible," says B.

"Didn't Iraq used to be the counterweight?"

"Iraq?"

"Before we overthrew Saddam, I mean. Didn't Iraq used to be the biggest counterweight to Iran?"

"I guess."

"But not anymore."

"I guess not."

"That's unfortunate."

The waiter is back with the bill. They both reach for their wallets, toss their money onto the table.

"Tell me we thought all this through first," says A.

"Who did?" says B. "Thought what through?"

"Exactly," says A.

Rick Horowitz is a nationally syndicated columnist. Contact him by writing to rickhoro@execpc.com.

Microchips in humans: High-tech helpers or Big Brother surveillance?

* Story Highlights
* Microchips that RFID capability function as tracking technology
* They can be found in cattle, credit cards, library books and passports
* Prospect of chipping humans has fired up debate over privacy rights

(AP) -- CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself -- until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms.
art.citywatcher.ap.jpg

Sean Darks, the chief executive of Citywatcher.com, points to the VeriChip implant he has in his arm.

The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs -- radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick -- was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said.

"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques," Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door."

Innocuous? Maybe.

But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age.

To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention -- a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.

To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else.

Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or Army Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then sex offenders, then illegal aliens -- until one day, a majority of Americans, falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically tagged.

Thirty years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating habits. In the 1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, pets, even racehorses.

Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on "contactless" payment cards (Chase's "Blink," or MasterCard's "PayPass"). They're embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of individual items at Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
Don't Miss


But CityWatcher.com employees weren't appliances or pets: They were people, made scannable.

"It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this technology in the workplace," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID."

Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, said his employees volunteered to be chipped. "You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by force," he told a reporter, "and that's not the case at all."

Implants in humans spark outrage

Yet, within days of the company's announcement, civil libertarians and Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip's implantation in people.

"Ultimately," says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes in consumer education and RFID technology, "the fear is that the government or your employer might someday say, 'Take a chip or starve."'

Some critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are forced to take the "Mark of the Beast" on their bodies, to buy or sell anything. Others saw it as a big step toward the creation of a Big-Brother society.

"We're really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in America, where every movement, every action -- some would even claim, our very thoughts -- will be tracked, monitored, recorded and correlated," says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington D.C.

In design, the tag is simple: A medical-grade glass capsule holds a silicon computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.

Implantations are quick, relatively simple procedures. After a local anesthetic is administered, a large-gauge, hypodermic needle injects the chip under the skin on the back of the arm, midway between the elbow and the shoulder.

John Halamka, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, got chipped two years ago, "so that if I was ever in an accident, and arrived unconscious or incoherent at an emergency ward, doctors could identify me and access my medical history quickly." (A chipped person's medical profile can be continuously updated, since the information is stored on a database accessed via the Internet.)

Hazards and benefits

But it's also clear to Halamka that there are consequences to having an implanted identifier. "My friends have commented to me that I'm 'marked' for life, that I've lost my anonymity. And to be honest, I think they're right."

Indeed, as microchip proponents and detractors readily agree, Americans' mistrust of microchips and technologies like RFID runs deep. Many wonder:

Do the current chips have global positioning transceivers that would allow the government to pinpoint a person's exact location, 24-7? (No; the technology doesn't yet exist.)

But could a tech-savvy stalker rig scanners to video cameras and film somebody each time they entered or left the house? (Quite easily, though not cheaply. Currently, readers cost $300 and up.)

What's the average lifespan of a microchip? (About 10-15 years.) What if you get tired of it before then -- can it be easily, painlessly removed? (Short answer: No.)

How about thieves? Could they make their own readers, aim them at unsuspecting individuals, and surreptitiously pluck people's IDs out of their arms? (Yes. There's even a name for it -- "spoofing.")

The company that makes implantable microchips for humans, VeriChip Corp., of Delray Beach, Florida, concedes that's a problem -- even as it markets its radio tag and its portal scanner as imperatives for high-security buildings, such as nuclear power plants.

"To grab information from radio frequency products with a scanning device is not hard to do," Scott Silverman, the company's chief executive, says. However, "the chip itself only contains a unique, 16-digit identification number. The relevant information is stored on a database."

VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans.

The company's present push: tagging of "high-risk" patients -- diabetics and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer's disease.

In an emergency, hospital staff could wave a reader over a patient's arm, get an ID number, and then, via the Internet, enter a company database and pull up the person's identity and medical history.

To doctors, a "starter kit" -- complete with 10 hypodermic syringes, 10 VeriChips and a reader -- costs $1,400. To patients, a microchip implant means a $200, out-of-pocket expense to their physician. Presently, chip implants aren't covered by insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid.

For almost two years, the company has been offering hospitals free scanners, but acceptance has been limited. According to the company, 515 hospitals have pledged to take part in the VeriMed network, yet only 100 have actually been equipped and trained to use the system.

Some wonder why they should abandon noninvasive tags such as MedicAlert, a low-tech bracelet that warns paramedics if patients have serious allergies or a chronic medical condition.

"Having these things under your skin instead of in your back pocket -- it's just not clear to me why it's worth the inconvenience," says Westhues.

Silverman responds that an implanted chip is "guaranteed to be with you. It's not a medical arm bracelet that you can take off if you don't like the way it looks..."

In fact, microchips can be removed from the body -- but it's not like removing a splinter.

The capsules can migrate around the body or bury themselves deep in the arm. When that happens, a sensor X-ray and monitors are needed to locate the chip, and a plastic surgeon must cut away scar tissue that forms around the chip.

The relative permanence is a big reason why Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is suspicious about the motives of the company, which charges $20 a year for customers to keep one its database a record of blood type, allergies, medications, driver's license data and living-will directives. For $80 a year, it will keep an individual's full medical history.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/01/chips.humans.ap/

Was the pin-up boy of Bush's War on Terror assassinated?
by CHARLES LAURENCE

Fallen hero? Pat Tillman died on the border of Afghanistan in April 2004
He was the pin-up boy of Bush's War on Terror. But the story of Pat Tillman's heroic death soon started to unravel. Today comes the most astonishing claim of all - that he was assassinated by his own side

Pat Tillman died a hero's death. At least, that's what America was told when this former football star and steel-jawed poster boy for the War on Terror, returned home in a box.

Here was a soldier who had paid the ultimate price for defending his fellow Army Rangers from an enemy ambush in the badlands of Afghanistan.

President Bush awarded him a posthumous Silver Star and made speeches in his honour.

Such was the mood of public mourning that his funeral service was broadcast on national television. In death, he was promoted to Corporal.

More than ever, the huge, slab-sided face below the crisply trimmed beret became the face of American patriotism.

But that was never the true story. One month after the fateful day in April 2004, when the 27-year-old died in a ravine on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden hid with Al-Qaeda, it was officially acknowledged that Tillman had not been killed by the Taliban at all.

Instead, he had been cut down by his own side, a victim of "friendly fire".

This was a revelation that triggered outrage. Spearheaded by Tillman's devastated mother Mary and father Pat "senior", a swelling tide of protesters demanded to know whether the Pentagon and the White House had deliberately played Tillman's death for propaganda value to boost support for the war. Plainly there were lies and cover-ups. Who knew what and when?

Now comes a new and even darker possibility. A growing body of evidence suggests that Tillman died neither at the hands of his nation's enemy nor in the tragic, accidental confusion of "friendly fire"; rather he was shot with three bullets in tight formation in the forehead at very close range.

If so, this is evidence of murder. Only now are the original battlefield reports emerging and they clearly suggest that his death was not a mistake, just as his mother - who has inevitably been trying to make sense of the inconsistent reports surrounding the loss of her son - has long suggested.

But could Pat Tillman really have been assassinated? And if so, why?

The dark shadow of "black ops" has fallen over the Tillman story, and it reaches all the way to the White House. Conspiracy theories are multiplying.

Preposterous though it may seem, there is a growing view that Pat Tillman was targeted by American special forces because he was about to become an embarrassment.

New evidence shows that he was turning out to be a very troubled "hero", a poster boy for the Army and the War on Terror who may have been about to speak out against the war he had come to symbolise.

Letters home and memories of those who knew him in Iraq suggest that after his initial enthusiasm, he had decided that Iraq was not just a quagmire but an "illegal" war.

Tillman had been heard arguing bitterly against the Iraq war and urging his fellow soldiers to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

He had also been using his celebrity to contact the best-selling anti-war intellectual Noam Chomsky, and they were due to meet as soon as Tillman returned from Afghanistan.

Astonishingly, long-hidden details of his death support the murder theory: medical evidence never did match up with the scenario of friendly fire; those three bullets from an M16 combat rifle could not have been fired from farther than ten yards; there were special forces snipers in the group immediately behind Tillman's platoon.

"The nation has been deceived," says Mary Tillman. "It's now about justice for Pat and justice for the other soldiers."

Bush in bomber jacket

President Bush awarded Tillman a posthumous Silver Star and made speeches in his honour

After three years of grief and anger - three years during which the national mood has changed from gung-ho support to rejection of the Bush wars and an atmosphere of dark suspicion over every White House motive - questions over the Tillman story are now convulsing America.

Just this week, the Army produced its seventh report into the affair to try to wipe away the stain of Pat Tillman's death.

There is no mention of assassination: the report adheres strictly to the friendly fire line.

But it apportions blame for the initial confusion over how Tillman died - enabling the White House and Pentagon to portray him as an all-American hero - on Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who was in charge of the special forces in Afghanistan that included Tillman's Rangers.

According to the report, the General had failed to notify both the Tillman family and senior officials of inquiries into the possibility of friendly fire.

He then lied to two sets of investigators about the stage at which he knew that American bullets had killed him. This was a "failure of leadership".

The report insists there was no cover-up and that the death was a battlefield accident, followed by a misunderstanding.

Kensinger faces post-retirement demotion by one star and a cut in his pension from $9,500 a month to $8,500.

In Washington, Army Secretary Pete Geren unveiled the report, saying: "General Kensinger was the captain of that ship and his ship ran aground."

He added that he expected this report to be the last.

There is little chance of that. Mary Tillman, who has long suggested her son was deliberately killed by his comrades, said the report was a farce - "a complete donkey show".

And Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, added: "We don't know the full story about the way the Pentagon and (the White House) managed this tragedy.

"In my view, the Army should reconsider today's announcement and move forward with harsher punishment."

Only a day after the Army report, the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convened an inquiry titled The Tillman Fratricide: What The Leadership Of The Defence Department Knew.

Chaired by another Californian Democrat with an eye on next year's elections, Henry Waxman, it is calling a slew of top brass and key Pentagon officials to the witness stand.

These include former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was sacked by Bush when the Iraq war turned sour for the voters.

"How high up did this go?" asks Waxman. In other words, did Bush ignore the truth on Tillman to use him for votes?

Or did Pentagon officials, White House staff or election strategists keep the truth from him?

The answer to that might be momentous. But this has all been pushed aside by the revelations prised from records by national news agency the Associated Press (AP).

Using the Freedom of Information Act - American law since the Watergate scandal - they went to court in San Francisco and sued for the right to look at the Pentagon records on the Tillman affair.

They were rewarded with 2,300 pages of documents, and what they contained raised extraordinary inconsistencies when put alongside the official versions of events.

The first mystery surrounds the nature of the wounds he sustained.

"The medical evidence did not match-up with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body told the first group of Army investigators.

Several doctors, their names blacked out in the reports, said that the bullets were so close together that Tillman must have been shot by an M16 combat rifle - a highpowered repeat machine gun - fired from no more than ten yards.

But soldiers have said their experience with an M16 on a three-shot burst suggests the killer was even closer.

To put three rounds into a man's forehead, they would need to be no more than ten feet away.

The Army doctors told the investigators that these wounds suggested murder and urged them to launch a criminal investigation.

The documents record that another doctor who conducted the Tillman autopsy was similarly so suspicious that he told investigators he had taken the unusual step of contacting the Human Resources Command which deals with personnel matters. He was rebuffed.

He then contacted an officer in the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) to suggest he open a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said 'no'," the doctor testified.

The newly uncovered papers then reveal, however, that as the controversy grew, the Pentagon did go back to check on the possibility of a fratricidal murder.

There is a record of investigators talking to then-Cpt. Richard Scott, who was in charge of the first, local army review.

"Have you, at any time since this incident on April 22, 2004, ever received any information or even rumour that Cpl Tillman was killed by anyone within his own unit intentionally?" they asked.

Scott replied he was sure the killing was accidental, though he must have been aware of the rumours that Tillman had been murdered.

Was Tillman disliked? Was anyone jealous of his celebrity? Was he - considered arrogant? His brothersinarms all insisted that Tillman was admired, respected and liked.

But there are more bombshells from the pages released to AP.

First, there was no evidence of any incoming fire from the enemy, and no sign of damage to any man or equipment from enemy fire.

Yet, the official story has always been that the tragedy started with the breakdown of a personnel carrier as Tillman's unit went into the ravine on an early evening seek-anddestroy patrol.

Tillman and his squad were ordered to continue on foot and were then ambushed; and the squad from a second vehicle following behind mistook them for the enemy ambushers.

If there is no evidence of an enemy ambush, how did the shooting start?

Is it coincidence that after more than three years it has been discovered that there were never-before-mentioned US snipers in the second group?

Could there have been a secret sniper on a mission to Afghanistan to assassinate the Army's poster boy?

Or perhaps three assassins, because as a general rule snipers fire in single shots, from specially tuned rifles, rather than in bursts of three?

Could the suggestion that Tillman was going to become a voice for the anti-war movement be why his mother says that a journal he'd kept since was 16 has gone missing?

It disappeared, along with most of his possessions, two days after he died.

"It's time to really ask who ordered the assassination of Pat Tillman," wrote blogger Josh Swiller on The Huffington Post, a mainstream website, sparking off a series of conspiracy theories.

If that is going too far, it is at least time for the Army, the Pentagon and the White House to come clean on the Tillman tragedy.

In these troubled times, the last thing America and its allies need is such suspicion, rumour and intrigue.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1770

PREMEDITATED MERGER
Now Cheney chimes in: Ain't no superhighways
VP latest to make official denial, some call it 'gaming semantics'
Posted: July 29, 2007
5:00 p.m. Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com


Vice President Cheney

Despite evidence to the contrary, Vice President Dick Cheney says there is no "secret plan" to create a continent-crossing superhighway to help facilitate a merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada.

"The administration is not engaged in a secret plan to create a 'NAFTA super highway,'" asserts Cheney in a recent letter to a constituent, according to a copy of the message obtained by WND.

The vice president's letter quotes an Aug. 21 statement from the U.S. Department of Transportation that, "The concept of a super highway has been around since the early 1990s, usually in the form of a claim that the U.S. Department of Transportation is going to designate such a highway."

DOT then refutes the claim, stating, "The Department of Transportation has never had the statutory authority to designate a NAFTA super highway and has never sought such authority."

The DOT statement then retracts the absolute nature of that statement, qualifying that, "The Department of Transportation will continue to cooperate with the State transportation departments in the I-35 corridor as they upgrade this vital interstate highway to meet 21st century needs. However, these efforts are the routine activities of a Department that cooperates with all the state transportation departments to improve the Nation's intermodal transportation network."


The DOT statement cited by the vice president seems to model the denial recently fashioned by the North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc., or NASCO, on its website.

There NASCO states, "There a no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35."

The coalition continues to distinguish its support for a North American "SuperCorridor" from a "NAFTA Superhighway," asserting that a "SuperCorridor is not 'Super-sized." The website then claims NASCO uses the term "SuperCorridor" to demonstrate "we are more than just a highway coalition."

In a July 21, 2006, internal e-mail obtained by WND under a Missouri Sunshine Law request, Tiffany Melvin, executive director of NASCO, cautions "NASCO friends and members" that, "We have to stay away from 'SuperCorridor' because it is a very bad, hot button right now."

As WND previously reported, Jeffrey Shane, undersecretary of transportation for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation got into a spirited exchange in January with congressmen after he asserted to a House subcommittee that NAFTA Superhighways were an "urban legend."

In response to questioning by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, before the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Shane asserted he was "not familiar with any plan at all, related to NAFTA or cross-border traffic."

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., then questioned aloud whether Shane was just "gaming semantics" when responding to Poe's question.

In June 2006, when first writing about NASCO, WND displayed the original homepage of NASCO, which used to open with a map highlighting the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada, arguing the trade group and its members were actively promoting a NAFTA superhighway.


NASCO's original map highlighted the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada

In what appears to be the third major revamping of the NASCO website since WND first began writing articles about NASCO, the Dallas-based trade group carefully removes identifying NASCO with the words behind the acronym, "North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc.," which the original NASCO website once proudly proclaimed.

The current NASCO homepage displays a photo montage of intermodal highway scenes, presumably taken along I-35, but without any map displaying a continental I-35 super corridor linking Mexico and Canada.

NASCO currently relegates the continental I-35 map to an internal webpage that describes the North American Inland Ports Network as a "working group" within NASCO that supports inland member cities who have designated themselves as "inland ports," seeking to warehouse container traffic originating in Mexican ports on the Pacific such as Manzanillo and L�zaro C�rdenas.

The beige and blue continental I-35 map now positioned on an internal page of the NASCO website was originally used as the second NASCO website, in make-over of the original NASCO blue and yellow continental I-35 map that made the continental nature of the I-35 appear graphically more pronounced.

WND has also previously reported that in a speech to NASCO on April 30, 2004, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta referred to Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94 – the core highways supported by NASCO as a prime "North American Super Corridor" – Mineta commented to NASCO that the trade group "recognized that the success of the NAFTA relationship depends on mobility – on the movement of people, of products, and of capital across borders."

WND has also reported Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a GOP presidential candidate, introduced an amendment to H.R. 3074, the Transportation Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2008, prohibiting the use of federal funds for participating in working groups under the Security and Prosperity Partnership, including the creation of NAFTA Superhighways.

On July 24, Hunter's amendment passed 362 to 63, with strong bipartisan support. Later, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3074 by a margin of 268-153. The bill has been sent to the Senate with Hunter's amendment included.

According to Freedom of Information Request documents obtained by WND, Jeffrey Shane has been appointed by the Bush administration to be the U.S. lead bureaucrat on the North American Transportation Working Group under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

On July 23, 1997, the NAFTA Superhighway Coalition was formed to promote continental highway development in association with the Ambassador Bridge.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=56912

A weak America is a weakened Europe

Christoph Bertram
August 4, 2007 12:00 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/christ...weakend_eu.html

America's power has been so overwhelming for so long that many think it has survived George Bush's presidency unscathed. That this is untrue is demonstrated by those, from Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, who are exploiting America's loss of standing and influence. This is no cause for schadenfreude. On the contrary, it is high time for friends of the United States, particularly in Europe, to realise that America's weakness undermines their international influence as well.

The evidence of America's weakness is clear enough. At the height of America's power, Russia had resigned itself to the apparently unstoppable encroachment of Nato on the Soviet Union's former sphere of influence. President Putin tolerated a US presence in central Asia to assist in the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan and raised no serious objections when the US trashed the anti-ballistic missile treaty prohibiting strategic missile defenses. America, eager to bring both Ukraine and Georgia into Nato, felt scant need to consider Russian concerns, convinced that the Kremlin would have no choice but to bow to the inevitable.

That was yesterday. Today, Putin seeks to regain the influence Russia lost in previous years. He is skillfully playing the anti-America card across Europe while putting pressure on the Baltic states, a clear warning not to extend Nato any further. In Ukraine, political forces resisting closer strategic links to the west have gained ground. And the Kremlin is aggressively portraying the planned establishment of a modest US missile defence installation in Poland and the Czech Republic as a threat to Russia's vital security interests.

Or consider Iran, another power exploiting American weakness. Only a few years ago, Iran's government seemed sufficiently in awe of the US to inch toward an agreement on its nuclear program that would have interrupted, and perhaps even halted, its enrichment activities. There was talk of possible bilateral contacts with the US, which, if successful, would have ended almost three decades of hostile relations. Today, Iran's enrichment program is going ahead despite the United Nations security council's warnings of new sanctions, while Iranian officials publicly ridicule threats of US military action.

These examples reflect the same message: America is losing clout around the world. The Bush administration is internationally exposed in both the arrogance of its concepts and the limits of its power. It lacks support at home and respect abroad.
Never since the US became the world's predominant power during the second world war has there been a similar decline in its international influence. Even during the Vietnam war and following its humiliating withdrawal from southeast Asia, there was never any serious doubt about America's authority and ability to deal with what was then the central strategic challenge, the cold war.

In today's interdependent world, however, it is no longer the number of nuclear warheads that bestows influence, but a country's ability to get others to go along with policies that it regards as serving its major interests. Bush's America has forfeited that influence - in the Middle East, in Asia and Africa, and in much of Europe.

Many in the US like to think that this is a temporary state of affairs that will vanish with the election of a new president and Congress in 2008. But they are neither sufficiently aware of the damage done nor realistic enough about the chances of Bush's potential successors - many of whom initially supported his adventurism - to revive the trust and respect their country once enjoyed.

To achieve that will take more than a new face in the White House. It will require years of hard work to reconcile America's resources and requirements, and to ensure that its initiatives can once again be seen as designed not to serve narrow US ideologies, but to advance a fair international order.

The result of protracted US weakness is also a weaker Europe. In the heyday of American dominance, European governments profited doubly: they were part of a powerful west and courted as a potential counterweight to US dominance by third countries. If they dissented from US positions, this did not seriously impair the west's strategic efficacy because American power was more than sufficient to compensate.

That arrangement no longer works. If European governments today distance themselves from America, as their citizens frequently demand, they will both antagonise and further weaken the US. At the same time, they will undermine their own international influence, allow others to play off Europe against America, destroying as well what chance remains for rebuilding the west with a reformed America. European leaders, even when they are unhappy over US positions, therefore need to combine forceful support for the transatlantic community of interests with discrete, if firm lobbying in Washington not to strain it to the breaking point.

Whether they can successfully perform this difficult act, remains to be seen. Fortunately, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Gordon Brown understand the challenge, and at least some parts of the Bush government seem aware of the problem. In the long period of American weakness, European leaders will have to demonstrate statesmanship for the west as a whole. It is a role for which decades of US supremacy have scarcely prepared them.

In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2007.

Congress yields to Bush on spying




Harry Reid, the senate majority leader was
critical of the bill [AFP]

The Democratic-led US Congress has yielded to George Bush, the president, and approved legislation to temporarily expand the government's power to conduct electronic surveillance to track foreign suspects without a court order. Civil liberties groups charge that the measure will cast a broad net that would sweep up law-abiding US citizens.
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The House of Representatives on Saturday gave its assent to the bill, 227-183, a day after it won approval in the Senate by 60-28. The temporary powers give Congress time to draw up a more comprehensive plan instead of rushing approval for a permanent bill before congressional recess.
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'Loophole' John Boehner, House minority leader and Ohio Republican representative, said: "After months of prodding by House Republicans, congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law - and America will be the safer for it." "After months of prodding by House Republicans, congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law - and America will be the safer for it"

John Boehner, Republican House minority leaderSteny Hoyer, the House majority leader, stated opposition to the bill, saying: "We think it is not the bill that ought to pass."

However, he said Democrats were unable to prevent it after strong lobbying by the White House and warnings of possible attacks on the US.

Bush had called on the congress to pass the bill before legislators begin a month-long break this weekend.

The measure allows the National Security Agency to listen in on telephone and email conversations between people in the US and suspects abroad.

Under the bill, which was approved by the Senate on Friday, intelligence officers will be able to listen in to such conversations without obtaining prior approval from a special court.

Harry Reid, the senate Democratic leader, criticised the bill, saying it "authorises warrant-less searches and surveillance of American phone calls, e-mails, homes, offices and personal records for however long (it takes for) an appeal to a court of review."

The administration would have to submit to a secret court a description of the procedures they used to determine that warrant-less surveillance only targeted people outside the United States.

The court, created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), would review the procedures and order changes, if needed, but the administration could still appeal.

Warrant-less surveillance

Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence, said earlier he needed the legislation "in order to protect the nation from attacks that are being planned today to inflict mass casualties on the United States."

If signed into law, the senate bill would expire in six months. During that period, congress would seek to write permanent legislation.

Bush authorised the interception without warrants of communications between people in the US and others overseas if one had suspected ties to terrorists in the wake of the attacks on September 11 2001.

Critics say the programme violated the FISA law, but Bush argued he had wartime powers to do so.

A recent ruling by the FISA court barred the government from eavesdropping on foreign suspects whose messages were being routed through US communications carriers, including Internet sites, prompting the Bush administration to call for the new bill.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5D3...C3C8AC900F7.htm

Arctic Wealth And Why Countries Are Jockeying Over The Roof Of The World

The arctic region comprises an ocean bordered by islands owned by Russia, Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark (through Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory). by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Aug 02, 2007
Global warming and, ironically, its main cause -- fossil fuels -- explain the intensifying squabble to claim rights over the Arctic seabed. Around a quarter of the world's oil reserves are locked up below the Arctic Ocean, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). The Arctic floor is also home to massive gas fields which are virtually unexploited, including those in the Barents Sea and in particular the Russian Shtokman field, which has reserves estimated at a staggering 3,200 billion cubic meters (113,006 billion cubic feet). This tempting treasure was previously way out of reach, for the ice that swathed the ocean's surface made prospection, drilling, pumping and storage technically impossible or astronomically costly.

Now, though, the icy shield is shrinking fast as atmospheric temperatures, stoked by the greenhouse effect, steadily rise.

Added to the hydrocarbon allure is the prospect of a new Northwest Passage along the roof of the world that would be open year-round to shipping, providing a lucrative short-cut between Asia and Europe.

"By 2040 or 2050, the Arctic Ocean will be navigable and that will mean significant developments very soon," Martin Fortier, a Canadian researcher who heads ArticNet, which studies the effects of climate change in the far north, said in January.

The Earth's far south, Antarctica, is a continent-sized chunk of land where human activity and national claims are regulated by an international treaty, signed in 1961 as a result of research conducted in the 1957 International Polar Year.

In 2007, another International Polar Year is underway but no such accord seems in prospect for the Arctic.

The region comprises an ocean bordered by islands owned by Russia, Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark (through Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory).

Russia on Thursday said it had planted its flag on the ocean floor at the site of the North Pole, in an operation undertaken by lawmakers aboard a midget submarine that descended 4,261 metres (13,980 feet) below the surface.

The expedition, ostensibly for scientific reasons, aims to establish that a tongue of seabed known as the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of Russia's landmass.

It would strengthen Moscow's claim over sub-sea rights extending to the Pole, made in 2001 to a UN commission.

Norway and Denmark are conducting territorial surveys of their own, while last month Canada announced it would spend 7.4 billion Canadian dollars (7.1 billion US) to build as many as eight armed ice-breaking naval ships to patrol its claim to the Arctic.

"Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic. We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said then.

Over the past five years, a flurry of scientific studies has said that winter sea ice in the Arctic has thinned and the extent of summer sea ice has retreated.

By 2040, "only a small amount of perennial sea ice" will remain along the northern coasts of Greenland and Canada in summer, the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) said last December.

The cause: warmer temperatures, amplified by a vicious circle that climatologists term "positive feedback." Ice reflects sunlight, but when it melts, that leaves a patch of open sea. Because sea is dark, it absorbs solar radiation, which thus leads to more ice loss.

"The polar regions are increasingly recognised as being... geopolitically and economically important (and) extremely vulnerable to current and projected climate change," the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in April.



http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Arctic_W..._World_999.html

ANALYSIS - U.S. peace effort faces Middle East credibility gap
Sun Aug 5, 2007
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.S. plan to host a Middle East peace conference is intended to signal a new commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But many in the region doubt President George W. Bush can muster the perseverance and evenhandedness in his last 17 months in office to deliver the two-state solution he evoked in 2002.

Others fear an exercise in futility if the idea is to forge peace between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction without the consent of the elected government led by Hamas Islamists who have seized control of the Gaza Strip.

Visiting the Middle East last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proposed an international conference, perhaps in October, that would discuss a "declaration of principles".

Previous outlines for resolving the conflict, from the 1993 Oslo accords to the 2002 "road map", have never led to deals on final borders and the fate of refugees and Jerusalem.

"The Bush administration has talked a good peace process, but hasn't done very much," said Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher, adding the conference was unlikely to be a major milestone.

Bush has mostly avoided close engagement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, often to the frustration of Washington's mediating partners -- the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

"We have been asking for these type of developments," Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said of the planned international conference.

But an EU official said the details of the meeting were not yet known and conditions for a breakthrough seemed lacking.

"If they want to solve the Middle East conflict, to agree on a final territorial settlement, probably the situation is not mature," said the official, who asked not to be named.

MISTRUST DOMINATES

Israel has shied away from such goals, especially since U.S.-brokered talks collapsed in 2000 and a Palestinian uprising began. Years of violence destroyed any lingering mutual trust.

Israel quit Gaza unilaterally in 2005, but the Hamas takeover there in June stifled any appetite for similar pullouts from the West Bank, where it has expanded Jewish settlements, built barriers and strangled the movement of people and goods.

Violent disarray among the Palestinians and persistent rocket attacks from Gaza have made many Israelis reluctant even to contemplate giving up land and security control.

To swing them behind any major policy shift towards ending the occupation would need strong leadership, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who once favoured some unilateral West Bank withdrawals, is struggling to save his political career from the damage it incurred in last year's Lebanon war.

He told Rice last week that Hamas, which has rejected international demands that it recognise Israel and accept previous interim peace deals, must be "kept out of the game".

Hamas has said any talks from which it is excluded would be just a photo opportunity, a view shared by many analysts who question the U.S.-Israeli strategy of isolating Hamas in Gaza while bolstering Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank.

While the Palestinian schism persists, Hamas will have a stake in sabotaging any progress in Abbas-led talks with Israel, the International Crisis Group argued in a report this month.

"How can Abbas deliver a ceasefire without the Islamists and their allies? How can he legitimise a political agreement with Israel ... if Hamas's significant constituency feels excluded? How can he move toward building a state if Gaza is left out?"

The report said repairing the Fatah-Hamas rift and including Islamists in the political system was vital to any peace effort.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?

Rami Khouri, a Beirut-based commentator, said the U.S. administration had left it very late to push for a solution.

"You have three desperate leaders -- Bush, Olmert and Abbas -- whose own people barely support them. If they try to salvage their political failures through a trumped-up, fake peace process, this is not going to work," he said.

Despite such scepticism, support for a peace drive is coming from Washington's Arab allies, fearful of rising Iranian power, chaos in Iraq and the appeal of Islamist militancy tapped by groups as diverse as Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah and al Qaeda.

Saudi Arabia, which has no diplomatic ties with Israel, has said it could join the U.S.-proposed peace talks as long as they are substantive. For Riyadh, this hinges on Israeli acceptance of an offer of full peace with the Arab world in return for withdrawal to 1967 borders and creation of a Palestinian state.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have argued for years that the region cannot be stable unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a major source of Muslim grievance, is settled.

These Sunni-ruled powers now share an interest with the United States and Israel in countering Shi'ite Iran, whose influence has expanded as a result of the war in Iraq.

Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, doubted Bush could seize the opportunity or recognise that settling the Palestinian issue was a strategic interest.

"To resolve this would require major U.S. leadership, and that is not going to happen in this administration," he said.

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.

A Future Natural Gas Cartel

What is not in doubt is the world's rising consumption of natural gas and LNG; within three years, analysts predict that global consumption of LNG will double. Natural gas accounts for about 23 percent of global energy use; after several years of record high oil prices, it is understandable that natural gas producers might want an increased share of the global energy pie.
by John C.K. Daly
UPI International Correspondent
Doha, Qatar (UPI) Aug 02, 2007
The April 9 meeting in Doha, Qatar, of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum attracted intense media scrutiny. Pundits speculated that the hidden agenda of the meeting, the first in two years, was to explore the possibility of developing a natural gas cartel along the lines of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Such a cartel would have immense financial and political clout in the global economy. Russian President Vladimir Putin first proposed the idea in 2002.

Last January Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei floated the concept of Iran and Russia creating a cartel. The following month, Putin and Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani agreed to discuss the idea.

GECF, founded in 2001, includes Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. The nations collectively own 73 percent of the world's natural gas reserves and produce 42 percent of global production.

The major players in such an organization would be Russia, with reserves of 47.8 billion cubic meters; Iran, which has 26.7 billion cu m; and Qatar, with 23.7 billion cu m. While Russia produces 21.6 percent of global production, two-thirds of its output is domestically consumed, leading the country's gas monopoly Gazprom to use its Soviet-era pipeline network to leverage lucrative contracts with such client states as energy-rich Turkmenistan, which have no other options for export.

While little has come as yet out of the discussions, alarm bells have been ringing across Western capitals, particularly in Washington, where the month after the GECF meeting the House of Representatives hastily passed H.R. 2264, the "No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act of 2007." NOPEC's sponsors, Michigan Democrat John Conyers and Ohio Republican Steve Chabot, assert that the legislation "subjects OPEC and other cartels to federal antitrust scrutiny by eliminating the sovereign immunity they receive under current law," adding that NOPEC is designed to make it illegal for nations "to artificially set high prices and limit the production of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product." President Bush threatened to veto the legislation, but partisans insist they have veto-proof majorities. The White House Office of Management and Budget says it "adamantly" opposes NOPEC.

Geopolitics are increasingly driving Washington's energy agenda. Forum members Russia, Iran and Venezuela, with whom the Bush administration has deteriorating relations, would be along with Algeria and Qatar the major players in a natural gas cartel. Qatar's relations with Washington are more ambivalent, as it hosts the Pentagon's massive Al Udeid Air Base. Qatar's relationship with Russia has also been strained in the past, particularly after three Russian agents in February 2004 assassinated former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Doha.

In the past, Russia has aggressively used its natural gas monopoly to play financial hardball with Azerbaijan, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia, and, as Russia would undoubtedly dominate a natural gas cartel, politicians are nervously predicting similar tactics, with natural gas being used to extract maximum political and economic advantages.

Certainly, comments from some of the Doha forum members indicate that work is eventually moving toward a consortium. Algerian Energy and Mines Minister Chakib Khelil said, "In the long term, we are moving toward a gas OPEC. ... The world has changed."

Sounding a conciliatory note, Qatari Energy Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said, "I hate the word 'cartel.'" But mincing no words, United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Mohammad bin Dhaen Al Hameli said, "The time of cheap gas is a matter of the past."

If there was a silver lining to the forum's meeting, it came in statements by several ministers commenting that the possibility of the group becoming another OPEC was impractical, as natural gas exporting nations supplied different regions of the world and frequently locked in prices in long-term contracts. Furthermore, pre-existing bilateral arrangements may slow progress toward development of a cartel. Khelil emphasized that the major gas markets such as the European Union have reacted very negatively to the concept of a gas cartel and that Algeria did not want to create doubts in Europe over its reliability as an energy supplier.

It is also unclear whether Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, dependent on the U.S. military for their security, would be willing to enter into such an organization, which would undoubtedly be strongly opposed by Washington. For Qatar, which next year will become the world's leading producer of liquefied natural gas, the risk of alienating the United States and one of its major markets may outweigh the benefits of such a grouping. Last but not least, even Russia could face a backlash from suppliers like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan if a cartel negotiated increased prices, further enriching Gazprom even as Central Asia received a fraction of the market value for its assets.

What is not in doubt is the world's rising consumption of natural gas and LNG; within three years, analysts predict that global consumption of LNG will double. Natural gas accounts for about 23 percent of global energy use; after several years of record high oil prices, it is understandable that natural gas producers might want an increased share of the global energy pie.

Source: United Press International

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/A_Futu...Cartel_999.html

The Turn
Defeatists in retreat.
by William Kristol
08/13/2007, Volume 012, Issue 45



Hot July brings cooling showers, / Apricots and gillyflowers, as Sara Coleridge's doggerel has it. But for the American antiwar movement, this July brought only a cold drizzle, wilted blossoms, and bitter fruit.

For the Iraq war's opponents, July began as a month of hope. It ended in retreat. It began with Democratic unity in proclaiming the inevitability of American defeat. It ended with respected military analysts--Democrats, no less!--reporting that the situation on the ground had improved, and that the war might be winnable. It began with a plan for a series of votes in Congress that were supposed to stampede nervous Republicans against the continued prosecution of the war. It ended with the GOP spine stiffened, no antiwar legislation passed, and the Democratic Congress adjourning in disarray, with approval ratings lower than President Bush's. It began with Democratic presidential candidates competing in their antiwar pandering. It ended with them having second thoughts--with Barack Obama, losing ground to Hillary Clinton because he seemed naive about real world threats, frantically suggesting that he would invade Pakistan.

July also began with the liberal media disparaging the troops. It ended with the liberal media in retreat. The New Republic had to acknowledge that its pseudonymous soldier's account of an incident purportedly showing the dehumanizing effects of the Iraq conflict was a lie: It had taken place in Kuwait (if it happened at all), before this imaginative private ever saw the horrors of war. The New York Times was so shocked to discover in late July that public opinion hadn't continued to move against the war that it redid a poll. The answer didn't change.

This last incident, though minor, is revealing. On July 24 the Times reported that a new survey had found an increase in the number of Americans retrospectively backing the liberation of Iraq:

Americans' support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. . . . Support for the invasion had been at an all-time low in May, when only 35 percent of Americans said the invasion of Iraq was the right thing and 61 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

In the Times's view, as explained on its website, this result was "counterintuitive"--so much so that the editors had the poll repeated to see whether they had "gotten it right." Turns out they had.

As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto commented: "Well, two cheers for the paper's diligence, but this also seems to be about as close as we're going to get to an admission of bias: an acknowledgment that those at the Times are flummoxed that the public is not responding the way they expect to all the bad news they've been reporting."

What's striking is that the Times was flummoxed. In the real world, the news from Iraq had been (relatively) good for a couple of months. General David Petraeus's military success had been followed with striking political achievements in Anbar province. At home, a mood of annoyance at the Bush administration's conduct of the war had started to yield to a realization that we were approaching a choice of paths on Iraq, and that the consequences of embracing defeat would be severe. But that's not the world the Times editors live in. In their world, this is a war that should never have been fought and that has long been irretrievably lost--and everyone should simply accept those settled facts.

In the real world, the public is skeptical of the administration's stance on Iraq--but not overwhelmingly or irretrievably so. Here's what a new Rasmussen poll says: "Twenty-five percent of voters now say the troop surge is working and another 26 percent say it's too soon to tell. A month ago, just 19 percent considered the surge a success and 24 percent said it was too early to tell." This means that 51 percent are now at least open to giving the policy more time. That's up from 43 percent a month ago.

Given the mistakes the Bush administration has made over the past four years, given the real challenges still ahead, given mainstream media bias in general and the lag in public understanding of what has happened in the last three months on the ground in Iraq in particular, these numbers aren't bad. And they're moving in the right direction. The public remains more sensible than much of elite opinion--and more open to new facts.

That's good, since progress on the ground in Iraq is likely to continue. It can't be taken for granted, given the nature of a war against a ruthless and adaptable enemy. Still, one British general--no cheerleader for our conduct of the war in the past--told me in Baghdad last week, "It's getting better--and I don't see why it shouldn't continue to do so." And, despite the mainstream media, reports of that progress should continue to seep into the American public's consciousness. "This war is lost," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated without qualification a few months ago, adding that it required "blind hope, blind trust" to believe in progress of any sort. But Reid is now in the position of holding blindly to his embrace of defeat. He has to deny facts in order to sustain his bleak judgment.

This denial will likely get more and more difficult. After all, civilian deaths in Baghdad are decreasing, and al Qaeda's networks and safe havens are being systematically disrupted. In Anbar, and now in Diyala, a bottom-up reconciliation is moving ahead as tribal sheikhs have turned against al Qaeda and are siding with American troops and Iraqi Security Forces. Ramadi, once among the most dangerous cities in Iraq, is now dramatically safer--our group walked through its downtown last week without body armor (though, of course, accompanied by several well-armed American soldiers).

As Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack put it in their New York Times op-ed on July 30,

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. . . . Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

What's more, the public debate will move from a referendum on Bush's conduct of the war over the past four years to a discussion of the choices ahead, as Gen. Petraeus's testimony in September draws near. The public will finally have to consider seriously the implications of giving up on Iraq, as opposed to supporting the continued prosecution of a war we might well win. This debate should bring home to nervous Republicans in particular the truth that panicked abandonment of the war effort is the worst gambit available to them (to say nothing of the most dishonorable). Meanwhile, Democrats, who have been pandering to their antiwar base, will increasingly see that they have--as the third-ranking Democrat in the House, James Clyburn, acknowledged last week--"a problem." If Petraeus reports progress, Clyburn acknowledged, then "I think there would be enough support" among moderate Democrats "to want to stay the course, and if the Republicans were to stay united as they have been, then it would be a problem for us."

So here is where we are: In terms of U.S. national interests--and in terms of its own political well-being--the Republican party faces a moment when, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, honor points the path of duty, and the right judgment of the facts reinforces the dictates of honor. General Petraeus will deliver the facts in September. If Republicans can keep their nerve under media and elite assault, then they will have the honor of following the path of both duty and the right judgment of the facts. I suspect all will come out well. Americans can sometimes be impatient and short-sighted. But when a choice is clearly presented, they tend to reject the path of defeat and dishonor.

--William Kristol



© Copyright 2007, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

The Iraq Shuffle
The congressional Democrats waltz around inconvenient facts.
by Matthew Continetti
08/13/2007, Volume 012, Issue 45



Last week, when the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that Gen. David Petraeus should be allowed more time to pursue his counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, supporters of President Bush's "surge" got excited. The political momentum seemed to shift in their direction. But Bush's supporters shouldn't get carried away. They are in danger of seriously underestimating the ability of those who believe the war is lost or was always unwinnable to ignore, deny, and attack all news of positive developments. They should not underestimate the popularity of what you might call the Iraq shuffle.

Antiwar activity seemed to crescendo in July, when leaks to the New York Times and Washington Post suggested the Bush administration was planning a significant reduction in American forces or a major shift in strategic goals in Iraq in coming months. The leaks--combined with congressional demands for a progress report on political and security "benchmarks" in Iraq and public criticism from several GOP senators that the current war strategy isn't working--caught the administration off guard. It scrambled to complete the progress report, explain the lack of political progress in Baghdad, and fight off further Republican defections.

It appears the administration was successful. In the House on July 12, only 4 Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the "Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act," fewer than the 10 Democrats who crossed party lines to vote against the bill. And in the Senate on July 18, only 4 Republicans voted with Democrats to invoke cloture on Levin-Reed, the most popular antiwar amendment mandating major troop reductions by next spring. When the vote failed, Senate majority leader Harry Reid pulled the Defense Authorization Bill from the floor rather than allow votes on Republican amendments that probably would have passed easily. Meanwhile, the USA Today/Gallup poll showed a majority of Americans wanted to hear Gen. Petraeus's scheduled September report to Congress before supporting any drastic moves to end the war.

Those developments set the stage for a hard week for antiwar congressional Democrats eager to cause maximum damage to the administration before the August recess. It all began on Monday, July 30, when the headline "A War We Might Just Win" appeared on the Times opinion page over a piece by Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. The two left-leaning national security experts, backers of the invasion of Iraq but also critics of the administration's "miserable handling" of war policy, recently returned from their second (O'Hanlon) and third (Pollack) trip to Iraq. They found that the United States is "finally getting somewhere," at least "in military terms." O'Hanlon and Pollack conclude: "The surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."

These words, coming from two well-regarded members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment and appearing on the nation's most liberal editorial page, resonated profoundly among war supporters in the White House and Congress. Right-wing radio talk show hosts began citing the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed, as did House Republicans during a debate on Iraq policy. Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani told talk show host Bill Bennett that when he read the piece, "I dropped my coffee." Supporters of the surge, who had long been aware of positive developments in Anbar province and elsewhere, felt as if their message finally was getting out.

Is it? It is hard to say. Antiwar Democrats immediately started dancing the Iraq shuffle, in which you ignore your opponent's arguments, shift the terms of the debate, and attack his motivation and character. Witness the left's reaction to a recent interview Petraeus gave to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Rather than rebutting Petraeus's findings, lefty bloggers accused the general of being a partisan political actor. Or consider the liberal, antiwar Center for American Progress's "Progress Report" of July 31, entitled "Bush's Enablers." The email newsletter is sent to left-wing political operatives, activists, and journalists throughout the country and is a reliable barometer of progressive opinion.

Rather than rebut O'Hanlon and Pollack's evidence of progress in Anbar, the reduction in (still high) civilian fatality rates, and the growing capability, integration, and accountability of Iraqi army units, the Progress Report said the authors were "cherry-picking anecdotal signs of progress in order to justify continuing a war they supported from the beginning." Rather than acknowledge the extraordinary alliance between coalition forces and the tribal sheikhs who rule Anbar, the Progress Report redirected attention to the problems facing the Iraqi national government--problems O'Hanlon and Pollack acknowledge in their op-ed. And rather than assuming its opponents argue in good faith, the Progress Report accused O'Hanlon and Pollack of "providing political cover for the administration's misguided war policies."

And so it goes. In recent days, however, surge critics seem to be performing the Iraq shuffle more frequently. A well-publicized instance came on July 27, when Democratic congresswoman Nancy Boyda of Kansas stormed out of a House Armed Services Committee hearing in which Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, and Lawrence Korb, an analyst at the Center for American Progress, gave divergent takes on the surge. Keane reported on the progress he had seen in mixed Sunni/Shiite neighborhoods during a recent trip to Baghdad. It is Gen. Petraeus's strategy of securing the Iraqi population that is responsible for such progress, Keane said.

"There was only so much you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while," Boyda said when she returned to the hearing. "So I think I am back and maybe can articulate some things--after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to. But let me first just say that the description of Iraq as in some way or another that it's a place that I might take the family for a vacation--things are going so well--those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying, 'Here's the reality of the problem.'"

General Keane hadn't recommended Iraq as a vacation spot. But that did not stop Boyda from indulging in hyperbole and suggesting his evidence of progress would "further divide this country." The implication is that the country would unify if only Gen. Keane and others who see encouraging signs would be quiet--a corrosive sentiment in a democracy sustained through public debate.

When conversation turns to the implications of American withdrawal from Iraq, the dance intensifies. The conservative blogosphere was abuzz last week over an interview the legendary New York Times war correspondent John F. Burns, who has been reporting from Iraq since 2002, gave to Hugh Hewitt. Burns told Hewitt that if America were to withdraw precipitously from Iraq, up to a million Iraqis might die in the ensuing violence. A recent Time cover story on withdrawal concluded that if the Americans left, "Iraq could bleed like the former Yugoslavia did from 1992 to 1995, when 250,000 perished." Yet antiwar senator John Kerry has denied even the possibility that such mass killing might occur, and antiwar senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says even if such slaughter is possible, it shouldn't factor into decisions over withdrawal.

"If that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces," Obama recently told the Associated Press, "then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now--where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife--which we haven't done. We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea." Here Obama sets an impossible standard for humanitarian intervention. By his logic, America should not act to prevent mass slaughter in a country it has occupied since 2003 unless it is willing to intervene wherever ethnic or sectarian killing may be taking place.

The antiwar reaction to the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed, and to the likely consequences of American withdrawal, suggest what will happen come September, when Petraeus reports to Congress. Those who want to leave Iraq as quickly as possible will ignore contrary evidence. They will attempt to shift the debate onto the ground where they are strongest. They will attack the messenger. For those most committed to American withdrawal from Iraq, no amount of positive reporting will matter. They will be too busy dancing the Iraq shuffle.

Matthew Continetti is associate editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

© Copyright 2007, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.



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<h2 class="date-header">Sunday, August 05, 2007</h2>


Al-Anbar Residents approve of Sunni withdrawal



Remember all that reporting about "progress" against "al-Qaeda" in al-Anbar Province? But for Sunni Arab Iraqis to hate the foreign Salafi fighters is not strange, and it says nothing about al-Anbar's relationship to the Shiite government in Baghdad. al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that its interviewees in al-Anbar wholeheartedly supported the withdrawal of the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalist) from the Baghdad government. They characterized the move as "deserting a sinking ship."

Iraq's electricity grid is on the verge of collapsing. Baghdad, the capital, is getting only one or two hours a day in the midst of a torrid summer. The Shiite holy city of Karbala has suffered without electricity for three days, which has also led to it lacking water. Karbala's merchants depend on Shiites coming on pilgrimage to the city, and lack of water and electricity discourages this pilgrim trade, costing the city its income.

About a third of Iraqis also lack access to clean water, a situation that will contribute to high infant mortality (small children die easily of dehydration caused by diarrhea) and potentially to the outbreak of diseases dangerous to adults, as well.

Reuters details political violence for Saturday.Labels: Iraq

posted by Juan Cole @ 8/05/2007 06:30:00 AM 0 comments

http://www.juancole.com/posted by Juan Cole @ <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2007/08/arc-of-crisis-panel-at-yearly-kos-heres.html" title="permanent link">8/05/2007 06:03:00 AM 0 comments http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID...529439774153267


Candidates at Yearly Kos
Reactions to Arc of Crisis Panel


Alas, although I heard the Democratic candidates for president at Yearly Kos and attended the break-out meeting afterward with Sen. Barack Obama, the controversy over his and Sen. Hillary Clinton's remarks about Pakistan never came up. So, nothing new to report on that score.

Here is some press coverage of the candidates' appearance Saturday afternoon.

In general, I suppose I am disturbed by the tendency of the Democratic candidates to displace 9/11 anxieties onto Afghanistan and Pakistan from Iraq. I can't see a military mission there in the medium term (at what point will the Pushtuns decide--under US military pressure--they aren't committed Muslism who dislike imperialism, and that they've changed their minds and want American bases in their territories?) If you put a lot more US military personnel into the Pushtun areas, they will just become Iraqized. My suggestion is to leave the Pushtuns alone militarily, and to depend mainly on the FBI, CIA and Afghanistan and Pakistan security services to track down the remaining, dangerous Arab al-Qaeda operatives in the area. Over 600 have been captured that way, and the rest can be, as well. As for convincing Pushtuns not to be or not to support Taliban, you can't do that militarily. It may not even be necessary, since polling in Afghanistan shows that everybody hates the Taliban.

Here's some comment on our panel at the Yearly Kos conference:

Democracy Arsenal;

Matthew Yglesias.

This is a dispassionate and objective discussion of a subject that attracts more hysteria than most in the U.S. press -- and sometimes even in the Economist, which here, however, does itself proud and once again illustrates why it is worth reading.


China's military might


The long march to be a superpower
Aug 2nd 2007 | BEIJING AND TIANJIN
From The Economist print edition


The People's Liberation Army is investing heavily to give China the military muscle to match its economic power. But can it begin to rival America?

THE sight is as odd as its surroundings are bleak. Where a flat expanse of mud flats, salt pans and fish farms reaches the Bohai Gulf, a vast ship looms through the polluted haze. It is an aircraft-carrier, the Kiev, once the proud possession of the Soviet Union. Now it is a tourist attraction. Chinese visitors sit on the flight deck under Pepsi umbrellas, reflecting perhaps on a great power that was and another, theirs, that is fast in the making.

Inside the Kiev, the hangar bay is divided into two. On one side, bored-looking visitors watch an assortment of dance routines featuring performers in ethnic-minority costumes. On the other side is a full-size model of China's new J-10, a plane unveiled with great fanfare in January as the most advanced fighter built by the Chinese themselves (except for the Ukrainian or Russian turbofan engines—but officials prefer not to advertise this). A version of this, some military analysts believe, could one day be deployed on a Chinese ship.

The Pentagon is watching China's aircraft-carrier ambitions with bemused interest. Since the 1980s, China has bought four of them (three from the former Soviet Union and an Australian one whose construction began in Britain during the second world war). Like the Kiev, the Minsk (berthed near Hong Kong) has been turned into a tourist attraction having first been studied closely by Chinese naval engineers. Australia's carrier, the Melbourne, has been scrapped. The biggest and most modern one, the Varyag, is in the northern port city of Dalian, where it is being refurbished. Its destiny is uncertain. The Pentagon says it might be put into service, used for training carrier crews, or become yet another floating theme-park.

American global supremacy is not about to be challenged by China's tinkering with aircraft-carriers. Even if China were to commission one—which analysts think unlikely before at least 2015—it would be useless in the most probable area of potential conflict between China and America, the Taiwan Strait. China could far more easily launch its jets from shore. But it would be widely seen as a potent symbol of China's rise as a military power. Some Chinese officers want to fly the flag ever farther afield as a demonstration of China's rise. As China emerges as a trading giant (one increasingly dependent on imported oil), a few of its military analysts talk about the need to protect distant sea lanes in the Malacca Strait and beyond.

This week China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), as the armed forces are known, is celebrating the 80th year since it was born as a group of ragtag rebels against China's then rulers. Today it is vying to become one of the world's most capable forces: one that could, if necessary, keep even the Americans at bay. The PLA has little urge to confront America head-on, but plenty to deter it from protecting Taiwan.

The pace of China's military upgrading is causing concern in the Pentagon. Eric McVadon, a retired rear admiral, told a congressional commission in 2005 that China had achieved a "remarkable leap" in the modernisation of forces needed to overwhelm Taiwan and deter or confront any American intervention. And the pace of this, he said, was "urgently continuing". By Pentagon standards, Admiral McVadon is doveish.

In its annual report to Congress on China's military strength, published in May, the Pentagon said China's "expanding military capabilities" were a "major factor" in altering military balances in East Asia. It said China's ability to project power over long distances remained limited. But it repeated its observation, made in 2006, that among "major and emerging powers" China had the "greatest potential to compete militarily" with America.

Since the mid-1990s China has become increasingly worried that Taiwan might cut its notional ties with the mainland. To instil fear into any Taiwanese leader so inclined, it has been deploying short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) on the coast facing the island as fast as it can produce them—about 100 a year. The Pentagon says there are now about 900 of these DF-11s (CSS-7) and DF-15s (CSS-6 ). They are getting more accurate. Salvoes of them might devastate Taiwan's military infrastructure so quickly that any war would be over before America could respond.

Much has changed since 1995 and 1996, when China's weakness in the face of American power was put on stunning display. In a fit of anger over America's decision in 1995 to allow Lee Teng-hui, then Taiwan's president, to make a high-profile trip to his alma mater, Cornell University, China fired ten unarmed DF-15s into waters off Taiwan. The Americans, confident that China would quickly back off, sent two aircraft-carrier battle groups to the region as a warning. The tactic worked. Today America would have to think twice. Douglas Paal, America's unofficial ambassador to Taiwan from 2002 to 2006, says the "cost of conflict has certainly gone up."

The Chinese are now trying to make sure that American aircraft-carriers cannot get anywhere near. Admiral McVadon worries about their development of DF-21 (CSS-5) medium-range ballistic missiles. With their far higher re-entry velocities than the SRBMs, they would be much harder for Taiwan's missile defences to cope with. They could even be launched far beyond Taiwan into the Pacific to hit aircraft-carriers. This would be a big technical challenge. But Admiral McVadon says America "might have to worry" about such a possibility within a couple of years.

Once the missiles have done their job, China's armed forces could (so they hope) follow up with a panoply of advanced Russian weaponry—mostly amassed in the past decade. Last year the Pentagon said China had imported around $11 billion of weapons between 2000 and 2005, mainly from Russia.

China knows it has a lot of catching up to do. Many Americans may be unenthusiastic about America's military excursions in recent years, particularly about the war in Iraq. But Chinese military authors, in numerous books and articles, see much to be inspired by.

On paper at least, China's gains have been impressive. Even into the 1990s China had little more than a conscript army of ill-educated peasants using equipment based largely on obsolete Soviet designs of the 1950s and outdated cold-war (or even guerrilla-war) doctrine. Now the emphasis has shifted from ground troops to the navy and air force, which would spearhead any attack on Taiwan. China has bought 12 Russian Kilo-class diesel attack submarines. The newest of these are equipped with supersonic Sizzler cruise missiles that America's carriers, many analysts believe, would find hard to stop.

There are supersonic cruise missiles too aboard China's four new Sovremenny-class destroyers, made to order by the Russians and designed to attack aircraft-carriers and their escorts. And China's own shipbuilders have not been idle. In an exhibition marking the 80th anniversary, Beijing's Military Museum displays what Chinese official websites say is a model of a new nuclear-powered attack submarine, the Shang. These submarines would allow the navy to push deep into the Pacific, well beyond Taiwan, and, China hopes, help defeat American carriers long before they get close. Last year, much to America's embarrassment, a newly developed Chinese diesel submarine for shorter-range missions surfaced close to the American carrier Kitty Hawk near Okinawa without being detected beforehand.

American air superiority in the region is now challenged by more than 200 advanced Russian Su-27and Su-30 fighters China has acquired since the 1990s. Some of these have been made under licence in China itself. The Pentagon thinks China is also interested in buying Su-33s, which would be useful for deployment on an aircraft-carrier, if China decides to build one.

During the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-96, America could be reasonably sure that, even if war did break out (few seriously thought it would), it could cope with any threat from China's nuclear arsenal. China's handful of strategic missiles capable of hitting mainland America were based in silos, whose positions the Americans most probably knew. Launch preparations would take so long that the Americans would have plenty of time to knock them out. China has been working hard to remedy this. It is deploying six road-mobile, solid-fuelled (which means quick to launch) intercontinental DF-31s and is believed to be developing DF-31As with a longer range that could hit anywhere in America (see map below), as well as submarine-launched (so more concealable) JL-2s that could threaten much of America too.


All dressed up and ready to fight?
But how much use is all this hardware? Not a great deal is known about the PLA's fighting capability. It is by far the most secretive of the world's big armies. One of the few titbits it has been truly open about in the build-up to the celebrations is the introduction of new uniforms to mark the occasion: more body-hugging and, to howls of criticism from some users of popular Chinese internet sites, more American-looking.

As Chinese military analysts are well aware, America's military strength is not just about technology. It also involves training, co-ordination between different branches of the military ("jointness", in the jargon), gathering and processing intelligence, experience and morale. China is struggling to catch up in these areas too. But it has had next to no combat experience since a brief and undistinguished foray into Vietnam in 1979 and a huge deployment to crush pro-democracy unrest ten years later.

China is even coyer about its war-fighting capabilities than it is about its weaponry. It has not rehearsed deep-sea drills against aircraft-carriers. It does not want to create alarm in the region, nor to rile America. There is also a problem of making all this Russian equipment work. Some analysts say the Chinese have not been entirely pleased with their Su-27 and Su-30 fighters. Keeping them maintained and supplied with spare parts (from Russia) has not been easy. A Western diplomat says China is also struggling to keep its Russian destroyers and submarines in good working order. "We have to be cautious about saying 'wow'," he suggests of the new equipment.

China is making some progress in its efforts to wean itself off dependence on the Russians. After decades of effort, some analysts believe, China is finally beginning to use its own turbofan engines, an essential technology for advanced fighters. But self-sufficiency is still a long way off. The Russians are sometimes still reluctant to hand over their most sophisticated technologies. "The only trustworthy thing [the Chinese] have is missiles," says Andrew Yang of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies in Taiwan.

The Pentagon, for all its fretting, is trying to keep channels open to the Chinese. Military exchanges have been slowly reviving since their nadir of April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet hit an American spy plane close to China. Last year, for the first time, the two sides conducted joint exercises—search-and-rescue missions off the coasts of America and China. But these were simple manoeuvres and the Americans learned little from them. The Chinese remain reluctant to engage in anything more complex, perhaps for fear of revealing their weaknesses.

The Russians have gained deeper insights. Two years ago the PLA staged large-scale exercises with them, the first with a foreign army. Although not advertised as such, these were partly aimed at scaring the Taiwanese. The two countries practised blockades, capturing airfields and amphibious landings. The Russians showed off some of the weaponry they hope to sell to the big-spending Chinese.

Another large joint exercise is due to be held on August 9th-17th in the Urals (a few troops from other members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a six-nation group including Central Asian states, will also take part). But David Shambaugh of George Washington University says the Russians have not been very impressed by China's skills. After the joint exercise of 2005, Russians muttered about the PLA's lack of "jointness", its poor communications and the slowness of its tanks.

China has won much praise in the West for its increasing involvement in United Nations peacekeeping operations. But this engagement has revealed little of China's combat capability. Almost all of the 1,600 Chinese peacekeepers deployed (including in Lebanon, Congo and Liberia) are engineers, transport troops or medical staff.

A series of "white papers" published by the Chinese government since 1998 on its military developments have shed little light either, particularly on how much the PLA is spending and on what. By China's opaque calculations, the PLA enjoyed an average annual budget increase of more than 15% between 1990 and 2005 (nearly 10% in real terms). This year the budget was increased by nearly 18%. But this appears not to include arms imports, spending on strategic missile forces and research and development. The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London says the real level of spending in 2004 could have been about 1.7 times higher than the officially declared budget of 220 billion yuan ($26.5 billion at then exchange rates).

This estimate would make China's spending roughly the same as that of France in 2004. But the different purchasing power of the dollar in the two countries—as well as China's double-digit spending increases since then—push the Chinese total far higher. China is struggling hard to make its army more professional—keeping servicemen for longer and attracting better-educated recruits. This is tough at a time when the civilian economy is booming and wages are climbing. The PLA is having to spend much more on pay and conditions for its 2.3m people.

Keeping the army happy is a preoccupation of China's leaders, mindful of how the PLA saved the party from probable destruction during the unrest of 1989. In the 1990s they encouraged military units to run businesses to make more money for themselves. At the end of the decade, seeing that this was fuelling corruption, they ordered the PLA to hand over its business to civilian control. Bigger budgets are now helping the PLA to make up for some of those lost earnings.

The party still sees the army as a bulwark against the kind of upheaval that has toppled communist regimes elsewhere. Chinese leaders lash out at suggestions (believed to be supported by some officers) that the PLA should be put under the state's control instead of the party's. The PLA is riddled with party spies who monitor officers' loyalty. But the party also gives the army considerable leeway to manage its own affairs. It worries about military corruption but seldom moves against it, at least openly (in a rare exception to this, a deputy chief of the navy was dismissed last year for taking bribes and "loose morals"). The PLA's culture of secrecy allowed the unmonitored spread of SARS, an often fatal respiratory ailment, in the army's medical system in 2003.

<a name="carrier_trade">
Carrier trade
The PLA knows its weaknesses. It has few illusions that China can compete head-on with the Americans militarily. The Soviet Union's determination to do so is widely seen in China as the cause of its collapse. Instead China emphasises weaponry and doctrine that could be used to defeat a far more powerful enemy using "asymmetric capabilities".

The idea is to exploit America's perceived weak points such as its dependence on satellites and information networks. China's successful (if messy and diplomatically damaging) destruction in January of one of its own ageing satellites with a rocket was clearly intended as a demonstration of such power. Some analysts believe Chinese people with state backing have been trying to hack into Pentagon computers. Richard Lawless, a Pentagon official, recently said China had developed a "very sophisticated" ability to attack American computer and internet systems.

The Pentagon's fear is that military leaders enamoured of new technology may underestimate the diplomatic consequences of trying it out. Some Chinese see a problem here too. The anti-satellite test has revived academic discussion in China of the need for setting up an American-style national security council that would help military planners co-ordinate more effectively with foreign-policy makers.

But the Americans find it difficult to tell China bluntly to stop doing what others are doing too (including India, which has aircraft-carriers and Russian fighter planes). In May Admiral Timothy Keating, the chief of America's Pacific Command, said China's interest in aircraft-carriers was "understandable". He even said that if China chose to develop them, America would "help them to the degree that they seek and the degree that we're capable." But, he noted, "it ain't as easy as it looks."

A senior Pentagon official later suggested Admiral Keating had been misunderstood. Building a carrier for the Chinese armed forces would be going a bit far. But the two sides are now talking about setting up a military hotline. The Americans want to stay cautiously friendly as the dragon grows stronger.

Published on Saturday, August 4, 2007 by Salon.com Democrats’ Responsibility for Bush Radicalism

by Glenn Greenwald

It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 — almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history — that George W. Bush can “demand” that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply (Meteor Blades has the list of the 16 Senate Democrats voting in favor; the House will soon follow).

I just finished a discussion panel with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero which was originally planned to examine his new (superb) book about the work his organization has done for years in battling the endless expansion of executive power and presidential lawbreaking. But the only issue anyone in the room really wanted to discuss — including us — was the outrage unfolding on Capitol Hill. And the anger was almost universally directed where it belongs: on Congressional Democrats, who increasingly bear more and more responsibility for the assaults on our constitutional liberties and unparalleled abuses of government power — many (probably most) of which, it should always be emphasized, remain concealed rather than disclosed.

Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation. In August of 2006, the Supreme Court finally asserted the first real limit on Bush’s radical executive power theories in Hamdan, only for Congress, months later, to completely eviscerate those minimal limits — and then go far beyond — by enacting the grotesque Military Commissions Act with the support of substantial numbers of Democrats. What began as a covert and illegal Bush interrogation and detention program became the officially sanctioned, bipartisan policy of the United States.

Grave dangers are posed to our basic constitutional safeguards by the replacement of Sandra Day O’Connor with Sam Alito, whose elevation to the Supreme Court Congressional Democrats chose to permit. Vast abuses and criminality in surveillance remain undisclosed, uninvestigated and unimpeded because Congressional Democrats have stood meekly by while the administration refuses to disclose what it has been doing in how it spies on us. And we remain in Iraq, in direct defiance of the will of the vast majority of the country, because the Democratic Beltway establishment lacks both the courage and the desire to compel an end to that war.

And now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with revealing symbolism, cancel their scheduled appearances this morning at Yearly Kos because George Bush ordered them to remain in Washington in order to re-write and expand FISA — a law which he has repeatedly refused to allow to be revised for years and which he has openly and proudly violated. Congressional Democrats know virtually nothing about how the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our conversations because the administration refused to tell them and they passively accepted this state of affairs.

The intense rush to amend this legislation means that most of them have no idea what they are actually enacting — even less of an idea than they typically have. But what they know is that George Bush and Fox News and the Beltway establishment have told them that they would be irresponsible and weak and unserious if they failed to comply with George Bush’s instructions, and hence, they comply. In the American political landscape, there have been profound changes in public opinion since September of 2001. But in the Beltway, among our political and media establishment, virtually nothing has changed.

I don’t have time this morning to dissect the various excesses and dangers of the new FISA amendments, though Marty Lederman and Steve Benen both do a typically thorough job in that regard. Suffice to say, craven fear, as usual, is the author of this debacle.

There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.

The common, defining political principle here — what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea — is a fervent and passionate belief in our country’s constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who — having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it — instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.

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Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine By Sharon BegleyNewsweekAug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."

It was 98 degrees in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 1988, and climate change was bursting into public consciousness. The Amazon was burning, wildfires raged in the United States, crops in the Midwest were scorched and it was shaping up to be the hottest year on record worldwide. A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."

The reaction from industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions was immediate. "As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," says historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research. ICE ads asked, "If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis [or Kentucky, or some other site] getting colder?" This sounded what would become a recurring theme for naysayers: that global temperature data are flat-out wrong. For one thing, they argued, the data reflect urbanization (many temperature stations are in or near cities), not true global warming.

Shaping public opinion was only one goal of the industry groups, for soon after Hansen's sweat-drenched testimony they faced a more tangible threat: international proposals to address global warming. The United Nations had scheduled an "Earth Summit" for 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and climate change was high on an agenda that included saving endangered species and rain forests. ICE and the Global Climate Coalition lobbied hard against a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases, and were joined by a central cog in the denial machine: the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank. Barely two months before Rio, it released a study concluding that models of the greenhouse effect had "substantially exaggerated its importance." The small amount of global warming that might be occurring, it argued, actually reflected a simple fact: the Sun is putting out more energy. The idea of a "variable Sun" has remained a constant in the naysayers' arsenal to this day, even though the tiny increase in solar output over recent decades falls far short of explaining the extent or details of the observed warming.

In what would become a key tactic of the denial machine—think tanks linking up with like-minded, contrarian researchers—the report was endorsed in a letter to President George H.W. Bush by MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler's Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you're in the minority, opts to be with you. "I thought it was important to make it clear that the science was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little basis for consensus and much reason for skepticism," he told Scientific American magazine. "I did feel a moral obligation."

Bush was torn. The head of his Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, supported binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Political advisers insisted on nothing more than voluntary cuts. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, had a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and "knew computers," recalls Reilly. Sununu frequently logged on to a computer model of climate, Reilly says, and "vigorously critiqued" its assumptions and projections.

Sununu's side won. The Rio treaty called for countries to voluntarily stabilize their greenhouse emissions by returning them to 1990 levels by 2000. (As it turned out, U.S. emissions in 2000 were 14 percent higher than in 1990.) Avoiding mandatory cuts was a huge victory for industry. But Rio was also a setback for climate contrarians, says UCSD's Oreskes: "It was one thing when Al Gore said there's global warming, but quite another when George Bush signed a convention saying so." And the doubters faced a newly powerful nemesis. Just months after he signed the Rio pact, Bush lost to Bill Clinton—whose vice president, Gore, had made climate change his signature issue.

Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006. Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on climate change, including an op-ed in The Washington Post in 1989 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism." The coal industry's Western Fuels Association paid Michaels to produce a newsletter called World Climate Report, which has regularly trashed mainstream climate science. (At a 1995 hearing in Minnesota on coal-fired power plants, Michaels admitted that he received more than $165,000 from industry; he now declines to comment on his industry funding, asking, "What is this, a hatchet job?")

The road from Rio led to an international meeting in Kyoto, Japan, where more than 100 nations would negotiate a treaty on making Rio's voluntary—and largely ignored—greenhouse curbs mandatory. The coal and oil industries, worried that Kyoto could lead to binding greenhouse cuts that would imperil their profits, ramped up their message that there was too much scientific uncertainty to justify any such cuts. There was just one little problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC—the international body that periodically assesses climate research—had just issued its second report, and the conclusion of its 2,500 scientists looked devastating for greenhouse doubters. Although both natural swings and changes in the Sun's output might be contributing to climate change, it concluded, "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."

Faced with this emerging consensus, the denial machine hardly blinked. There is too much "scientific uncertainty" to justify curbs on greenhouse emissions, William O'Keefe, then a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and leader of the Global Climate Coalition, suggested in 1996. Virginia's Michaels echoed that idea in a 1997 op-ed in The Washington Post, describing "a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom." To reinforce the appearance of uncertainty and disagreement, the denial machine churned out white papers and "studies" (not empirical research, but critiques of others' work). The Marshall Institute, for instance, issued reports by a Harvard University astrophysicist it supported pointing to satellite data showing "no significant warming" of the atmosphere, contrary to the surface warming. The predicted warming, she wrote, "simply isn't happening according to the satellite[s]." At the time, there was a legitimate case that satellites were more accurate than ground stations, which might be skewed by the unusual warmth of cities where many are sited.

"There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided," says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. Those recruits blitzed the media. Driven by notions of fairness and objectivity, the press "qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with 'some scientists believe,' where the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-caused [greenhouse] emissions are contributing to warming," says Reilly, the former EPA chief. "The pursuit of balance has not done justice" to the science. Talk radio goes further, with Rush Limbaugh telling listeners this year that "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just all part of the hoax." In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent said the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change."

Now naysayers tried a new tactic: lists and petitions meant to portray science as hopelessly divided. Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they "cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes." Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people's. Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote, of course (ask Galileo), but the number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.

Although Clinton did not even try to get the Senate to ratify the Kyoto treaty (he knew a hopeless cause when he saw one), industry was taking no chances. In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine—including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon—met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 "respected climate scientists" on media—and public—outreach with the aim of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom' " and, in particular, "the Kyoto treaty's scientific underpinnings" so that elected officials "will seek to prevent progress toward implementation." The plan, once exposed in the press, "was never implemented as policy," says Marshall's William O'Keefe, who was then at API.

The GOP control of Congress for six of Clinton's eight years in office meant the denial machine had a receptive audience. Although Republicans such as Sens. John McCain, Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee spurned the denial camp, and Democrats such as Congressman John Dingell adamantly oppose greenhouse curbs that might hurt the auto and other industries, for the most part climate change has been a bitterly partisan issue. Republicans have also received significantly more campaign cash from the energy and other industries that dispute climate science. Every proposed climate bill "ran into a buzz saw of denialism," says Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Climate Change, a research and advocacy group, who was a Senate staffer at the time. "There was no rational debate in Congress on climate change."

The reason for the inaction was clear. "The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming," says Sen. John Kerry. "There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts." Nor were states stepping where Washington feared to tread. "I did a lot of testifying before state legislatures—in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Alaska—that thought about taking action," says Singer. "I said that the observed warming was and would be much, much less than climate models calculated, and therefore nothing to worry about."

But the science was shifting under the denial machine. In January 2000, the National Academy of Sciences skewered its strongest argument. Contrary to the claim that satellites finding no warming are right and ground stations showing warming are wrong, it turns out that the satellites are off. (Basically, engineers failed to properly correct for changes in their orbit.) The planet is indeed warming, and at a rate since 1980 much greater than in the past.

Just months after the Academy report, Singer told a Senate panel that "the Earth's atmosphere is not warming and fears about human-induced storms, sea-level rise and other disasters are misplaced." And as studies fingering humans as a cause of climate change piled up, he had a new argument: a cabal was silencing good scientists who disagreed with the "alarmist" reports. "Global warming has become an article of faith for many, with its own theology and orthodoxy," Singer wrote in The Washington Times. "Its believers are quite fearful of any scientific dissent."

With the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, the denial machine expected to have friends in the White House. But despite Bush's oil-patch roots, naysayers weren't sure they could count on him: as a candidate, he had pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Just weeks into his term, the Competitive Enterprise Institute heard rumors that the draft of a speech Bush was preparing included a passage reiterating that pledge. CEI's Myron Ebell called conservative pundit Robert Novak, who had booked Bush's EPA chief, Christie Todd Whitman, on CNN's "Crossfire." He asked her about the line, and within hours the possibility of a carbon cap was the talk of the Beltway. "We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out," says CEI president Fred Smith, who counts this as another notch in CEI's belt. The White House declines to comment.

Bush not only disavowed his campaign pledge. In March, he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty. After the about-face, MIT's Lindzen told NEWSWEEK in 2001, he was summoned to the White House. He told Bush he'd done the right thing. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, Lindzen said, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. The treaty, he said, would "do nothing, at great expense."

Bush's reversal came just weeks after the IPCC released its third assessment of the burgeoning studies of climate change. Its conclusion: the 1990s were very likely the warmest decade on record, and recent climate change is partly "attributable to human activities." The weather itself seemed to be conspiring against the skeptics. The early years of the new millennium were setting heat records. The summer of 2003 was especially brutal, with a heat wave in Europe killing tens of thousands of people. Consultant Frank Luntz, who had been instrumental in the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, suggested a solution to the PR mess. In a memo to his GOP clients, he advised them that to deal with global warming, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." They should "challenge the science," he wrote, by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." Although few of the experts did empirical research of their own (MIT's Lindzen was an exception), the public didn't notice. To most civilians, a scientist is a scientist.

Challenging the science wasn't a hard sell on Capitol Hill. "In the House, the leadership generally viewed it as impermissible to go along with anything that would even imply that climate change was genuine," says Goldston, the former Republican staffer. "There was a belief on the part of many members that the science was fraudulent, even a Democratic fantasy. A lot of the information they got was from conservative think tanks and industry." When in 2003 the Senate called for a national strategy to cut greenhouse gases, for instance, climate naysayers were "giving briefings and talking to staff," says Goldston. "There was a constant flow of information—largely misinformation." Since the House version of that bill included no climate provisions, the two had to be reconciled. "The House leadership staff basically said, 'You know we're not going to accept this,' and [Senate staffers] said, 'Yeah, we know,' and the whole thing disappeared relatively jovially without much notice," says Goldston. "It was such a foregone conclusion."

Especially when the denial machine had a new friend in a powerful place. In 2003 James Inhofe of Oklahoma took over as chairman of the environment committee. That summer he took to the Senate floor and, in a two-hour speech, disputed the claim of scientific consensus on climate change. Despite the discovery that satellite data showing no warming were wrong, he argued that "satellites, widely considered the most accurate measure of global temperatures, have confirmed" the absence of atmospheric warming. Might global warming, he asked, be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" Inhofe made his mark holding hearing after hearing to suggest that the answer is yes. For one, on a study finding a dramatic increase in global temperatures unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, he invited a scientist who challenged that conclusion (in a study partly underwritten with $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute), one other doubter and the scientist who concluded that recent global temperatures were spiking. Just as Luntz had suggested, the witness table presented a tableau of scientific disagreement.

Every effort to pass climate legislation during the George W. Bush years was stopped in its tracks. When Senators McCain and Joe Lieberman were fishing for votes for their bipartisan effort in 2003, a staff member for Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska explained to her counterpart in Lieberman's office that Stevens "is aware there is warming in Alaska, but he's not sure how much it's caused by human activity or natural cycles," recalls Tim Profeta, now director of an environmental-policy institute at Duke University. "I was hearing the basic argument of the skeptics—a brilliant strategy to go after the science. And it was working." Stevens voted against the bill, which failed 43-55. When the bill came up again the next year, "we were contacted by a lot of lobbyists from API and Exxon-Mobil," says Mark Helmke, the climate aide to GOP Sen. Richard Lugar. "They'd bring up how the science wasn't certain, how there were a lot of skeptics out there." It went down to defeat again.

Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine's campaign. It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. "If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action," says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995. By appointing former coal and oil lobbyists to key jobs overseeing climate policy, he found, the administration made sure that didn't happen. Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial—and therefore no basis for making policy. Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney, working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as "lack of understanding" and "considerable uncertainty." A short section on climate in another report was cut entirely. The White House "directed us to remove all mentions of it," says Piltz, who resigned in protest. An oil lobbyist faxed Cooney, "You are doing a great job."

The response to the international climate panel's latest report, in February, showed that greenhouse doubters have a lot of fight left in them. In addition to offering $10,000 to scientists willing to attack the report, which so angered Boxer, they are emphasizing a new theme. Even if the world is warming now, and even if that warming is due in part to the greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, there's nothing to worry about. As Lindzen wrote in a guest editorial in NEWSWEEK International in April, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."


To some extent, greenhouse denial is now running on automatic pilot. "Some members of Congress have completely internalized this," says Pew's Roy, and therefore need no coaching from the think tanks and contrarian scientists who for 20 years kept them stoked with arguments. At a hearing last month on the Kyoto treaty, GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asked whether "changes in the Earth's temperature in the past—all of these glaciers moving back and forth—and the changes that we see now" might be "a natural occurrence." (Hundreds of studies have ruled that out.) "I think it's a bit grandiose for us to believe ... that [human activities are] going to change some major climate cycle that's going on." Inhofe has told allies he will filibuster any climate bill that mandates greenhouse cuts.

Still, like a great beast that has been wounded, the denial machine is not what it once was. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 38 percent of those surveyed identified climate change as the nation's gravest environmental threat, three times the number in 2000. After ExxonMobil was chastised by senators for giving $19 million over the years to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others who are "producing very questionable data" on climate change, as Sen. Jay Rockefeller said, the company has cut back its support for such groups. In June, a spokesman said ExxonMobil did not doubt the risks posed by climate change, telling reporters, "We're very much not a denier." In yet another shock, Bush announced at the weekend that he would convene a global-warming summit next month, with a 2008 goal of cutting greenhouse emissions. That astonished the remaining naysayers. "I just can't imagine the administration would look to mandatory [emissions caps] after what we had with Kyoto," said a GOP Senate staffer, who did not want to be named criticizing the president. "I mean, what a disaster!"

With its change of heart, ExxonMobil is more likely to win a place at the negotiating table as Congress debates climate legislation. That will be crucially important to industry especially in 2009, when naysayers may no longer be able to count on a friend in the White House nixing man-datory greenhouse curbs. All the Democratic presidential contenders have called global warming a real threat, and promise to push for cuts similar to those being passed by California and other states. In the GOP field, only McCain—long a leader on the issue—supports that policy. Fred Thompson belittles findings that human activities are changing the climate, and Rudy Giuliani backs the all-volunteer greenhouse curbs of (both) Presidents Bush.

Look for the next round of debate to center on what Americans are willing to pay and do to stave off the worst of global warming. So far the answer seems to be, not much. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds less than half in favor of requiring high-mileage cars or energy-efficient appliances and buildings. No amount of white papers, reports and studies is likely to change that. If anything can, it will be the climate itself. This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.

With Eve Conant, Sam Stein and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Matthew Philips in New York

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/

Published: Friday, June 29, 2007
Iraq War brings new attention to questions of just-war theory
Reviewed by Graham Yearley

The Horrors We Bless: Rethinking the Just War Legacy

By Daniel C. Maguire. Augsburg Fortress (Minneapolis, 2007). 103 pp., $8.50.

Faith and Force

By David L. Clough and Brian Stiltner. Georgetown University Press (Washington, 2007). 286 pp., $26.95.

Passion for Peace: Reflections on War and Nonviolence

By Thomas Merton, edited by William H. Shannon. Crossroad (New York, 2006). 174 pp., $14.95.

As the United States enters the fifth year of war in Iraq, many Americans are more focused on how our country can end our participation in it than on the question of whether the war is justified. But these three books remind us that we are doomed to repeat this kind of futility if we don't look hard at the moral and ethical issues of war and peacemaking. Christians in particular are obliged to re-examine its traditional responses to war: pacifism and just-war theories.

Daniel C. Maguire, the author of "The Horrors We Bless," is professor of ethics at Marquette University in Milwaukee whose views on contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage have been criticized by the U.S. bishops. This book offers a brief and blistering review of the just-war theory, its history and development, and the need to rethink it in the light of nuclear weapons and terrorism.

The war in Iraq reminds Maguire of the three major battles the French fought with the English in the 14th and 15th centuries. Three times the French rode into battle with knights clad in armor on horseback and three times the English slaughtered them with arrows shot from longbows. The French, with superior numbers and equipment, could not seem to understand that the methods of warmaking had changed and paid a high cost for their refusal to face facts.

In a similar way, Maguire argues, Americans don't seem to grasp that wars are not fought as they were in the Second World War. He contends that the Iraq War does not meet in any respect the criteria of just war: a just cause, a declaration of war by a legitimate authority, war fought with the right intention, war fought with the principles of proportionality and discrimination, and war used only as a last resort.

Rejecting the idea of pre-emptive strike as legitimate policy, the author does offer just peacemaking as a sane response to modern threats to security. Maguire acknowledges that peacemaking is difficult, and often dangerous, but he contends the alternatives are much worse.

Meanwhile, the book "Faith and Force" is the result of a debate argued across the Atlantic between David L. Clough, director of studies and teacher of ethics and systematic theology at St. John's College in Durham, England, and Brian Stiltner, an associate professor and chair of the department of philosophy and religious studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

Clough is a Methodist lay preacher and an advocate of pacifism; Stiltner is a Catholic theologian and a just-war adherent. They review issues of humanitarian intervention, the proliferation of weapons and the increasing threats made by rogue nations. Each chapter ends with a debate by the two authors on the given topic.

While "Faith and Focus" covers a broader range of topics, it reads like a textbook. Clough and Stiltner are skillful advocates of their positions, but their book lacks the passion of "The Horrors We Bless." We forget it is real human beings who are fighting and dying over the policies these men debate.

The book "Passion for Peace" is an abridgement of "Passion for Peace: The Social Essays" by Thomas Merton, originally published in 1995. Most of the essays were written by Merton in the early 1960s. It was in those years that Merton realized the contemplative life of a Christian monk is not meant to center on an individual's spiritual state, but, instead, is meant to be focused on the larger, contemporary concerns of the world.

Merton writes on people as diverse as Adolf Eichmann, Mohandas Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh and places as far-flung as Auschwitz and Vietnam. We hear the more mature voice of Merton, who had by this time rejected the religious romanticism of his younger years, but his eloquence and faith remain undiminished.

---CNS Graham Yearley is earning a certificate of advanced study in theology at the Ecumenical Institute at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore.

http://www.the-tidings.com/2007/062907/bookwar_text.htm

AEI: Caught Between Its Likudist Heart and Its Corporate Head

Today’s quotation in the Financial Times attributed to Danielle Pletka, the Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), was a stunner. “If we …begin to sanction foreign companies through more stringent sanctions in the Iran Sanctions Act, I think there will be serious repercussions for our multilateral effort.”

Whatever would possess AEI and Pletka, who personally has been one of the most prominent and enthusiastic cheerleaders of the rapidly spreading state divestment movement against companies doing business in Iran, to offer a cautionary note about adopting unilateral sanctions, let alone stress the importance of preserving multilateral unity with limp-wristed European allies in dealing with a charter member of the “Axis of Evil”? Judging from its provenance at what must be considered Neo-Con Central, it certainly couldn’t be common sense.

In fact, Pletka’s observation probably reflects growing tensions between AEI’s corporate contributors, many of whom are represented on its board of trustees, on the one hand, and, on the other, the hard-line neo-conservative views of its foreign-policy fellows, such as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Joshua Muravchik, and Pletka herself; academic advisers, such as Gertrude Himmelfarb, Eliot Cohen, and Jeremy Rabkin; and its board chairman, Bruce Kovner.

As AEI jumped on the divestment bandwagon initiated by Perle protégé Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP) earlier this spring with its publication of a list of evil-enabling companies, some of its corporate contributors with interests in some of those same companies — or in countries where those companies are based — objected. After all, multinational corporations, such as ExxonMobil, Motorola, American Express, State Farm Insurance, Dow Chemical, Merck & Co., Dell Inc. – all of which are represented in various ways on AEI’s board of trustees – not to mention General Electic, Amoco, Kraft, Ford Motor, General Motors, Eastman Kodak, Metropolitan Life, Proctor & Gamble, Shell, General Mills, Pillsbury, Prudential, Corning Glass Works, Morgan Guarantee, and Alcoa – all of whose foundations have reportedly contributed significant amounts of money to AEI – generally oppose economic sanctions that interfere with their investment and commerce, especially if they are unilateral and especially if they result in many jurisdictions (i.e. states) enacting different sanctions with which companies must comply.

“I know for a fact that some companies who are AEI contributors have complained to the president of AEI [Christopher DeMuth] about AEI’s involvement in this,” said William Reinsch, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), an association of some 550 of the biggest U.S. companies that, among other things, opposes unilateral economic sanctions. “There has been a significant level of upset by a number of [them].” In some cases, he added, companies complained about their inclusion on the list posted by AEI, while “others believe that it’s not an appropriate activity for AEI to be engaged in.”

Indeed, it is very strange that a think tank purportedly devoted to “limited government,” “private enterprise,” free markets and other neo-liberal ideals and funded in major part by the foundations of multinational corporations is actively leading a campaign to impose unilateral sanctions (and divestment) against multinational corporations like themselves and, in some cases, their own subsidiaries. After all, the history of such sanctions – against the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Iran itself, for example — shows that they often result in both resentment and retaliation – not just by the target country (Iran in this case), but also by friendly governments whose own companies stand to be negatively affected. That, in fact, was the point of the FT article whose lead sentence ran: “European governments are warning Congress that US legislation aimed at Iran could hit European energy groups, undermine transatlantic unity on Tehran’s nuclear programme and provoke a dispute at the World Trade Organisation.”

(Even the Bush administration, whose incumbency was due largely to the financial contributions of corporate givers, has opposed pending divestment and related sanctions legislation. “The Administration fears legislation such as H.R. 2347 would have the effect of dividing and splintering the coalition of allies and friends, which would be harmful to our common goal. Thus, passage of such legislation could result in a net loss, alienating friends, and having little to no prospect of modifying Iranian behavior.” The letter, delivered August 1, had virtually not impact, as the legislation in question, the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, was approved by the House, 408-6.)

While Pletka’s statement shows that she clearly understands the argument, however, there is no sign yet that AEI is reassessing its championship of sanctions and divestment. Despite her caution, the conference at which she voiced it was described by one corporate attendee as a “pep rally” for the divestment campaign. The question then is what will the corporate funders of AEI – which clearly like its free-market orientation but abhor divestment and sanctions – do? Will they back up their complaints by pulling their support? Or do they believe that the costs of its neo-conservative foreign-policy agenda are outweighed by the benefits of its effectiveness in promoting its neo-liberal economic agenda?

Not that corporate money is the only funding that keeps AEI afloat. Far-right foundations, which lined up behind the neo-cons in the late 1980s, leaving the paleo-cons penniless, have provided a lot of support. Scaife-related foundations have given the think tank more than two million dollars since 2002; while the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has given well over three million dollars since 2003; and the Smith-Richardson Foundation almost as much. And the neo-conservatives themselves aren’t without means, either. The Kovner Foundation, presumably the AEI chairman’s main philanthropy, gave nearly 4.2 million dollars to AEI in 2002, more than 3.7 million dollars in 2003, approximately 2.3 million dollars in 2004, and 1.3 million dollars in 2005, according to tax filings reviewed by IPS. Even multi-national corporations may find it hard to keep pace.

Still, the question remains: why do corporations provide funding to highly political think tanks that aren’t more responsive to their interests?

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogI...353173141418796

Blinded by the Story: Liberals and Progressives as Political Creationists
The vanishingly small number of Americans who genuinely desire liberty and peace, and who also understand what those great values require in terms of both political theory and political reality, have desperately grasped at any sign, no matter how miniscule, that a sufficient number of their fellow citizens might awake in time to prevent the ultimate catastrophe. There is no reason of any significance to find such signs any longer.

Americans now reside in the Land of the Living Dead. For the moment, the dim, blurred forms of a constitutional republic remain, but they are entirely empty and drained of life and vitality. We continue to go through the meaningless rituals of elections, many of us trying to convince ourselves that one party might be even a slight improvement over the other. As I pointed out before last fall's election, such hopes rely on willful self-delusion and an all-encompassing ignorance of history. As I have also said more than once, my estimate of how awful the Democrats' performance would be even if they took back both the House and the Senate -- and it was very awful -- has proved, in the event, to be laughably generous.

Please note -- and I underscore this point at least five times for emphasis -- that I absolutely do not include those individuals who so tirelessly work for Democratic electoral victory among those Americans who truly value liberty or peace. The criminal who currently resides in the White House and his fellow gang members may have taken the lead in destroying the remnants of our freedoms -- but they were supported and enabled every step of the way by the "opposition" party. From the Patriot Act, through both Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, and on to the monstrous Military Commissions Act, the Democrats offered enthusiastic support for the metastasizing authoritarian state or, when they meekly attempted to slow the tide, they fought in the manner of a skeletally thin imitation of a human being, about to fall over and finally expire due to a fatal lack of moral and spiritual nourishment.

The Democrats and their wholly-owned subsidiary (and one wonders if and to what extent they are compensated, financially and/or in terms of promised "influence," for their diligent and conscientious efforts), the much-lauded liberal-progressive "netroots" -- which is to say, bloggers of the kind represented by Atrios, Digby and their fellow travelers on this road leading straight to hell -- make much of the authoritarian approach and style of the current "conservative" movement. To be sure, today's conservatives manifest certain distinctive characteristics (which I have discussed in some detail myself, as in this post about David Brooks and one of his intellectual forebears, Joseph de Maistre). But in terms of the most critical fundamental principles, there is no difference whatsoever between the Republicans and the Democrats as institutions of power in the U.S. political system as it has developed over the last hundred years.

The latest example of the identity of means and ends shared by both major political parties is the FISA legislation, which the Senate approved by a wide margin yesterday. The difference between the Democrats and Republicans is now only one of style and emphasis, perhaps best expressed in the following manner. The Democrats will say to the American people: "You want us to keep you safe. You say you want 'security,' and to hell with liberty. You got it! We'll keep you safe, but that means we need a lot more power, despite the fact that all the power the government already had didn't prevent 9/11 -- but remember how much more competent we are than those lousy Republicans -- and even though we all keep telling you even more power won't prevent future terrorist attacks. But we'll do our best, provided you give us limitless power to do whatever we want. And while we're at it, we'll make sure to provide health insurance for your kids! Wotta deal, huh?"

And to this, the Republicans reply: "Nobody is better at keeping you safe than we are! Sure we screwed up on 9/11, but we're ready for those bastards now! And there haven't been any more attacks here in the Heitmatland since then, have there? But just to be sure, we need a lot more power, too! Oh, a few attacks will still almost certainly happen and we can't protect you against everything, but we do a hell of a better job than those limp-wristed, terrorist-coddling Democrats. Health insurance for your kids? We're at war, you wimp, and the war is for civilization itself. If your kids get killed by those SOBs, health insurance won't matter much, will it? Screw the insurance."

But they both agree that the government must be empowered to do whatever it wants, with no constraints at all, even if those constraints are imposed by the Constitution itself. Let's note a few passages from one story about this FISA legislation:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The legislation, which is expected to go before the House today, would expand the government's authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas.

As currently written, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already gives U.S. spies broad leeway to monitor the communications of foreign terrorism suspects, but the 30-year-old statute requires a warrant to monitor calls intercepted in the United States, regardless of where the calls begin or end.

...

Sixteen Democrats and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined all 43 Republicans in supporting the measure, which is nearly identical to a proposal prepared by the Bush administration. "We're at war. The enemy wants to attack us," Lieberman said during the Senate debate. "This is not the time to strive for legislative perfection."

Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.

Democrats "have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word 'terrorism,' they roll over and play dead," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, predicted that the bill's approval would lead to the monitoring of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency, which conducts most of the government's electronic surveillance. "If this bill becomes law, Americans who communicate with a person abroad can count on one thing: The NSA may be listening," he said.

...

Adding to the urgency for the administration is a secret ruling by a FISA judge earlier this year that declared surveillance of purely foreign communications that pass through a U.S. communications node illegal without a court-approved warrant -- a requirement that intelligence officials have described as unacceptably burdensome.

On that last point, please note that this FISA legislation follows the same pattern as the Military Commissions Act: the administration demanded new legislation to exempt it from the "restrictions" ( i.e., constitutional requirements) imposed by a court decision -- and the Democrats either failed to mount any serious opposition (in the case of the MCA), or they failed to oppose the administration and supplied their own votes to ensure the legislation was passed by an overwhelming majority (in the case of FISA). In both instances, the Democrats had been on notice for several years that the battle was coming; both times, they were completely unprepared and allowed the administration to stampede them into passing bills that are abominable in every respect.

I must immediately interject that to discuss these issues with regard to FISA is ludicrous in a much deeper sense. As Jonathan Turley explains here, FISA itself is a secret court whose very purpose is to circumvent the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The FISA court is no protection against illegitimate government intrusion at all. But as Turley notes, that we are fighting over whether to grant the executive branch and FISA still more untrammeled authority to disregard constitutional rights is a measure of how far we have already marched toward tyranny. And look at this chart to see just how compliant the FISA court is.

Once again, the leading liberal bloggers profess utter bafflement in response to the Democrats' actions. Several days ago, Atrios wrote:

Don't Get It

I'm really not sure why the Dems are even bothering to pretend (or, jeebus, not pretending) to take Bush seriously on this FISA stuff. He's been breaking the law for years.

Yesterday, in a post decrying the great haste with which the Democrats moved to accede to the administration's demands (which is, I note again, precisely what the Democrats did with regard to the MCA), Digby said -- with "Deep, Heavy, Sigh" (just so we know exactly how distressed she is):

Obviously, I'm not the only one who can't for the life of me figure out why the congress is doing this.

I suggest we take these leading lights of the progressive blogs at their word: they most certainly do not get it, and they absolutely cannot "for the life of [them] figure out why the congress is doing this."

I also note that, following the Senate cave-in, Atrios has dubbed Harry Reid the "Wanker of the Day." Will all this diminish in even the smallest degree Atrios's, or Digby's, or any other leading progressive blogger's efforts to ensure a huge Democratic victory in 2008? Of course not.

The reason for that is very simple, and it goes to the progressives' central articles of religious faith: The Democrats aren't really like this, not in their heart of hearts. The Democrats don't actually favor a repressive, authoritarian state. The Democrats are good, and they want liberty and peace for everyone, everywhere, for eternity, hallelujah and amen.

People who continue to believe this have evicted themselves from serious political debate, and they have willingly made themselves slaves to their enthusiastically embraced self-delusions. They confess a comprehensive ignorance of history, a stunning inability to understand the political developments of the last century, and a desire to place the story they have chosen, primarily because it flatters their own false sense of vanity and self-worth, above every relevant fact. In terms of these dynamics, they are no different from Sam Brownback and his ludicrous defense of his religious beliefs against the evidence of evolution. As I wrote (and this essay can be considered the concluding part of that article):

This is primacy of the story, offered in very clear fashion and without apology. Note carefully the methodology that Brownback endorses. He tells us "that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome" -- that is, the story Brownback chose long ago, completely apart from whatever the relevant evidence might show, has told us the most critical conclusions in advance: that man "was not an accident" and is "unique" in the entire universe. But it's the additional part of the methodology that is the intellectual censor, and the psychological killer: only "[t]hose aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth" are to be permitted, while anything and everything that "undermine[s] this truth" must be "rejected."

It must be noted that Atrios and Digby (and many other liberal and progressive bloggers) are obviously intelligent; on occasion, they are unusually perceptive on narrower questions. But when the story upon which we insist is used to trump history and facts, even when those facts continue to scream in our faces every day, even intelligent people render themselves functionally stupid. As a result, they "don't get it," and they cannot begin to understand why the Democrats act as they do. From the earlier essay concerning Brownback:

Let me just indicate an important related point, one I will return to in further detail in the series on tribalism in politics [a series I hope to begin in the next week or two, and for which this may be considered a preview]. Brownback's article, and all those who offer similar kinds of "arguments," illustrate this point with considerable force. Whenever a preexisting and preselected narrative assumes primary importance in this way, the longer one clings to the preferred story, the stupider one becomes. This is why the truth or falsity of the stories we tell is so critical, and why our methodology matters so much. If a story that is central to our view of ourselves fails to comport with the facts, and if we refuse to give up or even question the story, this necessitates that we block ourselves off from more and more information that might "undermine" that story, to use Brownback's terminology. Rather than eagerly seeking out further facts and trying to find out if a given story remains accurate or needs to be significantly revised (and sometimes even jettisoned altogether), we will lower our heads, narrow the scope of our inquiry, and progressively restrict the kind of data we permit ourselves to examine and even acknowledge. As time goes on, our intellectual curiosity steadily decreases. We won't want certain facts and information, because we might have to wonder whether particular cherished beliefs are correct.

Brownback has his story, which he refuses to give up or even to question: "Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order." And most liberals and progressives have their story, which they also refuse to surrender: Democrats are genuinely on the side of liberty and peace. If they act in ways that are inimical to those ends, there must be some explanation of which we are unaware. Some other factor must be making them do it, because they would refuse to behave in that manner if they could act in accord with their deepest convictions.

To believe that the Democrats are dedicated to peace and opposed to non-defensive, needless war and overseas intervention, one must blind oneself entirely to the history I have examined in great detail in my continuing "Dominion Over the World" series. See Parts I, III, and VI in particular. Woodrow Wilson grafted two important elements onto United States foreign policy: an insistence that the U.S. is the "indispensable" nation necessary to ensure worldwide peace and stability, and a messianic "idealism" that trumpets "American exceptionalism." To maintain that the current Bush invented these aspects of our conduct overseas is to pretend that Wilson never existed. And look again at the attacks and invasions the United States has launched since World War II, as listed by Jim Bovard:

Korea 1950-53
Lebanon 1958
Vietnam 1961-73
Laos 1964-73
Dominican Republic 1965-66
Cambodia 1969-70
Lebanon 1982-84
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-[2007]
Somalia 1992-94
Croatia 1994
Haiti 1994
Bosnia 1995
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
Afghanistan 2001-[2007]

The wars, covert operations, coups and assassinations went on uninterrupted, regardless of which party controlled the executive and legislative branches of government. The Democrats are devoted to peace? Try to be serious. But because the progressives will not give up their story, they continue to say they cannot understand why we are in Iraq -- when the invasion and occupation of Iraq are the logical and inevitable result of the decades-long bipartisan drive to American hegemony. Similarly, Digby cannot grasp why the Democrats continue to make an attack on Iran all but inevitable (a development I noted here):

I cannot believe that the Democrats voted for this en masses on the merits. It had to be a deal of some sort, or some kind of assurance from the powers that be or something that I'm just not getting. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out the kabuki of these inexplicable legislative actions but in this case, I'm stumped.

Digby concludes the post by confirming her ultimate bafflement: "I don't get it." Truer words...

As for the notion that Democrats are dedicated to individual liberty, we must look again at Wilson's deplorable and thoroughly repellent record, as summarized by Robert Higgs:

During World War I, the Wilson administration took sweeping actions to suppress not only individuals' freedom of action but even their freedom of expression. The 1918 Sedition Act must be read to be believed. Under it, one might be, as some 2,000 persons were, prosecuted for daring to "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States, or any language intended to bring the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United Sates into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute." Nor was this all the statute forbade!

When convictions under the Sedition Act were challenged in the courts, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the statute. To his eternal shame, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote: "When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." This decision and others upholding unconstitutional measures undertaken by the Wilson administration might strike the proverbial Man from Mars as odd, because the Constitution itself makes no provision for its own evisceration during wartime or other crisis, yet time and again during national emergencies the justices have allowed the legislative branch and especially the executive branch of government to transcend their constitutionally enumerated powers and to nullify individual rights proclaimed in the Constitution.

Here are further details of Wilson's destruction of freedom and civil liberties, from an essay I wrote over three years ago (this excerpt is from Thomas Fleming's book, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I:

In Congress...another brawl raged over an "omnibus bill" that gave the president wide powers to deal with spies, saboteurs and other forms of subversion; to control exports of materials that might be needed for the war effort; and to bar "treasonous" materials from the mail. The quarrel erupted when senators spotted in the middle of the bureaucratese the president's demand for the power to censor the nation's newspapers. Almost as infuriating was an appropriation of $100 million to fund the Committee on Public Information--with no accounting to Congress on how this large sum would be spent. Republicans--and many newspapers--were already viewing Creel's committee as a Wilson publicity machine.

Woodrow Wilson's low opinion of the press and fears of its supposed distortions had not been assuaged by George Creel's arguments in favor of government expression. The president's demand for censorship powers had Democratic support, but Republican progressives such as Senator Hiram Johnson of California went berserk over this attempt to repeal the First Amendment. Predictably, the New York Times and other papers agreed, calling the "spy" bill a tyrannous measure. ...

After weeks of wrangling, in which the president was repeatedly described as a would-be tyrant by the Republicans, Congress finally voted down the sweeping censorship powers Wilson demanded. But the lawmakers left in the hands of the postmaster general the authority to decide which newspapers were seditious and liable to prosecution. The Committee on Public Information also emerged with its power to control official war news largely intact. Even more worrisome--and largely ignored by the bill's opponents--was a passage stating that anyone who made "false reports or false statements with the intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces" or interfered with the recruiting of those forces would be subject to a $10,000 fine and twenty years in jail.

These words would soon inflict misery on thousands of Americans. The sponsors of the bill brushed aside worries about free speech expressed by some members of Congress. They were told that "policies of the government and [the] acts of its officers" would always be open to criticism. Only makers of "willfully false" statements would be prosecuted.

...

Elsewhere in the United States, the reality of the war was being brought home to people in less heroic ways. At Columbia University in New York, President Nicholas Murray Butler fired two professors, one for working with antiwar groups, the other for petitioning Congress not to send draftees overseas. The New York Times praised Butler for "doing his duty" by striking this blow against "disloyalty." Historian Charles A. Beard resigned in protest. Many other colleges soon followed Butler's lead, firing professors who declined to support the war.

[L]ike most Americans, including the president, [Attorney General Thomas W.] Gregory was convinced that the country swarmed with German secret agents and homegrown admirers of Kaiser Wilhelm. How to track them down was the problem. ...

The answer to Gregory's predicament emerged in Chicago, where a middle-aged businessman named Alfred M. Briggs offered to recruit twenty or thirty affluent men of his vintage who would hunt spies and other hidden enemies of the war effort gratis. They would even provide their own automobiles. ...The [Bureau of Investigation] head listened attentively while Briggs proposed a nationwide organization, the American Protective League (APL), which would operate under cover as "Secret Service Divisions" in cities and towns throughout the United States.

Bielaski swiftly persuaded Attorney General Gregory to approve this bad idea. By June the APL had 250,000 activists in its ranks and was rooting out dissent in six hundred cities and towns. It was ridiculously easy to join. A dollar bought a man membership and entitled him to call himself part of the "Secret Service."

Local APL leaders were usually prominent men in their communities--bankers, lawyers, clergymen. Unfortunately, their presumably good education did not include a course on the Bill of Rights. Their methods frequently involved opening suspects' mail, burglarizing their homes and offices, tapping their telephones and planting listening devices in their parlors and bedrooms. ...After the APL turned out in massive force to make sure there were no disruptions on draft registration day, Gregory told the president he thought they were a wonderful group of 100 percent Americans, and Wilson dropped the subject [of whether the APL should be stopped]. ...

The government also played a direct role in suppressing dissent. ... In Boston, labor union members staged a protest parade down Tremont Street, near the Common. They carried banners such as : "If This Is a Popular War Why Conscription? We Demand Peace!" The paraders were attacked by well-organized squads of soldiers and sailors commanded by uniformed officers. For three hours the military pursued, clubbed, kicked and battered the paraders, often forcing them to kiss the American flag on their knees. Afterward, the police, who watched the fracas in bemusement, arrested five of the marchers on charges of assault and battery. The Boston Journal called the riot a disgrace that would "harden the hearts of our already numerous skeptics of our war for democracy."

In West Virginia, the state secretary of the Socialist Party wrote a pamphlet attacking the draft as a foreshadowing of a "militarized America." He got six months in jail. In Philadelphia, another socialist was sentenced to six months in jail for possession of an antiwar pamphlet, Long Live the Constitution of the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld the sentence; liberal Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes affirmed the legality of the Espionage Act under the doctrine that in time of war, antigovernment critics can be "a clear and present danger" to victory.

At first, some judges dismissed charges against men and women who distributed literature or spoke out against the draft. Popular among the protesters was the pamphlet The Price We Pay, which described the war in France in horrific terms. In Albany, a man named Pierce gave a copy to one John Scully, who was holding forth against the draft in a saloon. Scully was working undercover for the American Protective League, and Pierce was soon in jail. His indictment declared that the statements in the pamphlet, which included a diatribe against fighting for J.P. Morgan, were "wholly false and untrue." Therefore Pierce was obstructing the war effort. When Pierce was convicted, this interpretation of the little-noticed clause in the Espionage Act swiftly became gospel in courts across the country.

I can't remember now who it was, but I recall that a very wise observer once noted that when Wilson proclaimed World War I a "crusade" to make the world "safe for democracy," he appeared to omit the United States from his calculations.

And here is Higgs on the record amassed by the greatest Democrat of them all -- and therefore and without question the greatest defender of liberty and peace -- Franklin Roosevelt:

World War II became the occasion for unprecedented repressive actions by the U.S. government. More than 10 million young men-about 63 percent of all those who served in the armed forces during the war-were drafted to fight, and hundreds of thousands of them died or suffered serious wounds. The government imprisoned nearly 6,000 conscientious objectors, most of them Jehovah's Witnesses, who refused to obey the conscription laws. Totally without due process of law, the government confined some 112,000 innocent persons of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens, in concentration camps in desolate areas of the west. Perceived enemies of FDR's administration came under surveillance by the FBI, whose special-agent ranks mushroomed from 785 to 4,370 during the war.

The government built a massive apparatus of economic controls between 1941 and 1945 and displaced free markets for the duration. No one should pooh-pooh the wartime economic controls because they entailed a sacrifice of "mere" economic liberties, as opposed to "precious" civil liberties. Men were sent to prison for violating price controls, and people were displaced from their homes to make way for military construction projects. Wartime taxation itself was no trivial assault.

To pay for the gargantuan munitions production, the government imposed new taxes and raised the rates of existing taxes to unprecedented heights. Payroll withholding of income taxes was instituted, as portentous an action as any, because it created a virtually automatic means of snatching people's earnings and thereby greatly facilitated the government's subsequent financing of its ever-growing expenditures. Despite the vastly increased taxation, the government had to borrow most of its wartime revenue, and the national debt swelled by $200 billion (equivalent to roughly ten times that amount in today's dollars), or about fivefold, creating liabilities that would hover over taxpayers ever afterward.

Let us pass over several of the subsequent decades, even though the destruction of liberty continued apace (and the wars also continued, as noted above), and consider just one of Bill Clinton's many contributions to the defense of individual freedom, as explained by the indispensable Jim Bovard. Please note that the title of Bovard's article is, "The Hypocritical War on Terrorism" -- and it dates from December 1996:

President Clinton is continuing to agitate for new powers to suppress terrorists. He is demanding more powers for wiretaps, more powers to prevent people from using encryption for their e-mail, more powers to classify normal crimes as terrorist offenses, and so forth. As usual, Clinton's solution to every problem is more power for himself and his cronies. Clinton has scorned opponents of his terrorist proposals, claiming that they want to "turn America into a safe house for terrorists." ...

Further evidence of the political abuse of the terrorist issue comes from comments by FBI Director Louis Freeh last year. Freeh repeatedly portrayed the new wiretap powers as vital in the fight against terrorism. But a report by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts in May revealed that the FBI and other federal agencies have dismally failed to use existing legal authority against domestic terrorist groups. Though the federal and state governments imposed a record number of wiretaps in 1994 (1,154), not a single wiretap was installed in the pursuit of arsonists, bombers, or gun-law violators. No such wiretap against alleged terrorists has been requested since 1988. The vast majority of wiretaps were targeted against drug and gambling criminals.

Further evidence of Clinton's hunger for more power is clear in his proposed antiterrorism bill. David Kopel and Joseph Olson recently observed in the Oklahoma City Law Review:

"The new terrorism bill defines virtually any crime as 'terrorism,' whether or not related to actual terrorism. 'Terrorist' offenses are defined as follows: any assault with a dangerous weapon, assault causing serious bodily injury, or any killing, kidnapping, or maiming, or any unlawful destruction of property. Snapping someone's pencil, breaking someone's arm in a bar fight, threatening someone with a knife, or burning down an outhouse would all be considered 'terrorist' offenses. Any attempt to perpetrate any of these terrorist crimes would be subject to the same punishment as a completed offense. Even a threat to commit the offense (i.e., 'One of these days, I'm going to snap your pencil') is likewise labeled 'terrorism.' The extra federal power created by the legislation is superfluous to genuine anti-terrorism. It was already a serious federal felony to make a real terrorist threat, as by threatening to set off a bomb, or to assassinate the president."

Clinton and Democratic congressional candidates this year are making political hay over the fact that the Republicans have not yet kowtowed to this particular Clinton power-grab.

Clinton's proposed antiterrorism legislation also greatly expands federal wiretap authority. The Clinton administration wiretap legislation would allow the use of illegal wiretaps in federal court and would also allow "roving wiretaps" — covering a large number of pay phones in the hopes of catching some lawbreaker. There is widespread fear among both liberals and conservatives that the Clinton administration could use the new wiretap authority to go after vast numbers of critics of government policy who pose no threat of violence.

Clinton's proposed legislation would allow wiretaps against suspected violators of any federal law. Jamie Gorelick, a deputy assistant attorney general, fanned such flames on May 3, 1995, when she told House International Relations Committee that tax protesters could be one type of "criminal" targeted by the expanded wiretap authority. ...

The Clinton administration also announced that it had issued a new interpretation of the guidelines under which the FBI surveils domestic political organizations. The revised guidelines will give the FBI a green light to infiltrate far more private groups and political organizations. Assistant Attorney General Gorelick told the Senate Judiciary Committee that even "without a reasonable indication of a crime, a preliminary indication can be undertaken" and "you could use informants and you could collect information, and then determine whether you have reasonable indication for a full-fledged investigation."

...

Another example of politicians' hunger to increase federal power over terrorism comes from a bill by Rep. Charles Schumer to create new mandatory minimum prison penalties for alleged terrorists. Kopel noted:

"Some of the new proposed mandatory minimums for 'violent antigovernment extremists' would impose a two-year mandatory minimum on someone who shoved a policeman during an argument over a traffic ticket, a two-year mandatory minimum on a jilted teenage girl who sent her rival an anonymous letter 'I'm going to tear your eyes out,' and an eight-year mandatory minimum on a homeowner who waved a baseball bat at a zoning inspector."

The Democrats are opposed to an increasingly repressive, authoritarian state? Try to be serious.

But perhaps liberals and progressives think Hillary Clinton will represent an improvement on her husband's baleful record. Honestly (if that's the operative word, which I strongly doubt)? "I'm a strong believer in executive authority," she said in 2003. "I wish that, when my husband was president, people in Congress had been more willing to recognize presidential authority."

As I noted in my post about the then-impending 2006 election, the Democrats will do nothing but make an attack on Iran more likely, check -- they will not end the occupation of Iraq, even if a Democrat -- any Democrat -- is president in 2009, check -- and they will not repeal the Military Commissions Act, check. They have not even made a serious effort to restore habeas corpus, upon which all our other rights depend. And let us not forget the Defense Authorization Act of 2006, or how easy that legislation makes it for the president to declare martial law -- or that Carl Levin co-wrote the key provision, and it was enthusiastically endorsed by many Democrats, including Ted Kennedy.

Recently, there was much commotion on the progressive blogs, as the liberals breathlessly anticipated the possible impeachment of Gonzales. A voluminous record supports the immediate start of impeachment hearings for Bush and Cheney, which is where one would and must start if one were serious about stopping even one of these continuing crimes, and if the Democrats genuinely wanted to forestall an attack on Iran. But, contend many progressives, if we start with Gonzales, we can then begin to establish a record that will make the impeachment of Bush and Cheney more likely.

Passage of this FISA legislation, which approves and expands the unconstitutional and criminal acts already engaged in by the administration, turns any future effort to impeach Gonzales into intellectual hash. To approve this legislation and to simultaneously push for the impeachment of Gonzales represents the triumph of utter incoherence. The Democrats may have feared Republican attacks on any impeachment effort, and that the Republicans would accuse them of acting only out of partisan motives, devoid of any concern for political principle whatsoever. The Democrats themselves have now handed the Republicans conclusive proof that the Republican attacks would be entirely correct. If the Democrats were actually concerned about Gonzales' eminently impeachable actions, this legislation would have been laughed off the Hill.

But for the reasons set forth above (and a full case would fill many volumes), the Democrats are not going to impeach any of these criminals, barring events entirely unforeseeable at present. And they will not for one overwhelmingly significant and determinative reason: always with regard to the underlying principles, and frequently with regard to the specifics, the Democrats are implicated in every single crime with which they would charge the members of the administration. The Republicans' crimes are their crimes.

I turn to another Robert Higgs article for a critical overarching point:

As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent "failed" policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers-that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: follow the money.

When you do so, I believe you will find U.S. policies in the Middle East to have been wildly successful, so successful that the gains they have produced for the movers and shakers in the petrochemical, financial, and weapons industries (which is approximately to say, for those who have the greatest influence in determining U.S. foreign policies) must surely be counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

So U.S. soldiers get killed, so Palestinians get insulted, robbed, and confined to a set of squalid concentration areas, so the "peace process" never gets far from square one, etc., etc. – none of this makes the policies failures; these things are all surface froth, costs not borne by the policy makers themselves but by the cannon-fodder masses, the bovine taxpayers at large, and foreigners who count for nothing.

What is true in foreign policy is also true in domestic policy. The Republicans and the Democrats both advance the growth of the corporatist state, as they have for the last century -- a state where key and hugely influential financial interests ally themselves with government power (including perhaps most significantly the military-industrial-congressional complex). As it expands and becomes increasingly corrupt, the corporatist state is also an authoritarian state: individual rights give way more and more to state power, in the form of proliferating laws, regulations, edicts, wiretapping and surveillance.

As Higgs notes, none of this serves the interests of the "ordinary" citizen, whose life and security become ever more fragile and disposable. But none of that concerns the ruling elites: their lives are ones of immense comfort and privilege, far removed from the petty concerns of those who pay for it and whose servitude makes it possible. As I said in that earlier essay: the concerns of the ruling elites are not yours or mine, and their motives are a universe apart from ours. Except for rare historic moments of huge and possibly threatening public protest, the elites don't give a damn at all about you or me.

The corporatist system itself is irreversibly corrupt. To restore anything even approaching the original design of a constitutional republic, another revolution is required. There is still time for a peaceful revolution, one led by those with a radically different political vision, but just barely. An attack on Iran and its likely aftermath, or an attack or series of attacks here at home, would almost certainly finish us off. But the liberals and progressives who remain devoted to Democratic electoral victory are completely unable to grasp this larger picture, and usually they have rendered themselves incapable of seeing even a small part of it. They remain committed to the story that gives their lives and their precarious sense of self meaning and succor: the Democrats will save us.

They will not. Try to grasp this finally, before it is too late: the Democrats may differ from the Republicans on matters of detail, or emphasis, or style. But with regard to the fundamental political principles involved, everything that has happened over the last six years -- just as is the case with everything that has happened over the last one hundred years -- is what the Democrats want, too.

This should not be a difficult point to understand. The historical record is compelling in its clarity, and overpowering in its length and volume. A corporatist, authoritarian state is what the ruling elites want, and it is precisely what serves their interests, Republican and Democrat alike. They know it; they count on your inability or refusal to see it.

So far, most liberals and progressives oblige them, just as the conservatives do. One would think the fact that they have become the Sam Brownbacks of political discourse would at least give the progressives pause. To date, it hasn't caused them to miss even a single step. And does anyone doubt that all the leading progressive and liberal writers and bloggers will eagerly fall into line for Hillary Clinton, if she is the presidential candidate? I certainly do not -- Hillary Clinton, warmonger, lover of ever-expanding executive authority, and endorser of state torture. If that last element isn't a deal-breaker for you, I have nothing further to say to you. She will be no better than Bush; in certain respects, she is likely to be significantly worse. And keep in mind that in the context of a deadly and oppressive authoritarian state -- which is what we've got and will have much more of, my friend -- competence is the last thing you want. The extent to which Clinton may be more "competent" than the current criminals is the precise extent to which she will be markedly more dangerous to anyone who wants to live in anything remotely like freedom.

But she's a Democrat and a self-proclaimed "progressive," the other progressives will bleat. She will save us.

Those of us who find ourselves in the newly-constructed domestic detention camps for "terrorists," dissidents, and other protesters against the state religion of power without end or limit will remember your immense and unforgivable betrayal. And even as we are imprisoned, beaten, starved, tortured and murdered, we will laugh at you -- for unless you finally wake up and begin to recognize reality, contempt and ridicule are all that you deserve.

Arthur Silber
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/...berals-and.html

Tancredo defends Makkah bombing comments WASHINGTON: Fiery Republican presidential long-shot Tom Tancredo on Sunday defended his suggestion that America should threaten to bomb Muslim holy sites in order to deter a nuclear attack on US soil.

Tancredo first mooted his controversial position last week, prompting the State Department to describe it as “absolutely crazy.”

“Yes, the State Department — boy, when they start complaining about things I say, I feel a lot better about the things I say,” Colorado representative Tancredo said in a presidential debate in Iowa televised on ABC.

“My task as president of the US is primarily to do one thing — by the way, not to make sure everybody has health care or everybody’s child is educated — my task is to do one thing: to protect and defend this country.

“And that means to deter — and I want to underline “deter” — any kind of aggression, especially the type we are threatened with by al-Qaeda, which is nuclear attack.

“I’m telling you right now that anybody that would suggest that we should take anything like this off the table in order to deter that kind of event in the United States isn’t fit to be president of the US.”

The State Department on Friday reacted angrily to Tancredo’s initial comments.

“Let me just say it is absolutely outrageous and reprehensible for anyone to suggest attacks on holy sites — whether they are Muslim, Christian, Jewish or those of any other religion,” departmental spokesman Tom Casey said.



http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=67154

Republicans reserve right to strike in Pakistan WASHINGTON: Top Republican 2008 White House hopefuls on Sunday reserved the right to launch US strikes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan in a feisty fourth televised debate.

Accusing Democrats of weakness on the war on terror, some in the field also subtly distanced themselves from Republican President George W Bush, as the race hit a new level of intensity five months before first nominating contests.

Rivals Mitt Romney and New York’s ex-mayor Rudolph Giuliani declined in the debate in Des Moines, Iowa, to rule out an incursion into remote tribal areas where al-Qaeda is holed up, according to US intelligence estimates.

“I would take that action if I thought there was no other way to crush al-Qaeda, no other way to crush the Taliban, and no other way to be able to capture bin Laden,” said former New York mayor Giuliani. But Giuliani, who leads nationwide Republican polls, said he hoped to get results by exerting more pressure on Islamabad to crack down on al-Qaeda and the Taliban close to the Afghan border.

“I think Pakistan has, unfortunately, not been making the efforts that they should be making,” Giuliani said in the debate televised by ABC. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who leads in several key early voting states, said Washington was right to bolster President Pervez Musharraf and should retain military options but keep them “quiet”.

Democratic candidate Senator Obama came under fire, after saying last week he would be ready to send troops to Pakistani tribal areas in search of Osama bin Laden. “It’s wrong for a person running for the president of the United States to get on TV and say, ‘We’re going to go into your country unilaterally’” said Romney, and also criticised Obama’s professed willingness to talk to leaders of US foes Iran and North Korea.

“He’s gone from Jane Fonda to Dr Strangelove in one week,” he said, referring to the anti-war activist and Hollywood star, and the mad scientist in the 1964 satirical movie about nuclear warfare.

Senator John McCain, the one-time Republican front-runner now in a campaign free-fall, also rebuked Obama. “It’s naive to say we’re going to attack Pakistan without thinking it through. What if Musharraf were removed from power? What if a radical Islamic government were to take place because we triggered it with an attack?”

The debate also included Congressman Duncan Hunter, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Congressman Ron Paul, former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson and Congressman Tom Tancredo.


http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=9441

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Copyright © 2007 The Daily Star Monday, August 06, 2007 Afghan president counters US rhetoric on Iranian role in country

By Agence France Presse (AFP)



WASHINGTON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a key US ally, contradicted US assessments of the threat posed by Iran and insisted in an interview aired Sunday that Tehran played a beneficial role in his region. "So far, Iran has been a helper and a solution," Karzai told CNN on the eve of a visit here Sunday to meet with President George W. Bush for talks on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.

"Iran has been a supporter of Afghanistan, in the peace process that we have and the fight against terror, and the fight against narcotics in Afghanistan," said Karzai, who became president with US backing in 2002.

His remarks differed markedly from the US stance, which sees Iran as a major menace that bankrolls terrorists, supplies arms to insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, and seeks to develop nuclear weapons.

The position was reiterated on Sunday by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she defended the decision to sell tens of billions of dollars in arms to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to thwart Iran.

"I don't think anybody doubts that Iran constitutes a major challenge, security challenge, to our friends, our allies, and therefore to our interests in the Gulf region," Rice said.

But asked about US suggestions that Iranian weaponry was being funneled into Afghanistan, where Taliban fundamentalists were mounting a reinvigorated insurgency six years after their ouster, Karzai was noncommittal.

"We have had reports of the kind you just mentioned. We are looking into these reports," he said in the interview conducted Saturday.

He added that Afghanistan and Iran had "very, very good, very, very close relations, thanks in part also to an understanding of the US in this regard."

"We will continue to have good relations with Iran. We will continue to resolve issues, if there are any, to arise," Karzai said.

Also interviewed on CNN, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates responded to Karzai's comments by offering that Iran was "playing both sides of the street in Afghanistan."

"I think they're doing some things to help the Afghan government," said Gates, who just returned from a Mideast tour, adding: "I think they're also doing things to help the Taliban, including providing weapons."

Karzai also said that he would do everything to help free 21 South Korean missionaries short of actions that would encourage more hostage-taking.

Asked whether he would negotiate with the Taliban kidnappers to secure the release of the Koreans, Karzai said: "We will try everything to have them released safely and in security.

"We will do everything other than encouraging hostage-taking and terrorism to have them released," he added.

Karzai said the kidnappers, who seized the 23 South Korean church aid workers on July 19 and have killed two of them to try to force the government to release Taliban prisoners, mainly foreigners. - AFP


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Qaeda video vows attacks on US missions
Published: Sunday August 5, 2007

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A wanted American member of Al-Qaeda warned in a new video on Sunday that US diplomatic missions and other interests were "legitimate targets," vowing that the network would attack these "spy dens."

In the footage compiled by Al-Qaeda's production arm Al-Sahab, an unnamed narrator singled out US missions in oil-rich Gulf Arab states as potential targets.

"We shall continue to target you at home and abroad just as you target us at home and abroad," Adam Gadahn, an American convert to Islam who has been indicted for treason in the United States, said in the video.

The video was posted on LauraMansfield.com, an American website which monitors terrorist groups.

"These spy dens and military command and control centres from which you plotted your aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and which still provide vital moral, military, material, and logistical support to the Crusade, shall continue to be legitimate targets for brave Muslims... unless you heed our demands," Gadahn said.

"Stop the Crusade and leave the Muslims alone," he added.

In a message to the Americans and their "Crusader allies," Gadahn said: "The amount of respect we have for your international law is even less than the respect you hold for defined sharia (Islamic law), and our observance of it is comparable to your observance of sharia."

"How can we comply with a law which contradicts divine law in whole and in part?" Gadahn asked.

"How can we recognise a law which states that the embassy or consulate is for all intents and purposes an inviolable fortress which the host country has no right to enter or monitor and when our sharia commands us to liberate every handspan of Islamic land occupied by the unbelievers?"

The one-hour 17-minute video was shown about two months after Gadahn warned in another Internet video that US President George W. Bush should withdraw all his troops from Muslim land or face attacks worse than September 11.

The only way to deal with the "dens of saboteurs and spies... when they refuse to leave of their own accord is to expel them by force," said Gadahn, who was wearing a chequered red and white Arab headdress.

The video included clips from old speeches by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"The killing of those infidels and the targeting of their dens (diplomatic missions) is a religious duty," thundered the narrator.

"Your embassies and consulates in Qatar, Kuwait, Riyadh and Bahrain provided you full support in your (March 2003 US-led) invasion of Iraq."

Gadahn -- also known as Azzam al-Amriki and Azzam the American -- has appeared in several videotapes for Al-Qaeda since 2004, praising the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and threatening new terror onslaughts.

In October 2006, he became the first person to be charged in the United States with treason since the World War II era. The charge carries a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of death.

Gadahn, who is believed to be in Pakistan, has a one million dollar reward for his capture and appears along with bin Laden on a US "Wanted" poster featuring 26 "faces of global terrorism."