Radar Contact

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(OK - took just a little liberty with the tune... --DN)

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Big Brother Bush
Domestic spying threatens fabric of republic
by Molly Ivins
appearing on Workingforchange.com
December 28, 2005

AUSTIN, Texas -- The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Thirty-five years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided some Americans had unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.

For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.

The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.

The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be killed off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap.

Of course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can catch the terrorists who threaten us all. Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they're onto the Quakers. We are not safer.

We would be safer, as the 9-11 commission has so recently reminded us, if some obvious and necessary precautions were taken at both nuclear and chemical plants -- but that is not happening because those industries contribute to Republican candidates. Republicans do not ask their contributors to spend a lot of money on obvious and necessary steps to protect public safety. They wiretap, instead.

You will be unsurprised to learn that, first, they lied. They didn't do it. Well, OK, they did it, but not very much at all. Well, OK, more than that. A lot more than that. OK, millions of private e-mail and telephone calls every hour, and all medical and financial records.

You may recall in 2002 it was revealed that the Pentagon had started a giant data-mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA), intended to search through vast databases "to increase information coverage by an order of magnitude."

From credit cards to vet reports, Big Brother would be watching us. This dandy program was under the control of Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of five felonies during Iran-Contra, all overturned on a technicality. This administration really knows where to go for good help -- it ought to bring back Brownie.

Everybody decided that TIA was a terrible idea, and the program was theoretically shut down. As often happens with this administration, it turned out they just changed the name and made the program less visible. Data-mining was a popular buzzword at the time, and the administration was obviously hot to have it. Bush established a secret program under which the National Security Agency could bypass the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court and begin eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

As many have patiently pointed out, the entire program was unnecessary, since the FISA court is both prompt and accommodating. There is virtually no possible scenario that would make it difficult or impossible to get a FISA warrant -- it has granted 19,000 warrants and rejected only a handful.

I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night, telling each other scary stories -- but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power. As the late Sen. Frank Church said, "That capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide." And if a dictator took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny."

Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response, "Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, do you?"

Folks, we KNOW this program is being and will be misused. We know it from the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- and, boy, if those aren't outposts of al-Qaida, what is? Could this be more pathetic?

This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly. Anyone think we're up to that again? Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?

Topplebush.comPosted: December 29, 2005
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...I mention Tricky Dicky, and in the next item I eyeball, here he is.

Being written about by none other than his ex-faithful servant - John Dean.

Hey, if anybody knows about illegal presidential wiretapping, other than Cheney, heeeeeeeeeerz Johnny!... --DN

"So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God." George W. Bush, accepting the Republican nomination, August 2000.

"In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal, but what is right - not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves." Candidate George W. Bush, October 26, 2000.

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." George W. Bush, May 24, 2005.

"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious." -- Joseph Goebbels

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George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon:

Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably; Both Claimed That a President May Violate Congress' Laws to Protect National Security
By JOHN W. DEAN ----
Friday, Dec. 30, 2005

On Friday, December 16, the New York Times published a major scoop by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau: They reported that Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on Americans without warrants, ignoring the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

It was a long story loaded with astonishing information of lawbreaking at the White House. It reported that sometime in 2002, Bush issued an executive order authorizing NSA to track and intercept international telephone and/or email exchanges coming into, or out of, the U.S. - when one party was believed to have direct or indirect ties with al Qaeda.

Initially, Bush and the White House stonewalled, neither confirming nor denying the president had ignored the law. Bush refused to discuss it in his interview with Jim Lehrer.

Then, on Saturday, December 17, in his radio broadcast, Bush admitted that the New York Times was correct - and thus conceded he had committed an impeachable offense.

There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons.

These parallel violations underscore the continuing, disturbing parallels between this Administration and the Nixon Administration - parallels I also discussed in a prior column.

Indeed, here, Bush may have outdone Nixon: Nixon's illegal surveillance was limited; Bush's, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope. First reports indicated that NSA was only monitoring foreign calls, originating either in the USA or abroad, and that no more than 500 calls were being covered at any given time. But later reports have suggested that NSA is "data mining" literally millions of calls - and has been given access by the telecommunications companies to "switching" stations through which foreign communications traffic flows.

In sum, this is big-time, Big Brother electronic surveillance.

Read the rest at the link:
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...and sure as God made little green apples, there will be more unconstitutional illegalities and lies finally exposed - hopefully, in our lifetimes.

What remains to be seen is whether our MSM will investigate and report on them, and our Congress and our courts will hold them accountable, with prosecutions, impeachments, convictions and prison time.

Not exactly holding my breath, but we do have warm, happy memories of Nixon's fate to sustain us in the meantime... --DN

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NATIONAL SECURITY (FROM)


On Saturday (12/17/05), President Bush acknowledged that he had personally authorized a secret warrantless domestic surveillance program more than three dozen times since October 2001. Bush's actions run contrary to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids "unreasonable searches" and sets out specific requirements for warrants, including "probable cause." They demonstrate a dangerous disregard for the basic liberties that serve as our nation's guiding values. They are also in violation of federal law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conduct electronic surveillance, except as "authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order." Moreover, since 1978, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2511(2)(f) has directed that Title III and FISA "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance...and the interception of domestic wire and oral communications may be conducted." The President's actions were not necessary; if he had legitimate concerns about FISA, "the appropriate response would have been to go to Congress and expand it, not to blatantly violate the law." Below, we debunk the administration's attempts to justify Bush's actions.

FACT: BUSH PROGRAM WOULD NOT HAVE PREVENTED SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS: Vice President Cheney said of the surveillance program, "It's the kind of capability, if we'd had before 9/11, might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11." This claim is false and sensational. The secret surveillance program authorized by President Bush did not provide the government with any new "capability." The government "already had the capacity to read your mail and your e-mail and listen to your telephone conversations. All it had to do was obtain a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The burden of proof for obtaining a warrant was relaxed a bit after 9/11, but even before the attacks the court hardly ever rejected requests." Indeed, from 1979 to 2002, the FISA court issued 15,264 surveillance warrants. Not a single warrant application was rejected.

FACT: BUSH PROGRAM DID NOT IMPROVE SPEED OF OBTAINING WARRANTS: Another claim made by members of the administration is that President Bush needed "to skirt the normal process of obtaining court-approved search warrants for the surveillance because it was too cumbersome for fast-paced counterterrorism investigations." This argument has several flaws. For one, the New York Times notes, "government officials are able to get an emergency warrant from the secret court within hours, sometimes minutes, if they can show an imminent threat." More importantly, Section 1805 of the FISA Act states that the government can begin a wiretap as soon as it determines a need and can wait up to 72 hours before obtaining a warrant. The Bush administration "did not seek to do that under the special program."

FACT: DISCLOSURE OF PROGRAM DID NOT UNDERMINE NATIONAL SECURITY: After the New York Times published its story, President Bush and other top administration officials refused to confirm the existence of the surveillance program, arguing that doing so would endanger the American people. Bush said on Friday he wouldn't "comment about the veracity of the story...because it would compromise our ability to protect the people." Press Secretary Scott McClellan and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both repeated this line. Within hours, however, President Bush not only confirmed the existence of the program in a Saturday morning address, but provided details about how it worked. In other words, the administration's initial refusal to comment was motivated by public relations, not security, concerns. The scope of surveillance under FISA -- which has long been public -- is the same under President Bush's secretive program.

FACT: RICE UNABLE TO EXPLAIN WHAT GAVE BUSH AUTHORITY TO EAVESDROP WITHOUT WARRANT: Yesterday, Condoleezza Rice was asked a simple question: what is the specific statute or law that gives President Bush the authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant? She had no answer. Instead, Rice referenced unspecified "authorities that derive from his role as Commander in Chief and his need to protect the country," then explained she was "not a lawyer and I am quite certain that the Attorney General will address a lot of these questions." Indeed, Rice said several times that she is "not a lawyer." That fact is irrelevant. Rice was the National Security Adviser when President Bush authorized the NSA program, and said today that she was aware of Bush’s decision at the time. Shouldn’t she know why it was legal?

FACT: SOME CONGRESSIONAL INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS NOT TOLD OF PROGRAM: Yesterday, Condoleezza Rice defended the eavesdropping program by arguing that congressional leaders -- specifically "leaders of the relevant oversight intelligence committees" -- had been briefed on the NSA activities. This is apparently not true. At the time the program was initiated, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL). On Friday's "Nightline," Graham made clear he had never been briefed by the administration about the program: "There was no reference made to the fact that we were going to...begin unwarranted, illegal, and I think unconstitutional, eavesdropping on American citizens." Additionally, in a letter issued last night, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she had been "advised by Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), Ranking Democrat on House Intelligence Committee, that the Bush Administration reversed its decision to brief the full House Intelligence Committee on the details of the activities."

FACT: IN CONFIRMATION HEARING, GONZALES DENIED BUSH WOULD ACT BEYOND CRIMINAL STATUTES: In a classified legal opinion, the administration argued the President had the power to order the warrantless search pursuant to his authority as commander-in-chief to wage war against al-Qaeda. During his Attorney General confirmation hearings in January 2005, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) asked Gonzales specifically whether the president "at least in theory [has] the authority to authorize violations of the criminal law under duly enacted statutes simply because he's commander in chief?" After trying to dodge the question for a time, Gonzales issued this denial: "Senator, this president is not — I — it is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes." Later, Feingold asked Gonzales to "commit to notify Congress if the president makes this type of decision and not wait two years until a memo is leaked about it." Gonzales replied, "I will advise the Congress as soon as I reasonably can, yes, sir."
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Click the link for the crap our soldiers, who are being turned into little Goebbels of propaganda by the despicable maladministration, are "prompted" to say. And there are, of course, penalties if they don't spout the lies... --DN

For the truth, read this: (And related here, here, and here.)

But soldiers who are home and don’t have to return to Iraq tell a different story.

“I've just been focused on trying to get the rest of these guys home,” says Sgt. Major Floyd Dubose of Jackson, MS, who returned home after 11 months in Iraq with the Mississippi Army National Guard's 155th Combat Brigade.

And the Army is cracking down on soldiers who go on the record opposing the war.

Specialist Leonard Clark, a National Guardsman, was demoted to private and fined $1,640 for posting anti-war statements on an Internet blog. Clark wrote entries describing the company's commander as a "glory seeker" and the battalion sergeant major an "inhuman monster". His last entry before the blog was shut down told how his fellow soldiers were becoming increasingly opposed to the US operation in Iraq.

“The message is clear,” says one reservist who is home for the holidays but has to return and asked not to be identified. “If you want to get out of this man’s Army with an honorable (discharge) and full benefits you better not tell the truth about what is happening in-country.”

But Sgt. Johnathan Wilson, a reservist, got his honorable discharge after he returned home earlier this month and he’s not afraid to talk on the record.

“Iraq is a classic FUBAR,” he says. (For you non-military folks that's "F---ed Up Beyond All Recognition --DN) “The country is out of control and we can’t stop it. Anybody who tries to sell a good news story about the war is blowing it out his ass. We [won’t] win and eventually we will leave the country in a worse shape than it was when we invaded.”
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When your friends and family are murdered by your government, with the covert and/or overt help of the United States of America, for decades and decades, and you are already a repressed minority, you tend to remember. Vengeance is mine, say the victims.

We are paying the price, currently most prominently in Iraq, for the hubris of folks like Herr Kissinger, among many others.

The history is out there, here, and here, and here, and many other places, for all to see, if only we will. Including, sadly, against our very own citizens. See native Americans, slavery and women's suffrage, for starters. BTW, speaking of women...

"They" do not 'hate us for our freedoms', as the Absolute Moron parrots, but for freedoms and lives lost because we have actively denied them, by reason of our arrogant interference in the affairs and destinies of others, in so many other sovereign lands.

Father USA does not always know best, as history has proven. Father USA needs to work on solving the increasingly myriad problems at home, and leave the neighbors alone... --DN

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none."
Thomas Jefferson

"The principles of Jefferson are the axioms of a free society." ~ Abraham Lincoln

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Lord Acton

"A fool is very dangerous when in power."
Denis Fonvizin

"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny."
Barry Goldwater

(Just thought I'd remind folks of what some "Republicans," or "conservatives," and others, have said. :)
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By Roger Burbach and Paul Cantor, Pacific News Service
Posted on December 15, 2004,
Printed on December 29, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20761/

The Chilean government has arrested Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who led a brutal military coup in 1973 and ruled the country with an iron hand until 1990. The United States should now follow suit by prosecuting Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon's former national security advisor, for breaking U.S. and international law by helping foment the coup that brought Pinochet to power.

Before Pinochet, Chile had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most vibrant democracies in the world. It had a democratically elected president and a Congress just as we do. It had a wide range of political parties from the far right to the far left, all of which participated in the political process. It had numerous newspapers, magazines and radio stations that together represented the views of people across the political spectrum. All of its citizens, including illiterates, had a right to vote.

Pinochet, with Kissinger's help, changed all that.

The military junta Pinochet led dissolved Congress, outlawed political parties and the largest labor union in the country, censored the press, banned the movie "Fiddler on the Roof" as Marxist propaganda, publicly burned books ("on a scale seldom seen since the heyday of Hitler," according to the New York Times), expelled students and professors from universities, designated military officers as university rectors and arrested, tortured and killed thousands who opposed the regime.

Among those who died in the coup and its aftermath were: Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected president; Victor Jara, its most famous folk singer; Carlos Prats, the commander in chief of the Chilean armed forces until the coup plotters forced him out of office; Jose Toha, a former vice president; Alberto Bachelet, an air force general who opposed the coup; and two North American friends of ours, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi.

The Pinochet regime was condemned for torturing political prisoners and for other human rights abuses by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Amnesty International and many other respected international organizations. Among those tortured was a 24-year-old young man who, according to the Wall Street Journal, "was stripped naked and given electrical shocks ... They started with wires attached to his hands and feet and finally to his testicles." Newsweek magazine wrote on March 31, 1975, "Each day Chileans are picked up for interrogation by the secret police. Some are held for weeks without charge, many are tortured, a few disappear altogether."

Chile, in sum, became a nightmare society. Even when Pinochet finally gave up power in 1990 to an elected government, he continued to dominate the country's politics as commander in chief of the military.


Only recently has the country demonstrated a determination to face its past head-on and bring those responsible for murder and torture under the Pinochet regime to justice, including the ex-dictator himself. Indeed, up until only a short time ago, Pinochet in Chile used to be like Kissinger in the United States. He was the Teflon man. No charges against him could be made to stick.

Three events provided Chileans with the resolve to take on the former tyrant. The first was his arrest in England in 1998 on a warrant issued by a Spanish judge charging him with human rights abuses. The second was the publication by the news media of documents indicating that he enriched himself at the expense of his own people in a variety of illicit ways. The third was a report by a government-sponsored commission detailing the torture of 45,000 people that took place under his regime.

So now, the 89-year-old ex-dictator – his former friends deserting him in droves, his cultivated image of the tough but honorable savior of his country in tatters – is under house arrest in his own country. He's trying to avoid prosecution by claiming he is too old and too feeble-minded to face a trial. What about Kissinger?

Innumerable reports in this country, beginning with a 1975 U.S. Senate document titled, "Covert Action in Chile," have made it clear that Kissinger was responsible for directing the CIA and other intelligence agencies to destabilize the Allende government. Kissinger's motivation was to prevent what he considered a communist government from gaining a foothold in Latin America. "I don't see why we need to stand idly by and let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people," he said after Salvador Allende was elected president.

Now, Pinochet's arrest reminds us that Henry Kissinger and others in our country who are responsible for undermining democracy and condoning human rights abuses need to be held accountable for their crimes. Until that happens, the rest of the world has a right to be incredulous when our leaders proclaim they want to spread democracy and human rights abroad.
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Paul Cantor is a professor of economics at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. He lived in Chile from 1970 to 1973. Roger Burbach also resided in Chile and is the author of "The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice" (Zed Books, 2003).

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20761/
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Vice Axes That 70's Show
by Maureen Dowd
The New York Times
December 28, 2005

WASHINGTON

We start the new year with the same old fear: Dick Cheney.

The vice president, who believes in unwarranted, unlimited snooping, is so pathologically secretive that if you use Google Earth's database to see his official residence, the view is scrambled and obscured. You can view satellite photos of the White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol - but not of the Lord of the Underworld's lair.

Vice is literally a shadow president. He's obsessive about privacy - but, unfortunately, only his own.

Google Earth users alerted The Times to this latest bit of Cheney concealment after a front-page story last week about the international fears inspired by free Google software that features detailed displays of things like government and military sites around the world.

"For a brief period," they reported, "photos of the White House and adjacent buildings that the United States Geological Survey provided to Google Earth showed up with certain details obscured." So Google replaced those images with unaltered photographs taken by a private company.

Even though the story did not mention the Cheney residence - and even though it's not near the White House - The Times ran a clarifying correction yesterday that said, "The view of the vice president's residence in Washington remains obscured."

Fitting, since Vice has turned America into a camera obscura, a dark chamber with a lens that turns things upside down.

Guys argue that women tend to stew and hold grudges more, sometimes popping up to blow the whistle on a man's bad behavior years later, like a missile out of the night, as Alan Simpson said of Anita Hill.

Yet look at Cheney and Rummy. Their steroid-infused power grabs stem from their years stewing in the Ford White House, a time when they felt emasculated because they were stripped of prerogatives.

Rummy, a Ford chief of staff who became defense secretary, and his protégé, Cheney, who succeeded him as chief of staff, felt diminished by the post-Watergate laws and reforms that reduced the executive branch's ability to be secretive and unilateral, tilting power back toward Congress.

The 70's were also a heady period for the press, which reached the zenith of its power when it swayed public opinion on Vietnam and exposed Watergate. Reporters got greater access to government secrets with a stronger Freedom of Information Act.

Chenrummy thought the press was running amok, that leaks should be plugged and that Congress was snatching power that rightfully belonged to the White House.

So these two crusty pals spent 30 years dreaming of inflating the deflated presidential muscularity. Cheney christened himself vice president and brought in Rummy for the most ridiculously pumped-up presidency ever. All this was fine with W., whose family motto is: "We know best. Trust us."

The two regents turned back the clock to the Nixon era, bringing back presidential excesses like wiretapping along with presidential power. As attorney general, John Ashcroft clamped down on the Freedom of Information Act. For two years, the Pentagon has been sitting on a request from The Times's Jeff Gerth to cough up a secret 500-page document prepared by Halliburton on what to do with Iraq's oil industry - a plan it wrote several months before the invasion of Iraq, and before it got a no-bid contract to implement the plan (and overbill the U.S.). Very convenient.

Defending warrantless wiretapping last week, the vice president spoke of his distaste for the erosion of presidential authority in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam.

"I do believe that, especially in the day and age we live in, the nature of the threats we face, it was true during the cold war, as well as I think what is true now, the president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy," he intoned. Translation: Back off, Congress and the press.

Checks, balances, warrants, civil liberties - they're all so 20th century. Historians must now regard the light transitional tenure of Gerald Ford as the petri dish of this darkly transformational presidency.

Consider this: when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it?

Dick Cheney. Then and now, the man is a menace.

Topplebush.com
Posted: December 28, 2005
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[...]

A Guarantee President Bush Cannot Ignore:

Our final word comes not from a mere pundit but from an informed source familiar with Bush's thinking: "... any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires _ a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

The source: Bush, speaking in Buffalo, on April 20, 2004 _ more than two years after he had begun ordering wiretaps without a court order.
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...we still live in the "land of the free," it's way past time to remove your heads from your nether regions, and recognize the neo-KGB.
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Links added by yours truly... --DN

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"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

NSA just one of many federal agencies spying on Americans
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Dec 27, 2005, 00:35

Spying on Americans by the super-secret National Security Agency is not only more widespread than President George W. Bush admits but is part of a concentrated, government-wide effort to gather and catalog information on U.S. citizens, sources close to the administration say.

Besides the NSA, the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and dozens of private contractors are spying on millions of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

“It’s a total effort to build dossiers on as many Americans as possible,” says a former NSA agent who quit in disgust over use of the agency to spy on Americans. “We’re no longer in the business of tracking our enemies. We’re spying on everyday Americans.”

“It's really obvious to me that it's a look-at-everything type program,” says cryptology expert Bruce Schneier.

Schneier says he suspects that the NSA is turning its massive spy satellites inward on the United States and intentionally gathering vast streams of raw data from many more people than disclosed to date — potentially including all e-mails and phone calls within the United States.

But the NSA spying is just the tip of the iceberg.

Although supposedly killed by Congress more than 18 months ago, the Defense Advance Project Research Agency’s Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) system, formerly called the “Total Information Awareness” program, is alive and well and collecting data in real time on Americans at a computer center located at 3801 Fairfax Drive in Arlington, Virginia.

The system, set up by retired admiral John Poindexter, once convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, compiles financial, travel and other data on the day-to-day activities of Americans and then runs that data through a computer model to look for patterns that the agency deems “terrorist-related behavior.”

Poindexter admits the program was quietly moved into the Pentagon’s “black bag” program where it does escape Congressional oversight. (I mentioned this [mass e-mails - pre-blog] when it happened. Did you complain to your Congresscritter at the time? ... DN)

“TIA builds a profile of every American who travels, has a bank account, uses credit cards and has a credit record,” says security expert Allen Banks. “The profile establishes norms based on the person’s spending and travel habits. Then the system looks for patterns that break from the norms, such as purchases of materials that are considered likely for terrorist activity, travel to specific areas or a change in spending habits.”

Patterns that fit pre-defined criteria result in an investigative alert and the individual becomes a “person of interest” who is referred to the Department of [In-]Justice and Department of Homeland (der Fatherland --DN) Security, Banks says.

Intelligence pros call the process “data mining” and that is something the NSA excels at as well, says former NSA signals intelligence analyst Russell Tice.

"The technology exists," says Tice, who left the NSA earlier this year.

"Say Aunt Molly in Oklahoma calls her niece at an Army base in Germany and says, 'Isn't it horrible about those terrorists and September 11th,'" Tice told the Atlanta Constitution recently. “That conversation would not only be captured by NSA satellites listening in on Germany — which is legal — but flagged and listened to by NSA analysts and possibly transcribed for further investigation. All you would have to do is move the vacuum cleaner a little to the left and begin sucking up the other end of that conversation. You move it a little more and you could be picking up everything people are saying from California to New York."

The Pentagon has built a massive database of Americans it considers threats, including members of antiwar groups, peace activists and writers opposed to the war in Iraq. (Yes, that includes ME - and I'm damn proud to be on their f...ing list! --DN) Pentagon officials now claim they are “reviewing the files” to see if the information is necessary to the “war on terrorism.” (It should be obvious by now, to even the most clueless Repukian, that this so-called "war" includes a war on you and me by "our" government. --DN)

“Given the military's legacy of privacy abuses, such vague assurances are cold comfort,” says Gene Healy, senior editor of the CATO Institute in Washington.

“During World War I, concerns about German saboteurs led to unrestrained domestic spying by U.S. Army intelligence operatives,” says Healy. “Army spies were given free reign to gather information on potential subversives, and were often empowered to make arrests as special police officers. Occasionally, they carried false identification as employees of public utilities to allow them, as the chief intelligence officer for the Western Department put it, ‘to enter offices or residences of suspects gracefully, and thereby obtain data.’”

“There's a long and troubling history of military surveillance in this country,” Healy adds. “That history suggests that we should loathe allowing the Pentagon access to our personal information.”

In her book Army Surveillance in America, historian Joan M. Jensen noted, “What began as a system to protect the government from enemy agents became a vast surveillance system to watch civilians who violated no law but who objected to wartime policies or to the war itself.”

“It’s a fucking nightmare,” says a Congressional aide who recently obtained information on the program for his boss but asked not to be identified because he fears retaliation from the Bush administration. “We’re collecting more information on Americans than on real enemies of our country.”

Sen. John Rockefeller says he raised concerns more than two years ago about increased spying on Americans but – as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee – could not share that concern with colleagues.

"For the last few days, I have witnessed the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney-General repeatedly misrepresent the facts," Rockefeller said last week. When he was first briefed about the activity in 2003, we sent a handwritten note to Vice President Dick Cheney outlining his concerns.

"I am retaining a copy of this letter in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of the Senate intelligence committee to ensure that I have a record of this communication," Rockefeller told Cheney. However, Rockefeller says now, “my concerns were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my colleagues.”

Missouri Congressman William Clay worries that the Bush Adminstration is skirting the law by letting private contractors handle the data mining.

"The agencies involved in data mining are trying to skirt the Privacy Act by claiming that they hold no data," said Clay. Instead, they use private companies to maintain and sift through the data, he said.

"Technically, that gets them out from under the Privacy Act," he said. "Ethically, it does not."
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Mail or bring your copies of '1984' to the Oakland Tribune -- they will send them to Congress!! "We think it's time for Congress to heed the warning of George Orwell. To that end, we're asking for your help: Mail us or drop off your tattered copies of '1984.' When we get 537 of them, we'll send them to every member of the House of Representatives and Senate and to President [sic] Bush and Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney. Feel free to inscribe the book with a note, reminding these fine people that we Americans take the threat to our liberties seriously... Bring or mail your books to the Oakland Tribune, 401 13th St., Oakland CA 94612. Doors are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m."
> > > > > > > > > >

"Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-mustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered."—George Orwell, 1984
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Such is the threat, as Senator Frank Church warned the American people over twenty years ago:

At the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology…

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
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Is it too late? Possibly. Probably. But have you given up?

Then shame on you... --DN
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"There is no war on crime. There is no war on drugs, no war on terrorism. There is only the ongoing effort by the federal government to collect as much information on as many people as possible."—Jim Redden, author of Snitch Culture: How Citizens Are Turned Into the Eyes and Ears of the State.
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FROM

Sunday, May 8, 2005
Home from Iraq
Journalist urges Americans to search for truth, freedom.

We spent 10 months in Iraq, working on a story, understanding who the people are who are fighting, why they fight, what their fundamental beliefs are, when they started, what kinds of backgrounds they come from, what education, jobs they have. Were they former military, are they Iraqi or foreign? Are they part of al-Qaida? What we came up with is a story in itself, and one that Vanity Fair ran in July 2004 with my text and pictures. [My colleague Steve Connors] shot a documentary film that is still waiting to find a home. But the basic point for this discussion is that we both thought it was really journalistically important to understand who it was who was resisting the presence of the foreign troops. If you didn't understand that, how could you report what was clearly becoming an "ongoing conflict?" And if you were reading the news in America, or Europe, how could you understand the full context of what was unfolding if what motivates the "other side" of the conflict is not understood, or even discussed?

Just the process of working on that story has revealed many things to me about my own country. I'd like to share some of them with you:

Lesson One: Many journalists in Iraq could not, or would not, check their nationality or their own perspective at the door.

One of the hardest things about working on this story for me personally, and as a journalist, was to set my "American self" and perspective aside. It was an ongoing challenge to listen open-mindedly to a group of people whose foundation of belief is significantly different from mine, and one I found I often strongly disagreed with.

But going in to report a story with a pile of prejudices is no way to do a story justice, or to do it fairly, and that constant necessity to bite my tongue, wipe the smirk off my face or continue to listen through a racial or religious diatribe that I found appalling was a skill I had to practice. We would never walk in to cover a union problem or political event without seeking to understand the perspective from both, or the many sides of the story that exist. Why should we as journalists do it in Iraq?

Lesson Two: Our behavior as journalists has taught us very little. Just as in the lead up to the war in Iraq, questioning our government's decisions and claims and what it seeks to achieve is criticized as unpatriotic.

Along these lines, the other thing I found difficult was the realization that, while I was out doing what I believe is solid journalism, there were many (journalists and normal folks alike) who would question my patriotism, or wonder how I could even think hearing and relating the perspective "from the other side" was important.

Certainly, over the last three years I've had to acquire the discipline of overriding my emotional attachment to my country, and remember my sense of human values that transcend frontiers and ethnicity. And with a sense of duty to history, I needed to just get on with reporting the story. My value of human life and rights don't fluctuate depending on which country I'm in. I don't see one individual as more deserving of fair treatment than another. . . .

Now, I realize I'm in Kentucky, a state with many military connections, and there are many of you here who may have served, or have family members who serve, and let me take this moment to say that I have the utmost respect and sympathy for the American soldiers overseas right now, particularly in Iraq. They have been sent on a most difficult mission, to quell a population that will not be quelled, in a land awash with weapons. The American military is being used to find a solution to what is essentially a political problem, an equation that rarely adds up well. As if that were not enough, our soldiers have been sent with insufficient resources to protect themselves. In my mind, that is all inexcusable.

Lesson Three: To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous.

Every one of the people involved in the resistance that we spoke to held us individually responsible for their security. If something happened to them -- never mind that they were legitimate targets for the U.S. military -- they would blame us. And kill us. We soon learned that they had the U.S. bases so well watched that we had to abandon our idea of working on the U.S. side of the story -- that is, discovering what the soldiers really thought about who might be attacking them. There were so many journalists working with the American soldiers that we believed that that story would be well told. More practically, if we were seen by the Iraqis going in and out of the American bases, we would be tagged immediately as spies, informants and most likely be killed.

As terrifying as that was to manage and work through, there was another fear that was just as bad. What if the American military or intelligence found out what we were working on? Would they tail us and round up the people we met? Would they kick down our door late one night, rifle through all our stuff and arrest us for "collaborating with the enemy?" Bear in mind that there are no real laws in Iraq. At the time that we were working, the American military was the law, and it seemed to me that they were pretty much making it up as they went along. I was pretty sure that if they wanted to "disappear" us, rough us up or even send us for an all expenses paid vacation in Guantánamo for suspected al-Qaida connections, they could do so with very little, or even no recourse on our part.

I could go into a long litany of the ways in which the American military has treated journalists in Iraq. Recent actions indicate that the U.S. military will detain and/or kill any journalist who happens to be caught covering the Iraqi side of the militant resistance, and indeed a number of journalists have been killed by U.S. troops while working in Iraq. This behavior at the moment seems to be limited to journalists who also happen to be Arabs, or Arab-looking, but that is only a tangential story to what I'm telling you about here.

The intimidation to not work on this story was evident. Dexter Filkins, who writes for The New York Times, related a conversation he had in Iraq with an American military commander just before we left. Dexter and the commander had gotten quite friendly, meeting up sporadically for a beer and a chat. Towards the end of one of their conversations, Dexter declined an invitation for the next day by explaining that he'd lined up a meeting with a "resistance guy." The commander's face went stony cold and he said, "We have a position on that." For Dexter the message was clear. He cancelled the appointment. And, again, this is not meant as any criticism of the military; they have a war to win, and dominating the "message," or the news is an integral part of that war. The military has a name for it, "information operations," and the aim is to achieve information superiority in the same way they would seek to achieve air superiority. If you look closely, you will notice there is very little, maybe even no direct reporting on the resistance in Iraq. We do, however, as journalists report what the Americans say about the resistance. Is this really anything more than stenography?

And many American journalists often refer to those attacking Americans or Iraqi troops and policemen as "terrorists." Some are indeed using terrorist tactics, but calling them "terrorists" simply shuts down any sense of need or interest to look beyond that word, to understand why indeed human beings might be willing to die in a violent struggle to achieve their goal. Pushing them off as simply "insane, wild Arabs" or "extremist Muslims" does them no service, but even more, it does the U.S. no service. If we as Americans fail to understand who attacks us and why, we will simply continue on this same path, and continue watching from afar as a war we don't understand boils over.

Lesson Four: The gatekeepers -- by which I mean the editors, publishers and business sides of the media -- don't want their paper or their outlet to reveal that compelling narrative of why anyone would oppose the presence of American troops on their soil. Why would anyone refuse democracy? Why would anyone not want the helping hand of America in overthrowing their terrible dictator? It's amazing to me how expeditiously we turn away from our own history. Think of our revolution. Think of our Founding Fathers. Think of what they stood for and hoped for. Think of how, over time, we have learned to improve on our own Constitution and governance. But think, mostly, about the words I just used: It was our decision and our determination that brought us where we are now.

Recall Patrick Henry's famous speech encouraging the Second Virginia Convention, gathered on March 20, 1775, to fight the British, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Why is it that we, as Americans, presume that any Iraqi would feel any differently? If the roles were reversed, do you think for a moment that our men wouldn't be stockpiling arms and attacking any foreign invader with the temerity to set foot on our soil, occupy our buildings of government and write us a new constitution?

Wouldn't we as women be joining with them in any way we could? Wouldn't the divisions between us -- how we feel about President Bush, whether we're Republican or Democrat -- be put aside as we resisted a common enemy?

Then why is it that this story of human effort for self-determination by violent means cannot be told in America? Are we so small, so confused by our own values that we cannot recognize when someone emulates our own struggle? Even if it is the U.S. that they are struggling against? I want to be careful to explain that I am not saying that the Iraqis fighting against us are necessarily fighting for democracy, but they are fighting for their right to decide for themselves what their nation looks like politically.

Lesson Five: What it's like to be afraid of your own country.
Once the story was finished and set to come out on the street, I was rushing back to the States -- mostly because we could no longer work once the story was published -- and I found I was scared returning to my own country. And that was an amazingly strange and awful feeling to have. Again, you could call me paranoid, but the questions about what might happen to me once in America -- where at least I would have more rights -- kept racing through my brain. I'm still here, so you could say that my frantic mental gymnastics about what could happen to me in my own country were paranoid anxieties.

But I would turn that question around:

How many other American journalists, perhaps not as secure in their position as I, have thought to do a story and decided that it's too close to the bone, too questioning of the American government or its actions? How many times was the risk that our own government might come in and rifle through our apartment, our homes or take us away for questioning in front of our children a factor in our decision not to do a story? How many times did we as journalists decide not to do a story because we thought it might get us into trouble? Or, as likely, how often did the editor above us kill the story for the same reasons? Lots of column inches have been spent in the discussion of how our rights as Americans are being surreptitiously confiscated, but what about our complicity, as journalists, in that? It seems to me that the assault on free speech, while the fear and intimidation is in the air, comes as much from us -- as individuals and networks of journalists who censor ourselves -- as it does from any other source.

We need to wake up as individuals and as a community of journalists and start asking the hard and scary questions. Questions we may not really want to know the answers to about ourselves, about our government, about what is being done in our name, and hold the responsible individuals accountable through due process in our legal or electoral system.

We need to begin to be able to look again at our government, our leadership and ourselves critically. That is what the Fourth Estate is all about. That's what American journalism can do at its zenith. I also happen to believe that, in fact, that is the highest form of patriotism -- expecting our country to live up to the promises it makes and the values it purports to hold. The role of the media in assisting the public to ensure those values are reflected in reality is undeniably failing today.

Go ahead, take a hard look in the mirror, ask the questions -- if there is something in our nation that needs repair or change, that is how it will get done, by asking those questions, getting answers and reporting them.

We still have the freedom in this country as individuals and as journalists to defend the rights enshrined in the Constitution, to defend the values that we as individuals still hold dear -- so why aren't we doing it? Are we scared? If we're scared, then who will be there to defend those rights and values when it is proposed that they be taken away?

I still believe in that country that I love so dearly, the place I think of when the words "freedom," "opportunity," "liberty," "justice" and "equality" are spoken on lips, but I want it to be a country I see, hear and feel every day, not one that lives in my imagination.

It's time we looked in the mirror and began to take responsibility for what our country looks like, what our country is and how it behaves, rather than acting like victims before we actually are.

Or do I need to start facing the reality that all I love and believe in is simply self-delusion?
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Pat Oliphant

...well, somewhere on Earth. Probably. Maybe. Anything's possible, we suppose. Where?

Not in Iraq, thanks to the Bumbling Busheviks.

And speaking of someone not doing their job, where the heck is the Prince of Peace when we really need him? (BTW, happy birthday!)

Guess that other George, Washington that is, and the rest of the Deists who founded our nation, was right: A supreme God created all this, including "free will," and simply walked away, leaving us to our own devices.

Well, that's another nice mess you've gotten [us] into.

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." -Benjamin Franklin



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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bombs struck Iraqi police and army patrols and destroyed an American tank in Baghdad on Sunday as fresh street protests over election results kept up tension that has soured the mood after a peaceful ballot 10 days ago.

In the violent northern city of Mosul, the killing of a Sunni Arab student leader abducted after heading a demonstration against the election results prompted accusations by mourners at his funeral against militias loyal to the victorious Shi'ite Islamists and their Kurdish allies in the interim government.

President Jalal Talabani, meeting the U.S. ambassador who is mediating in efforts to transform the newly inclusive parliament into a viable government, urged Sunni leaders to join a new, broader coalition. Otherwise there would be no peace, he warned.

Disappointed Sunni and secular parties have demanded a rerun of the December 15 election and threatened to boycott parliament, a move that could damage U.S. hopes of forging a consensus that can keep Iraq from breaking up in ethnic and sectarian warfare.

But despite militant rhetoric, seemingly aimed at increasing their leverage, Sunnis are negotiating with others to build a governing coalition on the basis of the existing poll results.
Meeting U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in his Kurdish power base of Sulaimaniya, Talabani said: "Without the Sunni parties there will be no consensus government ... without consensus government there will be no unity, there will be no peace."

LULL OVER

After a lull during the election, secured partly by fierce security measures and partly by an informal cease-fire by Sunni rebels hoping for representation in parliament, deadly attacks have picked up. Ten Iraqi soldiers were killed in one assault on Friday as were 10 worshippers at a Shi'ite mosque.

A U.S. soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack near Kirkuk on Saturday and troops marking Christmas had no respite on Sunday; an Abrams tank, the giant bulwark of American armoured might, was left in flames after a dawn attack in eastern Baghdad -- witness said a roadside bomb blasted it.

A U.S. military spokesman confirmed an attack on a tank but had no details of its cause or of any casualties.

Two car bombs, parked by the roadside, went off around lunchtime, wounding three Iraqi soldiers and a civilian in the city centre and three policemen in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Two soldiers were killed and six wounded in a mortar attack on an Iraqi base at Mahmudiya, just south of the capital.
In Kirkuk, where Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen are vying for control of the northern oilfields, a civilian was killed and seven wounded when a car bomb went off close to a police patrol.

Further north, in Mosul, Iraq's third city where ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds are also high, a roadside bomb killed a policeman when it detonated close to his patrol.

More grief at the link...
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Pat Oliphant

Every paragraph a triumph of truth and justified anger... --DN


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Commentary
Patience, Mr. Bush?
How about impeachment, now?
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Dec 21, 2005, 00:39

After suffering 17 minutes of bobbling homilies, lies, and hand gestures, as if the president were talking in sign language to the deaf and dumb, asking for our patience in pursuing a criminally illegal war, one that so far has cost 2100 American lives, 200,000 Iraqi lives, $200 billion plus (another $80 billion to be asked for), patience is not what is needed. Rather it is Bush's impeachment and that of his entire administration, now. This is a no-vote on his referendum-seeking screed. But let me be specific . . .

It is not "despair" that we the people feel, but an unmitigated disgust for a president who shamelessly lied his way into this war, claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, nucular and chem/bio weapons, and was about to use them, in league with bin Laden, who in fact was known to be repelled by Saddam, as much as we are by Bush. And, as Ambassador Joseph Wilson pointed out, after his trip to Niger, in his July 7, 2003, article in The New York Times, "What I Didn't Find," there was no attempt to buy yellow-cake uranium from Niger. For this, Wilson, previously called a hero by several presidents, was richly rewarded by having his wife, a covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame, outed, and consequently all those who worked for her outed, in effect, ending her career as such, and ending who knows how many lives. Reprehensible.

Again it is not "despair" that we the people feel, but disgust at the fact that the president has not spoken to the American people directly since March 2003, when in fact he ordered the unilateral, illegal preemptive strike on Iraq, against the wishes of the United Nations, and specifically Hans Blitz who was still trying to find said WDD in Iraq. Blitz subsequently found none. In fact, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, who coincidentally won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005, said the so-called proof about Niger came from forged Italian documents, which were totally untrue, bogus.

And so it is not "despair" that we the American people feel, but disgust at bold-faced Bush lies again: "Some look at the challenges in Iraq, and conclude that the war is lost, and not worth another dime or another day. I don't believe that. Our military commanders do not believe that. Our troops in the field, who bear the burden and make sacrifice, do not believe that America has lost."

This is the kind of lie that comes from sheer stubbornness and an unwillingness to deal with reality. It's delusional. Most notably, the highly decorated, former Marine officer, now Democratic congressman and one-time war hawk, John Murtha, in a speech to the House, called for a withdrawal of troops within six months. He said the unsayable: that the number of attacks in Iraq had increased from a 150 to more than 700 a week in the past year. That an estimated 50,000 American soldiers will suffer from what he called "battle fatigue." That the Americans were seen as "the common enemy" in Iraq. He declared that no more than 7 percent of the Iraq "insurgency," that is, a people fighting an occupying force, "was foreign." The rest were homegrown.

General John Zinni, former commander of Central Command of the U.S. military, and special envoy to the Middle East until he resigned in disgust, said more than a year ago (May 23, 2004) on 60 minutes that, "The plan was wrong, it was the wrong war, the wrong place and the wrong time -- with little or no planning. He added there were serious "derelictions of duty," criminal negligence," and plain poor planning that left U.S. forces in harm's way, after they left Iraq in shambles. These are not far-out liberals, Sparky. Listen up to former Team Bush members.

What's more, as Seymour Hersh reports in the December 12 New Yorker, in his article "Up In The Air," regarding our formidable air war, "The second military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, 'there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets -- it's a reversion to the Stone Age. There's no operational art. That's what happens when you give targeting to the Army -- they hit what the local commander wants to hit." In other words, the air war is chaotic. Then, without referring to a concrete source, Bush added, "We know from communications that they [the terrorists] feel a tightening noose and fear the rise of a democratic Iraq." The quintupling of weekly military missions as mentioned by Murtha would not indicate a tightening of any noose, except on our forces. Lying about it leads to more disgust, more pointless death.

So it is not despair we the people feel but disgust, that we now also openly admit and practice torture on prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions, thereby jeopardizing the safety of our own troops if they are taken prisoners, let alone being associated with the sheer obscenity of it all.

In spite of this, the president said, "I do not expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom." Would that be the freedom to continue bombing Iraq? Or to thinly hold together the recent election with military contractors and CIA men? All as the dominant religious group, the Shiites take a commanding lead, and the secular, American-hand-picked, Ayad Allawi has won only nominal support, even in important provinces where he was expected to do well. Ahmad Chalabi, the former US consultant, tossed for the discovery of previous bank frauds, lags behind with less than 1 percent of the votes. This as one more American marine was killed Sunday in Ramadi, in the capital of Anbar Province. So the victory for democracy Bush is claiming is empty.

The Kurds in their controlled areas, the Shiites, and the resistant Sunnis face their age-old culture and political "war," which will ask of these three groups to resolve their tribal, clan, religious and regional issues sooner or later on their own. It took a decade in Vietnam for us to get out of the way of the North and South. And, after losing 58,000 men and more than $150 billion (which Iraq has already surpassed), we did move and the Vietnamese welded together a country on their own. Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to live them over.

What's more, if Sparky were more than a jumpsuit jockey, and his butt was being shot at, I doubt if he would be quite so impelled to fight towards victory or defeat. Each takes an incredible amount of blood, suffering, and money, and cuts resources from needed domestic programs like Medicaid (now facing a proposed budget cut of $55 billion dollars, along with cuts to Medicare, Veterans benefits and student loans, to mention a few). All while the administration will add $60 billion in tax cuts to the rich, largely people who earn a million dollars a year and more. In short, Bush is buying the votes of the rich with the blood of the poor, disabled, aged and fighting Americans.

And so it is not lack of patience that we the people have, but an overriding disgust not only for Bush, but the Republican-led Congress and even the Democratic minority that has largely left him unchallenged in any meaningful way. It is to our disgust that this alcoholic, cocaine addict is running loose like a bull in a china shop, destroying everything in sight.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Bush reminds one so much of Nixon or even Johnson, leaning over into the camera, pleading with his hands, "We will see the Iraqi military gaining strength and confidence, and the democratic process moving forward. As these achievements come, it should require fewer American troops to accomplish our mission." It was like the promises that the South Vietnamese forces were gaining on the Vietcong, and that it was only a matter of time and carpet bombing until we would win, yes, we would prove invincible, and they would fold. After a decade of futility, we were forced to abandon the ship like rats. And it was dark, dirty but gratefully the last page in that sordid chapter of American history. Truly, in god's name, why are we writing another one?

And so, we the American people are not in need of patience, but suffer an excess of disgust at statements like this: "I will make decisions on troop levels based on the progress we see on the ground and advice of our military leaders, not based on artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington." Why does Bush need to wait for advice from military leaders to exit? He didn't take it from Colin Powell when he decided unilaterally to plunge into Iraq. The ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Gulf War, then secretary of state, warned Bush that if he "broke Iraq, he would own Iraq." It was a diplomatic way of saying don't touch it. For his honesty, he became the "black sheep" of the administration (no pun intended), and quietly trotted off after his first term. At that time, Bush invoked his commander-in-chief role, bulldozed the Congress, and ordered the armed forces to attack. And all this according to an artificial timetable set by neocon politicians in Washington, i.e., Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rove, Rice, Pearle, Rumsfeld, et al. Contradictions, hypocrisy, disgust.

And we the American people are not in need of patience, but relief from the idiocy of statements like this: "My convictions come down to this: We do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them." I thought we'd spent $350 billion, which includes Afghanistan expenditures, fighting terrorists. And we haven't caught bin Laden. And the real terrorists are in the White House, bombing away.

The evidence of the administration's participation in 9-11's execution continues to grow. That 9-11 was used as a kind of "Pearl Harbor" to enable team Bush to attack Afghanistan, through which it had been considered desirable for at least a decade to build pipelines from the Caspian Sea Basin to Pakistan, then India and the Indian Ocean for oil export. September 11 and the War on Terror also gave Team Bush the needed excuse to attack Hussein and Iraq, though their desire to do same had been expressed since day one of their administration, as reported by former security chief, Richard Clarke, and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. So the operative word remains "disgust." And the lack of patience is for Bush & Company to depart.

This would also include the payola suppliers, like Halliburton, of which VP Dick Cheney was CEO and remains on the payroll, as his old company makes billions on the war on no-bid, open-ended contracts. While Cheney recently made an unannounced trip to Iraq, a secret even from its prime minister, whom Cheney joined (surprise surprise) in a meeting, there remained a backdrop of renewed violence, over 30 people dying in suicide bombings and various attacks since Saturday night.

What's more, Bush's statements like these add to our disgust: "We would cause tyrants in the Middle East to laugh at our failed resolve and tighten their repressive grip. We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us." Who would those tyrants be? The vanished Osama bin Laden? Do we think he'd come out, come out wherever he is and head a movement to topple Iraq? Would the tyrant be Muammar al Qadhafi, the former "Hitler" of GHW Bush fame, who has now gone western? Would the tyrants be the Saudis, and lose all that oil revenue? Or the fundamentalist Muslim Wahabes, who are funded by the Saudis? Would it be Iran, who we keep threatening to attack? Or would it be Israel?

Now there's a contender which perceives Iraq as a threat to its existence, at least under Hussein. I think Bush's statement is vague beating of the tyrant terror drum. Bush in fact is the one acting the tyrant's role, usurping a country. Pick the troops up tomorrow, go home, give the people their country, and let them work it out. Period. As Howard Dean recommended before Bush's second term, stating the war was unjust, illegal, and should be ended immediately. He was then summarily sandbagged by the Democrats as a candidate and we got the other bobble-doll, John Kerry. An excess of disgust, that is what we the American people have.

The true lack of patience we do have is to see Bush and his awful gang gone, like a pox, like the anthrax after 9-11, which turned out to come from an Army bio-warfare lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, not Baghdad. This killer anthrax was sent to members of Congress to enhance the panic of 9-11. But the terrorists, at least all the prominent suspects, turned out to be homegrown.

And for statements like this, disgust: "Defeatism may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts. My fellow citizens, not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq." If you believe that political schizophrenia, after Murtha, Zinni and Hersh's comments, and dozens of others you can find on your own, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I could let you have for cheap.

Additionally, the president closed with words from the carol written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Christmas Bells," written during the Civil War. As expected, he avoided the dark verses of the poem, "And in despair I bowed my head; 'There is no peace on earth,' I said . . ." Bush skipped right to "God is not dead, nor does he sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men." That was another Hallmark card to put us to sleep. Yet questioning Americans all over the country are waking up, regarding Bush's rightness and goodness in Iraq, Afghanistan, and America.

In fact, George Bush's very "election victories" are still being questioned due to rigged electronic voting machines. What's more, the latest revelation is that George Bush has been undermining the constitutional protections of Americans. There are reports that the Pentagon has been gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is to choose to assemble. That Americans who question the administration's flawed policy in Iraq are actually labeled by this administration as domestic terrorists.

As Senator Robert Byrd (D-Va.) has pointed out in a recent mass email, "We now know that the FBI's use of National Security Letters on American citizens has increased one hundred fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records. These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a permanent gag order . . .

"Now comes the stomach-churning revelation through an executive order, that President Bush has circumvented both the Congress and the courts. He has usurped the Third Branch of government -- the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people -- by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and emails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. He has stiff-armed the People's Branch of government. He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war. The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the President, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

Ladies and gentlemen, Big Brother is alive, unwell and living in the White House. The question is, how long will it take to sum up his cumulative, documented crimes and sentence him and his cronies? And that is up to us, we the people, who now say 60 to 40 we are not satisfied with the job being done. And so, what? Let him stay on to bury us even deeper in malfeasance? Or turn him off today, like that bobbling talking head. And get on with our lives and what is left of our democracy.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer residing in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
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Posted by Robert Dreyfuss at 01:35 AM Permalink Comments (0) TrackBacks (0)
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December 19, 2005
More Lies from the Chief

Let’s parse W’s speech last night. I watched it, against my better judgment, and he looked as ignorant and goofy as usual, hands planted flat on the desk, eyes wide, straining with every muscle to avoid smirking. And as usual, from the cadence of his remarks, it was easy to tell that he didn’t have the slightest real knowledge of what he was talking about. So as always, criticizing a Bush speech really means criticizing his speechwriters and his sorry ability to convey their meaning.

Let’s do it anyway.

First, W. once again exercised his typical fallacy of composition, first noting that the enemy in Iraq is a combination of Saddamists (i.e., the Baath party) and so-called “foreign terrorists” (i.e., Zarqawists):

Since the removal of Saddam, this war, like other wars in our history, has been difficult. The mission of American troops in urban raids and desert patrols, fighting Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists, has brought danger and suffering and loss. This loss has caused sorrow for our whole nation -- and it has led some to ask if we are creating more problems than we're solving.

That is an important question, and the answer depends on your view of the war on terror. If you think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone.

So, here Bush argues a central point, that the enemy will not “become peaceful” if we “leave them alone.” That may be true of the Al Qaeda types, but in fact the Iraqi nationalists and Baathists only want us out of Iraq—after which they most likely will become peaceful—or at least what passes for peaceful in a post-war, shattered state filled with militias.

Then W. gets to his central scare tactic, that we are fighting a menace in Iraq that wants global domination and will attack us even at home:

This is not the threat I see. I see a global terrorist movement that exploits Islam in the service of radical political aims -- a vision in which books are burned, and women are oppressed, and all dissent is crushed. Terrorist operatives conduct their campaign of murder with a set of declared and specific goals -- to de-moralize free nations, to drive us out of the Middle East, to spread an empire of fear across that region, and to wage a perpetual war against America and our friends. These terrorists view the world as a giant battlefield -- and they seek to attack us wherever they can. …The terrorists do not merely object to American actions in Iraq and elsewhere, they object to our deepest values and our way of life. And if we were not fighting them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia, and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens, they would be on the offense, and headed our way.

Where to begin? First, the only radical Islamists burning books and oppressing women in Iraq are the Shiite fundamentalist parties, backed by Iran, whose power is being supported by the U.S. armed forces. Second, the supposed enemy in Iraq is not a “global terrorist movement” but an indigenous, nationalist resistance that wants nothing more than the departure of U.S. troops. The spectre of “an empire of fear across the region” is a wildly exaggerated threat that exists only in Bush’s fevered imagination. In fact, if we began to withdraw from Iraq, one of our best allies in exterminating the remnants of Al Qaeda would be the Iraqi Baathists. And their operations to clean up Al Qaeda in Iraq would not be pretty.

I also want to speak to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq: I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt. Yet now there are only two options before our country -- victory or defeat. And the need for victory is larger than any president or political party, because the security of our people is in the balance. I don't expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom.

The only two options are “victory or defeat”? Hopefully, that is not true, because victory in Iraq is inconceivable, unless we plan to stay and fight for decades. There is, in fact, a wide spectrum of other options, from immediate withdrawal to phased withdrawal to a negotiated ceasefire with the resistance to the internationalization of the conflict through the UN, the Arab League, and other interested parties. By victory, it is clear that Bush means a victory that preserves, somehow, the remaining shred of U.S. credibility worldwide. In his speech, Bush raised the image of the world laughing at the United States. If we left Iraq, he said:

We would abandon our Iraqi friends and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We would undermine the morale of our troops by betraying the cause for which they have sacrificed. We would cause the tyrants in the Middle East to laugh at our failed resolve, and tighten their repressive grip.

But no one, except Bush administration die-hards, believe that America has any word left to keep. By invading Iraq illegally and then bungling the occupation, Bush has utterly destroyed American credibility overseas. Our allies fear us, the nations of the Middle East are horrified at what Iraq has become. And if any Middle East tyrants are laughing, it’s the ones in Iran, who day by day are taking over Iraq.

Posted by Robert Dreyfuss at 10:15 AM
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Since we told you Tuesday night about Congressman Conyers' new bills to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their war lies, 26,000 people have visited the action alert page, and 17,000 have Emailed their Congress Members. You can add to those numbers here:
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=8329176

Already there are seven cosponsors of a bill to create an investigation and make recommendations on impeachment, four cosponsors on a bill to censure Bush, and five cosponsors on a bill to censure Cheney.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5768

This work, combined with our polling on impeachment, and the news that Bush authorized illegal spying on Americans, has pushed impeachment into the media.

For many months the media wouldn't cover and Congress wouldn't talk about the public's demand for impeachment of Bush and Cheney because the pollsters wouldn't poll on it, and the pollsters wouldn't poll on it because it wasn't in the media and wasn't in Congress. Remember Gallup's excuse for not polling?
http://www.democrats.com/gallup-drop-dead

The week before Christmas, things changed. Look at the spike in instances of the I word in recent media punditry.
http://www.impeachpac.org/?q=impeachment-news

And Congress Members and Senators are talking about impeachment. Rep. John Lewis says he favors it. Rep. John Conyers has introduced a bill to create an investigation into grounds for it, and seven other Congress Members have immediately signed on. Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she is asking legal scholars for advice on it. Senator Kerry said there are grounds for impeachment; then he flip-flopped -- but it wouldn't be Kerry without that.

No longer can pollsters honestly claim that they are refusing to ask the public about impeachment because it's not a topic in the news or the halls of Congress. But that doesn't mean they won't keep doing so dishonestly, unless we let them know how many of us are watching, unless we use the internet and the radio the way we did to force the Downing Street Minutes into the news.

ASK THE POLLSTERS TO POLL ON IMPEACHMENT:
http://www.democrats.com/bush-impeachment-polls

ASK THE MEDIA TO COVER THE ISSUE:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1084

Here's info on the few polls that have been done:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/polling

Here's an analysis of the pollsters' inconsistency:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200512200006

NATIONAL DAY OF TOWN HALL FORUMS ON ENDING THE WAR

Organize public meetings or smaller gatherings on Saturday, January 7, on the topic of ending the war!http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event

There are 60 events already planned around the country. Many Congress Members have been invited to attend by their constituents. Some have already commited to doing so, including: Bobby Scott, Diane Watson, Jim McDermott, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Adam Smith, and Dave Reichert.

One focus of some of these events will be Congressman John Conyers' new resolutions to censure Bush and Cheney and to create a select committee to investigate and make recommendations on impeachment. Rep. Conyers, and many other Congress Members, are likely to participate.

Also already confirmed to take part are several congressional and senatorial candidates, various local elected officials, and leaders of the peace movement, including Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan.

We are joining with Backbone Campaign, Progressive Democrats of America, After Downing Street, Democracy Cell Project, Cities for Peace, MilitaryFreeZone.Org, Operation Ceasefire, United for Peace and Justice, U.S. Tour of Duty, Hip Hop Caucus, Democracy Rising, World Can't Wait, Gold Star Families for Peace, PeaceMajority Report, Global Exchange, Bring Them Home Campaign, UP (United Progressives) for Democracy, 20 20 Vision, Impeach Bush Coalition, and Peace Action, in asking you to sign up and attend one of these events, or – if there is not one scheduled near you – help organize one and post it on the website for others to attend.

The war is costing us dearly in lives, in security, and in resources. We need this national day to make our demand heard and bring the war to an end. (Events can also be held on days other than the 7th, to fit the schedules of those involved.)

SIGN UP FOR AN EXISTING EVENT OR CREATE A NEW ONE HERE:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event
________

FORWARD THIS EMAIL
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If you received this from a friend, you can subscribe at:
http://afterdowningstreet.org
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The usual Daschle tepid response, but it does make the point; the Dictatorship is still lying.

And how many times must we remind everyone: It's the Fourth Amendment, stupid!? ... --DN

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
By Tom Daschle
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21

In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of
authority.

The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.

All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans' freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.

If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11.

For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.

In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.

That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat
terrorism.

The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader in 2001-02. He is now distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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