By Mary Lyon
All Roads Still Lead To Rove
"Bush's Brain" REALLY saying sayonara? I wouldn't bet the house (or the White House) on it.

By Jim Freeman
Losing Our Edge On Our Own Home Turf
John McQuaid makes the case in an editorial, The Can't-Do Nation, that America is losing its knack for getting big things done. It's an interesting premise. But the bridge disaster also reflects a broader and more troubling problem. The United States seems to have become the superpower that can't tie its own shoelaces. America is a nation of vast ingenuity and technological capabilities. Its bridges shouldn't fall down.

By Michael Shelby
Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

The resignation of "Bush's Brain" Karl Rove is not a cause for celebration. Karl Rove is a devotee of Machiavelli and never makes a move without thinking it through. I'm not letting down my guard down against this evil, manipulative, nasty little man for a second. If we are ever to be free of these reprehensible Republicans we must be as vigilant in watching for their assaults as we are when guarding against terrorism.

By Richard Mathis
Turd Blossom Rove Poops Out: Bush's Chronic Cognitive Dissonance Continues Constipating
Who will shield Bush now that his chief strategist and enabler Karl Rove is sashaying off into the sunset?

China and Russia Begin Teasing Washington
Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk —


Moscow and Beijing have teamed up and appear determined to send a message to the White House, singly and together, which translated could mean, “Don’t mess with us” and “Stay clear of our allies.”

The two countries are currently playing war games together with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, all members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), considered a buffer to US oil and gas ambitions in the Caspian.

The SCO claims its mission is counterterrorist but while Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia have been invited to attend an associated Aug. 16 summit, the US has been rebuffed.

This comes hard on the heels of a not subtle Chinese threat to the American economy. Last week, two Chinese officials made statements, which did nothing to settle market jitters.

In essence, they warned the US to quit pressuring China to revalue its yuan or else it could decide to dump its dollar reserves, worth $1,330 billion and cash in its US Treasury bonds, roughly valued at $900 billion.

In the unlikely event of China following through on the implied threat, the ensuing economic carnage could make the 1929 Wall Street Crash look like a picnic because other countries would be panicked into following suit. Incredibly, some 45 percent of America’s foreign debt is held by foreigners, which leaves the US in an extremely vulnerable position.

Not to be outdone in the audacity-stakes, Russia claims to have buzzed a US airbase on the Pacific island of Guam in a show of its military resurgence.

According to the Russian military, two of its bombers were intercepted by US jets.

The pilots smiled at one another, says Russia, before going their separate ways. The Pentagon denies any such interception ever took place.

Russia’s new confidence derives from its friends in powerful places plus the fact it is swimming in oil and gas wealth, partly because Bush’s wars and aggressive Middle East foreign policy has driven up prices.

Its recent foray into the Arctic where divers erected rustproof titanium Russian flag on the seabed of the North Pole was interpreted by some as Russia having laid claim to some of the world’s largest untapped petrochemical reserves.

In the past, the logistics of tapping into those reserves were daunting, not to mention uneconomical, but now that ice caps are melting and prices are rising, Russia sees an opportunity.

It seems so does Canada and Denmark. Last week Canada announced the opening of two military bases in the region, while a group of 40 Danish scientists are traveling to the Arctic on an icebreaker to stake Denmark’s claim.

Now Georgia has stepped into the fray by asserting a Russian military aircraft has violated its airspace, leaving behind a missile that failed to explode in a farmer’s field, near the disputed region of Ossetia.

Russia has denied the incident and accused Georgia of putting on a “theatrical presentation” aimed at canceling scheduled talks over the breakaway area’s future status.

Russia has further made it crystal clear that it does not approve of George Bush’s anti-missile defense shield being erected in Poland and the Czech Republic out of concern it could be directed at it rather than Iran and North Korea, as claimed. President Vladimir Putin initially proposed a joint missile defense venture with the US — an idea that was not well received.

And so he has decided to beef up his own defense system, modernize his army and navy and, in the event Bush’s star wars plan proceeds on his doorstep, he has threatened to direct his missiles toward Europe.

Russia’s relations with Britain have also gone south. Their erosion began when people Russia termed as British spies working under cover of the British Embassy in Moscow were filmed concealing a telecommunications device inside a dummy rock, through which secret messages could be transmitted via a palm-sized computer.

Diplomacy succeeded in papering over that embarrassing incident that was shown to viewers around the world on Russian TV. But nothing could put a lid on the mysterious death of Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned by Polonium-210 after meeting with two former KGB agents and an Italian friend in London.

Following investigation, Britain’s director of public prosecutions requested the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, a Russian citizen and was told in no uncertain terms that Article 61 of Russian Constitution forbids the extradition of Russian citizens to foreign countries and any such trial must take place within Russia. Russia also accuses Britain of refusing to extradite Russian citizens wanted by Moscow.

The contretemps is still ongoing and has thus far resulted in the tit-for-tat expulsions of both Russian and British diplomats. This is all a far cry from those cozy post-Cold War years when President Bush said he looked his Russian counterpart in the eye and sensed his soul. The only looks they’ll be giving one another nowadays would be decidedly shifty.

It seems to be a terrible shame that such a wealth of goodwill has been so cavalierly wasted. If the Bush administration hadn’t been so intent on pushing its global weight around to fulfill a neocon agenda of full spectrum dominance we might have enjoyed a world where major powers worked together for the good of all.

Together they could have striven toward alleviating poverty and disease, reducing conflict and tackling climate change. Instead, untold billions will go toward weapons of death and destruction. This is Cold War Mark II folks — a deadlier sequel to Mark I now that China is on board. Fasten your seatbelts for an uncomfortable ride ahead!

http://www.arabnews.com/services/print/pri...ng%20Washington

Editorial: Master of Dirty Tricks
14 August 2007 SO White House aide Karl Rove — the man they called “the president’s brain” — has quit. It is a significant departure which probably represents the beginning of the political end of this flawed and failed administration. Rove ran both George Bush’s successful election campaigns and also fulfilled a role as fixer and eminence grise at the White House. As deputy chief of staff, he played a major role in many decisions, including the one to invade Iraq. But last November he failed in the probably impossible task of saving the Republican hold on both houses of Congress. Bush, who has been consistently loyal to his staff, would probably have been happy for Rove to stay through the last 15 months of his presidency. But Rove decided that a decision that White House staff in post after this month should see out the presidential term was unacceptable.

He was probably glad of the chance to quit. This master of dirty tricks who is roundly disliked by Democrats — he once sent a crowd of Chicago down-and-outs to a swish Democrat reception, falsely promising they would be given free alcohol — was widely suspected of “outing” Valerie Plame, the CIA secret agent, in revenge for her ambassador husband Joe Wilson’s accurate debunking of administration claims that Saddam Hussein had been buying uranium yellow cake from Niger. Rove was called before a grand jury investigating the leak — which is an extremely serious federal offense — no fewer than four times.

In the end, Rove escaped prosecution as indeed did everyone else in the White House for this specific crime, despite evidence from journalists that the information came from there. In the end, the can, such as it was, was carried by another official, Lewis “Scooter” Libby who was found guilty of the lesser but no less reprehensible charges of perjury and obstructing the course of justice. There are many observers who believe that Rove should have been the man in the dock.

Rove’s key presence in the administration demonstrates the second fault line in this presidency. The bloody ruins and chaos of Iraq are testimony to the first — Bush’s ignorance and inability to take good advice from friends and allies, preferring the simplistic and bullheaded avenue of main force which in the end created more problems than it solved. It has, however, been little focused on the extent to which this presidential team has been prepared to resort to skullduggery and falsehood in order to achieve its ends.

Democrats, almost all of whom were complicit in the triumphalist crowing at the Iraq invasion and ouster of Saddam, seem unprepared to dwell on the lies and subterfuge that preceded it. They have not loudly claimed that they were misled. Why? Does the US political establishment accept that dishonesty is part of the political process? The electorate, it seem, does not. Only a quarter of Americans believe the Bush presidency will be considered a success. That number will be even smaller by Jan. 1, 2009.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&sectio...ategory=Opinion

Wall Street Journal reports scoop on Rove resignation in editorial, rather than news pages
By Associated Press
Monday, August 13, 2007 - Updated: 04:57 PM EST

NEW YORK - On the day it was revealed that the man credited with putting President Bush in the White House was quitting, there were no banner headlines in the country’s major newspapers.
There was no mention of it on the front page of The Washington Post, The New York Times [NYT] or USA Today.
That’s because Karl Rove, Bush’s close friend and chief political strategist, chose to quietly make the announcement through an interview with longtime acquaintance Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal.
It was Rove doing what he has done, consummately, for his tenure in The White House: controlling the message.
The Journal, which is owned by Dow Jones & Co., told readers on the front page of its Monday editions to turn to the editorial pages for the "why" behind the Rove story. There, Gigot revealed Rove’s resignation in a lengthy recap of his soft-hitting interview with the longtime Bush adviser, held in Rove’s "book-lined living room of his townhome on Saturday afternoon."
The paper’s news pages had no mention of the day’s biggest scoop.
"Rove has done this very skillfully, he’s the master of spin," said Louis Ureneck, chair of the journalism department at Boston University. "He selected a friendly environment in which to make his announcement and in a sense control the message. If he had told a reporter, he likely would have faced tougher questions."
Rove’s resignation comes as Americans grow more dissatisfied with the U.S. role in the war in Iraq and President Bush’s approval ratings at near-record lows.
Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst with the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., said it was no surprise Rove chose the Journal’s editorial page to announce his departure because it is widely considered to support Republican causes.
"It is plugged in to conservative sources in the administration and is often friendly to their viewpoint," he said.
Media watchers said the Journal’s editorial board’s handling the story independently of the newsroom was not unprecedented, or even anything that violated journalism principles.
"Many editorial writers do collect news on their own and occasionally they learn something before the news side," Ureneck said. "What this demonstrates is that the two sides operate independently, and that’s a good thing."
A Wall Street Journal spokesman said the two units are not required to tell each other what they are doing. "They are two very distinct and different operations with a ’wall’ between them," spokesman Robert Christie said.
But Edmonds said it seemed unusual that the Rove story did not get more of a "hard-news" treatment, something that could be linked to long-standing animosity between the Journal’s reporters and its editorial board.
"It’s no secret there is a well-established tradition that there is unhappiness on both sides with what the other guys are doing," Edmonds said.
The company’s wire service, Dow Jones Newswires, ran Gigot’s opinion story at 2 a.m., but it took another two hours before it alerted subscribers to the Rove news, sending the urgent headline, "WSJ: Bush Aide Karl Rove To Resign As Of Aug 31."
Christie would not comment on when or how the newsroom found out about Rove’s resignation.
The paper’s big scoop comes just two weeks after Dow Jones agreed to be acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. [NWS] for $5 billion, a major premium to the company’s stock market value before the offer was announced.
Murdoch needed four months to persuade the controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family, to accept the offer. The family balked on concerns that Murdoch would meddle in editorial decisions at the company’s flagship paper _ on both the news and opinion sides.
Murdoch has said the concerns are unwarranted, but the two sides put in place an agreement that would create a committee that would have to approve the hiring or firing of top editors at the Journal.
The Journal’s news coverage is considered a must-read in the business world and regularly wins major journalism awards. Its editorial pages are closely read in boardrooms and in influential political circles.

DEBKAfile CLARIFIES ITS DISCLOSURE OF AL QAEDA’S RADIOLOGICAL THREAT TO NEW YORK

August 13, 2007, 9:19 PM (GMT+02:00)

At midnight Thursday, Aug. 9, DEBKAfile’s monitors of terrorist Web sites and forums connected the messages accumulating from midday. They spelled out an al Qaeda threat mentioning New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets of attacks “by means of trucks loaded with radioactive material.” Our counter-terror sources and monitors stressed “there is no way of gauging for sure how serious these threats are, or how real.”

Monday, Aug. 13, the chatter continues.

Such disclosures are the daily content of DEBKAfile – not only about al Qaeda, but terrorist organizations in the Middle East and other parts of the world. We believe that holding back such information would be irresponsible and wrong and possibly expose people in targeted countries, most predominantly the United States and Israel, to danger. After this data is aired on our free site, our job is done and it is up to the relevant security authorities to decide how to deal with it.

In this case, the New York Police Department very properly responded.

After 24 hours, during which time the department almost certainly put its vast resources to work to research and assess the DEBKAfile disclosure, security was increased throughout Manhattan and on tunnels and bridges, with radioactivity sensors posted on vehicles, boats and helicopters.

The New York police came up with a further piece of information which was not sourced to DEBKA suggesting that a dirty bomb may go off on Friday evening around 34th Street in Manhattan, where the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden and Macy’s department store are located.

At that point, something quite irrational happened: The NYPD’s sensible precautions generated a flood of media recriminations against… DEBKAfile. Unbridled, gratuitous assaults on this publication’s credibility came from the publications which missed the story, prominently Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune and FoxNews.

Reuters, to its credit, covered the episode fairly and professionally.

With regard to DEBKAfile’s record, our readers may recall that in 2003, our counter-terror sources exposed the massive recruitment campaign al Qaeda ran worldwide for an army of jihadis to fight US forces in Iraq under the command of a Jordanian terrorist called Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

Again, in 2005 - and up until the present - we warned that al Qaeda was building networks in Egyptian Sinai and the Gaza Strip.

Had the powers-that-be responded in timely fashion to these advance alerts, the situation in both troubled places might have evolved differently.

August 14, 2007
Neolibs and Neocons,
United and Interchangeable
Philip Giraldi

When it comes to foreign policy, particularly as it relates to the Middle East, there is not a whole lot of separation between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Republicans tend to be more bellicose in their statements, but Democrats have more than made up for that with their steely resolve to take the fight to the enemy wherever he might be. Both Republicans and Democrats reflexively support Israel, and nearly all candidates are in agreement on a number of other areas, including an aggressive policy toward Iran.

This unanimity is not particularly surprising as there is little or no serious debate on foreign policy and many of the leading candidates' advisers are graduates of the same school of thought, i.e., that the United States must use its military power to impose certain standards on the rest of the world. Neoconservatives and neoliberals are really quite similar, so it doesn't matter who gets elected in 2008. The American public, weary of preemptive attacks, democracy-promotion, and nation-building, will still get war either way.

The key to understanding the direction that candidates will take is to examine their foreign policy advisers. The candidates themselves, with one or two exceptions, know little about the world and its problems. They operate on a basis of packaged responses to set questions and are essentially looking for quick, soundbite solutions that will enable them to be characterized as strong on national security. Apart from that, most would be quite willing to leave the subject alone. How they think is processed and filtered by their advisers, most of whom appear to believe that the American public has an unending appetite for overseas adventures in spite of the fact that such policies have brought nothing but grief for the past 15 years. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are shy about using force. Bill Clinton enforced sanctions on Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands; he killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians when he bombed Serbia; and he was more than willing to use cruise missiles against civilian targets in Sudan and Afghanistan. George Bush has accepted a rather broader mandate, invading two countries and bombing several more, resulting in hundreds of thousands dead.

The two leading Democratic candidates for president are undeniably Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary is regarded as by far the more conservative candidate in that she has carefully triangulated her potential supporters and is unwilling to say that her vote in the Senate in support of the Iraq war was a mistake. She has also positioned herself with the Israel lobby through her pledge to disarm Iran by whatever means necessary and her threat to use nuclear weapons on terrorists. Her foreign policy advisers are a who's who of neoliberal hawks, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who famously believed that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to sanctions was "worth it." Clinton is also being advised by Richard Holbrooke, who is reported to be close to Paul Wolfowitz. Holbrooke is a possible candidate for secretary of state if Clinton is elected president. Holbrooke has been a supporter of the Iraq war, and he was an architect of the 1999 bombing of Serbia. Strobe Talbott, who advised Bill Clinton and was also involved with the bombing of Serbia, is reported to be another Hillary adviser.

Barack Obama is somewhat more enigmatic, but his recent ill-advised pledge to attack Pakistan if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf does not do something about the Taliban and al-Qaeda shows that he is working hard to catch up. Obama's key advisers who speak for him on foreign policy include Gregory Craig, Anthony Lake, and Samantha Power. Craig is a leading Washington lawyer who was a White House special counsel under Bill Clinton and defended the president in his impeachment trial. Lake was also a Bill Clinton adviser who was involved in the Bosnian conflict. Power is an Irish-born Harvard professor from the Kennedy School who is regarded as an expert on Third World issues. None of the three is considered to be particularly partisan on any foreign policy issues but genocide, which Power has written a book about, but Obama is also accelerating his efforts to woo Jewish donors and to improve his standing with AIPAC, which has been suspicious of him because of youthful indiscretions that included expressions of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. He recently appointed Eric Lynn to develop an aggressive program of outreach to the Jewish community on his record of support for Israel, which he claims is unwavering. Obama fully endorsed Israel's invasion of Lebanon last year, and he has also cited his more recent sponsorship of the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of May 2007, another irresponsible piece of legislation by Congress that will increase the suffering of the Iranian people while doing nothing to change the country's leadership. He has pledged that Iran will not be allowed to threaten Israel through its nuclear program, but he is vague on exactly what he would do to stop it.

Giuliani heads the pack of Republicans in terms of sheer neocon manpower. His appointment of Norman Podhoretz to his team of foreign policy advisers might be a shrewd bid to compete with the Democrats for Jewish money for his campaign, but it might also be reflective of a genuine inclination toward a policy of all aggression, all the time. Giuliani has endorsed the use of force to disarm Iran, including using nuclear weapons. Podhoretz has called for a World War IV against Islamofascism, which presumably means a war against all Muslim countries until they surrender. Giuliani is also being advised by Martin Kramer, a leading neocon who is associated with the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The other two serious Republican contenders, John McCain and Mitt Romney, are also being advised on foreign policy by neoconservatives. McCain is supported by Robert Kagan, a noted American Enterprise Institute chickenhawk and the author of the surge policy, and former CIA director Jim Woolsey, who, like Podhoretz, has called for a World War against Islam. Leading neocon lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, who headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and was on the board of the Project for the New American Century, completes the McCain foreign policy and security team. There are reports that McCain will lose some of his advisers as his campaign is in trouble and that they might gravitate to Romney and Giuliani. McCain also had considerable interaction with neocon elder statesman Richard Perle in the early days of his campaign, but Perle has decided that McCain cannot win the nomination. Perle is deferring judgment on where he should go next. Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Henry Kissinger are also reported to be giving McCain advice.

Mitt Romney is being advised by Dan Senor, former AIPAC staffer who graduated to the post of official spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. He is also relying on J. Cofer Black, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and now head of Total Intel, a Beltway bandit that provides security services to the government.

Dark horse and undeclared Republican candidate Fred Thompson is being advised by Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president, and Mark Esper, a Lebanese Christian who is one of the few neocons from an Arab background.

All of the Republican and Democratic presidential aspirants appear to believe that a hard line on foreign policy makes them less vulnerable to attack in their run for the nomination. It is very discouraging to note that the advocates of the Iraq war, which is almost universally seen as Washington's greatest foreign policy blunder of the past hundred years, are continuing to play a major role in the shaping of policy for the next generation of political leaders of both parties.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=11438

Escalation by the Numbers
by Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=11441

July 30, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

Breaking Bush’s Resistance

A pending court case could expose the administration’s torture regime.

by James Bovard

From the first days after the Abu Ghraib photos hit the airwaves, the torture scandal has epitomized the worst of the Bush presidency. A timid media, a cowardly opposition party, and a refusal by most Americans to face the grisly facts has contained the damage since 2004. But the web of lies and lawlessness is rapidly unraveling. Leaks, foreign challenges, military officers revolting, and a pending Supreme Court case could set off a tidal wave of revulsion against the administration’s barbaric policies.

When President Bush was pressed by NBC’s Matt Lauer last September about the use of brutal interrogation methods, he replied, “Whatever we have done is legal. … We had lawyers look at it and say, ‘Mr. President, this is lawful.’” But Bush’s legal lackeys also proclaim that the president’s command is the highest law, and U.S. torture has been confirmed by FBI agents, former military interrogators, a DoD Inspector General report, and court cases around the globe.

Denial has been the Bush team’s first line of defense. From early 2005 onward, Bush repeatedly declared that the U.S. does not use rendition—the transport of terror suspects to other countries where they are tortured. He told the New York Times in January 2005 that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.” Doing so would be a federal crime.

But the evidence of CIA “torture taxis” secretly racing around the globe carrying gagged, sedated detainees to some of the most brutal regimes in the world proved too much for Bush to deny. He revised his defense in April 2005: “We operate within the law and we send people to countries where they say they are not going to torture people.” But then why would the U.S. go to the trouble of kidnapping people—Canadian Maher Arar, who was grabbed at JFK Airport and renditioned to Syria or Australian Mamduh Habib, seized in Pakistan and flown to Egypt, for instance—and turning them over to governments the U.S. has long denounced for using torture?

In June, the Council of Europe issued a report condemning the CIA’s exploitation of NATO military agreements to run secret prisons in Romania and Poland where detainees were tortured. The report called for banning “the Bush administration mindset” that says “if it is illegal for us to use such a practice at home or on our own citizens, let us export or outsource it so we will not be held to account for it.”

While Bush bears ultimate blame for the U.S. embrace of torture, Vice President Cheney’s team often drove the policy. The Washington Post reported on June 25 that starting in January 2002, “Cheney turned his attention to the practical business of crushing a captive’s will to resist. The vice president’s office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion in U.S. custody.” The Post noted, “Cheney and his allies ... pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden ‘torture’ and permitted use of ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading’ methods of questioning.” The Geneva Conventions, which are binding under U.S. law, make no such distinction.

The key was a radical new understanding of torture spelled out in an Aug. 1, 2002 Justice Department memo that narrowed the definition to suffering “equivalent in intensity” to “organ failure ... or even death.” Call it a license to almost kill.

Top military experts opposed the redefinition, but a few high-ranking civilian appointees at the Pentagon scorned the veterans. Cheney has been especially enthusiastic about simulated drowning of detainees known as waterboarding even though the U.S. government classified this as a war crime in 1947.

Though neoconservatives have always prided themselves on being more anti-Soviet than God, the U.S. government turned to an unlikely source for inspiration to fulfill Cheney’s vision of shattering detainees’ resistance. After 9/11, the Pentagon and CIA “reverse engineered” many Soviet interrogation techniques that the U.S. had long denounced as torture. Policymakers looked at the “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape” training American aviators received to endure Soviet interrogation for leads on how the U.S. could break the will of Muslim detainees. A 1956 Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry article entitled, “Communist Interrogation” described how the Soviets used “isolation, anxiety, fatigue, lack of sleep, uncomfortable temperatures” on their targets. The Bush administration adapted the same techniques at Guantanamo and the secret prisons scattered throughout the world, the New York Times reported last month.

The administration has an almost perfect record in its hearings over detainees at Guantanamo, but officers are increasingly refusing to carry out orders that they consider immoral or unjust. Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a veteran Marine aviator, resigned from the prosecution of Mohamedou Ould Slahi because the U.S. had tortured the defendant. The Wall Street Journal recently summarized a Pentagon report on this case: “On July 17, 2003, a masked interrogator told Slahi he had dreamed of watching detainees dig a grave. ... The interrogator said he saw ‘a plain, pine casket with [Slahi’s] identification number painted in orange lowered into the ground.’ Three days later, the interrogator told Slahi that his family was ‘incarcerated.’” Two weeks later, the Journal reported, “an interrogation chief visited the prisoner posing as a White House representative. ... He gave the prisoner a forged memorandum indicating that Mr. Slahi’s mother was being shipped to Guantanamo, and that officials had concerns about her safety as the only woman amid hundreds of male prisoners...” Threatening Slahi, who was also physically brutalized, with the prospect of his mother’s rape was the final straw for Couch.

The torture of David Hicks, an Australian seized in Afghanistan and sent to Gitmo in early 2002, became an international cause célèbre. Hicks, who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, a terrorist organization supported by the U.S. government, before fighting alongside the Taliban, was sexually assaulted, beaten with a rifle butt, kept in isolation in the dark for 244 days, prohibited from sleeping for long periods, threatened with firearms during interrogations, and psychologically tormented.

He was one of the first people tried by the Gitmo military tribunals. Though former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called him one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, after Hicks agreed to plead guilty to material support of terrorism, he was sentenced to nine months confinement—a typical sentence for a misdemeanor in most states. As part of his plea agreement, Hicks was obliged to declare that he “had never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody and control of the United States” and to swear that his guilty plea was made voluntarily, despite all the beatings he had received.

From the start of the torture scandal, the Bush team has done whatever it can to suppress the facts and punish truth-tellers. The initial photos from Abu Ghraib would have had far less impact had it not been for a courageous report by Major Gen. Antonio Taguba detailing far worse abuses. Seymour Hersh recently revealed in the New Yorker how Taguba was vindictively forced into retirement by the Pentagon because of the report. Taguba said Rumsfeld deceived Congress in May 2004 when he portrayed himself as a blindsided victim of a leak when testifying shortly after the Taguba report and the Abu Ghraib photos were posted online. Rumsfeld claimed to have not seen Taguba’s report when they met the day before he first testified, even though Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies to the Pentagon and elsewhere in the military command structure. Doug Feith, who set policy for detainees in Iraq, shotgunned an e-mail around the Pentagon prohibiting officials from reading the Taguba report. Feith also warned that Pentagon officials should not discuss the report with anyone, even family members. One Pentagon consultant declared that the Bush team’s “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’” Suppressing the worst evidence was key. Taguba told Hersh that he had seen “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” This could not have been spun away as mere college fraternity hazing.

Taguba had been ordered to focus only on the actions of the military police at Abu Ghraib. He could not examine the responsibility of senior officers or the Pentagon for the atrocities he found. Col. Tom Pappas, the commander of the battalion that carried out the abuses photographed at Abu Ghraib, “was granted immunity in return for his testimony against a dog handler,” as author Andrew Cockburn derisively noted.

The torture regime rests on the notion that anyone labeled an enemy combatant deserves whatever harsh treatment he receives. Combatant Status Review Tribunals are used to confirm the guilt of people sent to Guantanamo as enemy combatants, but the tribunals routinely rely on tortured confessions and hearsay evidence, and almost any allegation can be sufficient to perpetuate detention. Candace Gorman, a Chicago attorney representing two Guantanomo detainees, noted that in one case “the [tribunal] darkly noted that the prisoner owned a Casio wristwatch (which could conceivably be used to time explosives). … Karate skills, knowledge of computers and participation in the pilgrimage to Mecca have also been considered factors supporting ‘continuing detention.’”

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year Army veteran who had a pivotal role in gathering evidence for the tribunals, filed a sworn affidavit last month declaring that the process of identifying enemy combatants at Guantanamo was a sham and that officers were pressured to find defendants guilty. Abraham noted, “What purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence.” He noted that intelligence agencies refused to divulge exculpatory information that might clear the accused. The Pentagon conducted more than 500 hearings and found almost all the accused guilty, though sometimes a second or third panel of officers had to be summoned to convict. Abraham noted, “In very few instances would you find very specific information from which you could conclude he was an enemy combatant.”

In June 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration was dead wrong in claiming that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees in the war on terror. The Bush administration responded by railroading the Military Commissions Act through Congress last September. The MCA retroactively pardoned torturers and torture policymakers for war crimes committed after 9/11, rubber-stamped the administration’s Guantanamo tribunals, and blocked people labeled as enemy combatants from filing habeas corpus petitions in American courts. Bush pushed Congress to speedily pass the act because “as long as the War Crimes Act hangs over their heads, [CIA interrogators] will not take the steps necessary to protect” Americans.

As part of the procedure for establishing the “legal” limits of interrogation, the MCA requires the president to put in writing his definition of what constitutes “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” The Senate Intelligence Committee insists that the new standards be reviewed by the Justice Department and that the review be provided to Congress. But the Bush team is refusing to divulge the Justice Department’s verdict on Bush’s latest revised definition of non-torture. The Washington Post noted, “Lawmakers will be asked to accept Bush’s assurance in the executive order [on new interrogation standards] that the program has been deemed lawful.” In the meantime, the CIA enhanced interrogation program remains in limbo despite Bush’s tub-thumping during the congressional election season about such interrogation “tools” were needed immediately.

Thus far, the Democrats have been among the least of Bush’s torture travails. From the time the first Abu Ghraib photos appeared, Democrats have portrayed themselves as the Party of Virtue that could never condone such indignities, but they have controlled Capitol Hill for six months and not issued a single subpoena on interrogation practices.

On June 19, Democrats had the perfect opportunity to showcase their superior values. The Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing on the nomination of John Rizzo to become general counsel for the CIA. Rizzo, a 30-year CIA veteran, was acting general counsel in 2002 when the new torture rules were put in place and gave the CIA’s approval to the Bush administration’s 2002 redefinition of torture. Yet, as the New York Times noted, “no member of the Senate Intelligence Committee directly challenged the agency’s secret detention or harsh interrogation practices.” Only Sen. Dianne Feinstein voiced opposition to his confirmation. “Affable and calm, Rizzo rolled a pen between his fingers as he issued parsimonious replies to the five Democrats and two Republicans present,” the Washington Post reported. “Dapper, white-haired and bearded, he resembled a slimmed-down Santa Claus in civilian dress more than Hollywood’s version of a CIA consigliere.” Rather than following Bush-style interrogation guidelines, the senators apparently assumed that groveling was the best means to get the truth.

The Supreme Court may show a bit more resolve, prompted perhaps by Abraham’s affidavit. It had ruled in early April that it would not hear an expedited challenge to the MCA, but on June 29, the Court reversed itself and announced that it would hear two cases challenging the new law. Its decision was the first time in 60 years that the Court had reversed itself on granting a hearing to a case.

The MCA cases could provide a far brighter official spotlight on torture than ever before. Aziz Huq of the NYU Law School observes that the case will likely reveal how Gitmo hearings “relied on evidence gained by torture and abuse and how few safeguards they have against error.”

Bush torture policies were made in darkness by people who assumed that they would forever remain secret. As evidence leaked out, much of the world has been revolted at the U.S. government’s barbarism, but most Americans remain oblivious. The Supreme Court case could change that overnight. If the MCA is struck down, the get-out-of-jail-free card that the White House and Congress provided to torturers and their enablers will be null. And the Supreme Court cannot endorse the use of tortured confessions without destroying its own credibility.

The Bush administration was able to punish Taguba, muzzle Hicks, intimidate Congress, and browbeat much of the media, but its luck may have run out. The president’s approval ratings were his body armor against the torture revelations, but he is losing his immunity to criticism at the same time that CIA and military interrogators fear losing the de facto legal protection the president provided them since 2001. With each court or congressional battle, the administration is forced to embrace new absurdities or issue more falsehoods, and the number of people who could save their skins or their honor by telling the truth may now outnumber the diehard defenders of absolute executive power. ______________________________________________

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy and eight other books.
http://amconmag.com/2007/2007_07_30/article.html

Iran Ties Weaken Iraqi Government Further
by Ali al-Fadhily

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's increasing ties with Iran have triggered a splintering of his government.

Several groups, both Sunni and Shia, have followed the Sunni al-Tawafuq bloc (Iraqi Accord Front) in quitting the U.S.-backed government. But Maliki refuses to make the concessions necessary to bring his "unity" government back together.

Spokesman Iyad Jamaliddin said on behalf of the Iraqi National List led by former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi that the ministers of his group would now boycott government meetings. The party claims both Shia and Sunni following.

"We will inform the president, his deputies and the prime minister of the essential happenings and needs [of Iraqis] when necessary," Jamaliddin told IPS in Baghdad.

This means that the entire Sunni bloc has refused to deal with Maliki. The al-Tawafuq bloc has 44 seats in the 275-seat National Assembly, and Allawi's group 25. Their decision cannot unsettle the ruling Shia-dominated United Iraqi Alliance that has 128 seats and rules with the support of some small groups, but it would further deny the government legitimacy in the face of widespread perceptions that the government follows sectarian policies in support of Shias.

Maliki is under growing pressure over policies seen to be in line with what the government of Shia-dominated Iran wants. Following Maliki's visit to Tehran last week, U.S. President George Bush sternly warned him against coming too close to Iran.

Bush said that after the visit, "if the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart to heart with my friend, the prime minister, because I don't believe they are constructive."

Bush added, "My message to him is, when we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay."

On his visit Aug. 8, Maliki thanked Iran for its "positive and constructive" work in "providing security and fighting terrorism in Iraq." Iran in turn offered Maliki its full support for restoring security, but told him that a pullout of U.S. forces was the only way to end the ongoing violence.

But Maliki's government has continued to lose support within Iraq. Now Kurdish members of Maliki's government are also condemning his ailing leadership. Mahmood Othman, a Kurdish member of the assembly, has said that the situation is "too bad to be left as it is" and that something must change.

"I do not represent the whole Kurdish bloc, but as an MP who represents himself and those who voted for him, I say this government is suffering a great deal of problems with everyone, including Kurds," Othman told IPS in Baghdad. "It failed to find solutions to many Kurdish affairs, like article 140 of the constitution concerning Kirkuk, the oil law, and many other things."

Maliki's visited Iran on the date on which former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein declared victory in his war with Iran.

"If the visit were meant to be on that date intentionally, then it would be a terrible mistake by Maliki," Nadim al-Jaburi, general secretary of the Shia al-Fadhila Party that was part of the ruling coalition until its withdrawal from the government in March told IPS. "I am sure Iranians would not have visited Iraq on that date. If it was coincidence, then it only shows how inconsiderate Maliki is about our country."

Others too had misgivings about Maliki's visit to Tehran. "Maliki is Iranian, and he went there to show his solidarity with his own people," Majid Hamid, a lawyer from Baghdad, told IPS. "He has no self-respect and no consideration for the history of his country that was once at war with Iran."

Maliki is secretary-general of the Dawa Party and spent time in exile in Iran after leading insurgent groups against Saddam Hussein.

"It is a last attempt to get support from his masters in Iran," Abdul-Hussein Ali, a teacher from the predominantly Shia district of Kadhimiya in northern Baghdad, told IPS. "Iran killed nearly a million Iraqis in that war, and now our so-called prime minister is supporting them on the very day they officially lost the war."

Many Iraqis ask why Bush continues to support the failing prime minister. "Why is that Bush so fond of this finished government," said Yassin Jassim, a shopkeeper in Baghdad. "The government is finished by failing to provide us with security and all other daily essential needs. This means that Bush has also failed."

(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fadhily.php?articleid=11443

Iran plays the Central Asia card
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's tour of Central Asia will give a timely boost to a hitherto neglected aspect of Iran's foreign policy, which has been more preoccupied with the volatile Persian Gulf and Iraq. His visit will reinforce Iran's image in that region as a pillar of cooperation and stability. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Aug 14, '07)

Rove Exits With His Usual M.O.: Delusional and Deceptive

Arianna Huffington, HuffingtonPost.com

Karl Rove is heading out the door the doughy, fanatical personification of the Bush White House.

North Pole Activity Update:
Danish survey of the Lomonosov Ridge
By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
A couple weeks ago, Russian explorers planted a flag at the North Pole-- not on the ice, but the ocean floor-- as part of its claim that the North Pole is connected to Russian territory via the Lomonosov Ridge. Now, Denmark is mounting ...
IFTF's Future Now - http://future.iftf.org/

Denmark ready for North Pole mission
By Kay Murchie
The Arctic icecap is thinning as a consequence of global warming so the race is on to claim ownership of the rich oil and gas resources under the North Pole and Russia is one of many nations competing to lay claim to the oil and gas ...
Oil Prices and Oil News @ Oil Marketer - http://www.oilmarketer.co.uk

The North Pole
By wtanaka
Russia planted a flag underwater in the Arctic Sea. That's awesome. And ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome.
Wesley Tanaka - - http://wtanaka.com

North Pole Cage Match; Danes Up, Chinese Next?
By Noah Shachtman
Pretty soon, every country on the freakin' planet is going to be planting flags in the North Pole. A Danish team of 40 scientists set sail for Santa-land over the weekend, the Telegraph notes. Their goal: "gather evidence to support a ...
Danger Room - http://blog.wired.com/defense/

North Pole Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt."
By Mike McConnell(Mike McConnell)
... scenarios back during in the 1920s and 1930s, even before after those decades, and then we had the global cooling gloom and doom of the 1970s fearing the return of the ice age and massive ice sheets covering parts of North America. ...
Kokonut Pundit - http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.com/

Nuclear News:

• "Perkovich: Proliferation Triology: North Korea, Iran, and India," Council on Foreign Relations Interview with George Perkovich
• "N-Deal: India Racing to Get IAEA, NSG Stamp," By Rajeev Deshpande, The Times of India
• "India's Tough Choice on Iran," By Sadanand Dhume, Washington Post
• "U.S., N Korea Discuss Nuclear Disarmament," By Anita Chang, Associated Press
• "Nuclear Weapons in the Age of Al-Qaeda," By Ivo Daalder and Jeffrey Lewis, Financial Times - Opinion
• "Going Nuclear," By David Whitford, Fortune Magazine
• "Toshiba, Seeking Uranium, Sells 10% of Westinghouse to Kazakhs,"
By Nariman Gizitdinov, Bloomberg News

Kucinich Calls Out Clinton’s Nuclear Blunder
By Kasia Anderson — In what may have been one of the most controversial (and contradictory) missteps made yet in this pre-election season, Hillary Clinton refused, however ambiguously, to rule out using nuclear weapons to combat terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Though the media at large barely registered her comment, it wasn’t lost on Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who takes Clinton to task in an exclusive interview with Truthdig.

The Last Days of Democracy
Truthdig speaks with Elliot Cohen, author of “The Last Days of Democracy,” who argues that the United States is in political and cultural decline, with media and telecommunications giants engaged in “a well-organized effort to hijack America.”

Republicans Eye the California Electoral Cookie Jar
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter warns of a Republican plot to deliver some of California’s electoral votes to the GOP nominee—even if he loses the state. The scheme, which depends on California’s much-abused and confusing proposition system, would award the Golden State’s electoral votes by congressional district.

Will Nunn Run? by Martha Zoller Will former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, strong defense Democrat, mount a third party run in 2008?

The Useful Fools of Empire
Humanitarian Wars and Associated Delusions

By PAUL de ROOIJ

Most inhabitants of Western countries are afflicted by nefarious delusions about the nature of their societies and government policy; the public at large is led to believe that their societies are superior, and their governments' policies are noble and generous. The illusions have to do with the dissonance between the fabricated image and the reality of state power, especially when it entails wars waged against third world countries. Awful wars are waged for crass motives, yet they are sold on the basis that they are driven by benevolent intent. Promotion of democracy, freedoms, human rights, women's rights, and even religious tolerance are some of the purported motives for current interventions, subversion or wars. Since the 1990s, in the lead-up to the wars against former Yugoslavia, the primary justification offered to wage war was that it was necessary to safeguard human rights or to improve the humanitarian conditions of the target population. If the blatant hypocrisy wasn't bad enough, the Left's delusions regarding the stated humanitarian rationale for wars has had a distinctly deleterious effect on the Left as a movement and the organized opposition to the depredations of their states. Jean Bricmont's Humanitarian Imperialism is an extensive analysis of the "humanitarian war" rationale, and how its twisted arguments should be countered and its rationale for war rejected. One of the defining aspects of the Left of yesteryear was an opposition to imperialism and its consequent wars; Bricmont's important contribution aims to resurrect the principled opposition to the new imperial wars waged primarily by the United States and Britain.


Subversion of International Law

Perhaps the most important point addressed in this book is that the "humanitarian intervention" rationale served as a cynical means to sideline international law; it is usually presented as one requiring utmost speed to avert further disaster and therefore there is no time for formalities such as observing the UN Charter or international law in general. For at least two decades, the US has been itching to emasculate the UN even further and to undermine the basis of international law; the means to obtain this objective has been to promote "humanitarian wars" or even "humanitarian bombing" (it is difficult to concoct a nicer oxymoron) [1]. What is disconcerting is that this Trojan horse wasn't repelled by the principal human rights organizations, the so-called public intellectuals, or groups on the Left. The acceptance of the justification for wars has undermined the anti-war movement and it seems that few are aware of the stark implications of a debilitated international legal framework, i.e., a world afflicted with incessant wars and ruled by the law of the jungle. Those seeking to resist imperial wars or obtain a modicum of justice ought to defend the principle of international law, and certainly not allow it to be undermined by disingenuous appeals for war.


Kissing your SUV goodbye

If the US and its allies wage wars on the basis of false justifications, then the question arises what their real motives are. Another important section of Bricmont's book analyzes the nature of state power and the real reasons for wars or interventions. His analysis suggests that one of the reasons wars are waged is to guarantee access to raw materials and markets [2]. It is also fair to say that most western societies owe their economic development very much to the access to cheap resources, and most interventions seek to continue to guarantee such access. Even the tiniest/poorest third world countries are whipped into compliance -- no deviation is tolerated. If one rejects the notion of wars to guarantee cheap resources then there are serious implications for our societies; our economies will have to be weaned from such cheap supplies entailing costly restructuring. To change our societies so that they are less destructive to others requires rejecting delusions about our states, it demands rejecting interventionist wars, and certainly confronting specious justifications for such wars.


Clearing up arguments

Bricmont provides a lengthy analysis of the pro-war humanitarian arguments, and, in order to do so, also addresses the ineffective anti-war arguments used by some on the Left. Maybe it is fair to suggest that the Left in western countries has sometimes engaged in less-than-clear thinking. In the past Leftist groups opposed wars against third world countries as a matter of principle, but beginning in the late 1990s some succumbed to the humanitarian interventionist ideology; what is surprising is how effective this ploy has been. Others reject wars, but do so using weak, confusing or even contradictory arguments. In countering the pro-war arguments, Bricmont provides analysis suggesting the strongest counter-arguments, and how the twisted historical analogies used to sell wars are best dealt with (e.g., appeasement, or confronting Hitler early on). Bricmont's analysis of the Second World War analogies -- a favorite with the human rights crusaders -- should certainly be studied by anyone opposing wars.


What is missing

While the book deals with pro-war humanitarian arguments, it doesn't mention that some humanitarian disasters haven't elicited the same reaction. For human rights crusaders some cases deserve the intervention imperative, yet others are neglected. While they demand intervention in Darfur they are mysteriously silent about Congo; Palestine is perhaps the most neglected issue. Since part of the book deals with exposing the hypocrisy in the way wars are sold, maybe the book could have highlighted the cases where the vocal advocates for war apply a double standard.

The book is perhaps best read in conjunction with Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade (Johnstone is also the translator of Bricmont's book). While Humanitarian Imperialism deals with the humanitarian war topic in general, Fools' Crusade deals with a case history of this issue, i.e., the war against Yugoslavia, a particularly important chapter for the humanitarian war rationale and the origins of this ideology. Her book provides a historical background of the way the wars against Yugoslavia were deliberately and cynically planned. Kirsten Sellars' The Rise and Rise of Human Rights is another important book providing additional context. Sellars presents a history of how human rights have been exploited by the United States and Britain, and it also provides an unflattering history of the principal human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch in particular has been a key organization pushing for humanitarian wars, and a proper appreciation of such organizations is necessary to counter their influence. Finally, while Bricmont refers to a few of the principal proponents of humanitarian wars, the so-called public intellectuals or Liberals, more of these human rights crusaders need to be taken to task about their positions [3]. Edward S. Herman and David Peterson have compiled a list of these operators and it is also worth reading in conjunction with Bricmont's book [4]. One of the listed crusaders is Bernard Kouchner, the recently appointed French Foreign Minister, and his interventionist proclivities may well explain the changing French policy aligning itself closer to US policy.


Applying the lessons to Darfur

Bricmont's book doesn't deal with Darfur in any great detail, but one should apply its lessons to this case in rejecting calls for intervention. There are several reasons for this, and the primary one is that it has been a stated objective of the neocons to "take out" Sudan [5], and if this rotten gang bays for intervention, it behooves one to reconsider joining the chorus. The US has stepped up its presence in the region by organizing an invasion of Somalia, establishing a military presence in Chad, arming some Sudanese rebel groups, etc. The US seeks to undermine Sudan for reasons unrelated to the humanitarian situation, e.g., denying oil resources to its competitors. The US has also used the Darfur issue to deflect attention from its own depredations in Iraq or Afghanistan. Furthermore, several US-based zionist groups have taken up the Darfur issue for equally cynical ends. Pushing the Darfur issue is viewed among some of these groups as a means of deflecting attention from Israel, suggesting that the situation in Darfur is worse and therefore "why single out Israel". Divestment from companies doing business in Sudan serves the similar purpose of undermining efforts in the US to launch a divestment from Israel or boycott campaign. The situation in Darfur was also exploited after the Israeli war of aggression against Lebanon in 2006; as soon as the war ended, the media focus shifted immediately and preponderantly to cover the Darfur situation in order to deflect attention from a criminal war by US/Israel. There is also the question of focus as a humanitarian catastrophe of a much higher magnitude in Congo has barely elicited a peep. Finally, it is also clear that much of the conflict has to do with population dislocations due to environmental change, and it is likely that armed interventions aren't the best solution.

If we reject intervention as Bricmont urges us to do, there is an issue about what must be done. According to Jonathan Steele, negotiations among local groups will likely result in accommodation and conflict resolution [6]. Armed intervention on the other hand could only make matters worse.


Just like the chickenhawks, but more likely useful fools

The neocon chickenhawks are best known for urging the US military to go to war while they remained safely ensconced in their think tanks. The leftists or Liberals who have jumped on the humanitarian war bandwagon engage in very much the same hypocrisy. When anyone today prescribes "intervention", they are really only urging the military of their state to attack other countries, while they themselves are sitting pretty. Someone else will die for the positions they propound, and it is certainly a very different attitude compared to those who joined the International Brigades in Spain -- no chickens then. What makes matters worse is that the military was really not established to further humanitarian aims, but is meant to impose the interests of state power. Recently, the British military was concerned that "increasing emotional attachment to the outside world" had led the British public to expect humanitarian interventions [7]. The UK military sought to shape public attitudes so that military activities wouldn't be constrained or, let alone, face demands to have the military be used in legitimate peacekeeping! When the military are actually used for "humanitarian intervention" this means that the rationale has been exploited by state power to sell its wars and they have even managed to get some Lefty or Liberal dupes on board. Alternatively, if a state doesn't care to intervene in a given country, it will simply ignore the humanitarian appeals. When the British government's hypocrisy is exposed, e.g., with the "genocide" in Darfur, it simply states that it will "consider joining multilateral action" and, of course, it has been wringing its hands about what to do [8]. The first indication that a state doesn't want to use its military for humanitarian ends is when there are references to "multilateral action"; translation: do nothing or simply provide token forces subject to stringent "rules of engagement". Anyone opposed to the imperialist trends of the US and its faithful poodles should reject calls for direct military intervention in the third world; there already have been too many interventions.

Tony Judt wrote: "In today's America, neoconservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig leaf. There is no other difference between them" [9]. His article's apt title is "Bush's Useful Idiots". When jumping on the same bandwagon as the neocons, human rights crusaders might consider whether they are being jerked around.

Conclusion

The adoption of the humanitarian war rationale has had a particularly damaging effect on what remains of the Left in Western countries; one of the basic tenets for Leftists should have been to oppose imperial wars, and it has been disconcerting to witness the adoption of the human rights lingo to either co-cheerlead wars, accept portions of the rationale for war or simply to demonstrate unreflective muddled thinking. Jean Bricmont's book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is a clearly written guide through this moral maze, an unmasking of tendentious interpretation of history, and an antidote to the principal malaise afflicting our times: hypocrisy. It is an important contribution to help the Left to assess critically history, and to break through an intellectual logjam surrounding the so-called humanitarian wars.

Paul de Rooij is a writer living in London. He can be reached at proox@hotmail.com (NB: all emails with attachments will be automatically deleted.)

Paul de Rooij © 2007

Notes

[1] See Alexander Cockburn, How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those Incubator Babies, Once More?, CounterPunch Newsletter, April 1999.

[2] Of course, there are other reasons too -- some of them irrational, others to favor Israel, etc. For further discussion see: Jean Bricmont, The De-Zionization of the American Mind, 12 August 2006.

[3] Public intellectuals are only public or "celebrity" in so far as they present a serviceable rationale for state power. As soon as their message deviates from the interests of the state, they are quickly demoted to the ranks of relegated intellectuals.

[4] Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, Morality's Avenging Angels: The New Humanitarian Crusaders , Znet, 30 August 2005.

[5] Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander stated on DemocracyNow: " And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, *Sudan* and, finishing off, Iran.'" Amy Goodman interviewed Wesley Clark, Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: "I Think About It Everyday" , 2 March 2007.

[6] Jonathan Steele, Unseen by western hysteria, Darfur edges closer to peace, 10 August 2007.

[7] Mark Curtis quoted in David Miller (ed.), Tell me lies: Propaganda and Media distortion in the Attack on Iraq, Pluto Press 2004.

[8] Statement by Mike Gapes MP, member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Compass Conference, London, 2006.

[9] Tony Judt, "Bush's Useful Idiots", London Review of Books, 21 Sept. 2006.

http://www.counterpunch.org/

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/b...administ-1.html
---------

Bush Administration Says Warrantless Eavesdropping Cannot Be Questioned

By David Kravets August 13, 2007 | 2:04:48 PM

The Bush administration said Monday the constitutionality of its warrantless electronic eavesdropping program cannot be challenged.

The government is taking that position in seeking the dismissal of federal court lawsuits against the government and AT&T over its alleged involvement in the once-secret surveillance program adopted after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The strategy was first recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in a McCarthy-era lawsuit. It has been increasingly invoked in a bid to shield the government from legal scrutiny.

Two senior Justice Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in a teleconference with reporters, reiterated the administration's position that it was invoking the so-called "state secrets privilege" in arguing that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must dismiss the cases because they threaten to expose information authorities say is essential to the nation's security.

"The case cannot be litigated in light of the national security interest involved," one official said.

The officials spoke on the condition that their names would not be published because, they said, it was the government's protocol not to comment on pending litigation.

The Bush administration has invoked the state secrets defense often, from spy cases and patent disputes to employment discrimination litigation.

Still, two judges have ruled recently that the defense does not apply in two lawsuits challenging Bush's surveillance program. President Bush acknowledged in 2005 that the government was eavesdropping without warrants on communications in the United States as long as one of the parties to the communication was suspected of terrorism and outside the United States.

On Wednesday, the government will urge the San Francisco-based appeals court to dismiss the case on grounds that the case could expose state secrets, the justice department officials said.

"In our view, those claims should always be dismissed," a senior administration official said. "A year from now, a director of national intelligence, looking at all of the same information, may not make the same determination."

The official added: "These are legal principals not simply being made up by the executive."

The officials also said that the lawsuits should also be tossed because the plaintiffs have no direct proof they were spied on.

"We cannot confirm or deny whether or not that's true," one of the officials said.

Earlier this month, Congress sanctioned warrantless eavesdropping with new legislation, which is also under attack on allegations such electronic surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements. The new law requires that at least one of the parties to the communication be outside of the United States and associated with terrorism.

A Day of Reckoning for Americans Who Lived Beyond Their Means By Joseph Stiglitz The housing bubble induced Americans to live beyond their means -- net savings have been negative for the past couple of years. With this engine of growth turned off, it is hard to see how the US economy would not suffer from a slowdown.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18184.htm

Learn From the Fall of Rome, US Warned By Jeremy Grant in Washington The US government is on a 'burning platform' of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country's top government inspector has warned.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18183.htm

Secret InsecuritySelf-serving hush-ups, in Canada and the United States.
By Bruce Fein
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007, at 3:01 PM ET

To borrow from Mark Twain, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and national security claims.

Take the case of suspected terrorist Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen detained by the United States in 2002 while changing planes at Kennedy International Airport. Last week, a Canadian court ordered the release of previously classified information about Arar's case, which turned into a debacle when he was shipped to Syria, where he was tortured and imprisoned for nearly one year. In the end, the suspicion that Arar was a terrorist proved ill-founded, and in January the Canadian government coupled its apology for the injustice he'd suffered with $10.9 million in compensation and payment of legal fees.

Yet after the court ordered the release of the information about Arar that had been kept secret, the same Canadian government insisted that the disclosures would mean the ruination of national security. What that fear really betrays is a mindset that the rising and setting of the sun is a state secret.

The Canadian government opposed revealing that the CIA, not the FBI, decided to deport Arar. It fretted over disclosing that the operations director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service authored a memo 15 days after Arar's arrest opining that "the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him." The Canadians also objected to unbosoming that the Syrians considered Arar "more of a nuisance than anything else"; and that information extracted by severe abuse or torture in Syria from another Canadian, Ahmad El-Maati, was exploited by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to persuade a judge to authorize a wiretap. As John Ibbitson wrote in the Globe and Mail last week: "National security my ass. Foreign affairs, CSIS and especially the RCMP were simply trying to keep hidden their incompetent, duplicitous, and disgraceful handling of the Arar file. And they are still at it."

Counterparts to the Canadian government's secrecy fetish abound in the United States. To wit:

President Bush continues to conceal the legal advice he received after 9/11 to justify the National Security Agency's euphemistically styled Terrorist Surveillance Program, which contravenes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (or did, before Congress gutted key parts of FISA earlier this month). According to the president, to disclose the rationale for the TSP—the claimed unitary executive theory of the Constitution—would expose operational details. But al-Qaida's tactics are uninfluenced by what legal doctrine purports to authorize a method of spying.

When the New York Times published an account of the existence of the TSP in December 2005, based on a leak from the executive branch, President Bush accused the newspaper of semi-treason. He fancifully asserted that al-Qaida would maneuver to evade the TSP armed with the new knowledge that the NSA was spying without warrants. But again, al-Qaida was not born yesterday. Indeed, everyone in the Middle East assumes that both his government and foreign governments are spying on him, and he adapts his communications accordingly. President Bush instantly discredited his own accusation that the Times had impaired the utility of the TSP by ordering its continuation. Not a crumb of evidence has emerged in the 20 months since to substantiate any harm to national security.

The pattern of unsubstantiated finger-pointing repeats itself. After USA Today disclosed a spying program companion to the TSP, data mining involving telephone records, the president asserted that the publicity would compromise national security. But no cogent evidence demonstrated that the publicity made the United States less safe. The president also harshly condemned the Times' publication of another warrantless program, which obtained financial records of suspected terrorists through the SWIFT international banking consortium. It was suggested that without the publicity, terrorists would have been unguarded in their financing arrangements and that the SWIFT disclosures first clued in the terrorists to the need to conceal their financial tracks. But no evidence has ever been forthcoming to substantiate the claims. International terrorists, like al-Qaida in its way, are sophisticates.

When Congress held hearings on the TSP, the president invoked national security to justify concealing such basic information as the number of Americans who had been targeted for warrantless surveillance, the number of terrorist plots that had been thwarted in whole or in part by the TSP, and the intelligence that could not have been collected except by violating FISA. Suppose 10,000 Americans had been targeted by the TSP. How could the outing of that number assist international terrorists?

Consider also the reasoning of a FISA court ruling earlier this year that warrants are required to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications that transit the United States. Understanding the FISA court's rationale should have been central to informed public and congressional debate over the president's demand that Congress eviscerate privacy protections safeguarded by FISA, as lawmakers did in passing the Protect America Act this month. Yet President Bush insisted then and continues to insist that even the disclosure of a redacted version of the FISA court's opinion would endanger national security. At the same time, the president leaked a copy to Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner to skew the debate over the new law in his favor.

There's more in this self-serving vein, of course: President Bush and Vice President Cheney first maintained that intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction required secrecy. The two then collaborated to leak to the press through Karl Rove and Scooter Libby instantly declassified WMD information with the intent to destroy the credibility of their detractor, Joseph Wilson.

The fundamental point is that secrecy—not disclosure—regularly impairs national security. It promotes groupthink that spawns foolhardy endeavors like President John F. Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion or this president's democratization of Iraq. Secrecy also undermines public faith in the probity of government—the faith necessary to sustain protracted foreign engagements. And so national security is best secured by skepticism about demands for secrecy based on national security. And so I end with this question: Can you think of a single national security disclosure that seriously damaged the nation?

In 2005, Steven Aftergood documented the Bush administration's claims to secrecy for national security purposes. In 2006, Fred Kaplan reported its attempts to reclassify documents, and Henry Lanman revealed its invocation of the "state secrets" privilege. And Jack Shafer predicted that Bush's obsession with secrecy would be his undoing.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda. He is author of the forthcoming book Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle Over the Constitution and Democracy.

http://www.slate.com/id/2172219/

Draft NumbersIf we want to take on the world's problems, we may need the draft. Still want to?
By Fred Kaplan

http://www.slate.com/id/2172225/

Bush's tangled arms deal
By selling weapons to "moderate" states, Bush would again be playing puppet master and jerking around the Middle East with disastrous consequences.

By Gary Kamiya

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/0...bush_arms_deal/

What Do We Have in Common with States Like Colombia, North Korea, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, and Pakistan? Like them, it's failed to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Yet, on August 1, reports Nukes of Hazard, tiny Palau ratified it, shaming us big-time.

Learn from Rome's fall or else, U.S. comptroller general warns

Submitted by cpowell on 08:23PM ET Monday, August 13, 2007. Section: Daily Dispatches
By Jeremy Grant
Financial Times, London
Tuesday, August 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The US government is on a "burning platform" of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration, and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country's future in a report that lays out what he called "chilling long-term simulations."

These include "dramatic" tax rises, slashed government services, and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were "striking similarities" between America's current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including "declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands, and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government."

"Sound familiar?" Mr Walker said. "In my view, it's time to learn from history and take steps to ensure that the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time."

Read the entire article:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/80fa0a2c-49ef-11dc...00779fd2ac.html

Bush’s Booming Economy . . . For the Rich
by Sheila Samples / August 14th, 2007

Sometimes I’m amazed at how much I know about the financial markets and the economy. I don’t understand any of it, but I know a lot of stuff, thanks to my friend and mentor Richard Walrath, who’s been to the market more than once. He says when George Bush brags that the economy is booming, he’s probably right. The economy is exploding with a big boom, and Walrath says now we are engaged in a great battle to see how long this country can endure. (Full article …)

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/

Stock Market Brushfire
Will There Be a Run on the Banks?

by Mike Whitney / August 14th, 2007

On Friday, the Dow Jones clawed its way back from a 200 point deficit to a mere 31 point loss after the Federal Reserve injected $38 billion into the banking system. The Fed had already pumped $24 billion into the system a day earlier after the Dow plummeted 387 points. That brings the Fed’s total commitment to a whopping $62 billion. (Full article …)

Dick Cheney '94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire

Cheney was head of Halliburton in Dallas from 1995 until July, 2000, when he resigned in preparation for running for vice president. During that time, Halliburton subsidiaries allegedly did business with Iraq. <a href="http://www.antiwar.com/orig/leopold.php?articleid=3767">

This article gives Cheney's position in 1996:

' Halliburton was headed for a financial crisis in the mid-1990s. Cheney said sanctions against countries like Iraq were hurting corporations such as Halliburton. "We seem to be sanction-happy as a government," Cheney said at an energy conference in April 1996, reported in the oil industry publication Petroleum Finance Week. "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments," he observed during his conference presentation . . . . . . Sanctions make U.S. businesses "the bystander who gets hit when a train wreck occurs," Cheney told Petroleum Finance Week. "While virtually every other country sees the need for sanctions against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's regime there, Cheney sees general agreement that the measures have not been very effective despite their having most of the international community's support. An individual country's embargo, such as that of the United States against Iran, has virtually no effect since the target country simply signs a contract with a non-U.S. business," the publication reported.'

In September, 2000, Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb, Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff) and Fred Kagan [recently author of the 'surge' idea] drew up a position paper for Cheney entitled Rebuilding America's Defences. The document said,

' In the Persian Gulf region, the presence of American forces, along with British and French units, has become a semipermanent fact of life. Though the immediate mission of those forces is to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, they represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance. Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

The document found willing ears. Cheney's years in Dallas hanging around with Big Oil CEO's appear to have made him question his earlier conviction that it was best to leave Saddam Hussein in power.Labels: Iraq

posted by Juan Colehttp://www.juancole.com/

+ DHS Rolls Out No-Fly List Change But No Data Mining
Washington (UPI) Aug 15, 2007 - U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff Thursday rolled out a plan for implementing the controversial air passenger watch-list screening system called Secure Flight -- dropping plans to mine commercial databases as part of the checks. Chertoff also announced changes to the rules that govern the data airlines provide to the department for international passengers -- the Advance Passenge ... more

Rebuilding European Arms Control
Washington (UPI) Aug 15, 2007 - Russia's recent announcement that it intends to formally suspend its compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which limits Russian and NATO conventional forces and heavy weaponry in Europe, has caused consternation in Western capitals. In addition, Russian officials threatened that Moscow may also withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which limits the deplo ... more

Analysis: Iran's soft power pays off
Washington (UPI) Aug 14, 2007 - At a time when the United States is widely regarded in the Middle East as a military aggressor and faces plummeting popularity around the world, Iran is taking advantage of the situation to boost its own image and forge closer ties with its neighbors. The U.S. government has long been accused of botching public diplomacy in the Muslim world, where the United States is largely seen as ... more

Analysis: Russian ships in Syria unlikely
Washington (UPI) Aug 14, 2007 - Is the Russian fleet about to find a home in the warm waters of the Mediterranean in the Syrian ports of Tartous and Latakia? Yes, says one opposition official, citing multiple sources -- all anonymous. No, says with a laugh, Syria's ambassador to Washington. The Russian navy -- and before it the Soviet navy -- has long desired a warm-water port to serve the Russian fleet when winter ... more

Analysis: Kazakhstan's nuclear future
Washington (UPI) Aug 14, 2007 - While Western attention focuses on the rising oil and natural gas potential of Caspian states, rising energy player Kazakhstan has another energy asset up its sleeve: uranium. Kazakhstan contains the world's second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. In 2006 it produced 5,279 tons of uranium, 21 percent more than in 2005, and intends in 2007 to increase uranium prod ... more

Top general may propose pullbacks
By Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel
Petraeus is expected to tell Congress that Iraqis can assume duties in some
areas, freeing U.S. troops for other uses.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBV...Io30G2B0IqZ80EA

Karl who? White House downplays Rove's role
By Peter Wallsten
Reducing strategist's stature after departure could help with Congress, as it
did when Rumsfeld left.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBV...Io30G2B0IqaB0ER

Karl Rove: great tactics, bad strategy
By Ronald Brownstein
His goal to polarize politics worked against him when events shifted.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBV...Io30G2B0Iqac0Ey

Decline and Fall
U.S. comptroller general: America is Rome
by Justin Raimondo

Is America going the way of Rome? David Walker, the comptroller general of the U.S., has issued a report that basically answers in the affirmative: "The U.S. government is on a 'burning platform' of unsustainable policies and practices," Walker avers, including "fiscal deficits" and "overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon." If we continue on our present course, Walker warns, we are in for "dramatic" tax hikes, a radical reduction in government "services," and "the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of U.S. debt." The Chinese certainly concur with that last prediction.

"Sound familiar?" asks Walker. It ought to, he contends, because we are going down the path the ancient Romans took. There are, he says, "striking similarities," including "declining moral values and political civility at home, an overconfident and overextended military in foreign lands, and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government."

"In my view," says Walker, "it's time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time."

The GAO is as close to an objective, nonpartisan agency as the U.S. government – or any government – could create. It regularly assesses the impact of government policies and legislation passed by Congress, and it is relied on as the final arbiter in matters having to do with the fiscal health of the nation. Our present path, says the GAO report, is "unsustainable," and we can look to Rome as an example of what happens when a republic morphs into an empire: yes, Rome lasted a thousand years, but only half that as a republic, and the second half of its history was generally on a downward path, filled with wars, both civil and foreign, tyrants, and disastrous economic policies, ending, finally, in the sack of Rome by the emperor's mercenaries.

Walker is hardly the first to draw the parallels between the Roman and American empires: some of us have been making this argument for years. Yet if even our government officials are now telling us that we are on the road to ruin, then shouldn't we examine the ominous parallels a bit further?

Edward Gibbon, the famous historian of Roman decline, struck a note similar to Walker's in his multi-volume narrative detailing the decline and fall of the city on the Tiber. "The decline of Rome," he maintained, "was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight."

Sound familiar?

"Immoderate greatness" – now there's a phrase that trenchantly and succinctly captures our national ailment. A while ago, the neoconservative blowhards who brought us the Iraq war were promoting their newest nostrum, which they called "national greatness" – but what, one wondered, could such a concept mean? David Brooks opined that it might mean building huge, ornate government buildings, such as the Library of Congress. But that benign imagery soon gave way to a darker vision. As columnist Jim Pinkerton put it in a piece on the takeover of the GOP by neoconservative ideologues:

"They have no interest in a minimalist Goldwaterian state; it's 'National Greatness' they crave. These neocons once opined that such greatness might be found in majestic monuments. David Brooks in a 1997 Weekly Standard piece on 'A Return to National Greatness' waxed lyrical over the Library of Congress as the embodiment of 'brassy aspirations of Americans' and 'their brash assertion that America was emerging as a world-historical force.' But after futilely casting about for opportunities on the home front, neocons have settled on the idea that greatness comes from fighting foreign wars."

Pinkerton also recalled the words of Richard Perle, the most obnoxiously aggressive defender of our crazed foreign policy, who took us further down the road to immoderate greatness by declaring, in the wake of 9/11: "This is total war. If we just let our vision of the world go forth … our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Yes, great songs about bankruptcy, arrogance, and how pride goeth before a fall: anthems of faded imperial glory, ballads bemoaning an overweening hubris, and tragic elegies to a legacy of liberty betrayed.

Empires are expensive, and the American imperium is unique in that, as Garet Garrett wrote in 1950, it might be described as "the Empire of the Bottomless Purse," because "everything goes out and nothing comes in." The Romans exacted tribute on their client states and local satraps: we, on the other hand, pay tribute to our "allies," such as Israel and Egypt, the two biggest recipients of U.S. aid (number one and number two, respectively). We are currently fighting a war in Iraq the cost of which will eventually total in the trillions, and there is no end in sight, as the new movie of that title quite accurately puts it.

With a global network of bases, entangling alliances, and long-standing informal military commitments, the U.S. government must finance, maintain, and defend so much that it has reached the limit of its once-considerable resources. We can't have an empire and maintain our republican character. It is one or the other. This is the essence of Walker's warning, and one that politicians in both parties will do anything to ignore, since their careers depend on promising the moon. The conceit of our Washington-based elites, their image of themselves as world-conquering, world-saving leaders, who are making history instead of heeding its lessons, prevents them from seeing the oncoming catastrophe. Yet the day of reckoning is at hand…

I have always been suspicious – although, perhaps, skeptical is a better word – of all forms of catastrophism, i.e. the belief that the natural process of history is ushering in an ultimate confrontation between the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil, a vision of Armageddon that seemed to have more to do with religious belief than empirical observation. Marxism had this built-in mechanism whereby the very nature of the capitalist system – which had implanted within it the seeds of its own destruction – ensured the triumph of communism.

That, as we have seen, proved false, and I have been just as wary of the libertarian form of catastrophism, which predicts that the expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve and the growth of government spending will eventually bring the whole structure of the welfare-warfare state down, and usher in … what? A libertarian utopia? Here is where my skepticism kicks in: the result, in my view, is much more likely to be enhanced state authority, and even a new American authoritarianism, coupled with violent upheavals at home and abroad.