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From the Miami Herald

BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY

jlgalloway2@cs.com

The power brokers in Washington spent the week carefully arranging fig leaves and tasteful screens to cover the emperor's nakedness while he was busy pretending to listen hard to everyone with an opinion about Iraq while hearing nothing.

Sometime early in the new year, President Bush will go on national television to tell a disgruntled American public what he has decided should be done to salvage ''victory'' from the jaws of certain defeat in the war he started.

The word on the street, or in the Pentagon rings, is that he'll choose to beef up U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq by 20,000 to 30,000 troops by various sleight-of-hand maneuvers -- extending the combat tours of soldiers and Marines who are nearing an end to their second or third year in hell and accelerating the shipment of others into that hell -- and send them into the bloody streets of Baghdad.

These additional troops are expected to restore order and calm the bombers and murderers when 9,000 Americans already in the sprawling capital couldn't. They're expected to do this even when Bush's favorite (for now) Iraqi politician, Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, refuses to allow them to act against his primary benefactor, the anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr and his Shiite Muslim Mahdi Army militiamen who kill both Americans and Sunni Arabs.

This hardly amounts to a ''new way forward'' unless that definition includes a new path deeper into the quicksand of a tribal and religious civil war where whatever Bush eventually decides is already inadequate and immaterial.

The military commanders on the ground -- from Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, to his generals in Iraq -- have said flatly that more American troops aren't the answer and aren't wanted. For them, it's obvious that only a political decision -- an Iraqi political decision -- has even the possibility of producing an acceptable outcome.

(Well, did anyone notice, certainly not the American press, that those same generals rather quickly did a one-eighty in favor of that which they so recently condemned? Politicians aren't the only hypocrites... --DN)

The White House hopes that its much-trumpeted reshuffling of a failed strategy and flawed tactics will buy time for their bad luck to change miraculously. That this time will be bought and paid for with the lives and futures of our soldiers and Marines -- and their families -- apparently means little to these wise men who've never heard a shot fired in anger.

This president has made it painfully obvious that he has no intention of listening to anyone who doesn't believe that he's going to win in Iraq. He'll march stubbornly onward without any real change of course until high noon on January 20, 2009, when his successor will inherit both the hard decision to pull out of Iraq and the back bills for his reckless, feckless misadventure.

The midterm election that handed control of Congress to the Democrats can be ignored. His own approval rating in the polls, now at an all-time low of 27 percent -- likewise means little or nothing.

Only Bush's definition of reality carries any weight with him and therein lies the tragedy -- both his and ours.

James Baker was sent to Washington by the original George Bush, No. 41, to salvage something out of the mess that his son, Bush No. 43, has made of his presidency and the world. The Baker commission labored mightily and produced, if little else, some truth: That the situation in Iraq is dire and rapidly growing worse.

It's also clear, however, that Bush the son is paying no more than lip service to the Baker report. He doesn't want Dad's help, and the idea that he once again needs to be rescued from the consequences of his mistakes -- as he had to be so often back in Texas -- can only have hardened his resolve to stay the course.

This is akin to a drowning man who pushes away a life preserver just before he sinks for the last time. Can nothing save this man from himself -- from the voices that only he hears telling him that he, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, will have his reputation and his place in American history restored and burnished long after his death?

What will happen to that impossible dream in the coming year if the congressional Democrats begin to do their job, issuing subpoenas and holding oversight hearings into the looting of billions from the national treasury by defense contractors and other fat-cat donors to the GOP?

What will happen if everything that President Bush does to string things along in Iraq fails, as has everything else he has done there so far, and the Iraqis ask, order or drive us out of their country?

Did you notice that at every stop on the president's information-gathering tour this week, there was a very familiar face looming over his shoulder?

It can be argued that Bush understood little about war and peace and diplomacy and honesty in government. Vice President Cheney understood all of it, and he bears much of the responsibility for what's gone on in Washington and in Iraq for the last six years. Keep a sharp eye on him. Desperate men do desperate things.

Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.

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From consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry
December 30, 2006

Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the U.S. military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity.

The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be – as the New York Times observed – the “triumphal bookend” to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. If all had gone as planned, Bush might have staged another celebration as he did after the end of “major combat,” posing under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on May 1, 2003.

But now with nearly 3,000 American soldiers killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush may be forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately.

Still, Bush has done his family’s legacy a great service while also protecting secrets that could have embarrassed other senior U.S. government officials.

He has silenced a unique witness to crucial chapters of the secret history that stretched from Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 to the alleged American-Saudi “green light” for Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War during which high-ranking U.S. intermediaries, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, allegedly helped broker supplies of war materiel for Hussein.

Hussein now won’t be around to give troublesome testimony about how he obtained the chemical and biological agents that his scientists used to produce the unconventional weapons that were deployed against Iranian forces and Iraqi civilians. He can’t give his perspective on who got the money and who facilitated the deals.

Nor will Hussein be available to give his account of the mixed messages delivered by George H.W. Bush’s ambassador April Glaspie before Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Was there another American “green light” or did Hussein just hear what he wanted to hear?

Like the climactic scene from the Mafia movie “Casino” in which nervous Mob bosses eliminate everyone who knows too much, George W. Bush has now guaranteed that there will be no public tribunal where Hussein gives testimony on these potentially devastating historical scandals, which could threaten the Bush Family legacy.

That could have happened if Hussein had been turned over to an international tribunal at the Hague as was done with other tyrants, such as Yugoslavia’s late dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Instead Bush insisted that Hussein be tried in Iraq despite the obvious fact that the Iraqi dictator would receive nothing close to a fair trial before being put to death.

Hussein's hanging followed his trial for executing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982 after a foiled assassination attempt on Hussein and his entourage. Hussein's death effectively moots other cases that were supposed to deal with his alleged use of chemical weapons to kill Iraqi civilians and other crimes that might have exposed the U.S. role.

[For details on what Hussein might have revealed, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege or Consortiumnews.com’s “Missing U.S.-Iraq History” or “The Secret World of Robert Gates.”]

Thrill of the Kill

Some observers think that Bush simply wanted the personal satisfaction of seeing Hussein hanged, which would not have happened if he had been sent to the Hague. As Texas governor, Bush sometimes took what appeared to be perverse pleasure at his power to execute prisoners.

In a 1999 interview with conservative writer Tucker Carlson for Talk magazine, Bush ridiculed convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker and her unsuccessful plea to Bush to spare her life.

Asked about Karla Faye Tucker’s clemency appeal, Bush mimicked what he claimed was the condemned woman’s message to him. “With pursed lips in mock desperation, [Bush said]: ‘Please don’t kill me.’”

But a more powerful motive was always Hussein’s potential threat to the Bush Family legacy if he ever had a forum where he could offer detailed testimony about the historic events of the past several decades.

Since stepping into the White House on Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush has made it a top priority to conceal the history of his father’s 12 years as Vice President and President and to wrap his own presidency in a thick cloak of secrecy.

One of Bush’s first acts as President was to sign an executive order that blocked the scheduled release of historic records from his father’s years. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush expanded his secrecy mandate to grant his family the power to withhold those documents from the American public in perpetuity, passing down the authority to keep the secrets to future Bush generations.

So, even after George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are dead, those noted historians Jenna and Barbara Bush will control key government documents covering a 20-year swath of U.S. history.

Already, every document at the George H.W. Bush presidential library must not only be cleared for release by specialists at the National Archives and – if classified – by the affected agencies, but also by the personal representatives of both the senior and junior George Bush.

With their backgrounds in secret societies like Skull and Bones – and with George H.W. Bush’s work at the CIA – the Bushes are keenly aware of the power that comes from controlling information. By keeping crucial facts from the American people, the Bushes feel they can turn the voters into easily manipulated children.

When there is a potential rupture of valuable information, the Bushes intervene, turning to influential friends to discredit some witness or relying on the U.S. military to make the threat go away. The Bushes have been helped immeasurably, too, by the credulity and cowardice of the modern U.S. news media and the Democratic Party.

What Can Be Done

Still, even with Hussein’s execution, there are actions that the American people can take to finally recover the lost history of the 1980s.

The U.S. military is now sitting on a treasure trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration exploited these documents to discredit the United Nations over the “oil for food” scandal of the 1990s, ironically when Hussein wasn’t building weapons of mass destruction. But the Bush administration has withheld the records from the 1980s when Hussein was producing chemical and biological weapons.

In 2004, for instance the CIA released the so-called Duelfer report, which acknowledged that the administration’s pre-invasion assertions about Hussein hiding WMD stockpiles were “almost all wrong.” But a curious feature of the report was that it included a long section about Hussein’s abuse of the U.N.’s “oil for food” program, although the report acknowledged that the diverted funds had not gone to build illegal weapons.

Meanwhile, the report noted the existence of a robust WMD program in the 1980s but offered no documentary perspective on how that operation had occurred and who was responsible for the delivery of crucial equipment and precursor chemicals. In other words, the CIA’s WMD report didn’t identify the non-Iraqis who made Iraq’s WMD arsenal possible.

One source who has seen the evidence told me that it contains information about the role of Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen, who has been identified as a key link between the CIA and Iraq for the procurement of dangerous weapons in the 1980s. But that evidence has remained locked away.

With the Democrats taking control of Congress on Jan. 4, 2007, there could finally be an opportunity to force out more of the full story, assuming the Democrats don’t opt for their usual course of putting “bipartisanship” ahead of oversight and truth.

The American people also could demand that the surviving members of Hussein’s regime be fully debriefed on their historical knowledge before their voices also fall silent either from natural causes or additional executions.

But the singular figure who could have put the era in its fullest perspective – and provided the most damning evidence about the Bush Family’s role – has been silenced for good, dropped through a trap door of a gallows and made to twitch at the end of a noose fashioned from hemp.

The White House announced that George W. Bush didn’t wait up for the happy news of Hussein’s hanging. After the U.S. military turned Hussein over to his Iraqi executioners, Bush went to bed at his Crawford, Texas, ranch and slept through the night.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

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*Unless "the state," in the form of another "might makes right" bigger bully, decides that, despite its pious pleas of being a "born-again Christian nation," it will ignore the Father of Christ and his Commandments, plus the "earliest known recorded words of Jesus" regarding behavior on Earth.

Assuming Saddam was a "bad guy," although a majority of Iraqis now say, after a dose of "shock and awe" bombing of their infrastructure and killing of their friends and relatives, an invasion and occupation of THEIR "homeland", the rounding up of those still alive, whether guilty of crimes or not, and the deportation to prisons around the world, where they have been tortured and killed, innocent or not, and, last but not least, the indiscriminate "home invasions" and robberies and rapes and murders committed in the name of "spreading democracy," that maybe it wasn't so bad when Saddam was running things. At least they had jobs and homes and food and electricity and water and sanitation. And if they stayed the hell out of Saddam's way, and didn't try to assassinate him, they were usually free to go about their lives. It may not have been a perfect existence, but at least most of them HAD lives.

Will the President (sic) of our bastion nation of democracy, justice, fair play, human rights and liberty now set about to take out the rest of the despotic bullies of this planet? Or, as usual, just the ones who can't fight back? Or have very large oil reserves? Or whom Israel wants taken out? (What the hell ever happened to the mushroom clouds of WMD's which could be unleashed upon us in fifteen minutes?)

Would the Little Prince of the "free" world like an alphabetical list of the bad guys? I could give him one. The name of the first one on the list, however, would start with a "B" ... --DN

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FROM earthchangestv.com

Does This Public Display of Enthusiastic Hanging Help or Hurt the United States?
No, this article has nothing to do with science, but then I am more than just a scientific researcher. I am also a human being, an American human being and I have something to say. I have no doubt this article will generate a lot of hate mail, but sometimes it is better to say what is on my mind, because the action of silence on matters such as this is not my nature.

Have a great deal of Americans been so dumbed-down to actually think the US hanging of Saddam Hussein has any justification whatsoever? Do you really think we have any reason to shout with joy of this shameless public display of a “lynch mob”?

The scenes of parading the two sons of Hussein (Uday and Qusay) on July 22nd 2003 as if ‘they’, Bubba Bush Regime, just killed their wild game is still fresh in my memory. Bubba Bush and his daddy are well versed in the traditions of hunting in Texas. When you kill your game (usually deer), you drape them over the hood or roof of your car (or truck) and parade your kill through town on your way to the butcher or refrigerated storage.

For those of you from Texas, especially those old enough to have been hunting in the 60’s, 70’s and perhaps part of the 80’s, know EXACTLY what I am speaking of.

Is this parading of the hanging of Hussein something you support? If so, tell us exactly why? Is it the WMD (weapons of mass destruction)? Is it the ‘imminent threat’ to America? Is it the United States is the policing authority of the world? Did you answer “yes” to even one of these questions? Of course not. So why are we watching on every single news source this “frenzy” to see the hanging of just another brutal dictator?

Did you think Saddam Hussein was the only brutal dictator in the world? Did you think if we kill this one with enthusiasm it will send a message to the others? Do you think this shameless public display of a cheering ‘lynch mob’ will show the world “what real American moral standards are to be?

Watching this unfold is one of the most--- no, scratch that---it is the most pathetic “surreal” unfolding happening in real-time that I have ever witnessed. Do you think the words I have just used were uttered in the late 1930’s and 40’s in Germany? Something tells me it is most likely “exactly” what that generation said.

Am I alone on this? Am I the one who is completely off base and should return to reality? Have the people of the United States of America lost their ability to question authority and use their skill of “critical thinking”? Have the majority become so dumbed-down to not see what is happening?

Saddam Hussein is (was --DN) a brutal dictator---So what. There are countless others in the world. So why should I, or any of you, have one ounce of cynical revenge for this one? The answer is you should not. It is not “our” fight. It is the Bubba Bush Regime’s fight and too many Americans have been successfully manipulated into buying this crap. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are many who see what I see, but for whatever reason have become silent. It is this notion which scares me more than any coming natural disaster.

You can send your hate mail to ectv@earthlink.net

Dec 29, 2006, 20:13

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FROM legitgov.org

Saddam Hussein hanged at dawn 30 Dec 2006 Saddam Hussein was hanged for crimes against humanity at dawn on Saturday, a dramatic, violent end for a leader [and key US ally] who ruled Iraq by fear for three decades before he was toppled by a U.S. invasion four years ago. [There's a lot of extra rope that needs to be put to good use here. --MDR]

Saddam Hussein 'executed in Iraq' 30 Dec 2006 Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been murdered by hanging at an unspecified location, reports say. Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT). It was witnessed by a doctor, lawyer and officials. It was also filmed. [Comment from CLG reader: The Importance of Language 29 Dec 2006 "Executed" is a word one uses when there has been a bona-fide Trial, with a genuine opportunity to defend the accusations on the merits. "Murdered", "Killed", or "Silenced," is the appropriate word when there has been a sham proceeding with an inevitable result without regard to the facts or legitimate defenses. --Terry L. Clark, Esq.]

Sean Hannity (Faux News) asks his Machiavellian pundits, 'Is hanging a good way to execute people?' Let's try key war criminals of the Bush regime in the Hague and *find out!* --LRP

US judge refuses to stop Saddam Hussein's murder (MSNBC, live) 29 Dec 2006

Hussein's lawyers ask US court to stop murder 29 Dec 2006 Lawyers for former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who could be hanged within hours, on Friday asked a U.S. court to order a halt to his killing. In a last-minute filing to the U.S. District Court of Washington, Hussein's lawyers asked for a temporary stay of execution because Hussein is a defendant in a civil case in the same court and he has been prevented from being able to defend himself.

Saddam trial verdict tarnished by Iraqi court's failings By Anne Penketh 30 Dec 2006 ...[T]he first trial against Saddam Hussein, in which he was charged with human rights violations dating back to 1982, was so rife with defects that the guilty verdict was unsound, according to Human Rights Watch. In a 97-page report on a trial which centred on the execution of almost 150 Shia Muslims and the arrest of 1,500 in Dujail, Human Rights Watch identified the following flaws...

The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein (The New York Times) 29 Dec 2006 After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. [Saddam] Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.

The execution of the president (Members of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee) 30 Dec 2006 The execution of President Saddam Hussein would be a grave war crime imputable under international law. The US-orchestrated tribunal that sentenced President Saddam Hussein has no legal standing. The imminent execution of Iraq’s lawful president is testimony to the gutting of international law by the Bush regime and its criminal partners.

Why Saddam Hussein should not hang (commentary) 29 Dec 2006 Richard Dicker, Director of the International Justice Program At Human Rights Watch "The Iraqi government should not implement the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, which was imposed after a deeply flawed trial for crimes against humanity. The Appeals Chamber of the Iraqi High Tribunal, which was first reported by Iraq’s national security adviser to have upheld the sentence, should have conducted a thorough legal review of the verdict and then announced its findings... That a judicial decision was first announced by Iraq’s national security advisor underlines the political interference that marred Saddam Hussein's trial."

A dictator created then destroyed by America By Robert Fisk 30 Dec 2006 Who encouraged Saddam [Hussein] to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

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FROM CounterPunch

What's Good for Saddam May Be Good for Mubarak or the Saudi Royals

Saddam at the End of a Rope

By TARIQ ALI

It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging--- most of it (bar the last moments) shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. After a trial so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch---the largest single unit of the US Human Rights industry--- had to condemn it as a total travesty. Judges were changed on Washington's orders; defense lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well-orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nuremberg was a more dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam's trial has, till now, been the crudest and most grotesque. The Great Thinker President's reference to it 'as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy' as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger.

The contemptible leaders of the European Union, supposedly hostile to capital punishment, were silent, as usual. And while some Shia factions celebrated in Baghdad, the figures published by a fairly independent establishment outfit, the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies (its self-description: "which attempts to spread the conscious necessity of realizing basic freedoms, consolidating democratic values and foundations of civil society") reveal that just under 90 per cent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before it was occupied.

The ICRSC research is based on detailed house-to-house interviewing carried out during the third week of November 2006.
Only five per cent of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003; 89 per cent of the people said the political situation had deteriorated; 79 per cent saw a decline in the economic situation; 12 per cent felt things had improved and 9 per cent said there was no change. Unsurprisingly, 95 per cent felt the security situation was worse than before. Interestingly, about 50 per cent of those questioned identified themselves only as "Muslims"; 34 per cent as Shiites and 14 per cent as Sunnis. Add to this the figures supplied by the UNHCR: 1.6 million Iraqis (7 per cent of the population) have fled the country since March 2003 and 100,000 Iraqis leave every month, Christians, doctors, engineers, women, etc. There are one million in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 150,000 in Cairo. These are refugees that do not excite the sympathy of Western public opinion, since the US (and EU backed) occupation is the cause. These are not compared (as was the case in Kosovo) to the atrocities of the Third Reich. Perhaps it was these statistics (and the estimates of a million Iraqi dead) that necessitated the execution of Saddam Hussein?

That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who now occupy the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington (and the poison gas supplied by West Germany) that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war. He deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this. The double standards applied by the West never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto who presided over a mountain of corpses (At least a million to accept the lowest figure) was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam.

And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Fallujah; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad, the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantanamo. Will Bush and Blair ever be tried for war crimes? Doubtful. And Aznar, currently employed as a lecturer at Georgetown University in Washington, DC , where the language of instruction is English of which he doesn't speak a word. His reward is a punishment for the students.

Saddam's hanging might send a shiver through the collective, if artificial, spine of the Arab ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged, so can Mubarak, or the Hashemite joker in Amman or the Saudi royals, as long as those who topple them are happy to play ball with Washington.

Tariq Ali's new book, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, is published by Verso. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

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DEMOCRATS IGNORE VOTERS ON IRAQ

ALEXANDER COCKBURN, COUNTERPUNCH - This last Sunday Harry Reid, the
incoming Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, went on ABC's
Sunday morning show and declared that a hike in U.S. troops in Iraq is
okay with him. . .

Somewhat to their surprise the Democrats recaptured both the Senate
and the House. Then they went to work--to obliterate the mandate. The
first thing they did was reject Jack Murtha, the man who said "Quit
Now" in 2005. They voted down Murtha as House majority leader and
picked the pro-war Steny Hoyer.

Then Nancy Pelosi, chose Silvestre Reyes as House Intelligence
Committee chairman. Reyes promptly told Newsweek, "We're not going to
have stability in Iraq until we eliminate those militias, those
private armies. We have to consider the need for additional troops to
be in Iraq, to take out the militias and stabilize IraqI would say
20,000 to 30,000-for the specific purpose of making sure those
militias are dismantled, working in concert with the Iraqi military.". . .

Next, the Democrats in the Senate gave unanimous confirmation to
Robert Gates as defense secretary. Gates has a career record as one
who slants intelligence to suit his bosses' political agenda. . .

Next, House Democrats welcomed the Iraq Study Group report of James
Baker and Jim Hamilton by promptly reaffirming the Palestinian Terror
Bill 2006", written by AIPAC. . .

Then, on December 17 the Democrats' Senate leader, Harry Reid, said it
was okay with him to send more troops to Iraq. This was the same
Sunday morning that Colin Powell, appearing on CBS, said a troop
increase "cannot be sustained" and that the thousands of additional
U.S. soldiers sent into Baghdad since the summer had been unable to
stabilize the city and more probably could not tip the balance, Powell said.

Yesterday, it was instructive to go to the Democratic websites in the
wake of Reid's statement. Nothing on Daily Kos, nothing on Truthout,
nothing on any of them. They had many words about Republican
warmongering, about McCain's call for more troops. About Reid, one of
the top Democratic leaders, about the evolving Democratic posture--nothing.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12192006.html
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Congressional Record: December 5, 2006 (Senate)
Page S11197-S11199           



        STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and cosponsor the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2006.

This bill would restore the great writ of habeas corpus, a cornerstone of American liberty for hundreds of years that Congress and the President rolled back in an unprecedented and unnecessary way with September's Military Commissions Act.

  I am also pleased to join Senator Dodd as a cosponsor of the
Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act of 2006. That bill would likewise
restore the liberties guaranteed by the writ of habeas corpus. It would
also correct many of the other very disturbing provisions of the
Military Commissions Act by narrowing that act's extremely broad
definition of ``unlawful enemy combatants,'' excluding evidence
obtained by coercion, and allowing defendants to review evidence used
against them.

Habeas corpus provides a remedy against arbitrary detentions and
constitutional violations. It guarantees an opportunity to go to court,
with the aid of a lawyer, to prove one's innocence. As Justice Scalia
stated in the Hamdi case: ``The very core of liberty secured by our
Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite
imprisonment at the will of the Executive.'' The remedy that secures
that most basic of freedoms is habeas corpus.

The Military Commissions Act eliminated that right, permanently, for
any non-citizen determined to be an enemy combatant, or even
``awaiting'' such a determination. That includes the approximately 12
million lawful permanent residents in the United States today, people
who work for American firms, raise American kids, and pay American
taxes. This new law means that any of these people can be detained,
forever, without any ability to challenge their detention in federal
court--or anywhere else--simply on the Government's say-so that they
are awaiting determination whether they are enemy combatants.

I regret that Chairman Specter and I were unsuccessful in our efforts
to stop this injustice when the President and the Republican leadership
insisted on rushing the Military Commissions Act through Congress in
the lead-up to the elections. We supported an amendment which would
have removed the habeas-stripping provision from the Military
Commissions Act. It failed by just three votes. I was saddened that the
bill passed even with this poisonous habeas provision. Since then, the
American people have spoken against the administration's ``stay the
course'' approach to national security and against a rubber stamp
Congress that accommodated this administration's efforts to grab more
and more power.

When we debated Chairman Specter's amendment to remove the habeas-
stripping provision back in September, I spelled out a nightmare
scenario about a hard-working legal permanent resident who makes an
innocent donation to, among other charities, a Muslim charity that the
Government thinks might be funneling money to terrorists. I suggested
that, on the basis of this donation and perhaps a report of
``suspicious behavior'' from an overzealous neighbor based on visits
from Muslim guests, the permanent resident could be brought in for
questioning, denied a lawyer, confined, and even tortured. And this
lawful permanent resident would have no recourse in the courts for
years, for decades, forever.

Many people viewed this kind of nightmare scenario as fanciful, just
the rhetoric of a politician. It was not. It is all spelled out clearly
in the language of the law that this body passed. Last month, the
scenario I spelled out was confirmed by the Department of Justice
itself in a legal brief submitted in a Federal court in Virginia. The
Justice Department, in a brief to dismiss a detainee's habeas case,
said that the Military Commissions Act allows the Government to detain
any noncitizen declared to be an enemy combatant without giving that
person any ability to challenge his detention in court. This is true,
the Justice Department said, even for someone arrested and imprisoned
in the United States.

[[Page S11199]]

The Washington Post wrote that the brief ``raises the possibility that any
of the millions of immigrants living in the United States could be
subject to indefinite detention if they are accused of ties to
terrorist groups.''

In fact, the situation is more stark even than the Washington Post
story suggested. The Justice Department's brief says that the
Government can detain any noncitizen declared to be an enemy combatant.
But the law this Congress passed says the Government need not even make
that declaration; they can hold people indefinitely who are just
awaiting determination whether or not they are enemy combatants. It
gets worse. Republican leaders in the Senate followed the White House's
lead and greatly expanded the definition of ``enemy combatants'' in the
dark of night in the final days before the bill's passage, so that
enemy combatants need not be soldiers on battlefield. They can be
people who give money, or people that any group of decisionmakers
selected by the President decides to call enemy combatants. The
possibilities are chilling.

The administration has made it clear that they intend to use every
expansive definition and unchecked power given to them by the new law.
Last month's Justice Department brief made clear that any of our legal
immigrants could be held indefinitely without recourse in court.
Earlier in November, the Justice Department went to court to say that
detainees who had been held in secret CIA prisons could not even meet
with lawyers because they might tell their lawyers about the cruel
interrogation techniques used against them. In other words, if our
Government tortures somebody, that person loses his right to a lawyer
because he might tell the lawyer about having been tortured. A law
professor was quoted as saying about the government's position in that
case: ``Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is `Alice in
Wonderland.' '' We are not talking about nightmare scenarios here. We
are talking about today's reality.

We have eliminated basic legal and human rights for the 12 million
lawful permanent residents who live and work among us, to say nothing
of the millions of other legal immigrants and visitors who we welcome
to our shores each year. We have removed the check that our legal
system provides against the Government arbitrarily detaining people for
life without charge, and we may well have made many of our remaining
limits against torture and cruel and inhuman treatment obsolete because
they are unenforceable. We have removed the mechanism the Constitution
provides to check Government overreaching and lawlessness.

This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American. It is
designed to ensure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again
be embarrassed by a U.S. Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful
abuses of power. The conservative Supreme Court, with seven of its nine
members appointed by Republican Presidents, has been the only check on
the Bush-Cheney administration's lawlessness. Certainly the outgoing
rubberstamp Republican Congress has not done it, or even investigated
it. With passage of the Military Commissions Act, the Republican
Congress completed the job of eviscerating its role as a check and
balance on the administration.

Abolishing habeas corpus for anyone who the Government thinks might
have assisted enemies of the United States is unnecessary and morally
wrong. It is a betrayal of the most basic values of freedom for which
America stands. It makes a mockery of the Bush-Cheney administration's
lofty rhetoric about exporting freedom across the globe.

Admiral John Hutson testified before the Judiciary Committee that
stripping the courts of habeas jurisdiction was inconsistent with
American history and tradition. He concluded, ``We don't need to do
this. America is too strong.'' Even Kenneth Starr, the former
independent counsel and Solicitor General to the first President Bush,
wrote that the Constitution's conditions for suspending habeas corpus
have not been met, and that doing so would be problematic.

Under the Constitution, a suspension of the writ may only be
justified during an invasion or a rebellion, when the public safety
demands it. Six weeks after the deadliest attack on American soil in
our history, the Congress that passed the PATRIOT Act rightly concluded
that a suspension of the writ would not be justified. Yet 6 weeks
before a midterm election, the Bush-Cheney administration and the
Republican Congress deemed a complete abolition of the writ their
highest priority. Notwithstanding the harm the administration has done
to national security with its mismanaged misadventure in Iraq, there
was no new national security crisis. There was only a Republican
political crisis. The people have now spoken, and it is time to reverse
the dangerous choices this Congress made.

Rolling back the Military Commissions Act's disastrous habeas
provision will set the stage for us to approach that issue in a way
consistent with our needs and our values. We should take steps to
ensure that our enemies can be tried efficiently and quickly and to
prevent our courts from being tied up with frivolous suits. But
abolishing the writ of habeas corpus for millions of legal immigrants
and others, denying their right to get into court to challenge
indefinite detainment on the Government's say-so, is not the answer.

I hope that others will hear the call of the American people for a
new direction and work to correct these and other problems with the new
law, including the gutting of the War Crimes Act, which I was proud to
help spearhead with strong bipartisan support in 1997.

I will keep working on these issues until we restore the checks and
balances that make our country great. We can ensure our security
without giving up our liberty.
                               ______

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Tag: Why are we not surprised. Sieg Heil, President Gasman... --DN

From SF.indymedia.org
by repost Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006 at 2:39 AM

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."

Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."

For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

An article on "recent contract awards" in a recent issue of the slick, insider "Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International" reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellog, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." The report points out that "KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton." (3) So, in addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion "supplemental provision" which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the new law, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an "emergency managed" and seemingly willfully gullible public as a "global war on terrorism."

Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both," is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of 'law enforcement.' As such, it has been the best protection we've had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless executive, an executive intent on using force to enforce its will.

Unfortunately, this past week, the president dealt posse comitatus, along with American democracy, a near fatal blow. Consequently, it will take an aroused citizenry to undo the damage wrought by this horrendous act, part and parcel, as we have seen, of a long train of abuses and outrages perpetrated by this authoritarian administration.

Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007's Defense Authorization Act contained a "widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation's governors."

Senator Leahy went on to stress that, "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. One can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders."

A few weeks later, on the 29th of September, Leahy entered into the Congressional Record that he had "grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report," the language of which, he said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law." This had been "slipped in," Leahy said, "as a rider with little study," while "other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."

In a telling bit of understatement, the Senator from Vermont noted that "the implications of changing the (Posse Comitatus) Act are enormous". "There is good reason," he said, "for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."

Senator Leahy's final ruminations: "Since hearing word a couple of weeks ago that this outcome was likely, I have wondered how Congress could have gotten to this point. It seems the changes to the Insurrection Act have survived the Conference because the Pentagon and the White House want it."

The historic and ominous re-writing of the Insurrection Act, accomplished in the dead of night, which gives Bush the legal authority to declare martial law, is now an accomplished fact.

The Pentagon, as one might expect, plays an even more direct role in martial law operations. Title XIV of the new law, entitled, "Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions," authorizes "the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders."

In other words, the law facilitates the "transfer" of the newest in so-called "crowd control" technology and other weaponry designed to suppress dissent from the Pentagon to local militarized police units. The new law builds on and further codifies earlier "technology transfer" agreements, specifically the 1995 DOD-Justice Department memorandum of agreement achieved back during the Clinton-Reno regime.(4)

It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president's polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes. And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.

Source:
(1) http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/091906a.html and http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.html See also, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, "The Use of Federal Troops for Disaster Assistance: Legal Issues," by Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, August 14, 2006

(2) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill+h109-5122

(3) Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, "Recent Contract Awards", Summer 2006, Vol.12, No.2, pg.8; See also, Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," New American Media, January 31, 2006.

(4) "Technology Transfer from defense: Concealed Weapons Detection", National Institute of Justice Journal, No 229, August, 1995, pp.42-43.

www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911/

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Anyone still believe "your government" isn't capable of just about any damn thing they can think of? Including staging an excuse in order to do just about any damn thing they wanted to do after 9/11?

Watch the movie and continue questioning. It ain't perfect, but then neither is a police state dictatorship... --DN

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Cannon fodder for the "New Way Forward" ... --DN

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/22/troop_numbers/print.html

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Despite being armed with fat cash incentives, recruiters may not be able to meet Bush's call for a bigger Army -- even if they keep lowering standards for new recruits.

By Mark Benjamin

Dec. 22, 2006 | Reversing his long-held opposition to increasing the permanent size of the U.S. military, President Bush is now considering calling for an addition of up to 70,000 troops. But with the Army already in an uphill battle to meet its current recruitment targets, many military experts fear Bush's expansion plans are way overdue and can be met only by lowering the standards for Army recruits -- including those with criminal records. Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, summed up Bush's notion of a bigger Army this way: "Good idea, five years too late."

Bush is belatedly joining the ranks of many retired generals, military experts and some members of Congress who have been pushing for a substantial increase in the U.S. ground forces for years. Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, said it has long been painfully obvious that the military is "far too small to accomplish what it is being asked to do."

The expansion is desperately needed but "should have been done before we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq," lamented David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. Now it may be too late.

Last year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by the biggest gap since 1979. It met its quota this year, in part by lowering standards. The Army has nearly doubled the percentage of recruits it will accept who score badly on aptitude tests and increased the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42. It has also admitted more recruits who previously would not have made the grade for criminal, medical or moral reasons. In 2005, 17 percent (21,880 new soldiers) qualified under such waivers, a 42 percent increase since the pre-Iraq year of 2000.

The Army says that the waiver program simply gives young people who made mistakes a second chance. But the matter is not academic. In an extreme example, Pvt. Steven Green, the soldier in federal prison under charges that he raped and killed a 14-year-old girl in Iraq and murdered three of her family members, got into the Army with a waiver. He had three criminal convictions and a history of substance abuse. Segal said that to expand the Army anytime soon might mean that the ranks will be filled with "more people with criminal records."

In addition to lowering standards, the Army has dramatically increased the number of recruiters in the field. But signs indicate that they are increasingly desperate. The Army briefly suspended recruiting efforts completely in May 2005 after receiving reports that recruiters were forging documents, helping young people dupe the drug-testing system and asking teens to lie to their parents.

And the recruiters are already armed with dramatically sweetened incentives for those who are willing to sign up. New recruits may now be eligible for a $40,000 cash bonus for putting their name on the dotted line. (And some angrily denounce the calling of these young recruits - up to age 42! - 'mercenaries?' --DN) Eli Flyer, a former senior manpower analyst for the Pentagon, said that, "to meet its quota of 80,000 new recruits annually, the Army has pulled out all the stops."

Even if recruitment weren't so challenging, as it has been during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, it would still take at least until 2008 to recruit and train enough new troops to substantially increase the number of units on the ground in Iraq. And it would be very expensive -- roughly $1.2 billion a year for each additional 10,000 troops, according to military experts. (Hey, plenty more money where that came from - out of OUR pockets... and thin air... -DN)

Former generals such as Batiste say the military has paid a higher price for not investing early in a bigger Army. "We went to war on the cheap in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we asked our military to do a number of tasks which should have been done by other departments and agencies in our government, and we inconvenienced the American people as little as possible."

There is a sad symmetry to the president's belated consideration of a bigger Army and his recent mulling of possible new strategies on Iraq. Just as the president's strategic options had dwindled precipitously by the time he decided to change course in Iraq, so the expanded recruiting effort he may endorse at this late date will be severely hampered by the disincentive posed by four years of a brutal and seemingly unproductive war.

-- By Mark Benjamin

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FROM

Put on the Spot, Our Punk President Lies Yet Again

Posted 20 December 2006

Whenever I hear President Bush tell another lie (or read that he has told another lie) I'm reminded of the Liar-in-Chief's former professor at the Harvard Business School, Yoshi Tsurumi, and his spot-on recollection of this president's punk past. According to Professor Tsurumi, Bush "showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." [Mary Jacoby, "The Dunce," Salon.com, 16 September 2004]

Tsurumi concluded: "Behind his smile and his smirk…he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy." "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion." [Ibid] In conservative Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where I grew up during the 1950s and 1960s, such people were called "punks."

Perhaps, it's fair to say that the world would be a much better and safer place if America's mainstream news media had challenged Bush as much as Professor Tsurumi and his classmates did. Alas, it let the punk candidate slide during his first run for president, notwithstanding such smug and asinine assertions as: "I may not know where Kosovo is, but I know what I believe." Thus, alas, many Americans voted for an admitted alcoholic (and, allegedly, a former drug using) twit, who would come to believe that God spoke directly to him and wanted him to be president.

The mainstream news media also failed to challenge seriously the Bush administration's campaign of lies, which it employed to frighten witless Americans into supporting an unprovoked - and, thus, illegal, immoral -- invasion of Iraq. Specifically, the news media paid insufficient attention to an outrageous assertion by Bush that proved he was either a bald-faced liar or an extremely reckless ignoramus.

On September 7, 2002, President Bush asserted: "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

Yet, not only was there no such report, but the report actually written by the IAEA in 1998 reached precisely the opposite conclusion: "Based on all credible information available to date…the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its programme goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material." [MSNBC.com, 7 Sept. 2002]

And although a White House official subsequently admitted that the IAEA report did not say what Bush claimed, the spokesman's own dissembling shed further light on the dishonesty driving Bush's push for war: "What happened was, we formed our own conclusions based on the report."[Ibid] Why this entire episode failed to send red flags of suspicion flying across our entire news media remains an open question.

Yet, worse was to come. On October 2, 2002, Bush lied when he told Congressional leaders: "None of us here today desire to see a military conflict." How do we know he lied? Because in March 2003, in the moments "before he gave his national address announcing that the war had just begun, a camera caught Bush pumping his fist as though instead of initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. 'Feels good,' he said." [Paul Waldman, Fraud, 2004, p.8] Once a punk, always a punk?

In December 2003, months after the Bush administration's reckless assertions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction proved to be false, ABC's Diane Sawyer pressed Bush about justifying a war to the American public by stating "as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he [Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons." Put on the spot, Bush resorted to his punk college ways by responding: "So what's the difference?"

Two months later, Bush weaseled again. When put on the spot by Tim Russert, of Meet the Press, Bush justified his illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq by asserting: "Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and so I'm not going [sic] leave him in power and trust a madman…He had the ability to make weapons, at the very minimum." Such a snotty and infantile excuse for sending thousands to their deaths should have persuaded even the most brain-dead of Bush supporters that he had wasted his vote on a reckless punk.

In late 2005, Bush told another lie, when attempting to justify his unconstitutional order permitting the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without obtaining the required court-approved warrants. Bush defended his directive as a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism, evidently forgetting that, in April 2004, he assured an audience in Buffalo, New York: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Bush lied again on December 14, 2005, when discussing what intelligence was available to Congress, when it voted to support his decision to invade Iraq. Bush lied when he asserted: "Some of the most irresponsible comments - about manipulated intelligence - have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein."

In fact, the Congressional Research Service (CSR) released a report the very next day that exposed his lie: "The President and a small number of presidentially designated cabinet-level officials, including the vice president …have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive information, including intelligence sources and methods." In all, the report identified "nine key U.S. intelligence 'products' not generally shared with Congress."

And Bush lied again, on the eve of the November 2006 mid-term elections, when he said that he wanted Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to stay on until the end of his presidency. In fact, Bush already had commenced work on replacing Rumsfeld and knew he was lying when he said Rumsfeld would stay on. Bush even admitted to this deliberate deception.

Two days ago, Bush lied again. In a December 19, 2006, interview with the Washington Post , America's Liar-in-Chief was once again put on the spot. According to the Post, when he was asked to reconcile his "absolutely, we're winning" in Iraq assertion of October 25, 2006, with his new assertion, "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush "recast" his former assertion "as a prediction rather than an assessment."

Bush's Harvard classmates and Professor Tsurumi would have understood all too well: Once a punk, always a punk.

Indeed, if "once a punk, always a punk," then columnist Joseph L. Galloway is on to something when he asks: "Can nothing save this man from himself?" [See Galloway's splendid article, "Desperation in the White House," Miami Herald at http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16250266.htm ] And, indeed, if nothing can save Bush from himself, the citizens of the United States have an obligation to remove him from office - impeach, convict, remove - before he does more damage to American and the world.

But only after first removing the thug, who has so perniciously enabled the punk.

Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).

waltuhler@aol.com

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Both groups are in denial about the chaos in Iraq and are not yet ready to offer the tough solutions that could stabilize the country. Perhaps they should accept the top ten things not to do in Iraq:

By Ivan Eland
PalestineChronicle.com

Ever since the Iraq Study Group (ISG) issued its recommendations, the debate in Washington has swirled around what to do about the mess in Iraq. Unfortunately, both the recommendations of the study group and the contradictory inclinations of the Bush administration are “bridges to nowhere.” Both groups are in denial about the chaos in Iraq and are not yet ready to offer the tough solutions that could stabilize the country. Perhaps they should accept the top ten things not to do in Iraq:

1. Don’t send more U.S. troops. By pursuing this course, neoconservative armchair generals—such as Frederick Kagan—who helped Bush get into this mess, want to help him dig the hole deeper. Yet the senior U.S. military officers on the ground in the Middle East are not keen on this option. They realize that the quagmire makes it impossible for U.S. forces to ever succeed, and they have been inclined toward withdrawal. Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell seemed to reflect their views when he said that when deciding whether to send more troops, “I’d want to have a clear understanding of what it is they’re going for, how long they’re going for. And let’s be clear about something else.… There really are no additional troops. All we would be doing is keeping some of the troops who were there, there longer and escalating or accelerating the arrival of other troops.” Without having a clearly defined reason for sending more troops, the policy collapses into the usual “show the Iraqis and the domestic political audience that the Bush administration means business.” But the domestic political audience has long soured on the war and wants the troops to begin coming home and the Iraqis, like Powell, realize that the troop increase is not sustainable in the long-term.

2. Don’t think that sending more U.S. troops is politically sustainable. In a democracy, putting more troops and money into a war that has lost public support rivals the stupidity of invading a country to bring democracy to a fragmented society with no prior democratic experience or culture.

3. Don’t use any extra forces to secure Baghdad. The Bush administration can’t seem to accept what the U.S. military command in Iraq has said: that more U.S. forces will only inflame Iraqi resistance. Recently, when the United States moved forces from other parts of Iraq into Baghdad, in an attempt to increase Baghdad’s security, violence flared in reaction to the augmented U.S. troop presence.

4. Don’t use any extra U.S. troops to train Iraqi forces. Even if the Iraqi army and police could be made larger and better quickly—which they can’t be—the biggest difficulty is not their competence. The main problem is that they will fight for their religious sect, ethnic group, or tribe, not for their country.

5. Don’t think that training Iraqi security forces is a viable U.S. exit strategy. Because of the fragmented nature of Iraqi society, training such forces is merely enabling one side’s combatants in an accelerating civil war. Many of those already trained are now operating as Shi’ite death squads attacking Sunnis.

6. Don’t think that the ISG’s proposed withdrawal of combat forces by early 2008, while retaining about half the 140,000 troops to train Iraqi forces, is a viable solution. In addition to making the long-term situation in Iraq worse (see item #5), this proposal was merely a “cut and hide” strategy by the bipartisan foreign policy elite to diminish the importance of Iraq in the 2008 elections. If combat troops are withdrawn, the less visible training mission would incur fewer U.S. casualties and generate less intense media coverage back home during the next election season.

7. Don’t pursue the “80 percent solution.” This proposal would abandon any attempt at reconciliation with the Sunnis and throw all of the diminishing U.S. influence behind the groups that effectively control the Iraqi government: the Shi’a, which make up 60 percent of Iraq’s population, and the Kurds, which make up another 20 percent. After the invasion, U.S. support defaulted to the Shi’a and Kurds because they were opposed to the rising Sunni insurgency. But the Shi’a have become more militant, have turned southern Iraq into an intolerant Islamic state, and have come under the influence of their sectarian brethren in Iran. Many of the Sunni guerrillas are thugs, but at least most are not religious militants. Besides, for long-term stability, all groups—including the Sunnis—have to be satisfied enough with any political settlement to attempt to quell violence from their members.

8. Don’t think that talking to Syria and Iran will pay big dividends in Iraq. Right after the invasion, these countries were afraid that they would be next and thus were more amenable to helping out the United States. Now, they are both delighted that they have the United States over a barrel—that is, bogged down in a quagmire and less likely to put them in the cross hairs. So they will be in no hurry to help U.S. forces extricate themselves from the tar baby. Although assistance to various groups in Iraq is coming from Syria and Iran, Iraqi violence appears to be funded mainly through kidnappings and organized crime. Thus, although talks should be initiated with Syria and Iran, even if they agree to help, that help will not dampen most of Iraq’s violence.

9. Don’t continue talking about democracy or victory in Iraq. Neither is possible, and such rhetoric makes withdrawal harder before either is achieved.

10. Don’t think Iraq can exist as a unified country. Iraq already has decentralized governance and militias dominating various areas. The United States should mediate a conclave of all Iraqi groups to recognize this decentralized governance and to negotiate a viable oil sharing agreement. The decentralization option is the only one that has any hope of reducing and compartmentalizing the violence. At this late date, however, even this option might not prevent unbridled mayhem.

-Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

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FROM: http://www.worldcantwait.org

If war crimes, torture, and crimes against humanity aren’t enough to impeach, what is? NEW Video on YouTube Demonstrate in Washington as Congress opens! Impeach Bush! Thurs Jan 4 7:00 pm National Press Club: Voices for Impeachment Thurs. Jan 4 12 Noon Rally Upper Senate Park Gold Star Families WALK for CHANGE January 3/4 To the World Can’t Wait Community, Two weeks from tomorrow, World Can’t Wait will place the demand for impeachment in front of Congress, on this basis: The war on Iraq is a war of aggression, waged preemptively on the basis of lies against a country that posed no threat. This is a war crime. The war has been conducted through the targeting of the civilian population. The city of Fallujah (more than 300,000 people) was fenced in, cut off from water and electricity, most of its homes demolished, and declared a “free fire” zone. This – collective punishment – is a war crime. And there is much more. Get the whole picture with an amazing set of DVD’s from the Bush Crimes Commission Making a demand to Congress at this moment that this president must be impeached is a way to challenge the whole country to come to terms with what this regime represents. It also constitutes a challenge to the logic of accommodation by the Democrats, and if done in the context of the whole Call by World Can’t Wait, it can bring forward the critical mass of people required to move millions into mass independent political action. There is no other way to change things. I’m asking you to join the demonstration in Washington on January 4, AND to send funds to support the effort to drive out the Bush regime in 2007. Sincerely, Debra Sweet Director, The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime Sean Penn Speaks Out for Impeachment Sean Penn received The 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition on December 18, 2006, in New York City, where he made a devastating argument for impeaching George Bush. “…globally, the United States is number one at demanding accountability and backing up that demand with imprisonment. But, when it comes to our president, vice president, secretary of state, former secretary of defense...this insistence on accountability vanishes. All of a sudden, what's past is prologue. And we're just "forward-looking." But some people can't just look forward. Men and women stationed in Iraq at this moment, under orders of a Commander-in-Chief so sufficiently practiced in the art of deception, that he got vast numbers of American journalists and the most esteemed media outlets of this country, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and PBS to eagerly serve his agenda-building for war. And the process also induced vast numbers of artists and performers (probably even some in this room tonight) to keep quiet and facilitate the push for an invasion in Iraq. I'm sure many people who I met in Baghdad, both in my trips prior to and during the occupation, now similarly cannot just look forward. With lives so entirely shattered by a violence of occupation - an ongoing U.S. war effort and the civil war that it has catalyzed. All on the back of a crumbled infrastructure, following eleven years of devastating U.N. sanctions…” The Berkeley High School Chapter of World Can't Wait held three assemblies Monday, December 11, to coincide with Human Rights Day with a total attendance of about 1,500 students. Carlos Mauricio, who was a victim of torture by the government of El Salvador, and Larry Everest, author of Oil, Power, & Empire, spoke to approximately 1,500 students during 3 separate assemblies. Nickelodeon filmed the assemblies as part of a documentary on student activism that features World Can't Wait. Many students wore orange as part of World Can't Wait's call to take a stand against torture Dec. 10 & 11 by wearing what Guantanamo detainees have to wear everyday. Why Demand Impeachment Now? | Print | E-mail By Debra Sweet on behalf of the World Can't Wait national steering committee, 12/11/06 The day Congress opens, World Can’t Wait will lead a major challenge to the political direction in this country since the election. A regime as criminal as the Bush regime still allowed to even remain in office? No! An unjust war started on lies, allowed to continue for four years despite an election where people meant to express how strongly they want it stopped? No! The Democrats, now the majority, allowing debate only on how to run the war more effectively, and saying that impeachment can’t even be considered? No! BUSH MUST GO! IF WAR CRIMES, TORTURE, AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY ARE NOT REASON TO IMPEACH, WHAT IS? This is no time to “wait and see”. This is a critical time to take action and demand action. Open the investigations and start impeachment, now! A few weeks ago, we announced that World Can’t Wait was going to raise the specific demand for impeachment at the opening of Congress on January 4, 2007. A call has been posted with initial endorsers. This letter is to address more fully why we propose this course of action now. There are several major developments since October 5. The Democrats won both houses of Congress in what was widely acknowledged as a massive repudiation of Bush’s war on Iraq and whole program. Rumsfeld was forced out. The Iraq Study Group’s report sharply criticized Bush for “the grave and deteriorating situation in Iraq”, while trying to unify the country around the need to continue the war. And Bush is already making clear he will not go along with major elements of their recommendations and will not change course. Millions of people who hate the war on Iraq and the direction of the Bush program hope that the danger of the Bush regime has been mitigated so that he will not be able to do much more damage with a Democratic majority in Congress. In fact, the whole situation is rapidly intensifying with potential dangers and opportunities closely bound together in this moment. The Bush Regime is encountering deep and profound difficulties in their mission to reorder the whole Middle East under the dominance of U.S. strategic interests that are critical to empire, as Tony Snow openly put it the day after the Iraq Study Group report was issued. This bipartisan commission, which is dealing with the collapse of the nation and society of Iraq, has put out a report that is intended to stem the hemorrhage in Iraq and to unite the U.S. around a consensus of continuing an unjust war of occupation. To quote Sandra Day O’Connor, “We’ve said in the report that we agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq as stated by the President: an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And to do that, we’ve made these various recommendations on a consensus basis. It’s my belief that if a large segment of our country gets behind that on a consensus basis, that it’s very likely we can move forward and make some progress toward that statement of goals. And I hope that the American people will feel that if they are behind something in broad terms, that we’ll be better off.” Nancy Pelosi says the Democrats have to work with the president and be perceived as “uniters and not dividers”. But what is needed is NOT for the country to be united around an immoral and unjust war. The country NEEDS to be polarized. To unite with this war is to be complicit in war crimes. Millions of people who hate this must take independent action that makes clear this is NOT IN OUR NAME and we do not stand behind it in any way. We want this brought to a halt, the regime responsible driven out, tried and convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. George Bush and the regime he heads is remaking laws, policies, and the shape of the government in a fascist direction, based on a fanatical reactionary vision of changing U.S. society permanently. They are seeking global empire through unjust wars which we are told will last generations, building a police state of repressive laws, and moving towards a theocracy, where the Bible becomes the law with all the horrors that will bring. And they are not stopping, threatening to attack Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons. All the “your government” indictments of the World Can’t Wait Call, including the ongoing crimes against Katrina survivors and the destruction of the planet’s environment, are the reasons this Bush program must be brought to a halt. It is our strong belief and mission that George W. Bush, his administration and his program be repudiated and driven from office before 2008 in order for this whole direction to be stopped. We have about a year to do this before the 2008 election cycle creates other, and likely unfavorable, terms for doing so. It is our assessment that raising a demand for impeachment based on making the case that this government, which has clearly committed war crimes and is guilty of crimes against humanity, would help establish very different political terms in the country than the ones presently being hammered out in the halls of power. And it will help accelerate the kind of movement from below that moves millions out of political paralysis and into the kind of massive resistance needed to drive out the Bush regime. Whether this assessment of the situation and the content of the attached call for January 4 are correct is something that every member of this movement should seriously think through and weigh in on. We strongly urge local chapters to meet this week to discuss this and to correspond with the Steering Committee. Here is the basis to impeach them: The war on Iraq is a war of aggression, waged preemptively on the basis of lies against a country that posed no threat. This is a war crime. The war has been conducted through the targeting of the civilian population. The city of Fallujah (more than 300,000 people) was fenced in, cut off from water and electricity, most of its homes demolished, and declared a “free fire” zone. This – collective punishment – is a war crime. The Military Commissions Act legalizes torture and rendition by the U.S. The United Nations says: “Torture is a crime under international law. According to all relevant instruments, it is absolutely prohibited and cannot be justified under any circumstances. This prohibition forms part of customary international law, which means that it is binding on every member of the international community, regardless of whether a State has ratified international treaties in which torture is expressly prohibited. The systematic or widespread practice of torture constitutes a crime against humanity”. These war crimes and other crimes against humanity, well documented by the Bush Crimes Commission and the Center for Constitutional Rights were not the basis on which the Democrats opposed the Bush Regime, nor are they the basis on which the Iraq Study Group is urging Bush to change the conduct of the war on Iraq. But these crimes are the basis on which we must drive them from office. Representative Cynthia McKinney introduced a resolution for impeachment on her final day in Congress, as well as a resolution to repeal the Military Commissions Act. Representative McKinney is now being vilified and dismissed. It’s necessary for people of conscience to rise to her defense and take up the challenge she poses. Will people be complicit in these crimes by staying trapped within the deadly logic of the Democratic Party taking impeachment off the table, “ruling from the center,” and ushering in an era of “partnership” with these war criminals? We have to challenge people living in this country to take responsibility to stop what is being done in our names. Can we, or can we not, tolerate what this regime is doing? Are we a people who will go along with these outrages, or will we unite to say: Bring all of this to a halt - and force Bush from office? Now, when there is a widening gap between what people think they voted for – an end to the war – and what the Democrats are actually doing, is the time to make these demands and to unite with people in the Impeachment movement to challenge and change the discussion that will take place as Congress opens. Many people who feel they voted to end the war are more politicized, and urgently want to see things changed. We have to show people why acting at THIS moment in THIS way matters, and why they have a moral obligation to act. Making a demand to Congress at this moment that this president must be impeached is a way to challenge the whole country to come to terms with what this regime represents. It also constitutes a challenge to the logic of accommodation by the Democrats, and if done in the context of the whole Call by World Can’t Wait, it can bring forward the critical mass of people required to move millions into mass independent political action. There is no other way to change things. In discussing this, people in the San Francisco chapter raised the concern that World Can’t Wait could be dragged into relying on the Democrats by raising the demand for impeachment, and they were right to have that worry. They contrast the correct basis on which to demand impeachment, which we have incorporated into the call for January 4, with the wrong basis: “This is the wrong way for World Can’t Wait to go and will lead to surrendering key principles and standing. It means WCW tailors ourselves to the coalition’s framework -- which will no matter what we say, drag WCW into advocating for people to rely on the Democrats, because the coalition overall is predicated on that understanding of how things work…It also gives up our powerful message that there will be no saviors from the Democrats and the only way to solve the situation is driving out the Bush regime…Everybody knows impeachment is off the table according to the leading Democrats. What does it mean to formulate the opposition to the Bush Regime --- and the complicity and hand in it of the Democrats – as a demand for impeachment? Not much, if the grounds are that Bush lied. If he gets impeached just for that, it won’t force any real change. The Bush program can just go forward whether led by Republicans or Democrats. They are the same (corporate controlled, wealthy interests). We should only see impeachment as meaningful if it’s on ground of he’s a war criminal.” * The questions the SF chapter is raising are highly important, and should be part of every chapter’s discussion. Is there a way to raise this demand without being drawn into the dominant political framework and way politics as usual is conducted in this country? Can it be done without leading people to rely on pressuring the Democrats and accepting incremental changes and false promises that do not and will not change the direction of things? Or can it be done in a way that fosters massive societal upheaval in response to people acting on principles and a morality that unites people living in the U.S. with people living under the US occupation and living under the threat of the next war the Bush regime intends to launch? It would be wrong to raise impeachment just to broaden the appeal of this movement, or to narrow our concern to “impeachable offenses”. The call for January 4 and a broader coalition it can unite focuses on the war, torture and repression. And in doing this we think it’s critical that the Call for World Can’t wait is used as we in World Can’t Wait build for this. We should get out hundreds of thousands of copies and have people sign onto it. The Call’s indictments, based on the whole Bush program and trajectory, are the basis of unity for this movement. We need a whole lot of people feeling that they wouldn’t accept any government doing what the Bush regime has done. In sum: Forcing the Bush regime from power could happen through impeachment, investigations leading to criminal prosecutions, or resignations based on scandals which go very high. The exact mechanism of their removal is not where we start. We start with why this regime should not be in office--and why it must be driven out. Impeachment based on making the case that the regime is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity is what the whole nation should be discussing, deliberating and acting on. The exact mechanism for Bush’s political removal from office will be found when a large enough section of people no longer think this regime is legitimate, and act in their millions to repudiate it and drive it out. A powerful indictment delivered on January 4, setting those terms, will focus and direct peoples’ attention to what the regime has done, and can potentially accelerate the kind of movement and the kind of political situation needed to drive it out. *The chapter discussion was held before the call for January 4 was drafted. <><><><><><><><>

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