Soldatensender

2006-11-22T11:57:00.000-06:00

Defeating the Bill of Rights

Bush's Lone Victory

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

George Orwell warned us, but what American would have expected that in the opening years of the 21st century the United States would become a country in which lies and deception by the President and Vice President were the basis for a foreign policy of war and aggression, and in which indefinite detention without charges, torture, and spying on citizens without warrants have displaced the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution?

If anyone had predicted that the election of George W. Bush to the presidency would result in an American police state and illegal wars of aggression, he would have been dismissed as a lunatic.

What American ever would have thought that any US president and attorney general would defend torture or that a Republican Congress would pass a bill legalizing torture by the executive branch and exempting the executive branch from the Geneva Conventions?

What American ever would have expected the US Congress to accept the president's claim that he is above the law?

What American could have imagined that if such crimes and travesties occurred, nothing would be done about them and that the media and opposition party would be largely silent?

Except for a few columnists, who are denounced by "conservatives" as traitors for defending the Bill of Rights, the defense of US civil liberty has been limited to the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. The few federal judges who have refused to genuflect before the Bush police state are denounced by attorney general Alberto Gonzales as a "grave threat" to US security. Vice president Richard Cheney called a federal judge's ruling against the Bush regime's illegal and unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program "an indefensible act of judicial overreaching."

Brainwashed "conservatives" are so accustomed to denouncing federal judges for "judicial activism" that Cheney's charge of overreach goes down smoothly. Vast percentages of the American public are simply unconcerned that their liberty can be revoked at the discretion of a police or military officer and that they can be held without evidence, trial or access to attorney and tortured until they confess to whatever charge their torturers wish to impose.

Americans believe that such things can only happen to "real terrorists," despite the overwhelming evidence that most of the Bush regime's detainees have no connections to terrorism.

When these points are made to fellow citizens, the reply is usually that "I'm doing nothing wrong. I have nothing to fear."

Why, then, did the Founding Fathers write the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

American liberties are the result of an 800 year struggle by the English people to make law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of government. For centuries English speaking peoples have understood that governments cannot be trusted with unaccountable power. If the Founding Fathers believed it was necessary to tie down a very weak and limited central government with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, these protections are certainly more necessary now that our government has grown in size, scope and power beyond the imagination of the Founding Fathers.

But, alas, "law and order conservatives" have been brainwashed for decades that civil liberties are unnecessary interferences with the ability of police to protect us from criminals. Americans have forgot that we need protection from government more than we need protection from criminals. Once we cut down civil liberty so that police may better pursue criminals and terrorists, where do we stand when government turns on us?

This is the famous question asked by Sir Thomas More in the play, A Man for All Seasons. The answer is that we stand naked, unprotected by law. It is an act of the utmost ignorance and stupidity to assume that only criminals and terrorists will stand unprotected.

Americans should be roused to fury that attorney general Alberto Gonzales and vice president Cheney have condemned the defense of American civil liberty as "a grave threat to US security." This blatant use of an orchestrated and propagandistic fear to create a "national security" wedge against the Bill of Rights is an impeachable offense.

Mark my words, the future of civil liberty in the US depends on the impeachment and conviction of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

2006-11-20T13:18:00.000-06:00

The Democrats & Civil Liberties
Will They Turn A Blind Eye To The
Destruction Of The Bill Of Rights?
By Paul Craig Roberts

















Unless November's new blood improves the Democratic Party's civil liberties pedigree, the Democrats will have failed even before they are sworn in next January.

In its disregard for truth, public opinion, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, the US Constitution and statutory law, the Bush administration has been more of a regime than an administration. The Bush/Cheney executive branch has operated independently of all the constraints that provide accountability and prevent despotism.

The Bush regime was able to evade these restraints, because Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and because Republicans wielded 9/11 as a weapon to forestall political opposition.

With signing statements and other unilateral declarations of presidential authority, the Bush regime asserted executive branch powers beyond the reach of Congress and the judiciary.

The Bush regime was a coup d'etat against the Bill of Rights and the jurisdictions of Congress and the courts. Unless Democrats roll back this coup, Americans have seen the last of their civil liberties.

Judging by Democrats' statements in the flush of their electoral victory, Democrats have little, if any, awareness of this critical fact. Democrats are anxious to get on with their agendas and have shown no recognition that the first order of business is to repeal the legislation that permits torture, warrantless detention and domestic spying.

If Bush threatens to veto the resurrection of US civil liberty, the Democrats can impeach Bush as a tyrant as well as for pushing America into an illegal and catastrophic war on the basis of lies and deception.

Bush is the most impeachable president in American history. However, the incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has declared impeachment to be "off the table." Obviously, this means that Bush will not be held accountable and that the Bill of Rights is a casualty of the vague, undefined, and propagandistic "war on terror."

Do Pelosi and the incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have the intellect and character to deliver the leadership required for Americans to remain a free people? Instead of bemoaning the damage Bush has done to civil liberty, Democrats are up in arms over one child in five being raised in poverty. The more important question is whether children are being raised as a free people protected by civil liberties from arbitrary government power.

Do Democrats share the delusion of Bush supporters that it is only Middle Eastern terrorists who are deprived of the protection of the US Constitution? One can understand the reluctance of Americans to extend constitutional protection to terrorists who are trying to kill Americans. However, without these protections, there is no way of ascertaining who is a terrorist.

Currently, a "terrorist" is anyone given that designation by any of a large number of unaccountable government officials and military officers. No evidence has to be provided in order to detain a designated suspect. Moreover, designated suspects can be convicted in military tribunals on the basis of secret evidence not made available to them or to any legal representation that they might be able to secure. In other words, you are guilty if charged.

As the case of US citizen Jose Padilla makes clear, these gestapo police state proceedings apply to Americans. Padilla was declared to be an "enemy combatant." He was held in a US prison for three and one-half years with no charges and no warrant. He was kept in isolated confinement, tortured, and denied legal representation.

In order to avoid US Supreme Court jurisdiction over the case, the Bush regime filed charges after stealing three and one-half years of Padilla's life. However, the charges have no relationship to the Bush regime's original allegations that Padilla, an Hispanic-American, was an al Qaeda operative who was going to set off a radioactive dirty bomb in an American city. The US government no longer designates Padilla as an "enemy combatant." The dirty bomb charge has disappeared, and US Federal District Judge Marcia Cooke has criticized the government's indictment as vague with sketchy evidence "weak on facts."

The reason that the Bush regime wants to detain people indefinitely without evidence is that it has no evidence. The reason the Bush regime passed torture legislation is in order to produce the missing evidence by torturing a suspect into self-incrimination. "Evidence" procured by torture has been illegal in civilized societies for centuries. But the Bush regime has resurrected the medieval rack and substituted it for the Bill of Rights.

If Democrats cannot bring themselves to rectify the inhumane and barbaric practices that now pass for US justice, then they, too, have failed the American people.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolutin (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholar journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.

2006-11-15T09:11:00.000-06:00

Joe Weaselman

Lieberman - Stooge of Israel retains seat.

I'm sure AIPAC is pleased, myself and others are not - way to go Connecticut.

Idiots...and another raspberry goes out to Doug Thompson for (again) deleting commentary on his website.

Why is rational discussion about American/Israeli relations forbidden in our country?

2006-11-13T12:29:00.000-06:00

Like Cornered Rats...

GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever

RALL 11/7/06

NEW YORK--"My fellow Americans," assured incoming president Gerald Ford hours after the Watergate scandals forced Richard Nixon to resign, "our long national nightmare is over."

I'm tempted, in the aftermath of the widest and most stunning electoral repudiation of Republicanism since Watergate, to mark the Democratic recapture of governorships, the House of Representatives (and probably the Senate) as the beginning of the end of Bush's fascism lite, and thus a long overdue vindication of what I've been saying about him since his December 2000 coup d'état.

Back in 2001 and 2002, state-controlled media called me radical. Now, with most Americans seeing things my way, I'm mainstream. Yet I'm more scared now.

"Iraq," I wrote a week before the 2003 invasion, "will probably be Bush's Waterloo." And so it has been: Exit polls found voters more motivated by opposition to the war than any other issue. "There was general revulsion in the country, particularly among Democrats and independents, against the conduct of the war in Iraq," said pollster John Zogby. "This was, at the grass roots, a referendum against the war and the president. For Republicans, there was significant disappointment about opportunities lost through enormous budget deficits, threats to civil liberties, a failed social agenda, and the war." Although Democrats failed to nationalize the election, Iraq succeeded: a pitiful seven percent of respondents to the latest Gallup survey still want to "stay the course."

A White House controlled by an unpopular, highly partisan lame duck, a rival party majority without enough votes in Congress to override his veto, and the early start of a highly anticipated 2008 presidential campaign add up to one likely result: gridlock. Bush's legislative and military agendas are dead. But our long national nightmare has just begun.

A Frightening New Security State

We'll be cleaning up Bush's mess long after his scheduled abdication on January 20, 2009. But the trillions of dollars in national debt he has run up and his two losing wars will drain our economy for decades to come. We've provoked a new generation of terrorists. Yet even more damaging and nearly impossible to unravel will be the threats to Americans posed by the neofascist national security apparatus the Bushists will leave behind--unless they use it to remain in power.

Shortly after 9/11 Bush began the first of a long series of power grabs that have transformed him from the leader of a country beholden to its people to an authoritarian despot. He signed a secret executive order granting himself the right to declare anyone in the world, including a U.S. citizen, an "enemy combatant"--without proof--and order him assassinated. Violating federal law and privacy rights, Bush authorized the NSA to listen to our phone calls and read our e-mail. FBI, CIA and HomeSec goons "disappeared" thousands of people into a horrible new matrix of concentration camps and secret prisons.

On October 17, 2006 Bush signed the Military Commissions Act. The new law, scarcely mentioned in the media, is breathtaking for the breadth of its attack on basic rights. Under the MCA either the president or the secretary of defense may declare you an "enemy combatant"--as usual, without proof. Under that designation you may be jailed, without the right to an attorney, for the rest of your life. You can even be tortured. Your U.S. citizenship can't protect you. And it's all "legal."

Concentration Camps

In January 2006 HomeSec awarded a $385 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton Co., to build "temporary detention and processing capabilities"--internment camps--"in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

The question, asks Progressive magazine editor Ruth Conniff, "is what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?" After all, Bush and other Republican leaders have spent five years calling Democrats and others who disagree with them traitors and terrorists. Following so much hateful rhetoric, you can't blame liberals for wondering whether they too are about to be declared "enemy combatants." They're not paranoid; they're just paying attention.

And Now, Martial Law

About a week ago some left-wing bloggers began circulating rumors that Bush had secretly signed something called the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" that "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.'" I couldn't find the text of the law at the time, formerly H.R. 5122, or a reliable media account, so I decided not to report on it.

I can now confirm the bloggers' account. Bush signed the JWDAA hours after the MCA, in a furtive closed-door White House ceremony. There is, buried deep down in Title V, Subtitle B, Part II, Section 525(a) of the JWDAA, a coup. The Bush Administration has quietly stolen the National Guard away from the states.

Here's the relevant section of Public Law 109-364:

"The [military] Secretary [of the Army, Navy or Air Force] concerned may order a member of a reserve component under the Secretary's jurisdiction to active duty...The training or duty ordered to be performed...may include...support of operations or missions undertaken by the member's unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense."

The National Guard, used to maintain order during natural disasters and civil disturbances and the sole vehicle available under U.S. law to enforce a declaration of martial law, has previously been controlled by state governors. They have now been stripped of that control. Thanks to the JWDAA, Bush or Rumsfeld can now deploy National Guardsmen in American cities without obtaining permission from state governors.

Section 526 of the Warner Act goes further still. It states that the "Governor of a State...with the consent of the [military] Secretary concerned, may order a member of the National Guard to perform Active Guard and Reserve duty..." The key word is "may." A governor can no longer deploy the Guard in his or her state without first getting Rumsfeld's permission.

Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sounded the alarm during senatorial debate, but U.S. state-controlled media ignored him. The Warner Act, he said, "includes language that 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...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."

Only one governor, Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, made a fuss over the Warner Act. A spokesman for the National Governors Association requested a wimpy "clarification" concerning what circumstances might prompt Bush to impose martial law. As far as I can determine this column marks the first time the JWDAA has been mentioned in the mainstream media.

Now the dark men who engineered America's post-9/11 police state have watched the public reject their policies. The incoming Democratic majority Congress will be able to hold hearings and launch investigations that could lead to their indictments and removal from office. John Dingell, the liberal incoming chairman of the Commerce Committee did nothing to dissuade GOP fears of "a blizzard of subpoenas": "As the Lord High Executioner said in 'The Mikado,'" Dingell recently joked, "I have a little list."

A year of crisis commences.

As ugly secrets surface, Bushists will turn desperate. Democracy has failed their grand schemes; token resignations like Rumsfeld's come too little, too late. Only tyranny can save their skins. Will the beleaguered neocons led by Cheney and Bush, cornered like rats, unleash their brand-new police state on their political opponents? Or will they tough it out and suck up the fines and prison sentences to come? The next year or two could go either way.

The nightmare is not over.

2006-11-09T11:37:00.000-06:00

A Lesson on Power...

Main Entry: ¹pow·er
Pronunciation: 'pau(-&)r
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French poer, pouer, from poer to be able, from Vulgar Latin *potEre, alteration of Latin posse -- more at POTENT
1 a (1) : ability to act or produce an effect (2) : ability to get extra-base hits (3) : capacity for being acted upon or undergoing an effect b : legal or official authority, capacity, or right
2 a : possession of control, authority, or influence over others b : one having such power; specifically : a sovereign state c : a controlling group : ESTABLISHMENT -- often used in the phrase the powers that be d archaic : a force of armed men e chiefly dialect : a large number or quantity
3 a : physical might b : mental or moral efficacy c : political control or influence

In their criminal pursuit of supremacy, duh-bya and his political minions forgot, or had never learned the limits of power and the hazards of arrogance.

The voters just taught them that lesson - and showed them there is a power greater than either themselves or the deity they pretend to worship.

We The People...

2006-11-03T13:17:00.000-06:00

This is not an election...

It's an intervention.

When you lose the support of a Reich Wing nutter like Andrew Sullivan it's game over - you lose.

2006-10-25T22:09:00.000-05:00

Stooge's of Israel...

A funny thing happened today on the Capitol Hill Blue site, I posted in a thread about Joe Lieberman calling him a "stooge of Israel" and the editor deleted the comment and called it "anti-semitic" - I can only assume the editor is none other than Doug Thompson.

Until today I had a lot of respect for Doug as he *seemed* to be a man of integrity who told it like it is - I now have doubts about that, now I'm wondering if he's not just another of bought and paid for AIPAC whore.

There is nothing anti-semitic about telling the truth about how much influence the (piss ant) country of Israel has over Americas politicians - the picture below (pulled from Ha'aretz) is all the proof a person needs. (large image, save to disk to view)

Fuck Israel - it's well past time to kick those murderous bastards lobby out of Washington, they exert entirely to much influence over both our elections and foreign policy.

2006-10-23T20:36:00.000-05:00

FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS:

Locations and Executive Orders

There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general’s signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached. Ask yourself if you really want to be on Ashcroft’s list.

The Rex 84 Program was established on the reasoning that if a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA. Rex 84 allowed many military bases to be closed down and to be turned into prisons.

Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.

The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.

Now let’s review the justification for any actions taken…

Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:…

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990

allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995

allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997

allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998

allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports, and waterways.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999

allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000

allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001

allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002

designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005

allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051

specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310

grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049

assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.

When you examine the changes President Bush had made in regard martial law via Executive Orders, anyone with an understanding of the broad powers they bestow on President Bush immediately asks why the United Sates would adopt such draconian measures – even in a national emergency!

These new orders, if ever implemented, will give President all of the powers of a dictator, effectively blinding the American public as to what is happening both within the US and abroad by taking over all communications, which include the news media, radio, and the Internet. The public would hear only what the government deems necessary, effectively quashing free speech and even the public’s right to know what is happening within their own country.

Read the Executive Orders thoroughly and ask yourself why a free and democratic Republic would ever need such severe measures? These orders and directives rival and actually surpass the old Soviet Union and China in their severity – and are not a measure our democratic republic would need under any foreseeable emergency, especially when one specific individual would assume complete and absolute control of every segment of our society without any oversight - or even the ability of the people to know what our government is doing… In this author’s opinion, these Executive Orders are possibly the gravest danger to our democracy – and without doubt, completely void all of our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Welcome to the Fourth Reich...

2006-10-10T20:38:00.000-05:00

Why Does Habeas Corpus Hate America

By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Tuesday 10 October 2006

Because the Mark Foley story began to break the night of September 28th, exploding the following day, many people may not have noticed a bill passed by the Senate that night.

Our third story on the Countdown tonight, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and what it does to something called "habeas corpus."

And before we reduce the very term "habeas corpus" to something vaguely recalled as sounding kinda like the cornerstone of freedom, or maybe kinda like a character from "Harry Potter," we thought a Countdown Special Investigation was in order.

Congress passed The Military Commissions Act to give Mr. Bush the power to deal effectively with America's enemies - those who seek to harm this country.

And he has been very clear about who that is:

"… for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America."

So the president said it was urgent that Congress send him this bill as quickly as possible, not for the politics of next month's elections, but for America.

"The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Because time was of the essence - and to ensure that the 9/11 families would wait no longer - as soon as he got the bill, President Bush whipped out his pen and immediately signed a statement saying he looks forward to signing the actual law … eventually.

He hasn't signed it yet, almost two weeks later, because he has been swamped by a series of campaign swings at which he has made up quotes from unnamed Democratic leaders, and because when he is actually at work, he's been signing so many other important bills, such as: The Credit Rating Agency Reform Act; the Third Higher Education Extension Act; ratification requests for extradition treaties with Malta, Estonia and Latvia; his proclamation of German-American Day; the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Act; and his proclamation of Leif Erikson Day.

Still, getting the Military Commissions Act to the President so he could immediately mull it over for two weeks was so important, some members of Congress didn't even read the bill before voting on it. Thus, has some of its minutiae, escaped scrutiny.

One bit of trivia that caught our eye was the elimination of habeas corpus. which apparently used to be the right of anyone who's tossed in prison, to appear in court and say, "Hey, why am I in prison?"

Why does habeas corpus hate America … and how is it so bad for us?

Mr. Bush says it gets in the way of him doing his job.

[video clip] Bush: " … we cannot be able to tell the American people we're doing our full job unless we have the tools necessary to do so. And this legislation passed in the House yesterday is a part of making sure that we do have the capacity to protect you. Our most solemn job is the security of this country."

It may be solemn …

[video clip] Bush: "I do solemnly swear … "

But is that really his job? In this rarely seen footage, Mr. Bush is clearly heard describing a different job.

[video clip] … to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States..

Countdown has obtained a copy of this "Constitution of the United States."

And sources tell us it was originally snuck through the Constitutional Convention and state ratification in order to establish America's fundamental legal principles.

But this so-called Constitution is frustratingly vague about the right to trial. In fact, there's only one reference to habeas corpus at all. Quote: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

But even Democrats who voted against the Military Commissions Act concede that it doesn't actually suspend habeas corpus.

[video clip] Leahy: The bill before the Senate would not merely suspend the great writ, the great writ of habeas corpus, it would eliminate it permanently.

And there is considerable debate whether the conditions for suspending habeas corpus, rebellion or invasion, have been met.

[video clip] Leahy: conditions for suspending habeas corpus have not been met.

[video clip] Kerry: We're not in a rebellion, nor are we being invaded.

[video clip] Specter: We do not have a rebellion or an invasion.

[video clip] Biden: The United States is neither in a state of rebellion nor invasion.

[video clip] Byrd: We are not in the midst of a rebellion, and there is no invasion.

Countdown has learned that habeas corpus actually predates the "Constitution," meaning it's not just pre-September 11th thinking, it's also pre-July 4th thinking.

In those days, no one imagined that enemy combatants might one day attack Americans on native soil.

In fact, Countdown has obtained a partially redacted copy of a colonial "declaration" indicating that back then, "depriving us of Trial by Jury" was actually considered sufficient cause to start a War of Independence, based on the then-fashionable idea that "liberty" was an unalienable right.

Today, thanks to modern, post-9/11 thinking, those rights are now fully alienable.

The reality is, without habeas corpus, a lot of other rights lose their meaning.

But if you look at the actual Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to that pesky Constitution - you'll see just how many remain.

Well, ok, Number One's gone.

If you're detained without trial, you lose your freedom of religion, speech, the press and assembly. And you can't petition the government for anything.

Number Two? While you're in prison, your right to keep and bear arms just may be infringed upon.

Even if you're in the NRA.

Three?

No forced sleepovers by soldiers at your house. OK. Three is unchanged.

Four?

You're definitely not secure against searches and seizures, with or without probable cause - and this isn't even limited to the guards.

Five … Grand juries and due process are obviously out.

Six. So are trials, let alone the right to counsel. Speedy trials? You want it when?

Seven. Hmmmm. I thought we covered "trials" and "juries" earlier.

Eight - So bail's kind of a moot point …

Nine: "Other" rights retained by the people. Well, if you can name them during your water-boarding, we'll consider them.

And Ten - powers not delegated to the United States federal government seem to have ended up there, anyway.

So as you can see, even without habeas corpus, at least one tenth of the Bill of Rights, I guess that's the Bill of "Right" now … remains virtually intact.

And we can rest easy knowing we will never, ever have to quarter soldiers in our homes … as long as the Third Amendment still stands strong.

The President can take care of that with a Signing Statement.

2006-10-09T20:03:00.000-05:00

Dereliction of Duty

2006-10-08T17:31:00.000-05:00

Revolt of the Generals

2006-10-07T21:00:00.000-05:00

Will November Bring Hope or Another Stolen Election?

2006-10-06T08:11:00.000-05:00

A Call To Arms...

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It is time to march on Washington - to reestablish government as the Founding Fathers intended it.

Men of conviction and courage took up arms to throw off tyranny - are there any true Americans left, or have we become a nation of cowards who willingly lick the hands of those who beat them?

2006-10-05T07:55:00.000-05:00

Nation or Notion?

2006-10-04T15:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

2006-10-03T17:23:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Fascist America!

by Gene Callahan

My fellow Americans, it’s official now: We live in a fascist nation.

Now, the term "fascist" has been thrown around over the last fifty years in a loose way that has drained it of much of its meaning. If someone wanted to cut 5% off of a leftist professor's favourite welfare programme, the professor would call his opponent a "fascist." I’m not using the word like that. I mean honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, 1930s style fascism, featuring such old favourites as:

* Secret prisons – they’re back!
* Torture – we’re doing it.
* Spying on all citizens.
* Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial.
* Rampant militarism.
* Secret detention.
* Enforced disappearance.
* Denial and restriction of habeas corpus.
* Prolonged incommunicado detention.
* Unfair trial procedures.

(This list was compiled partially based on the work of Amnesty International.)

An absolutely mind-numbing response to complaints that our traditional legal system is being torn apart is the question, "So, you want to protect the rights of terrorists?"

Um, no, I want to protect the rights of non-terrorists who might be falsely accused of terrorism! That was sort of, you know, the whole idea of our legal system. I’m sure there was some neo-con around in the 1700s saying to Jefferson or Madison, "So, you want to protect the rights of murderers and robbers?" but luckily they ignored him.

We’ve now gotten to the point where Nazi Germany was, say, in 1934. Remember, at that time, if you had told a typical German what his government would do over the next ten years, he would have looked at you as a madman. After all, his land had been civilized for over a thousand years. His was the nation of Albertus Magnus, Gutenberg, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Bach, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Heisenberg, Reimann, Mann, Lessing, Herder, Handel, Dürer, Leibniz, Gauss, Helmholtz – he could have gone on, but you get the point. His nation could not possibly descend into barbarism! If you tried to tell him he was living in a police state, he would have pointed out that his government had used its vast new powers very judiciously, and only against a few trouble-makers. So far.

It is interesting, in gauging the direction we are heading, to look at the proclamations of "respectable" opinion writers who support this administration. For instance, we have people at a "libertarian" think tank proclaiming that Moslems are not entitled to full civil rights in the US. (Perhaps we need to make them wear something special on their clothing like, say, a yellow star, so we know just who they are, hey?) But "conservatives" provide even more stunning examples of purely fascist reasoning. For example, conservative demagogue Ann Coulter has called for the editor of The NY Times to face the firing squad for his part in publicizing this administration's abuses of power. Let’s look at a recent column by Douglas MacKinnon at TownHall.com.

MacKinnon considers all of those involved in revealing the sordid collection of secret programmes that have been launched by the Bush administration as "traitors" who have publicized these schemes "purely because they don’t like the policies of the new president." Well, he’s right in that "they don’t like the policies" that they consider unconstitutional violations of our rights. Far from "aiding the enemy," these revelations aided us, the American people, by letting us know what our government has in store for us.

Consider what the point of classifying these programmes was in the first place, and who they were being kept secret from. The jihadists no doubt already knew about the secret prisons – their friends are in them! They surely knew that the war in Iraq has been helping their recruiting – it’s their recruiting! ("Praise be to Allah, Abdul, I read in The NY Times that it is the Iraq War that is sending us these thousands of new recruits – who knew?") They no doubt suspect they may be wiretapped – what they didn’t know was that all the rest of us are, as well. No, not one of these leaks helps terrorists, nor was one of them classified to stop terrorists from finding them out. We were the ones who weren’t supposed to find out about them.

MacKinnon continues: "And if even one American lost his or her life because of a leak, then I would want that person to be executed for treason."

So anyone who reveals our fascist government policies is a traitor who can be executed! This is obviously an attempt to intimidate the opposition so that our police state can be expanded without the annoying work stoppages caused by public outcry when the latest bit of construction is revealed. And just how does MacKinnon propose to show that some American lost his life because a journalist revealed that the US government tortures people across the globe, rather than, say, because the policies he supports have inspired a million new jihadists? Secret trial, perhaps? Or why even bother with trials for filthy traitors?

Herr Goebbels – oops, I mean MacKinnon – writes, "Until we severely punish those who leak classified information, then the traitors among us will not only continue to flourish, but will grow more brazen with the secrets they reveal."

Yes, what we ought to be able to do, you know, is simply seize anyone who even mentions our government’s "secret" prisons, and, without a trial, throw them in a secret prison! This is the logical conclusion of this fascist’s article, after all, since those who talk about the American Gulag are pretty much terrorists themselves.

Folks, this is coming real soon, and, once it does, domestic opposition is pretty much over. One journalist – that will be about all it takes – will be seized as a "terrorist" and thrown in the Gulag. The government may release him, but then another will simply disappear in the night in Iraq or Afghanistan, and rumors will circulate that he is being kept in a cage somewhere and waterboarded. No journalist lacking heroic courage will any longer be willing to seriously protest government policy.

America is full of decent people, who could never believe their own government could become fascist. So were Germany and Italy in the 1920s. But they became fascist anyway. They passed laws suspending civil liberties, but the government promised the frightened populace that those laws would only be used against targets like "Communist terrorists." And, a little bit at a time, the target kept getting bigger and bigger, slowly enough that the people who weren’t paying close attention never detected it.

And, next thing you know, there were millions of people dead! So, it turns out, it would have been worth paying attention after all.

2006-10-02T22:21:00.000-05:00

Kindasleazy - Nest of Lies

"I beez fitin fo my Massa"

2006-10-01T21:47:00.000-05:00

Powell was fired by Duh-bya

Why am I not surprised that the only competent person in the cabal was fired?

2006-09-30T21:14:00.000-05:00

Impeach, indict, arrest, and prosecute duh-bya the war criminal.

2006-09-29T16:04:00.000-05:00

The Death of Freedom

Habeas Corpus

2006-09-28T14:49:00.000-05:00

He Wrote the Book on Torture

I'm old enough to remember when Americans were the good guys.

Under duh-bya we have become torturers - and unfit to lead the world.

2006-09-27T08:22:00.000-05:00

Kindasleazy - Incompetent Liar
2001 memo to Rice contradicts statements about Clinton

Duh-bya's whore tries to cover "Massa's" ass.

Fake News That Delivers The Truth

2006-09-25T13:31:00.000-05:00

The Rise of Jihadistan

Why do they call Afghanistan the "Graveyard of Empires" Unka Dick?

2006-09-24T11:58:00.000-05:00

Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

Whether Osama is Dead or Alive: U.S. Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat.

Duh-bya Has Betrayed the National Security of the United States of America. "National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence."

Hey duh-bya - where's Osama?

Impeach this brain dead mother fucker - do it for Americas sake.

2006-09-23T21:27:00.000-05:00

Hot as "the devil."

By Peggy Noonan (R - Insane)

If there is a Satan he has a hot-tub in Hell reserved for this Nazi bitch.

2006-09-22T08:41:00.000-05:00

'Republicans Will Make History'

Translation: When you own the voting machines you cannot lose.

2006-09-21T15:32:00.000-05:00

Petulant Punk or Callow Cunt?

In summer 2001, less than six months into his presidency while confronting congressional obstacles to his domestic program, Bush told followers that he was ready to “go back to Crawford” if he didn’t get his way on legislation.

I'll buy a plane ticket for the Cunt-mmander in Chief - just say the word and a check will be in the mail.

Grow some fucking balls America - demand this cocksuckers impeachment today!

2006-09-20T19:10:00.000-05:00

Got Depends?

Poor Mortimer - incontinence must be a bitch.

2006-09-19T21:39:00.000-05:00

Unacceptable..

I live in a country where thinking is not only acceptable but mandatory. We're waiting for your apology duh-bya - but we won't be holding our breath.

Impeach this anti-American motherfucker.

2006-09-18T19:11:00.000-05:00

Ashamed to be an American

I never thought I would reach the point where I was ashamed of my country.

I was wrong.

2006-09-17T22:25:00.000-05:00

Existential Threat?

Countries are never brought down from the outside - unless they are rotten inside.

The only existential threat the United States faces is squatting in the White House.

Impeach duh-bya.

2006-09-16T19:58:00.000-05:00

Defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan?

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, America appears to have three options. Put in more U.S. troops and go all out for the victory of which duh-bya speaks. Stay the course, which holds no promise of victory or of any early end to either war. Begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces and accept the consequences, which could well be what the cocksucker in chief warns – calamitous.

The decision is up to duh-bya and the new Congress, but also to us. No matter which decision we make, Americans are headed for a long, dark night of recriminations not unlike the Truman-McCarthy era.

Impeach the motherfucker.

2006-09-15T13:49:00.000-05:00

There Is No War On Terror

By: Robert Dreyfuss

President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney and the entire Republican election team are scrambling to make their so-called war on terror the focus of the next seven weeks. As in 2002 and 2004, they’re counting on their ability to scare Americans with the al-Qaida bogeyman. And while the trauma of 9/11 has begun to dissipate and American voters seem less susceptible than ever to the scare tactics used by the White House, for the past five years the Democrats have been singularly unable to develop an effective counter to the Bush administration on terrorism. So, for that reason, here are 10 important facts about terrorism that opponents of President Bush should understand.

Part of what follows is derived from a series of some two dozen interviews I conducted over the summer with leading U.S. counterterrorism officials, many of whom served in top posts during the Bush administration. Not all of them agree with each other, nor with all of my conclusions, which can be found in the Sept. 21 issue of Rolling Stone . But most of them served on the front lines of the so-called "war on terror." If U.S. counterterrorism efforts were run by these officials, instead of Bush and Cheney, those efforts would look radically different than they do today.

I. The threat of terrorism is wildly exaggerated.

A strong and convincing case that the al-Qaida bogeyman is inflated far beyond the real but limited threat that it poses is made in the current issue of Foreign Affairs , in an article by political scientist John Mueller. He and others argue persuasively that the reason the United States has not been attacked since 9/11 is that terrorists are far less powerful than the White House claims. “If al Qaeda operatives are as determined and inventive as assumed, they should be here by now. If they are not yet here, they must not be trying very hard or must be far less dedicated, diabolical, and competent than the common image would suggest,” writes Mueller. Why haven’t the Democrats picked up this argument?

II. Al-Qaida barely exists at all as a threat.

The organization that attacked the United States on 9/11 has been shattered and pushed to the brink of extinction, despite claims to the contrary of the vast anti-terrorism industrial complex and its journalistic heavy-breathers. I interviewed Carl Ford, the former assistant secretary of state for intelligence, who told me:

We’re overstating their capability, because we can’t believe that there isn’t a more nefarious explanation for the fact that we haven’t been attacked. There aren’t a lot of terrorists out there, and they’re not 10-feet tall. … One appealing hypothesis is: they’ve been damaged more than we know.

The Democrats should stop ringing alarm bells about al-Qaida and explain calmly that the terrorist threat, which was small five years ago, has been greatly reduced since 9/11.

III. There is no Terrorist International.

President Bush lumps the remnants of al-Qaida together with states such as Iran and Syria, the resistance movement in Iraq, insurgent political parties such as Hezbollah and Hamas and other assorted entities into one, big “Islamofascist” enemy. Nothing could be more ill-informed or further from the truth. "That's an oversimplification of the task of dealing with the tactic [terrorism] that is used by many different groups, with many different ideologies," Paul R. Pillar, a former top CIA analyst and the author of a respected book on terrorism, told The Washington Post . "It leads to a misunderstanding of the need of what is in fact a different counterterrorist policy for each group and state we are dealing with. . . . Hamas is an entirely different entity than al-Qaeda. . . . Their objectives are very much different." Pillar said much the same thing to me. Bush claims that al-Qaida and its terrorist allies want to create an “empire than spans from Spain to Indonesia.” Not a chance. Larry Wilkerson, the former top aide to Colin Powell, told me: “I don’t think there’s a soul in the administration, except for Vice President Dick Cheney, who believes that crap about Islamofascism.” Why don’t Democrats ridicule this specific sort of fear-mongering?

IV. Iraq will not, and could not, fall to al-Qaida.

The Iraqi resistance is overwhelmingly made up of Sunni, former Baathist, nationalist members of Iraq’s former military and intelligence services, Sunni tribal leaders and just plain old “pissed-off Iraqis.” It is not al-Qaida. When Bush says that by leaving Iraq we would turn Iraq over to the al-Qaida types, he is making the same false argument that he made five years ago. Then, he told us that Saddam Hussein backed Osama bin Laden. Now, he tells us that pro-Saddam Hussein Iraqis back pro-bin Laden al-Qaida types. He lied then and he is lying now.

V. The Taliban is not al-Qaida.

In 2001, the Taliban and al-Qaida may have had a marriage of convenience. But, as in many marriages, it was not a happy one. Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership were suspicious and resentful of al-Qaida, and some Taliban leaders were openly hostile to bin Laden. Today, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan is a sad reminder that Bush bungled Afghanistan, too—but the Taliban fighters are Afghan Islamists, like the mujahideen that the CIA supported in the 1980s. They are not Arabs or foreign fighters, and they are not al-Qaida. If the Taliban pose a threat to U.S. interests, it is not a terrorist one.

VI. Neither Iran nor Syria sponsor anti-U.S. terrorism.

Al-Qaida has zero support in Iran and Syria. The Syrian regime is fiercely hostile to al-Qaida-style fundamentalist Islam. Iran, a Shiite theocracy, is bitterly hostile to Sunni fundamentalism and to al-Qaida. Although both countries tactically support Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel and although Iran routinely assassinates opposition leaders abroad, neither country has attacked the United States in decades. The few al-Qaida leaders—including Osama bin Laden’s son—reported to be in Iran are under house arrest and do not lead operations for the shattered terrorist group. Yet that hasn’t stopped Bush administration officials, such as Nicholas Burns of the State Department, from accusing Iran of “harboring” al-Qaida. Nonsense.

VII. It is not a “war.”

Although the Pentagon has garnered 90 percent of the money for the so-called war on terrorism, and although the Pentagon’s special operations command is supposedly in charge of the “war,” it is not a war. Terrorism cannot be fought with tanks, planes and missiles. The Defense Department cannot invade the London suburbs or mosques in Hamburg or the teeming cities of Pakistan. Cells of angry Muslims will coalesce spontaneously to seek revenge for real or alleged wrongs for decades to come. That is a problem for the CIA, the FBI, and, especially, foreign police and intelligence services, not Donald Rumsfeld’s legions. “I hate the term ‘global war on terrorism,’” John O. Brennan, who headed the National Counterterrorism Center until last year, told me. “The Department of Defense and others insist very strongly on calling it a war, because that allows the Pentagon to prosecute the military dimension of the conflict. It fits their strategy.”

VIII. There were never any al-Qaida sleeper cells in the United States.

In 2002, the Bush administration leaked to the press its assertion that al-Qaida had 5,000 “sleepers” in the United States, dormant agents that could be activated by Osama bin Laden. There were none—at least, not a single one has been found, and no terrorism has occurred in five years. No terrorism at all: In five years, no one in the United States has as much as been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim fundamentalist.

IX. Vulnerabilities are not threats.

The unnecessary, superfluous Department of Homeland Security is tracking countless points of vulnerability. Trains and trucks, buses and subways, chemical plants and factories, airports and ports, skyscrapers and bridges, tunnels and dams—the list of potential targets is endless. But the list of potential terrorists is infinitesimally small. Despite the recently uncovered London plot—details of which have still not been revealed and which is increasingly looking exaggerated—there hasn’t even been a single advanced terrorist plot uncovered in the United States since 9/11. President Bush gamely cites 10 supposed plots stopped by U.S. counterterrorism efforts, but on closer examination all 10 are either bogus or were to take place overseas. According to several top counterterrorism officials, the number of serious terrorist plots against the United States in the past five years is: zero.

X. No one is in charge.

After the creation of the DHS, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center, the U.S. Northern Command, the FBI’s new intelligence division and other counterterrorism agencies, no one is in charge. “We have a more confusing organization now,” Pillar told me. “It’s really hard to answer the question ‘Who’s in charge?’” Every agency, from the Pentagon to the lowliest police department, has used the threat of terrorism to win ever-larger appropriations from federal, state and local governments for the ostensible purpose of fighting terrorism. So far, none of them have found any actual terrorists—but the proliferation of competing agencies continues, and they continue to step on each other’s toes.

After 9/11, the Bush administration launched an open-ended war on an ambiguous enemy ("terror") while offering the nation no definition of what victory would look like. Five years later, the nation has spent billions in taxpayer dollars and lost thousands of American lives fighting a threat that should be the province of law enforcement and intelligence services, not the military. And the White House tells us there is no end in sight.

Mr. Bush: Do you still want the November election to be decided on this sorry record?

2006-09-14T12:41:00.000-05:00

Hack the vote? No problem

Sept. 13, 2006 | Having reported extensively on the security concerns that surround the use of electronic voting machines, I anxiously awaited the results of a new study of a Diebold touch-screen voting system, conducted by Princeton University. The Princeton computer scientists obtained the Diebold system with cooperation from VelvetRevolution, an umbrella organization of more than 100 election integrity groups, which I co-founded a few months after the 2004 election. We acquired the Diebold system from an independent source and handed it over to university scientists so that, for the first time, they could analyze the hardware, software and firmware of the controversial voting system. Such an independent study had never been allowed by either Diebold or elections officials.

The results of that study, released this morning, are troubling, to say the least. They confirm many of the concerns often expressed by computer scientists and security experts, as well as election integrity activists, that electronic voting -- and indeed our elections -- may now be exceedingly vulnerable to the malicious whims of a single individual.

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There's more to the story - click the link at the top and get a day pass from Salon to read the rest - when you absolutely, positively have to win Diebold has it covered.

2006-09-13T08:08:00.000-05:00

Oh Noes - teh Hitlar!

Here we go again with the Hitler bullshit - has anyone ever told this idiot about Godwins Law?

2006-09-12T17:07:00.000-05:00

Olbermann Bitch Slaps Duh-bya...

Keith Olbermann - Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

2006-09-10T14:58:00.000-05:00

"WE ARE ALL AMERICANS NOW"

September 11: The price we've paid

What a difference five years has made in world sentiment and opinion towards the United States - due to the inept policy and actions of duh-bya unconditional support has become unbridled hatred.

"Moral results can only be obtained through moral restraints."
--Mohandas Gandhi

2006-09-09T16:17:00.000-05:00

Whir-Beep-Click...

My name is GDUHBYAO - Human / Bush-bot relations.

Bend over and I will inseminate you with the essence of stupidity.

The links are for readers who have wondered where to find the final 30% which still support duh-bya - the 2nd link is particulary pathetic and typical of the fascist mentality of those who frequent the Free Republic website.

These war mongering sycophants pretend to be patriotic Americans - the reality is that they are unabashed apologists who will go out of their way to find excuses for the Christofascist in Chief and his Zionist henchmen - any excuse, no matter how weak is better than holding their hero accountable for 9/11.

They are no different than the cowardly sheeple who groveled at the feet of Hitler and licked the boots of his Nazi thugs - I'm old enough to remember when America stood up to people like this rather than join or become like them.

2006-09-08T18:00:00.000-05:00

The Emergence of Totalitarianism

Congress has failed us, the courts are in BushCo's pocket, our election system is broken - the only choice we (the People) have left is revolution - it is the only way to get back what the fascist in the White House has stolen.

Our freedom...

2006-09-07T20:15:00.000-05:00

All Fascism All the Time

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

--Benjamin Franklin

2006-09-06T08:15:00.000-05:00

Appeasement

Merriam-Webster defines appeasement as:

PACIFY, CONCILIATE; especially : to buy off (an aggressor) by concessions usually at the sacrifice of principles.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

What was once the dominant American attitude has now been drowned by a streak of timidity which grows stronger day by day - it has become clear that once again the United States faces an existential threat from fascism.

No - not from so-called "Islamofascists" but from a home grown variety of fascism, a threat composed of Zionists and Christofascists who have allied themselves in an effort to usurp our government and destroy the American way of life.

Appeasement did not end with the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Even afterward, many in the U.S. opposed active resistance. Members of the Bush crime family continued supporting the evil of Hitler with money and the raw materials of war, fascists among the American Legion and the American Bund sought to bring Nazism to America - and the communists opposed fighting Stalin's ally until Hitler invaded Russia.

In January 1942, when German armies were at the gates of Moscow, George Orwell wrote that "the greater part of the very young intelligentsia are anti-war ... don't believe in any 'defense of democracy,' are inclined to prefer Germany to Britain, and don't feel the horror of Fascism that we who are somewhat older feel."

When applied to the embodiment of pure evil there are echoes of Orwell's words in the attitude and words of many modern-day intellectuals such as Tony Blankley, their support for the insane foreign policy of George W. Bush is the moral equivalent of Neville Chamberlains appeasement of Adolph Hitler.

These so called intellectuals refuse to recognize who the real "terrorists" are, they seek to deceive the American public by the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments - make no mistake, we are at war, but to not recognize who the true enemy is a recipe for defeat.

Pundits from William Kristol to Charles Krauthammer join in Blankley's moral relativism by suggesting that the United States is better than its enemies through the actions it has taken to prevent terrorism. Just as 1940s pacifists could see no difference between Nazi concentration camps and American wartime curtailments of civil liberties, so today's doppelgangers equate the mass murder carried out by the Nazis to attacks by religious fanatics, - all the while overlooking the war crimes perpetuated by the United States and Israel.

The problem is that the stated demands of the Bush cabal are a pretext for their maniacal ambitions. Bush is unappeasable - to continue supporting the madman in the White House only whets his insatiable appetite for destruction, just as giving up the Sudetenland encouraged Hitler to seek more.

Orwell's words, written in October 1941, ring true today: "The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality."

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-- Thomas Jefferson.

2006-09-05T08:05:00.000-05:00

Has Duh-bya gone over the edge?

An increasing number of Republicans, ranging from former conservative Congressman Joe Scarborough to former President George H.W. Bush, worry that President George W. Bush's tenuous hold on reality is slipping away and the leader of the free world may be sliding into a full-fledged mental breakdown. Scarborough sounded the warning recently when he devoted an episode of his MSNBC talk show to the topic "Is Bush an Idiot?" Other published reports say even Bush's own father is worried about his son's mental state. Psychiatrists who have observed Bush during his presidency share this concern.

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Respect for Bush currently seems to be limited to the willfully ignorant, the feces eating sycophants, and the deranged - looks like there's some truth to the old saying, birds of a feather flock together.

2006-09-04T10:19:00.000-05:00

Baying for Blood...

The cowardice of George Duh-bya Bush knows no bounds. While Americans were dying on 9/11 he cowered in a hole like the worm he is.

Shameful...

2006-09-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

Henny Penny...

One day Henny-penny was picking up corn in the cornyard when–whack!– something hit her upon the head. “Goodness gracious me!” said Henny- penny; “the sky’s a-going to fall; I must go and tell the king.”

So she went along and she went along and she went along till she met Cocky-locky. “Where are you going, Henny-penny?” says Cocky-locky. "Oh! I’m going to tell the king the sky’s a-falling,” says Henny- penny. “May I come with you?” says Cocky-locky. “Certainly,” says Henny-penny. So Henny-penny and Cocky-locky went to tell-the king the sky was falling.

They went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Ducky-daddles. “Where are you going to, Henny-penny and Cocky- locky?” says Ducky-daddles. “Oh! we’re going to tell the king the sky’s a-falling,” said Henny-penny and Cocky-locky. “May I come with you?” says Ducky-daddles. “Certainly,” said Henny-penny and Cocky- locky. So Henny-penny, Cocky-locky and Ducky-daddles went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.

So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Goosey-poosey, “Where are you going to, Henny-penny, Cocky- locky and Ducky-daddles?” said Goosey-poosey. “Oh! we’re going to tell the king the sky’s a-falling,” said Henny-penny and Cocky-locky and Ducky-daddles. “May I come with you,” said Goosey-poosey. "Certainly,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky and Ducky-daddles. So Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles and Goosey-poosey went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.

So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Turkey-lurkey. “Where are you going, Henny-penny, Cocky- locky, Ducky-daddles, and Goosey-poosey?” says Turkey-lurkey. “Oh! we’re going to tell the king the sky’s a-falling,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles and Goosey-poosey. “May I come with you? Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles and Goosey-poosey?” said Turkey-lurkey. “Why, certainly, Turkey-lurkey,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, and Goosey-poosey. So Henny-penny, Cocky- locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey and Turkey-lurkey all went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.

So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they met Foxy-woxy, and Foxy-woxy said to Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey and Turkey-lurkey: “Where are you going, Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey- lurkey?” And Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey said to Foxy-woxy: “We’re going to tell the king the sky’s a-falling.” “Oh! but this is not the way to the king, Henny- penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey and Turkey-lurkey," says Foxy-woxy; “I know the proper way; shall I show it you?” “Why certainly, Foxy-woxy,” said Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey. So Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky- daddles, Goosey-poosey, Turkey-lurkey, and Foxy-woxy all went to tell the king the sky was a-falling.

So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they came to a narrow and dark hole. Now this was the door of Foxy-woxy’s cave. But Foxy-woxy said to Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey- lurkey: “This is the short way to the king’s palace you’ll soon get there if you follow me. I will go first and you come after, Henny- penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey." "Why of course, certainly, without doubt, why not?” said Henny-Penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey.

So Foxy-woxy went into his cave, and he didn’t go very far but turned round to wait for Henny-Penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey- poosey and Turkey-lurkey. So at last at first Turkey-lurkey went through the dark hole into the cave. He hadn’t got far when “Hrumph," Foxy-woxy snapped off Turkey-lurkey’s head and threw his body over his left shoulder. Then Goosey-poosey went in, and “Hrumph,” off went her head and Goosey-poosey was thrown beside Turkey-lurkey. Then Ducky- daddles waddled down, and “Hrumph,” snapped Foxy-woxy, and Ducky- daddles’ head was off and Ducky-daddles was thrown alongside Turkey- lurkey and Goosey-poosey. Then Cocky-locky strutted down into the cave and he hadn’t gone far when “Snap, Hrumph!” went Foxy-woxy and Cocky- locky was thrown alongside of Turkey-lurkey, Goosey-poosey and Ducky- daddles.

But Foxy-woxy had made two bites at Cocky-locky, and when the first snap only hurt Cocky-locky, but didn’t kill him, he called out to Henny-penny. So she turned tail and ran back home, so she never told the king the sky was a-falling.

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Moral of the story - don't believe everything you read, especially when the author is a liar with an agenda.

2006-09-02T22:37:00.000-05:00

Bush's continuing contempt for the Constitution

Going by the readers comments duh-bya is in deep shit, too bad that it's too late to do anything about it.

America is doomed, we are one "terrorist" attack away from it's death.

2006-09-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

The Nuremberg Standard

Bush Turns His Terror War On The Homeland
Retroactive Legislation Being Rushed To Protect
Administration Officials From War Crimes Prosecution

By Paul Craig Roberts
8-31-6

When I was a kid, John Wayne war movies gave us the message that America was the good guy, the white hat that fought the villain.

Alas, today the US and its last remaining non-coerced ally, Israel, are almost universally regarded as the bad guys over whom John Wayne would triumph. Today the US and Israel are seen throughout the world as war criminal states.

On August 23 the BBC reported that Amnesty International has brought war crimes charges against Israel for deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure as an "integral part" of Israel's strategy in its recent invasion of Lebanon.

Israel claims that its aggression was "self-defense" to dislodge Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. Yet, Israel bombed residential communities all over Lebanon, even Christian communities in the north in which no Hezbollah could possibly have been present.

United Nations spokesman Jean Fabre reported that Israel's attack on civilian infrastructure annihilated Lebanon's development: "Fifteen years of work have been wiped out in a month."

Israel maintains that this massive destruction was unintended "collateral damage."

President Bush maintains that Israel has "a right to protect itself" by destroying Lebanon.

Bush blocked the attempt to stop Israel's aggression and is, thereby, equally responsible for the war crimes. Indeed, a number of reports claim that Bush instigated the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

Bush has other war crime problems. Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, recently said that President Bush should be tried as a war criminal side by side with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars, Hussein for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The US Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crime charges under both the US War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration's military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.

President Bush and his Attorney General agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to US treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

One of Bush's changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in any American court.

Bush's other change would protect from prosecution any US government official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would also undo Senator John McCain's amendment against torture. Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice says that Bush's changes "immunize past crimes."

Under the US Constitution and US legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible. What do Americans think of their President's attempts to immunize himself, his government, CIA operatives, military personnel and civilian contractors from war crimes?

Apparently, the self-righteous morally superior American "Christian" public could care less. The Republican controlled House and Senate, which long ago traded integrity for power, are working to pass Bush's changes prior to the mid-term elections in the event the Republicans fail to steal three elections in a row and Democrats win control of the House or Senate.

Meanwhile, the illegal war in Iraq, based entirely on Bush administration lies, grinds on, murdering and maiming ever more people. According to the latest administration estimate, the pointless killing will go on for another 10-15 years.

Trouble is, there are no US troops to carry on the war. The lack of cannon fodder forces the Bush administration to resort to ever more desperate measures. The latest is the involuntary recall of thousands of Marines from the inactive reserves to active duty. Many attentive people regard this desperate measure as a sign that the military draft will be reinstated.

According to President Bush, the US will lose the "war on terror" unless the US succeeds in defeating "the Iraqi terrorists" by establishing "democracy in Iraq." Of course, insurgents resisting occupation are not terrorists, and there were no insurgents or terrorists in Iraq until Bush invaded.

Bush's unjustified invasion of Iraq and his support for Israeli aggression have done more to create terrorism in the Muslim world than Osama bin Laden could hope for. The longer Bush occupies Iraq and the more he tries to extend US/Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, the more terrorism the world will suffer.

Bush and the Zionist/neocon ideology that holds him captive are the greatest 21st century threats to peace and stability. The neoconized Bush regime invented the war on terror, lost it, and now is bringing terror home to the American people.

2006-08-31T15:48:00.000-05:00

International Pariah

Not So Clean Break

Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative

by Taki

Israel bombed southern Lebanon on July 12 in response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah fighters. But the Israelis were said to have planned a military campaign weeks before the soldiers were kidnapped. According to Dr. John Pike, head of the Washington-based think tank Global Strategies, and my friend Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large of the Washington Times and UPI, Israel had briefed Washington about its concerns, and the U.S. had given Israel a green light to attack Hezbollah and push its troops into southern Lebanon. There was an agreement between Israel and Uncle Sam that Iranian nuclear plants would eventually have to be bombed. Once this was done, Iran would most likely order Hezbollah to attack Israel. Thus the U.S. and Israel agreed in secret that at some point before the attack on Iran, Hezbollah would have to be disarmed and that as soon as a pretext became available, Israel should use force.

Elementary, my dear Watson. As everyone who does not live in a cave knows, whenever there is a glimmer of stability in the region, the state of Israel orders a targeted assassination. (Just before the Hezbollah kidnapping, there were targeted assassinations in Gaza.) On June 17, the former Israeli prime minister and chief hawk, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with Vice President Dick Cheney. Speaking to the London Spectator recently, Netanyahu suggested that President Bush had assured him Iran will be prevented from going nuclear. I take him at his word. Netanyahu seems to be the main mover in America’s official adoption of the 1996 white paper “A Clean Break,” authored by him and American fellow neocons, which aimed to aggressively remake the strategic environments of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. As they say in boxing circles, three down, two to go.

The trouble, of course, is that the three are not down. The U.S.-sponsored assault on Lebanon is looking a lot like the ill-fated Iraq invasion. In both cases we were told smart bombs would accomplish miracles. Not so. Stiff resistance on the ground and outrage throughout the world is the result. The Bush doctrine of creating democracy in the Middle East with bombs will go down in history as the cruelest and craziest ever. A war on terror, as Bush calls everything he doesn’t agree with, cannot be won by a democratically elected government acting like a terrorist organization. Killing civilians, especially children, is wrong. As Talleyrand cynically pointed out, “It is worse than a crime, it’s a mistake.”

The truth is that even friends of Israel—and there are many—do not believe for a moment that Hezbollah, Syria, or Iran really threaten Israel’s existence. Only a propagandist like John Podhoretz—“we should have killed many more Sunnis age 15 to 35”—and his bloodthirsty ilk of neocons believe such rubbish, and being a betting man I’d bet the farm that even they don’t. Normal, decent, sophisticated countries that claim the moral high ground, as Israel does, do not kill thousands of civilians and destroy the infrastructure of their neighbors because three soldiers were kidnapped. It was a set-up from day one.

Both sides, needless to say, claim victimhood. The U.S. and its allies invoke 9/11, Madrid, and London. The Arabs underline 1967, 1982, 2003, not to mention Der Yassin in 1948 and last month’s bombing of Qana. Yet we have three Arab territories today where American bombs and policies have played a major role in promoting chaos and mass death: Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon. Now we hear that the neocons want Syria and Iran to disintegrate next. Is there no one with any brains left in the White House? Don’t any of them understand that if any means were acceptable to fight one’s enemies, then the people who have bombed children in Israel and killed innocents at the World Trade Center would have been right? Not only were they morally wrong, we are doubly wrong to follow their example.

And speaking of lack of brainpower, isolating the Syrian ambassador to Washington cannot be the smartest thing to do. 18,000 Lebanese lost their lives when Israel attacked that miserable country in 1982, but Americans wonder why there are so many people who would spend six years building tunnels or sending suicide bombers. “We do not talk with terrorists” is the Bush mantra. He keeps repeating it like those mechanical monkeys who say “Howdy” one buys for children at a zoo. The collective punishment dealt out by Israel against innocents in Lebanon is bound to have repercussions. Netanyahu was and always will be a thug. The neocons ditto. The global loathing for the United States and Britain has helped corrupt the minds of a generation of young Muslims. Nightly scenes of slaughter and devastation on their television screens rouse them to blind bitterness against those they hold responsible—Uncle Sam and Israel. Is there no one to knock some sense into the morons who have turned us all into pariahs? This is America’s nadir.

2006-08-30T12:11:00.000-05:00

They're Even Dumber Than We Thought

The Five Morons Revisited

By Paul Craig Roberts

When the neocons launched the Bush administration's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and announced plans for invading Syria and Iran, I labeled Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice "the five Morons." With the passage of time I see that I over-estimated their mental capabilities.

The "cakewalk" war has now lasted longer than World War II with Nazi Germany, and no end is in sight. It has cost the US taxpayers $310 billion in out-of-pocket costs with many additional hundreds of billions coming due in veterans' medical bills and other expenses yet to be paid.

To carry on the pointless war, which has achieved nothing but death, destruction, and hatred of America, Bush has had to call up inactive reserves who long ago completed their active duty service to their country and have managed to get on with their lives. It is well known that the older one gets the harder it is to find employment or the energy to restart a mothballed business. But Bush is too busy saving us from terrorism to care about people's lives.

Despite the lack of US troops and Bush's inability to prevail in Afghanistan and Iraq, neocons in Bush's government are working around the clock to instigate war with Iran and Syria.

I thought that I had Rumsfeld pegged as the complete dolt, but I was stunned when I read Associated Press reporter Robert Burns account of what Rumsfeld told 200 Navy aviators in a question and answer session at Fallon Naval Air Station on August 28. "The thing that keeps me up at night," said Rumsfeld, is the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media."

Rumsfeld told the pilots that terrorists "are actively manipulating the media in this country" by falsely blaming US troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. All that "collateral damage" we hear about, the tens of thousands of dead and maimed civilians, is just terrorist propaganda. "The enemy lies constantly . . . and with impunity. . . . The enemy is so much better at communicating." Rumsfeld made similar remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nevada, where he was presented the Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award. Eisenhower must be rolling over in his grave.

Now I get it. When Fox News' Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilley assured us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would be used against us if we didn't strike first, they were being manipulated by Osama bin Laden, who used America to get rid of the secular Saddam Hussein and to create a new training and recruitment ground for al Qaeda and fundamentalist fanatics.

When the New York Times let Judith Miller serve as a propagandist for war with Iraq, the Times was being manipulated by Muslim terrorists, not by neocons.

When CNN, the networks and columnists like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin reassure us that we will win the war unless we pull out prematurely, they are being manipulated by terrorists. Finally I understand what the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, AEI, and the online site Frontpage are all about.

The terrorists are so clever at manipulation that Americans cannot perceive that we have been sucked deep into a war that is creating the Islamic fundamentalism that we so desperately fear.

Obviously, I misjudged Rumsfeld's intelligence. Anyone who can figure out the Muslim conspiracy is off the charts. What I can't figure is why Rumsfeld is willing for America to continue to be sucked in. Don't tell me that terrorists are manipulating Rumsfeld, too!

I keep waiting for the money appeal from AIPAC. I already know what it is going to say: "Although AIPAC is undisputedly the most powerful lobby in America and can determine with impunity the fate of every elected official, we cannot match the terrorists' ability to manipulate the media. Polls show that terrorists' manipulation of the US media is causing American support for the war to dwindle away. Please send more millions to counter the terrorists' control of the American media. We are winning in the Middle East but losing at home."

One of the lessons one learns in life is that things are not always what they seem to be. Before I watched Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's National Press Club broadcast on C-Span (August 28), I regarded AIPAC as Israel's friend and promoter. Now I realize that I was wrong. As the two distinguished professors made perfectly clear, anyone who cares about the survival of Israel should scorn the bribes, threats, and blandishments of AIPAC.

AIPAC led the Israeli government onto a path where diplomacy is no longer a tool that Israel can use. Instead, Israel relies on Mao's dictum that "power comes out of the barrel of a gun" or from a bulldozer that knocks down Palestinians' homes, uproots their olive groves, and enrages Muslims at Israel's inhumanity. Backed into a corner with no tool but violence, Israel faces hundreds of millions of increasingly angry Muslims.

If Bush were a true friend of Israel, he would never have let Israel again destroy Lebanon, this time under the pretext of striking at Hezbollah.

AIPAC and Bush have allowed, or caused, Israel to do itself so much damage in the eyes of Muslims and the wider world that a peaceful resolution in the MIddle East is no longer in people's thoughts. With the mighty US military checked in Iraq by a handful of Sunnis, and the mighty Israeli army checked in Lebanon by a handful of Hezbollah, violence is unlikely to settle the matter in a way that neocons in the US and Zionists in Israel would like.

The only hope is that Bush and Olmert miraculously turn into grown men, admit their mistakes, apologize, send reparations and commit to winning acceptance of Israel and America based on Israel's and America's good behavior. It would be nice to see in operation some of the superior morality that the two claim.

Considering the extraordinary hubris and self-righteousness of neocons and Zionists, nothing like this can possibly happen. Israel, the US, and the Muslim world will continue to bleed.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

2006-08-29T23:01:00.000-05:00

Tyranny Creeps...

By Robert Burns

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces "a new type of fascism" and warned against repeating the pre-World War II mistake of appeasement.

Rumsfeld alluded to critics of the Bush administration's war policies in terms associated with the failure to stop Nazism in the 1930s, "a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among the Western democracies."

Without explicitly citing Bush critics at home or abroad, he said "it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons." Aides to Rumsfeld said later he was not accusing the administration's critics of trying to appease the terrorists but was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in earlier eras.

If anyone would be able to recognize fascism when he see's it "Donnie Death" would.

After all, he is one...

2006-08-28T08:57:00.000-05:00

Crimes Against Humanity

Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter:

“The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility: (a) CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing; ...Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.”

Article 7 of the Nuremberg Charter:

“The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment.”

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution:

“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”

Chapter 1, Articles 3 and 4 of the United Nations Charter:

“All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The above is the legal basis to arrest and prosecute the members of the Bush junta, it's time to arrest duh-bya and deliver him and his minions to the Hague for prosecution.

2006-08-27T14:49:00.000-05:00

Carter Spanks Duhbya's Poodle

2006-08-26T10:15:00.000-05:00

Punked By Osama...

Will America survive to 2050?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

"In 376 a large band of Gothic refugees arrived at the Empire's Danube frontier, asking for asylum. In a complete break with established Roman policy, they were allowed in, unsubdued. They revolted, and within two years had defeated and killed the emperor Valens – the one who had received them – along with two-thirds of his army, at the battle of Hadrianople."

So writes Oxford's Peter Heather in "Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians," who is convinced that Valens' welcoming of the Goths was the decision that sealed the fate of the empire.

As recent headlines tell us of 5 million more immigrants having arrived in America in the last five years, we see now, no longer as through a glass darkly, how America ends.

The Fear Factor

By Eleanor Clift

If you think things are bad now, they will be worse if we leave. That’s the essence of President Bush’s argument for staying the course in Iraq. Bush is doing what he always does—shamelessly ramping up the fear factor. He says if U.S. troops leave Iraq, the terrorists will be right behind them, bringing Baghdad to America. He’s brought ruin to Iraq and his policies are helping create our worst nightmare, a nuclear Iran. How much worse can it get?

The Perils Of Using 'The Allies'

By Charles Krauthammer

The cowboy has been retired. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is king. That's the conventional wisdom about George W. Bush's second term: Under the influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration has finally embraced "the allies."

This is considered a radical change of course. It is not. Even the most ardent unilateralist always prefers multilateral support under one of two conditions: (1) There is something the allies will actually help accomplish or (2) there is nothing to be done anyway, so multilateralism gives you the cover of appearing to do something.

The New "Activist" Judges

By Molly Ivins

Another bee-you-ti-ful example of the right-wing media getting it all wrong. Here they are having the nerve to mutter in public about "activist judges" because Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has pointed out that spying without a warrant is illegal in this country -- so warrantless telephone tapping is illegal in this country.

Improbably enough, the first complaint of many of these soi-disant legal scholars is that Taylor's decision is not well written. No judicial masterpiece, they sneer. Nevertheless, warrantless spying is illegal. Did it ever occur to these literary critics that Taylor has a lay-down hand? The National Security Agency program is flat unconstitutional, and for those who insist this means Osama bin Laden wins, it's also ridiculously easy to fix so that it is constitutional.

A Question of Balance

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman

War, it is said, is a series of catastrophes that, sooner or later, result in victory. But the war between Israel and Hezbollah has resulted not in victory but in a disturbingly unquiet peace.

2006-08-25T15:42:00.000-05:00

It's Your Fault America

Twenty-seven years ago Jimmy Carter didn’t say that there was a malaise afflicting America. He did deliver a speech on July 15, 1979 in which he said there was a “crisis of the American spirit.” That speech has ever since been known as “The Malaise Speech,” even though the word malaise was never used.

I find a certain catharsis in this: It’s somehow comforting to remember that at least in many ways the news media sucked back then too (though not nearly as badly as today).

Nevertheless, the speech proved to be a political disaster when critics succeeded in spinning it as an attempt by Carter to blame the American people for his own failures.

(Interestingly, when you read the speech from today’s perspective you realize his discussion of the energy crisis was nothing short of brilliant. If America had listened to Jimmy Carter back then, instead of following Ronald Reagan’s more seductive advice to let the energy good times roll, this would be a much more secure nation today, not to mention a world much less at risk from global warming.)

Yet, I couldn’t help but hear the faint voice of Carter’s supposed malaise in George W. Bush’s comments today about Iraq:

“War is not a time of joy,” he said. “These are challenging times, and they’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country. I understand that. You know, nobody likes to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to turn on their TV on a daily basis and see havoc wrought by terrorists.”

Ah, so the problem isn’t that Bush lied in order to get us into this God awful war, or the fact he’s been utterly incompetent in the way he’s prosecuted it. No, the problem is with the American people themselves. It’s our psyches that are all screwed-up, not his policies. It’s our fault, not his.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Take that one to the bank, GOP. It’s a winner if I’ve ever heard one — really.

2006-08-24T14:18:00.000-05:00

THE AMERICAN GESTAPO

If a government program ever needed reform, the "war on drugs" is it.

Fat chance. The country is addicted to the bureaucracy of the war. It keeps prisons in business. It keeps police departments fattening up their ranks. It lets politicians on the stump freebase on tough-sounding rhetoric, cost-free. It is the law-enforcement establishment's bottomless welfare plan, with more dire results than social welfare ever caused those on the dole.

For all its "welfare queen" myths and admitted failures, social welfare programs had their millions of successes, keeping people out of poverty or helping them through bad patches. The drug war is a legacy of victims. Its only true winners are its enablers and dependents -- government and law enforcement -- who, experiencing its futility firsthand, should have been leading the charge for reform decades ago. But they're too addicted to 12-step their way out of it.

Desperate Soundbites

Duh-bya - you make the nation proud.

Can you imagine the courage it takes to live under the worst president ever. Imagine what it's like for all the republicans who voted for you after four years of what can charitably called a nightmare, realizing that it wasn't a dream they really had re-elected you.

Imagine what it would be like if you had a brain. Imagine what it would be like if Dick Cheney had chosen someone who cared about the country instead of taking the job himself. We know George. Sometimes you're frustrated, but rarely surprised. Sometimes you're happy, but mostly, you just tell lies.

The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance

By Congressman John Conyers

(This Report is over 350 pages.)

In sum, the report examines the Bush Administration's actions in taking us to war from A to Z. The report finds there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice-President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.

The Report concludes that a number of these actions amount to prima facie evidence (evidence sufficiently strong to presume the allegations are true) that federal criminal laws have been violated. Legal violations span from false statements to Congress to whistleblower laws.

The Report also concludes that these charges clearly rise to the level of impeachable conduct. However, because the Administration has failed to respond to requests for information about these charges, it is not yet possible to conclude that an impeachment inquiry or articles of impeachment are warranted.

2006-08-23T14:04:00.000-05:00

Are Bush's critics right?

By Tony Blankley

One word answer - yes, and it begs a question.

How does Blankley breathe when his head is so far up duh-bya's ass?

Is Bush a Clear & Present Danger?

By Robert Parry

Faced with George W. Bush’s disastrous policies in the Middle East and his adamant refusal to change course, the question now arises whether the President has become a “clear and present danger” to the security of the United States and, indirectly, to Israel.

I am so sick of hearing about the danger to Israel coming out of the mouths of Americans I could scream - why should the United States give a fuck about that shitty little country?

The US - Israel relationship reminds me of the teenage sluts my friends and I used to fuck in high school - totally one sided..

Good News...

2006-08-22T08:38:00.000-05:00

Religion is the cause

Not the cure for Middle Eastern violence.

Things CNN Will Never Tell You About Religion

By R. Joseph Hoffmann

1. That there is no God.

2. That you will not live forever.

3. That Noah’s ark will never be found because it never existed.

4. That Christianity began as a violent first century messianic sect which learned to cope peaceably when its messiah didn’t show up.

5. That most fundamentalists are rather stupid, Muslims and Christians alike.

6. That most evangelical Christians cannot describe what they mean by “inerrant” - speaking of the Bible.

7. That the vast majority of Christians opposed to stem cell research think it means killing babies for their brains.

8. That biblical Israel ceased to exist in 720 BC, lasted for less than two hundred years, and that modern Israel didn’t exist again until 1948.

9. That virtually no Jews use the phrase ‘Judaeo-Christian’, applied to ethics or anything else.

10. That Muhammad, a delusional first century Arab who thought the God of the Jews was speaking to him, was not a Muslim.

11. That Jesus, a delusional first century Jew who, if he existed, thought that the God of Abraham was his father, was not a Christian.

12. That most Arabs don’t like Palestinians.

13. That religion is the cause and not the cure for Middle Eastern violence.

14. That most Lebanese who are not Shi’a would rather be called Phoenicians than Arabs.

15. That the intellectual tradition in Arabia that is supposed to have given us everything from astronomy to the Zero and algebra…didn’t.

16. That not all religions are about peace, love and brotherhood—specifically, that the word Islam does not derive from the Arabic word peace but from the term for “Give up?”

17. That the term Jihad historically has never meant an inner struggle for spiritual perfection but killing the enemies of Islam before they can hurt you.

18. That almost no one in the Middle East believes that the future of the Middle East resides with “moderate” Muslims.

19. That atheism, secular humanism, and agnosticism are essential ingredients of the pluralist culture of modern Europe and America.

20. That when secularism and humanism fail, democracy fails.

21. That religious tolerance is not possible in the Middle East.

22. That unless the phrase ‘freedom and democracy’ includes the construct ‘secular’ neither term is meaningful.

23. That prior to the war on Iraq, the American president did not know that Iraq was biblical Mesopotamia, Eden.

24. That the American President thinks the distinction between Shi’a and Sunni is similar the distinction between Methodist and Presbyterian.

25. That the new ‘democratic’ regime in Iraq - Iraqi Shi’a - and Not Syria or Iran, were the staunchest supporters of Hezbollah prior to the invasion of Iraq.

26. That this means that the people we are calling the bulwark of freedom and democracy in Iraq are the terrorists of southern Lebanon.

R. Joseph Hoffmann is currently senior fellow and Chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, at the Center for Inquiry, Amherst, New York. From 2000 until the break out of the war against Iraq, he was Professor of Civilization Studies at the American University Of Beirut.

An American Turning Point

By Peter Dyer

If and when President Bush is impeached and removed from office, the next step should be to arrest him and the other architects of the unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq.

If Americans ever find the will to do this, as we once did to German aggressors, history will remember it as a turning point in international relations. It will go down as one of the most spectacular and complete affirmations of the very best of American ideals.

Is Israel Good for the Jews?

By Norman Birnbaum

American Jewish citizens can be sure that a large number of Jewish organizations will claim to speak in our name--without being asked to do so. We can also be sure that should we dissent from the US Jewish community's central item of faith, that Israel can do no wrong, we will be pilloried. When our gentile fellow citizens express doubt, they are accused of anti-Semitism. Those of us who are Jewish are taxed with self-hatred.

Uncomfortable Truths about Israel

By Larry C. Johnson

We are faced with the spectacle of Hizbullah acting with statesmanship and restraint while the Israelis destroy their credibility among the international community -- and that's what Israel needs to hear from Bush.

What would we be saying if Hizbullah kidnapped the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and launched a daring raid inside Israel to disrupt a U.S. effort to resupply the Israeli Defense Force? We would be up in arms over their provocation and would be convening the UN Security Council to recommend new sanctions. Hell, we'd probably have the National Security Council in session and be ready to dispatch U.S. military forces to help Israel.

Imagine...

Rx at thepartyparty.com is at it again Lennon's Imagine with a little Walk on the Wild Side makes for a great video.

2006-08-21T12:02:00.000-05:00

Five Years After 9/11

Fear Finally Strikes Out

By Frank Rich

The results are in for the White House's latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over.

In each poll released since the foiling of the trans-Atlantic terror plot - Gallup, Newsweek, CBS, Zogby, Pew - George W. Bush's approval rating remains stuck in the 30's, just as it has been with little letup in the year since Katrina stripped the last remaining fig leaf of credibility from his presidency. While the new Middle East promised by Condi Rice remains a delusion, the death rattle of the domestic political order we've lived with since 9/11 can be found everywhere: in Americans' unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, in politicians' and pundits' hysterical overreaction to Joe Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut, even in the ho-hum box-office reaction to Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center."

It's not as if the White House didn't pull out all the stops to milk the terror plot to further its politics of fear. One self-congratulatory presidential photo op was held at the National Counterterrorism Center, a dead ringer for the set in "24." But Mr. Bush's Jack Bauer is no more persuasive than his Tom Cruise of "Top Gun." By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, he and his administration have long since become comedy fodder, and not just on "The Daily Show." June's scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a "full ground war" and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots.

What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat - though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair's vacation - is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn't stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday's talk shows. "It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out," he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Mr. Chertoff and still see the man who couldn't figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television.

No matter what the threat at hand, he can't get his story straight. When he said last weekend that the foiling of the London plot revealed a Qaeda in disarray because "it's been five years since they've been capable of putting together something of this sort," he didn't seem to realize that he was flatly contradicting the Ashcroft-Gonzales claims for the gravity of all the Qaeda plots they've boasted of stopping in those five years. As recently as last October, Mr. Bush himself announced a list of 10 grisly foiled plots, including one he later described as a Qaeda plan "already set in motion" to fly a hijacked plane "into the tallest building on the West Coast."

Dick Cheney's credibility is also nil: he will always be the man who told us that Iraqis would greet our troops as liberators and that the insurgency was in its last throes in May 2005. His latest and predictable effort to exploit terrorism for election-year fear-mongering - arguing that Ned Lamont's dissent on Iraq gave comfort to "Al Qaeda types" - has no traction because the public has long since untangled the administration's bogus linkage between the Iraq war and Al Qaeda. That's why, of all the poll findings last week, the most revealing was one in the CBS survey: While the percentage of Americans who chose terrorism as our "most important problem" increased in the immediate aftermath of the London plot, terrorism still came in second, at only 17 percent, to Iraq, at 28 percent.

The administration's constant refrain that Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terror is not only false but has now also backfired politically: only 9 percent in the CBS poll felt that our involvement in Iraq was helping decrease terrorism. As its fifth anniversary arrives, 9/11 itself has been dwarfed by the mayhem in Iraq, where more civilians are now killed per month than died in the attack on America. The box-office returns of "World Trade Center" are a cultural sign of just how much America has moved on. For all the debate about whether it was "too soon" for such a Hollywood movie, it did better in the Northeast, where such concerns were most prevalent, than in the rest of the country, where, like "United 93," it may have arrived too late. Despite wild acclaim from conservatives and an accompanying e-mail campaign, "World Trade Center" couldn't outdraw "Step Up," a teen romance starring a former Abercrombie & Fitch model and playing on 500 fewer screens.

Mr. Lamont's victory in the Connecticut Democratic senatorial primary has been as overhyped as Mr. Stone's movie. As a bellwether of national politics, one August primary in one very blue state is nearly meaningless. Mr. Lieberman's star began to wane in Connecticut well before Iraq became a defining issue. His approval rating at home, as measured by the Quinnipiac poll, had fallen from 80 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in July 2003, and that was before his kamikaze presidential bid turned "Joementum" into a national joke.

The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician's opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn't easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman's loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.

A similar panic can be found among the wave of pundits, some of them self-proclaimed liberals, who apoplectically fret that Mr. Lamont's victory signals the hijacking of the Democratic Party by the far left (here represented by virulent bloggers) and a prospective replay of its electoral apocalypse of 1972. Whatever their political affiliation, almost all of these commentators suffer from the same syndrome: they supported the Iraq war and, with few exceptions (mainly at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard), are now embarrassed that they did. Desperate to assert their moral superiority after misjudging a major issue of our time, they loftily declare that anyone who shares Mr. Lamont's pronounced opposition to the Iraq war is not really serious about the war against the jihadists who attacked us on 9/11.

That's just another version of the Cheney-Lieberman argument, and it's hogwash. Most of the 60 percent of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq also want to win the war against Al Qaeda and its metastasizing allies: that's one major reason they don't want America bogged down in Iraq. Mr. Lamont's public statements put him in that camp as well, which is why those smearing him resort to the cheap trick of citing his leftist great-uncle (the socialist Corliss Lamont) while failing to mention that his father was a Republican who served in the Nixon administration. (Mr. Lieberman, ever bipartisan, has accused Mr. Lamont of being both a closet Republican and a radical.)

These commentators are no more adept at reading the long-term implications of the Connecticut primary than they were at seeing through blatant White House propaganda about Saddam's mushroom clouds. Their generalizations about the blogosphere are overheated; the shrillest left-wing voices on the Internet are no more representative of the whole than those of the far right. This country remains a country of the center, and opposition to the war in Iraq is now the center and (if you listen to Chuck Hagel and George Will, among other non-neoconservatives) even the center right.

As the election campaign quickens, genuine nightmares may well usurp the last gasps of Rovian fear-based politics. It's hard to ignore the tragic reality that American troops are caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian bloodbath escalating daily, that botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11. For those who've presided over this debacle and must face the voters in November, this is far scarier stuff than a foiled terrorist cell, nasty bloggers and Ned Lamont combined.

2006-08-20T20:53:00.000-05:00

Hi, my name is Chuckie - want to play?

Hey Kristol - I hear Reuters has an opening, given your perfect record of being perfectly wrong you should fit right in.

Is this is how Israel treats its anti-war activists?

Israel Troops Shooting Anti-War Demonstrators -- Video The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) has uploaded a video of Israeli border troops firing on unarmed anti-war demonstrators. The video clearly shows the commander of the Zionist Nazi's saying, “This is Lebanon!” as he orders his force to fire on retreating demonstrators, and “I will not allow a demonstration during wartime!”

Ob's stürmt oder schneit,
Ob die Sonne uns lacht,
Der Tag glühend heiß
Oder eiskalt die Nacht.
Bestaubt sind die Gesichter,
Doch froh ist unser Sinn,
Ist unser Sinn;
Es braust unser Panzer
Im Sturmwind dahin.

2006-08-19T12:24:00.000-05:00

WEEKEND ROUND-UP

What's Good for the Goose...

By Gina Keating

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A lawyer plans to use a legal precedent that allowed President Bill Clinton to be sued while in office to force Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify in a lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband.

Judgment Day coming – for the neocons

By Patrick J. Buchanan (P-Patriot)

The Democrats are determined to make the election of 2006 a referendum on Bush and the war in Iraq. And, as of now, that is how history will likely record it. But beneath the surface of the national election, a different plebiscite is being held, within the conservative movement

Stumping for Joe

By Peggy Noonan (R-Insane)

"Joe Lieberman's shrewd decision to run against Washington."

Gee Peggy - is Joe finally going to reveal that he works for Israel?

Expect the GOP to Play the Osama Card

By Eleanor Clift

Expect the Republicans to use the specter of the terror leader to frighten voters ahead of the elections.

Voters Turn Away From Bush’s Error

By Joe Conason

As Connecticut Democrats went to their polling places to choose a Senate nominee, waves of rhetorical hysteria burst forth from the mouths of excitable conservatives. At stake in the primary was not only the fate of a single politician, they cried, but the very “soul of the Democratic Party” and perhaps even the fate of the West.

Osama bin Lieberman

INDIANA A TERRORIST TARGET?

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- The most cunning refinement yet in the administration's plot to scare the liver, lights and onions out of us with Tales of Terror Plots is the Department of Homeland Security's brilliant move to declare Indiana the national center of terrorism, with 8,591 potential targets.

"State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America"

By Tony (the Hut) Blankley

Be careful Tony, someone might mistake you for being sane.

"Rice Flunks First International Crisis"

By Helen Thomas

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has flunked her first foreign policy crisis in the Middle East.

"Bought and Paid For"

A Matter of Timing

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman (AIPAC)

Mort shows his true colors...

"Brain damage?"

I think he is not just inarticulate. I think his brain is damaged, and that his short term memory is deteriorating. Notice how he completely loses the thread?

2006-08-18T16:47:00.000-05:00

The Thirty Three Day War

From Mania to Depression

By URI AVNERY

Thirty three days of war. The longest of our wars since 1949.

On the Israeli side: 154 dead--117 of them soldiers. 3970 rockets launched against us, 37 civilians dead, more than 422 civilians wounded.

On the Lebanese side: about a thousand dead civilians, thousands wounded. An unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead and wounded.

More than a million refugees on both sides.

So what has been achieved for this terrible price?

"GLOOMY, HUMBLE, despondent," was how the journalist Yossef Werter described Ehud Olmert, a few hours after the cease-fire had come into effect.

Olmert? Humble? Is this the same Olmert we know? The same Olmert who thumped the table and shouted: "No more!" Who said: "After the war, the situation will be completely different than before!" Who promised a "New Middle East" as a result of the war?

THE RESULTS of the war are obvious:

* The prisoners, who served as casus belli (or pretext) for the war, have not been released. They will come back only as a result of an exchange of prisoners, exactly as Hassan Nasrallah proposed before the war.

* Hizbullah has remained as it was. It has not been destroyed, nor disarmed, nor even removed from where it was. Its fighters have proved themselves in battle and have even garnered compliments from Israeli soldiers. Its command and communication stucture has continued to function to the end. Its TV station is still broadcasting.

* Hassan Nasrallah is alive and kicking. Persistent attempts to kill him failed. His prestige is sky-high. Everywhere in the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, songs are being composed in his honor and his picture adorns the walls.

* The Lebanese army will be deployed along the border, side by side with a large international force. That is the only material change that has been achieved.

This will not replace Hizbullah. Hizbullah will remain in the area, in every village and town. The Israeli army has not succeeded in removing it from one single village. That was simply impossible without permanently removing the population to which it belongs.

The Lebanese army and the international force cannot and will not confront Hizbullah. Their very presence there depends on Hizbullah's consent. In practice, a kind of co-existence of the three forces will come into being, each one knowing that it has to come to terms with the other two.

Perhaps the international force will be able to prevent incursions by Hizbullah, such as the one that preceded this war. But it will also have to prevent Israeli actions, such as the reconnaissance flights of our Air Force over Lebanon. That's why the Israeli army objected, at the beginning, so strenuously to the introduction of this force.

IN ISRAEL, there is now a general atmosphere of disappointment and despondency. From mania to depression. It's not only that the politicians and the generals are firing accusations at each other, as we foresaw, but the general public is also voicing criticism from every possible angle. The soldiers criticize the conduct of the war, the reserve soldiers gripe about the chaos and the failure of supplies.

In all parties, there are new opposition groupings and threats of splits. In Kadima. In Labor. It seems that in Meretz, too, there is a lot of ferment, because most of its leaders supported the war dragon almost until the last moment, when they caught its tail and pierced it with their little lance.

At the head of the critics are marching--surprise, surprise--the media. The entire horde of interviewers and commentators, correspondents and presstitutes, who (with very few exceptions) enthused about the war, who deceived, misled, falsified, ignored, duped and lied for the fatherland, who stifled all criticism and branded as traitors all who opposed the war--they are now running ahead of the lynch mob. How predictable, how ugly. Suddenly they remember what we have been saying right from the beginning of the war.

This phase is symbolized by Dan Halutz, the Chief-of-Staff. Only yesterday he was the hero of the masses, it was forbidden to utter a word against him. Now he is being described as a war profiteer. A moment before sending his soldiers into battle, he found the time to sell his shares, in expectation of a decline of the stock market. (Let us hope that a moment before the end he found the time to buy them back again.)

Victory, as is well known, has many fathers, and failure in war is an orphan.

FROM THE deluge of accusations and gripes, one slogan stands out , a slogan that must send a cold shiver down the spine of anyone with a good memory: "the politicians did not let the army win."

Exactly as I wrote two weeks ago, we see before our very eyes the resurrection of the old cry "they stabbed the army in the back!"

This is how it goes: At long last, two days before the end, the land offensive started to roll. Thanks to our heroic soldiers, the men of the reserves, it was a dazzling success. And then, when we were on the verge of a great victory, the cease-fire came into effect.

There is not a single word of truth in this. This operation, which was planned and which the army spent years training for, was not carried out earlier, because it was clear that it would not bring any meaningful gains but would be costly in lives. The army would, indeed, have occupied wide areas, but without being able to dislodge the Hizbullah fighters from them.

The town of Bint Jbeil, for example, right next to the border, was taken by the army three times, and the Hizbullah fighters remained there to the end. If we had occupied 20 towns and villages like this one, the soldiers and the tanks would have been exposed in twenty places to the mortal attacks of the guerillas with their highly effective anti-tank weapons.

If so, why was it decided, at the last moment, to carry out this operation after all--well after the UN had already called for an end to hostilities? The horrific answer: it was a cynical--not to say vile--exercise of the failed trio. Olmert, Peretz and Halutz wanted to create "a picture of victory", as was openly stated in the media. On this altar the lives of 33 soldiers (including a young woman) were sacrificed.

The aim was to photograph the victorious soldiers on the bank of the Litani. The operation could only last 48 hours, when the cease-fire would come into force. In spite of the fact that the army used helicopters to land the troops, the aim was not attained. At no point did the army reach the Litani.

For comparison: in the first Lebanon war, that of Sharon in 1982, the army crossed the Litani in the first few hours. (The Litani, by the way, is not a real river anymore, but just a shallow creek. Most of its waters are drawn off far from there, in the north. Its last stretch is about 25 km distant from the border, near Metulla the distance is only 4 km.)

This time, when the cease-fire took effect, all the units taking part had reached villages on the way to the river. There they became sitting ducks, surrounded by Hizbullah fighters, without secure supply lines. From that moment on, the army had only one aim: to get them out of there as quickly as possible, regardless of who might take their place.

If a commission of inquiry is set up--as it must be--and investigates all the moves of this war, starting from the way the decision to start it was made, it will also have to investigate the decision to start this last operation. The death of 33 soldiers (including the son of the writer David Grossman, who had supported the war) and the pain this caused their families demand that!

BUT THESE facts are not yet clear to the general public. The brain-washing by the military commentators and the ex-generals, who dominated the media at the time, has turned the foolish--I would almost say "criminal"--operation into a rousing victory parade. The decision of the political leadership to stop it is now being seen by many as an act of defeatist, spineless, corrupt and even treasonous politicians.

And that is exactly the new slogan of the fascist Right that is now raising its ugly head.

After World War I, in similar circumstances, the legend of the "knife in the back of the victorious army" grew up. Adolf Hitler used it to carry him to power--and on to World War II.

Now, even before the last fallen soldier has been buried, the incompetent generals are starting to talk shamelessly about "another round", the next war that will surely come "in a month or in a year", God willing. After all, we cannot end the matter like this, in failure. Where is our pride?

THE ISRAELI public is now in a state of shock and disorientation. Accusations--justified and unjustified--are flung around in all directions, and it cannot be foreseen how things will develop.

Perhaps, in the end, it is logic that will win. Logic says: what has thoroughly been demonstrated is that there is no military solution. That is true in the North. That is also true in the South, where we are confronting a whole people that has nothing to lose anymore. The success of the Lebanese guerilla will encourage the Palestinian guerilla.

For logic to win, we must be honest with ourselves: pinpoint the failures, investigate their deeper causes, draw the proper conclusions.

Some people want to prevent that at any price. President Bush declares vociferously that we have won the war. A glorious victory over the Evil Ones. Like his own victory in Iraq.

When a football team is able to choose the referee, it is no surprise if it is declared the winner.

2006-08-17T06:52:00.000-05:00

Better Saddam Than Dead

By David Corn

Better dead than Red. During the Cold War, that was the rallying cry of the diehard anti-communists, many of whom never had to face the choice. During those years, hundreds of millions of people—in the Soviet Union, in China and elsewhere—did not adhere to such an extreme slogan. They may not have fancied living in lands without freedoms, but they believed it was preferable to reside under repression than to die trying to topple tyranny.

There have always been brave souls—the rebels of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the members of Solidarity in Poland, the dissidents of the Soviet Union, the champions of Tiananmen Square—willing to sacrifice their own existence to achieve freedom for their fellow citizens. But let's face it; most of us would rather be red—or any other color—than dead. And that's hardly an irrational choice, for even in a dictatorship, one is often free to enjoy family and friends and some of the mundane pleasures of life.

Which brings us to Iraq. The chaos and mayhem there has reached (or surpassed) a point when it may not be unsound to say that Iraqis were better off under Saddam Hussein. Think of it this way: in the years since George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. The most recent statistics are staggering. In May and June, according to the United Nations, six thousand Iraqis were slain. Recently, the health ministry noted that 1,850 Baghdad residents were killed in July alone and 3,438 civilians were killed throughout the country. That is, in a three-month period, about 10,000 Iraqis have lost their lives in the troubles the invasion—and the poorly planned occupation—gave birth to. Yet despite these harrowing numbers, President Bush, according to The New York Times, is befuddled by the lack of public support among Iraqis for the American mission in their country.

As we all are aware, pre-invasion Iraq was a nasty place in terms of human rights and political freedoms. But in the years prior to the invasion, there was not this level of slaughter. Amnesty International's 2002 report (PDF here ) notes that “scores of people, including possible prisoners of conscience and armed forces officers suspected of planning to overthrow the government, were executed.” Scores of suspected government opponents were arrested, and their fates and whereabouts were unknown.

Scores of people killed—that's what now happens on a daily, rather than annual, basis. Of course, there were brutal and horrific acts of mass murder during Saddam Hussein's reign. The Anfal campaign of the late 1980s—which included chemical weapons attacks on Kurdish villages—led to the deaths of tens of thousands and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands. Saddam's repression of the Shiite rebellion of 1991—which came at the end of the first Persian Gulf war after President George H.W. Bush called on Iraqis to overthrow the dictator and then did nothing to support the uprising—resulted in about 30,000 Shiite deaths. Since the invasion, the discovery of mass graves has reminded the world of these atrocities.

But the United States took no action at the time of these nightmares to stop the killings. And in the years since the Gulf War, a weakened Saddam had not repeated such genocidal acts. That is hardly praise. But let's be blunt: Far many more Iraqis have died due to the war Bush started than were killed by Saddam in the years prior to the invasion. The total number of civilian Iraqi deaths may well be more than 100,000. (The equivalent loss for the United States would be more than 1 million people.) This is much more than the recent death counts in Lebanon and Israel—which spark justifiable outrage on each side.

I imagine that hardheaded advocates of the war will say that such is the price of liberty, that eggs must be broken. Yet here's the rub: The Iraqi people did not decide that such a cost was worth bearing. They had it imposed upon them. In the examples of anti-communist rebellions cited above, freedom fighters in those countries were willing to take the risk and put their own lives at stake. They could determine if they wished to be dead rather than red. In Iraq, there was no such indigenous calculation. People in another country decided they knew what was best for Iraqis. And they then botched the job.

The Saddam regime is gone; that's true. But given what has taken its place, it would not be an irrational choice for many Iraqis to prefer the Iraq of 2002 rather than the Iraq of 2006. Think about it. Most Iraqis before the invasion—like most citizens in most repressive states—managed to get by. They may not have had freedoms, but they had their friends and relatives. They still fell in love, had sex, had families, played with their kids, followed sports. The lucky ones—like the lucky ones in all countries—had meaningful work. Now millions of Iraqis have lost a loved one. And in return, they have a country that is unstable and on the brink of collapse, and their daily lives are marked by crime and deep uncertainty involving life and death. It's a different sort of terror than what George W. Bush speaks of.

Is it better to be free in an environment of violent chaos than safe in circumstances without freedom? I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know the answer. I might well choose a life without political freedoms rather than lose my wife or children. Live free or die, they say in New Hampshire. But how many people really believe that? In any event, that choice should be left to those who are actually willing to die to make the point. The 100,000 or so dead Iraqis cannot tell us what they would prefer.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and the other supporters of this war are responsible for the consequences of their actions—or they ought to be. One result is that tens of thousands of Iraqis are now dead who would not have been had the invasion not happened. Given that Bush hails the preciousness of each life when the subject is embryonic stem-cell research, I wonder why the Iraq war is not judged—and acknowledged—an abysmal failure by its creators. Do they not believe Iraqi lives are as valuable as frozen embryos?

Before the war, Bush and his aides said the primary rationale for the war was neutralizing a direct WMD threat to the United States. That turned out to be bogus. They also claimed that bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq would have a positive effect on the entire Middle East. Strike that, too. Additionally, they claimed the war would save the Iraqi people. Instead, it has created a hell for many Iraqis. The carnage that has come about due to Bush's invasion is unforgivable. In defending the war, Bush often points to the fact that a brutal dictator has been removed from power. But so profound is Bush's failure in Iraq that there is increasing merit to the argument that this single positive achievement was not worth the cost.

Let's ask all the dead Iraqis what they think.

2006-08-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

Perpetual State of Fear

How can you control a population, if you don’t give them something to fear? Not to worry, though–those in Washington DC are nothing if not creative. We now have a new government-mandated fear. This time the enemy won’t let us down: it won’t take down the walls. It will be nebulous, and undefeatable, made more so by our own actions. We, the last of the generation of ‘duck and cover’ can now rest safely at night knowing that our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, will know fear. Every damn day of their lives.

You see, it is to our government’s advantage to have us be afraid. When we’re afraid, we don’t look around us and see how 43 million Americans still have no health care coverage; the middle class is dwindling while the ranks of the poor are increasing; there are jobs, but too many at wages that can barely cover subsistence living. You can get a happy meal for less than a gallon of gas now, and buying both feeds the same corporate machine which is raking in record profits at a time when our country is teetering on the edge of a major climate and economic shift.

When we, the people, are afraid, we’re so easy to manipulate. People concerned about cost of living? Just parade a few gays around, mention the sanctity of marriage. If that doesn’t work, show an Arab.

The Politics of Cowardice...

Osama bin Laden must be howling with laughter. He's a man with no armies to command or weapons to brandish, except for the most powerful weapon of all: fear. More Americans drown in bathtubs every year than are killed by terrorists -- and indeed we've now reached the point where bin Laden doesn't actually have to kill anyone to achieve his goal of promoting military conflict between the Islamic and Western worlds.

2006-08-15T15:07:00.000-05:00

Mad Dog On A Leash

2006-08-14T20:47:00.000-05:00

We the People

By Reuven Schossen
8-10-6

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America"

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Beautiful words! The US Constitution has been for me a timeless example of good and just government. Unfortunately, I do not belong to such a "We The People."

In the place I come from, there is no Constitution.

In the place I come from, different kinds of people have different rights and responsibilities. Usually, people with many rights have few responsibilities. Some of the people must serve in the army on pain of imprisonment; others are exempted. Of those exempted, some belong to the elite and enjoy unusual benefits; others belong to minorities with very few rights.

In a recent case, the Supreme Court of my country, sitting down to its most special meeting of thirteen of our most prominent judges, decided to forbid marriage between a citizen from one part of my country with a person from a territory occupied by my country.

In the place I come from, my religion was decided for me by the State and is coded into the internal passport required by my government. Trying to officially change my religion could be a useless lifelong struggle.

In the place I come from, I can marry a Christian in a church; but the ceremony will not be recognized by the state and my children will be bastards and denied many rights because my parents were Jews. There are no civil ceremonies and one must get married in the temple belonging to the religion indicated on the internal passport.

I come from Israel.

Can Israel justify discrimination using Scripture? Hardly so. Perhaps the most beautiful text denouncing discrimination is Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one..." You may say that Israel does not recognize the New Testament and thus is not bound by its message. But the whole of Isaiah 58 is a reminder that God requires charitability and respect for all people, especially the less fortunate. It is clear that the State of Israel is not the same as the spiritual Kingdom of Israel promised to believers regardless of their ethnic background.

It is time for you, American citizens, carriers - at least in name - of the Human Rights Torch, to decide if you will stand by the sublime ideals institutionalized by your ancestors or if you will continue to support a society which does not abide by such ideals and de facto violates them every day. History teaches that discriminating regimes do not last, the list is too long for such an article, hence I'll mention only Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the white regime in South Africa. Israel, unless it adopts a Constitution promising equal rights and responsibilities to all its citizens, regardless of religion, race and gender, will cease to exist. It is time for you, American citizens, to decide if your nation will follow Israel into the dustbin of history or will remember that "We the People" must set an example for others to follow.

_____

Reuven Schossen is an Israeli political refugee, harassed by security services across several continents since he chose to leave his home country in disgust at the corrupt practises of Israel's leaders. The four articles below were published after he signed a contract with Publish America for his book, "Holygarchy," an account of his political and spiritual awakening in Israel and a revelation to the world of the racist, theocratic and "Big Brother" police state policies of the State of Israel. His efforts to secure political asylum and a new citizenship require the assistance of understanding individuals. Thorough research indicates that the San Francisco area would be the best place to apply for asylum in the US. Attorney fees will run to about $1,500. We are asking for financial assistance and sancutary in the San Francisco area so that Reuven can successfully secure political asylum here in the US. If you can help in any way, please contact Reuven at (505) 982-3609 or schossen@gmail.com . His website is at www.schossen.com and it is possible to donate via credit card or paypal from that site. During the Civil War, Americans of conscience created an "underground railway" to shelter African Americans who were brave enough to escape from slavery. Let's not betray the American tradition of helping those in need by letting Reuven's situation take a turn for the worse through our inaction. Even a brave reform rabbi has been willing to help Reuven, so let's not be frightened into paralysis by Israeli propaganda.

Leland Lehrman, Santa Fe, New Mexico leland.lehrman@gmail.com

2006-08-13T01:22:00.000-05:00

The Power of Nightmares

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

2006-08-12T12:29:00.000-05:00

WEEK END ROUND-UP

Less propaganda, more answers

By Patrick J. Buchanan (P-Patriot)

As usual, Buchanan demonstrates he's the smartest pundit alive.

Christofascist

Christian religious extremist. Often a person who believes in forcing a right-wing Christian agenda on the rest of the world. Also known as a 'fundamentalist' or more recently 'evangelical'.

Since many Christofascists bristle at the term 'fundamentalist' there has been a movement to get the media to refer to them as 'evangelicals.' However the term 'evangelical' is a misleading one as many Christian sects are evangelical in nature and not all evangelical Christians have such extreme views or political agendas. Christofascist is a more descriptive term for these right-wing extremists.

Christofascists urge museum to hide man's ancestors

FBI - “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”

We only have the word of a serial liar and his Likudnik henchmen.

Wake Up America!

Pat Roberts - "the Enabler"

The Senator from Jesusland is an enemy of democracy, and the main reason Duh-bya gets away with his criminal assault on the Constitution - Vote Incumbents Out!

What is Left? What is Right?

Does it Matter?

A collection of articles written by some of the brightest from both sides of the political aisle - well worth taking the time to read them all.

2006-08-11T12:52:00.000-05:00

Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism

The Menage a Trois From Hell

2006-08-10T14:12:00.000-05:00

Lawyers group condemns Bush's abuse of Constitution

By TARA GODVIN

The American Bar Association on Tuesday approved a resolution condemning President Bush's practice of writing exceptions to legislation he signs into law.

Delegates, representing 410,000 members, at the ABA's annual meeting approved the resolution objecting to any president using bill signing statements as a way of diluting or changing laws rather than using an outright veto.

Bush has vetoed only one bill, on stem cell research, but written exceptions to some 800 legislative provisions, more than all previous presidents combined.

The Bush statements say the president reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

"The constitution says the president has two choices: either sign the bill or veto it. And if you sign it, you can't have your hand behind your back with your fingers crossed," said Michael Greco, the ABA's outgoing president.

A call Tuesday to the White House was not immediately returned.

The bar delegates urged Congress to require the president to promptly submit copies of any signing statements, along with a report giving the legal basis for his objections.

The resolution also proposes that Congress create a system allowing courts to review any claim by the president that he has the authority to disregard or decline to enforce a law he signs or interpret the law in a different way than Congress had intended.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., submitted a bill last month seeking to ensure that signing statements aren't used to rewrite legislation or veto parts of bills.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

2006-08-09T01:45:00.000-05:00

Christian Zionism

^ This vampire wants the blood of your children, his insane, apocalyptic religion demands that mankind be sacrificed over the 2000+ year old hallucinations of a heat stroke/ergot victim.

The Power of AIPAC

A Moment of Zen

See also, Christian Terrorism.

2006-08-08T23:07:00.000-05:00

American Zionism -- the Real Problem

A well written series of articles by Edward Said - even though they are now five years old they are still pertinent to the current situation in Gaza and Lebanon.

Throw off the yoke America - Vote Incumbents Out!

2006-08-07T22:01:00.000-05:00

Impeachment Road Map

^ Poor, poor Byron - he looks soooooo sad.

2006-08-06T23:11:00.000-05:00

Iran: The Next War

"Jesus put MY OIL under Iran."

2006-08-05T01:32:00.000-05:00

Week End Round-Up
Pearls, Swine, and Skull & Bones

^ Does this look familiar?

These animals wore bones too - and the Bush family collaborated with them.

I wonder if the members of Yale's Skull and Bones cult also sport ShutzStaffel Runes under their left armpit?

On Talking With Terrorists

By Patrick Buchanan (P - Patriot)

As usual, Buchanan hits it out of the park - it's a damned shame that such a clear thinking and wise man has been relegated to the sidelines of "the Great Game."

Wake Up America - recognize AIPAC for what it is, a hostile agent of a foreign power.

Focusing on the Future

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman (R - AIPAC)

I don't often see eye to eye with Mort but he nails this one.

World Opinion

By Tony Blankley (R - Reptile)

I nominate Tony (the Hut) for this weeks Aspidistra Award.

We know who you work for Tony - and remember, when you wave a bloody shirt your hands get stained.

Holding Pattern

By Eleanor Clift (D - Dazzling)

What can I add to such an astute analysis of the current situation?

John Dean's words are also chilling - rumor has it the Secret Service brought a toilet with them to the G-8 Summit for duh-bya's use.

They don't want anyone to know just how high he is on a daily basis. He looked like he was capable of dancing with a lampshade on his head during some of the clips.

Dysfunction Rules In Middle East Conflict

By Joe Conason (D - Dumb)

Sigh...come on Joe - haven't you figured out yet that they want chaos to reign?

24/7 Coverage Doesn't Cover It

By Molly Ivins (D - Dynamite)

"All we have to fear, said FDR, is fear itself. And when we are afraid, we do damage to both ourselves and to the Constitution. Our history is rank with these fits of fear. We get so afraid of some dreadful menace, so afraid of anarchists, Reds, crime or drugs or communism or illegal aliens or terrorists that we think we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free. We damage the Constitution because we're so afraid. We engage in torture and worse because we're afraid. We damage our standing in the world, our own finest principles, out of fear."

Good Golly Ms Molly - I love it when she takes Bush to the woodshed!

No Más
Castro may be dead. It's time to kill Castroism.

By Peggy Noonan (R -Insane)

Kill, kill, kill - this Nazi bitch can't get enough, she loves death.

How about we just leave them alone instead of fomenting another civil war?

No Más is right - America has had enough of what you're selling.

Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State (Alex Jones)

2006-08-04T01:13:00.000-05:00

Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State was filmed primarily during the Republican Party's 2004 national convention in New York City. The Republican Party's choice to hold the event there drew both strong praise and strong criticism. Alex Jones' clear intent was that the people who were truly guilty of planning and carrying out the events of September 11, 2001 were coming back to the scene of the crime. In the film, Jones shows what he believes are signs of a growing police state: constant surveillance, a defined military presence, a militarized civilian police force, mass roundups and arrests of protesters, detention in a makeshift facility laden with asbestos which one interviewee called a "concentration camp", and threats of arrest for constitutionally legal activities. Many different views are presented, including one semi-humorous confrontation with a group of American communists.

This video is copyrighted, but Alex Jones has permitted and encourged the distribution of these videos for non-profit, educational purposes. If you would like to help Alex Jones and/or have a hard copy, buy one from him by going through his website. It can be done online or through his office.

It's 2:34 long so grab your favorite drink and watch it.

2006-08-03T23:33:00.000-05:00

Unholy Alliance

Ba'al and Yahweh

2006-08-02T16:17:00.000-05:00

The "Chuckie"

Hi - my name's Whore-o-witz, wanna play?

I plan on making this a weekly feature, feel free to nominate someone.

Treasonous bastard

2006-08-01T19:51:00.000-05:00

"Bush’s favorite Democrat."

Any questions?

2006-07-31T21:05:00.000-05:00

"Roberts and Alito Misled Us"

Main Entry: mis·lead
Pronunciation: "mis-'lEd
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): mis·led /-'led/; -lead·ing
transitive verb : to lead in a wrong direction or into a mistaken action or belief often by deliberate deceit
intransitive verb : to lead astray : give a wrong impression
synonym see DECEIVE

Or you could call them fucking liars...

There is a remedy - spit out your dummy, dry your eyes, and get to work you corrupt piece of shit.

2006-07-30T14:34:00.000-05:00

Röve Blasts Journalist's Role in Politics

By WILL LESTER
The Associated Press
Saturday, July 29, 2006; 9:02 PM

WASHINGTON --Presidential adviser Karl Röve said Saturday that journalists often criticize political professionals because they want to draw attention away from the "corrosive role" their own coverage plays in politics and government.

"Some decry the professional role of politics, they would like to see it disappear," Röve told graduating students at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. "Some argue political professionals are ruining American politics _ trapping candidates in daily competition for the news cycle instead of long-term strategic thinking in the best interest of the country."

But Röve turned that criticism on journalists.

"It's odd to me that most of these critics are journalists and columnists," he said. "Perhaps they don't like sharing the field of play. Perhaps they want to draw attention away from the corrosive role their coverage has played focusing attention on process and not substance."

Röve told about 100 graduates trained to be political operatives that they should respect the instincts of the American voter.

"There are some in politics who hold that voters are dumb, ill informed and easily misled, that voters can be manipulated by a clever ad or a smart line," said Röve, who is credited with President Bush's victories in the 2000 and 2004 elections. "I've seen this cynicism over the years from political professionals and journalists. American people are not policy wonks, but they have great instincts and try to do the right thing."

Röve said it is "wrong to underestimate the intelligence of the American voter, but easy to overestimate their interest. Much tugs at their attention."

But he said voters are able to watch campaigns and candidates closely and "this messy and imperfect process has produced great leaders."

Joseph Goebbel's would be proud of Herr Röve

2006-07-29T01:36:00.000-05:00

THEO-FASCIST

14 Signs of Fascism.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. Usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often borders on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. Through clever use of propaganda, the population is brought to accept human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among past regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. A disproportionate share of national resources is allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute.

5. Domestic spying. Secret surveillance of and gathering dossiers on its own citizens.

6. A controlled mass media. Whether directly or indirectly, these regimes exercise power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods include the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media are often politically compatible with the power elite.

7. Obsession with national security. National security apparatus is under direct control of the ruling elite. It is usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions are justified under the rubric of “protecting national security,” and questioning its activities is portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Most of the regimes attach themselves to the predominant religion of the country and choose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. Propaganda keeps up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.”

9. Power of corporations protected. The corporate structure is a way to not only ensure military production, but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite are often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor is seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it is inevitably crushed or made powerless.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them are anathema to fascist regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom are considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal.

12. “Normal” and political crime are often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” is often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. This corruption works both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism.

14. Fraudulent elections. Common methods include maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.

^ Does any of this sound familiar?

2006-07-28T00:21:00.000-05:00

GOD WILLS IT!

Duh-bya brayed:

"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

If there was a God I would be praying for him to call Duhbya home - though somehow I don't think God would have much use for him either...

2006-07-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

Neo-Conned

Hey George, here's a suggestion...

GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Take your Christian End of Times nonsense and shove it up your ass.

Jesus isn't going to save your ass, you are not going to sit by the right hand of God.

Somehow, (even if God wasn't a figment of mans imagination) I can't see him accepting a mass murderer into Heaven - unless he is also a practitioner of situational ethics like yourself.

2006-07-26T00:13:00.000-05:00

Behind Blue Eyes...

During the "All Star Panel" on the 7/19 episode of "Special Report with Brit Hume", the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes turned the panel discussion, which centered around the Israeli/Lebanese conflict, to the concept of Israel sending ground troops into Lebanon (which is quickly becoming reality). NPR's Mara Liasson shot the idea down, claiming logistically this was an impossibility. When she brought up the high civilian casualties such an invasion would cause, even Barnes seemed chastised, but not Hume - who attempted to change the topic from civilian casualties in the most uncouth of manners.

ML: "Look, a ground attack raises incredible complications. I mean, Hezbollah is completely interwoven with the civilian population there. People keep missiles there in their homes, there's no difference between the military and the civilian population in that part of Lebanon."

BH: "Yeah, it's not like they wear uniforms."

ML: "No. And it would be a very, very high civilian toll. I think for Israel to do that..."

BH: "Or a toll on the apparent civilians."

Hume's interruption quickly diverted the attention from civilian deaths, bringing it back to Hezbollah as though civilian deaths weren't an issue. A look of shock spread across Liasson's face as Hume showed that he could not care less about the civilians in harms way, and wanted the viewers to quickly forget they were even brought up.

But don't take my word for it - watch this Whore of Israel perform for his masters.

2006-07-25T00:28:00.000-05:00

Lord Haw-Haw

"Nothing is more tasteless, when set against the reality of death, than the hollow note of demagogy and false sentiment."
-- Christopher Hitchens

Once again Hitchens proves he is an effete fool and a Whore of Israel, the fact that he is now a proven liar, thief, and hypocrite is sauce for the goose.

I wonder how much AIPAC pays him to sell the rest of us out?

2006-07-24T13:55:00.000-05:00

"Unconstitutional"

By GINA HOLLAND

President Bush's penchant for writing exceptions to laws he has just signed violates the Constitution, an American Bar Association task force says in a report highly critical of the practice.

The ABA group, which includes a one-time FBI director and former federal appeals court judge, said the president has overstepped his authority in attaching challenges to hundreds of new laws.

The attachments, known as bill-signing statements, say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

"This report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy," said the ABA's president, Michael Greco. "If left unchecked, the president's practice does grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries."

Some congressional leaders had questioned the practice. The task force's recommendations, being released Monday in Washington, will be presented to the 410,000-member group next month at its annual meeting in Hawaii.

ABA policymakers will decide whether to denounce the statements and encourage a legal fight over them.

The task force said the statements suggest the president will decline to enforce some laws. Bush has had more than 800 signing statement challenges, compared with about 600 signing statements combined for all other presidents, the group said.

Noel J. Francisco, a former Bush administration attorney who practices law in Washington, said the president is doing nothing unusual or inappropriate.

"Presidents have always issued signing statements," he said. "This administration believes that it should make clear ... when the Congress is getting close to the lines that our Constitution draws."

Francisco said the administration's input is part of the give and take between the branches of government. "I think it's good that the debate is taking place at a public level," he added.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said last month that "it's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions."

The ABA report said President Reagan was the first to use the statements as a strategic weapon, and that it was encouraged by then-administration lawyer Samuel Alito _ now the newest Supreme Court justice.

The task force included former prosecutor Neal Sonnett of Miami; former FBI Director William Sessions; Patricia Wald, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards; and former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein; and law school professors and other lawyers.

___

On the Net:

American Bar Association

2006-07-23T22:40:00.000-05:00

Appearing on MSNBC, conservative pundit Pat Buchanan -- along with MSNBC host Chris Matthews -- slammed neoconservatives for what Buchanan described as Mideast 'warmongering' surrounding the crisis in Lebanon.

In a recent column, Buchanan also said that the Bush administration's unwavering support for Israel, as it imposes "deliberate suffering on civilians" and "collective punishment on innocent people" through its attacks on Lebanon, is "un-American and un-Christian."

2006-07-22T12:01:00.000-05:00

Hey - Kristol...

No, This is Not 'Our War'

2006-07-21T14:09:00.000-05:00

Our Dangerous Times.

There's really not much a person could add which wouldn't be redundant.

Contact your Representative or Senator today - Do it for Americas sake.

2006-07-20T10:46:00.000-05:00

Whore of Israel
"The eyes are the window to the soul"

My eyes adore you
So many others always say
Tomorrow’s before you...

Who needs a ideological prism when you have eyes like Kristol?

"Ideological movements become more dangerous when they become governing regimes of major nations." - William Kristol

I couldn't agree more Bill - which is why America must root out the Likudniks like yourself who have hijacked our media and government.

2006-07-19T20:17:00.000-05:00

Hasbara

The Ideological Occupation of the American Media.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one.

The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.

2006-07-17T11:18:00.000-05:00

Washington Whispers

That Times Leak Was No Surprise

Before you jump in with those heaping scorn on the New York Times for using a leak to reveal the secret Treasury program to search financial transactions for terrorist activities, know this:

The Treasury Department expected it to leak.

When the program was developed in 2003, a press plan was included. The goal: Get out front with the spin that there are safeguards to prevent snooping on private accounts, that it is legal, and that there are big benefits to it. "These three elements needed to be in the first-day story," says an insider. The plan worked. When the Times told Treasury it was running the story, top Treasury aides were OK'd to talk to the Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times, which presented the three points. "It was a textbook case of very good PR management," says the insider.

2006-07-16T01:23:00.000-05:00

Brazen Bilbray

BY PAUL JACOB

When the felonius Duke, California's 50th District Representative Cunningham, left office last December, we had every reason to hope for something better. Candidate Brian Bilbray even promised to cut back on pork.

He had been to Congress before, and claimed to have been on the right side in 1995.

"There's still more to do," he said in his recent campaign, giving the example of "not allowing members of congress to put in private so-called earmarks for funding."

So of couse he won the special election.

Some of us wondered: how long will it take to corrupt the man? Terms? Years? Months?
More like: one week.

Bilbray was in the House no more than a week when he voted for the latest appropriation bill, this one with over 1500 earmarks!

Fifteen hundred! Well, maybe the country just couldn't go along without that bill. But what can we say about Bilbray's voting down each of Representative Jeff Flake's FOUR anti-pork amendments? That's not one NO, not a mere two, not even three. That's FOUR NOs.

Funny thing is, before the special election, he seemed to be fighting a bit of an uphill battle. You see, he had been a lobbyist for several years. Jadedly, he said, "Everyone is trying to say that everyone in Washington is tainted."

Hmmm. I wonder why. Could it be because everyone in Washington IS tainted? Nope. But Bilbray certainly is. And he proved it!

2006-07-15T13:32:00.000-05:00

A Constitutional Crisis

Power of the Pen

The president uses signing statements to decree which laws apply to him.

by James Bovard

For generations, Republican politicians have spoken reverently of the rule of law. But since 2001, this hoary doctrine has been redefined to mean little more than the enforcement of the secret thoughts of the commander in chief.

George W. Bush has added more than 750 “signing statements” to new laws since he took office. Earlier presidents occasionally appended such comments to new statutes, but Bush is the first to use signing statements routinely to nullify key provisions of new laws. He perennially announces that he will not be bound by limits on his power and that he will scorn obligations to disclose how federal power is being used.

While Bush supporters speak glowingly of originalist interpretations of the Constitution, Bush’s signing statements have far more in common with George III than with George Washington. The Constitution specifies that Congress shall “make all laws” and that presidents must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But Bush—his ego swollen by swarms of groveling intellectuals—has embraced theories that convince him that the president alone may decree what shall be the law.

Bush’s most famous signing statement was on the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. After White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales publicly declared that Bush enjoyed a “commander in chief override” regarding laws prohibiting torture, members of Congress enacted legislation to make it stark that torture was illegal. The White House engaged in long and arduous negotiations with Congress. After Bush signed this law last Dec. 30, he announced that he would construe it “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power.”

This was widely interpreted to mean that the law is binding only when Bush pleases. He was reiterating a confidential 2002 Justice Department memo that declared that the federal Anti-Torture Act “would be unconstitutional if it impermissibly encroached on the President’s constitutional power to conduct a military campaign.”

Getting the Patriot Act renewed was one of the Bush administration’s highest priorities. After months of negotiations and compromises, a bipartisan agreement was finally reached, giving the White House almost everything it wanted. As part of the deal, Bush administration officials agreed to provide Congress with more details on how Patriot Act powers were being used. The Justice Department would be obliged to disclose to Congress how many Americans’ privacy was being violated by FBI subpoenas known as National Security Letters. (The Washington Post reported that the FBI was issuing 30,000 such letters a year).

However, Bush reneged in a “signing statement” quietly released after a heavily hyped White House bill-signing ceremony. Bush decreed that he was entitled to deny Congress any information that would “impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive’s constitutional duties.” Bush announced that he would interpret the law “in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information.”

In other words, any provision in the law that requires disclosure is presumptively null and void. The crux of the “unitary executive” is that all power rests in the president and that checks and balances are an archaic relic. This is the same “principle” the Bush administration invoked to deny Congress everything from Iraqi war plans to the records of the Cheney Energy Task Force. Bush has invoked the “unitary executive” doctrine almost 100 times since taking office, according to Miami University professor Christopher Kelley.

Democrats were furious over what they saw as a Bush Patriot Act double-cross. Representatives Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and John Conyers (D-Mich.) bitterly complained to Gonzales: ‘‘Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight. The administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such oversight.”

The Bush administration ignored the complaint.

Bush’s prerogative also apparently includes the right to cover up waste, fraud, and abuse—regardless of how badly taxpayers get boarhogged. After Congress created an inspector general in late 2003 to look into the Coalition Provisional Authority, Bush decreed, “The CPA IG shall refrain from initiating, carrying out, or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing a subpoena, which requires access to sensitive operation plans, intelligence matters, counterintelligence matters, ongoing criminal investigations by other administrative units of the Department of Defense related to national security, or other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat to national security.”

Since the Bush administration seems to consider any unfavorable press coverage a “threat to national security,” it is not surprising that the inspector general found almost nothing—despite pervasive reports and rumors of massive fraud. (There is no evidence that the wording of the signing statement was dictated by Halliburton.) Bush also used a signing statement to undermine the power and independence of an inspector general for Iraq in 2004 legislation.

Another frequent target of Bush signing smitings are provisions in laws on whistleblowers. Apparently he considers legal protections for whistleblowers a violation of his own prerogatives.

The administration recently swayed the Supreme Court to undermine protections for federal employees who disclose federal crimes, and the Justice Department is signaling that it could prosecute both whistleblowers and journalists who publish leakers exposing government abuses.
Some people consider Bush’s “El Supremo” view of his own powers as necessary for the war on terror.

But Bush claims this prerogative regarding any foreign intervention. As the Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage, who has done the best work on this subject, noted, “On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels. After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.”

The Colombian government’s paramilitary allies have committed some of the worst atrocities in recent Latin American history. The fact that Bush would claim a unilateral right to engage in what could become a full-scale civil war in Colombia vivifies that his boundless power stems from his job title—not from any conflict with al-Qaeda or other “Islamofascists,” as he likes to call them.

Bush’s signing statements also imply that he considers the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878—which prohibited using the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement—null and void. Congress passed laws in 2004 and 2005 prohibiting the military from using intelligence not “lawfully collected” on American citizens. In both cases, as Savage noted, “Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.” It is appalling that Congress would feel it necessary to pass a law declaring that the Pentagon cannot violate the Bill of Rights—but the president responds by declaring that he will not be bound by any such law—or by the Constitution.

The “signing statement” gambit for stretching presidential power was hatched during the Reagan administration. Attorney General Ed Meese instructed Samuel Alito, then a Justice Department lawyer, to analyze how such presidential assertions could buttress the administration’s viewpoints in court. But Alito was a piker compared to George W. Bush. Alito declared that the Justice Department should ‘‘concentrate on points of true ambiguity, rather than issuing interpretations that may seem to conflict with those of Congress.”

Bush, on the other hand, has used signing statements to negate the most important parts of legislation. According to the Bush administration, if the president issues a signing statement memo that is printed in the Federal Register, federal agencies are not obliged to obey laws enacted by Congress.

The American Bar Association has appointed a bipartisan panel to examine whether Bush’s signing-statement policies conflict with the Constitution. Their report is due later this summer. However, an ABA report earlier this year that concluded that Bush’s warrantless wiretaps were illegal failed to make the slightest dent in either the administration’s policies or its preening.

We have a nullification crisis at the heart of the American Republic. Torture is apparently legal, despite a federal prohibition. Domestic wiretapping is apparently legal, despite clear legal and constitutional prohibitions. Seizing suspects and holding them indefinitely is apparently legal, despite the Constitution’s requirement of habeas corpus.

Apparently, the government is not obliged to obey any law that Bush does not personally approve of. And how can we know which laws Bush approves of? It’s a secret. Bush’s personal thoughts thus become the ultimate law of the land—and no one can know if the government is violating the “law” because Bush has not publicly declared what the law is.

Why should anyone give Bush the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is obeying all of the laws that he has not yet publicly proclaimed a right to violate? New York University law professor David Golove told the Boston Globe, “Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional.”

Americans may have to wait many years to learn what the rule of law meant in 2006. The truth may be suppressed until Bush’s aides begin publishing their memoirs or until the Supreme Court has a change of mood and decides that the executive branch is not entitled to boundless secrecy.

In the meantime, don’t count on the legislative branch to right the balance: Bush has encountered almost no effective resistance in his own party to his power grabs. One Republican senator recently told author Elizabeth Drew: “We’ve got to hang with the president because if you start splitting with him or say the president has been abusing power we’ll all go down.” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently denounced criticism of the NSA warrantless wiretapping as “insulting” to the president, Drew reported.

Apparently, some prominent Republicans believe that the president cannot be criticized even after he admits breaking the law.

So what is the meaning of “limited government” in the Bush era? Merely that the courts and Congress must be prohibited from limiting the president’s power.

2006-07-14T15:26:00.000-05:00

A Punch in the Mouth.

What has the GOP ever done for the working class?

Not too long ago, my wife and I attended a TV football party in south Tulsa. With a lopsided score, the conversation turned to a livelier subject -- politics. The crowd was, of course, top-heavy with Republicans. With each point expressed their faces became more flushed, eyes bulging a little more and veins popping in their foreheads as they railed against the liberal programs.

Finally a lone, liberal voice asked: "Will you people name me one bill your party ever passed to help the working man of this country?" The question created much din and clamor, and someone sputtered, "Well, what have the Democrats done?"

The liberal responded with a few programs and was interrupted by howling and disdain. He noted that he had not promised they would like the programs and he asked to complete his statement -- a difficult task to ask of Republicans.

He spoke of Social Security; Medicare-Medicaid; Peace Corps; unemployment insurance; welfare (for the poor and corporate); civil rights; student grant and loan programs; safety laws (OSHA); environmental laws; prevailing wage laws; right to collective bargaining (which brought about paid medical insurance, paid vacations, pensions, etc.); workers' compensation; Marshall Plan; flood-disaster insurance; School Lunch Program; women's rights.

He spoke of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage, instituted child labor laws, and set up time-and-a-half pay for over a 40-hour week.

He mentioned FHA-HUD with its public housing, urban renewal and 44 million residential homes (before WWII almost 70 percent of our nation were renters; by the 1970s this had been reversed). And farm-conservation subsidies -- USDA programs, Farmers Home Administration (the bankers didn't want to make rural loans), small flood-control lakes (more than 3,000 in Oklahoma alone), rural water districts, rural electricity (REA).

The GI Bill was passed, which the Republicans at the time bitterly opposed. They were salivating over millions of returning veterans to hire as cheap labor. More than 8 million have used college benefits, creating millions of entrepreneurs; most of us had never dreamed of college. For the unemployed GI, there was $20 a week for 52 weeks to help get started (a lot of money in those days). The Veterans Administration provided more than 2 million home loans.

For the bankers at the football party, it was pointed out that the liberals saved their industry with the creation of FDIC and FSLIC, insuring their deposits, and saved Wall Street with the establishment of the Securities Exchange Commission.

The oil men came on bended knees to FDR at a time when East Texas oil was 4 cents a barrel and begged him to save their industry. He did; prorationing overturned the rule of capture and the days of flush production were over. Prorating has served this great industry (and nation) well.

And the list went on and on, but of course this group didn't let him get halfway through. He noted they were weary, inattentive, so again he challenged them to offer up any Republican legislation examples.

"I'm sure your party has authored one or two comparable bills from time to time, but I can't think of any, and apparently you can't either. What it boils down to is this: the liberals dragged you into the 20th century scratching and screaming with your heels in the mud, fighting anything that's progressive, everything that's made this country great. You Republicans have never understood that the spending power of blue-collar workers, obtained through Democrats and unions, is what really made this country great. You really believe "The Good Life" was obtained from your own endeavors. You cloak your greed in religion and patriotism, railing against any form of tax, never comprehending that these programs have benefitted all of us and our country."

Well, I almost didn't make it out of the house. My wife and I didn't even get to see the end of the football game.

If Reps. Steve Largent or J.C. Watts had been there, perhaps politics would never have come up, only the game plan ... pity.
==================

Clint C. Gold is former mayor of Moore, OK and a retired savings and loan executive.

2006-07-14T11:10:00.000-05:00

EXODUS...

"Hold me Unka Dick - I'm scared of them thar terrarists."

Baghdad in Meltdown

The standard line of political bullshit from the Bush Administration and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill is that the situation is improving in Iraq. But journalists on the ground in Baghdad, the ones who aren't brain dead from U.S. propaganda, report otherwise.

I guess the question is - who do you believe?

The reporters - or the serial liars in Washington?

Words of Wisdom...

An independent republic still?

© Pat Buchanan

Two hundred thirty years have elapsed since Jefferson's document was signed in Philadelphia, declaring the 13 colonies to be independent forever of the England of George III.

In his Farewell Address, Washington defined independence in a single sentence: "It is our true policy to steer clear of any permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

Jefferson echoed the father of his country, declaring America's policy to be one of "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."

Adams thought his greatest achievement was that he prevented a naval war with France from degenerating into all out-war with Napoleon and had severed America's 1778 alliance with Paris. Not for 150 years would the United States enter another permanent alliance, NATO, in the extraordinary situation that was the Cold War.

It was because America remained independent of the alliances of Europe – the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia, and Triple Alliance of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy – that Americans did not arrive on the battlefields of the Great War of 1914-1918 until six months before the Armistice. America lost 116,000 soldiers in that bloodbath, but avoided the horrendous casualties that killed the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian and Ottoman empires, and forever wounded the British and French.

America emerged the most powerful nation and greatest creditor on earth, as a Senate wisely rejected both the Versailles Treaty and a League of Nations set up to enforce its dishonorable terms.

World War II began Sept. 3, 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany to honor a guarantee Neville Chamberlain had given to Poland. France fell in the late spring of 1940, as the British were hurled off the continent. Stalin's prison house of nations was invaded in June of 1941. Untold millions in Central and Eastern Europe perished.

Free of alliances, the Americans did not even land in France until five years after the war began, only 11 months before its end in Europe.

No European empire survived these wars. No great European nation was left undiminished. These wars ended Europe's role as shaper of world history.

Thus it was that America emerged as first nation on earth, the most self-sufficient republic in history, undisputed leader of the West. For 40 years of Cold War against a Soviet Empire, America drew a red line across Europe and told Moscow not to cross it. Nor did we cross it the other way to liberate Eastern Europe, when the Hungarian Revolution broke out in 1956, the Prague Spring was crushed by Russian tanks in 1968, or Solidarity was smashed on Moscow's orders in 1981.

Unlike the British and French, who declared war over Poland in 1939, Americans did not think Eastern Europe worth the risk of a new world war. We waited patiently for the evil empire to collapse, and collapse it did under steady pressure from Reagan's America. Patience paid off, for, as Reagan always believed, time was on our side, time was on the side of freedom. It still is.
Today, however, the independent foreign policy of Washington and Jefferson, the non-interventionist policy of Eisenhower and Reagan – of peace through strength, of staying out of wars where U.S. interests are not imperiled, of keeping one's powder dry unless the United States were attacked – is derided as cowardly isolationism.

So, with the end of the Cold War did not come the end of the Cold War alliances, but their permanent extension and the addition of new allies – until it is probably not possible for a major war to break out anywhere on earth today without the United States being involved from Day One.

Alliances are transmission belts of war. Temporary ones, like the French alliance of 1778 and the NATO alliance of 1949, may be necessary, but a wise republic terminates those entanglements when the crisis is ended – and restores its freedom of action to decide when, where and whether to go to war, and not have that decision made by some 50-year-old treaty.

That is what the Founding Fathers taught, and what America believed, to her benefit, for most of her history.

But if the Founding Fathers were to come back to life and to be asked, "Whom does the America of 2006 resemble more, the republic you created or the empire from which you broke away?" is there any doubt how they would have to answer?

America today is more dependent on foreign fuel, foreign goods, foreign loans and foreign allies than she has ever been. Her worldwide commitments have never been greater, nor has her global and national debt.

Yet her leaders still seek to embed America every more deeply in global institutions from the WTO to the United Nations to the North American Union.

This is not the road on which the Founding Fathers set out, but it is a familiar road, one taken before by every empire in history.

2006-07-13T12:31:00.000-05:00

Cute and Fund!

^ Would you beat this woman?

Meet John_Fund, conservative pundit and regular guest on Faux News.
My, my - doesn't he look prosperous, especially sitting in front of that banner!

Why, the only things missing are a tiny American flag pin in his lapel and a halo above his head, because everyone knows the GOP is Gods party, maybe the microphone's blocking his patriotic display of the flag?

Must be - and maybe his girlfriend knocked his halo off when she was defending herself from physical abuse?

The Grand Old Party isn't looking so grand these days...

2006-07-12T23:29:00.000-05:00

The "N" Word...

Honest question - what is the 1st word that pops into your mind when you see a bling covered, corn-rowed, track suit wearing person who also happens to be of African American descent speaking in a dialect best described as mush-mouth on television?

(Look at the picture and think about it a moment before scrolling down.)

When you hear or read the word nigger what image pops into your mind, a slave chopping cotton or one of the many contemporary practitioners of the Gangsta in Da HUD lifestyle?

Like it or not American blacks have cultivated an image that is less than savory.

Take the 2006 Oscars for example;

Djay f/ Shug - It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp Lyrics

[Chorus 2X: Shug - singing] + (Djay)
You know it's hard out here for a pimp
(you ain't knowin)
When he tryin to get this money for the rent
(you ain't knowin)
For the Cadillacs and gas money spent
(you ain't knowin)
Because a whole lot of bitches talkin shit
(you ain't knowin)
Will have a whole lot of bitches talkin shit
(you ain't knowin)[Djay]
In my eyes I done seen some crazy thangs in the streets
Gotta couple hoes workin on the changes for me
But I gotta keep my game tight like Kobe on game night
Like takin from a ho don't know no better, I know that ain't right
Done seen people killed, done seen people deal
Done seen people live in poverty with no meals
It's fucked up where I live, but that's just how it is
It might be new to you, but it's been like this for years
It's blood sweat and tears when it come down to this shit
I'm tryin to get rich 'fore I leave up out this bitch
I'm tryin to have thangs but it's hard fo' a pimp
But I'm prayin and I'm hopin to God I don't slip, yeah
[Chorus][Djay]
Man it seems like I'm duckin dodgin bullets everyday
Niggaz hatin on me cause I got, hoes on the tray
But I gotta stay paid, gotta stay above water
Couldn't keep up with my hoes, that's when shit got harder
North Memphis where I'm from, I'm 7th Street bound
Where niggaz all the time end up lost and never found
Man these girls think we prove thangs, leave a big head
They come hopin every night, they don't end up bein dead
Wait I got a snow bunny, and a black girl too
You pay the right price and they'll both do you
That's the way the game goes, gotta keep it strictly pimpin
Gotta have my hustle tight, makin change off these women, yeah.

Yeah?

Yeah?

What the fuck is so great about the life of crime and degradation described in those lyrics that a person could bring themselves to mouth the words much less praise them?

Contemplate the words of that song for a moment and then remind yourself - black people in the audience gave it a standing ovation, they paid homage to a song which describes criminal acts, savagery and degradation, their applause was nothing less than an embrace of, and the enshrinment of depictions of prostitution and murder as the status quo in contemporary African American culture.

"Yeah" my ass - those words are an indictment, and a clear example of a bankrupt culture.

Anyone who understands the concepts of dignity and self respect should recognize it for the dead end that it is and discard it - throw in the fact that many blacks on a regular basis publicly refer to themselves and others of their race as niggers and is it any wonder that people of other races might also come to think of, or refer to them as such.

Slavery was a shitty deal for the enslaved, and segregation and discrimination was poor compensation for those who endured it. But those days are gone, and as people of the African race they should be thanking whichever figment of the imagination they worship that they were born in the USA rather than some pestilental hell hole on the continent where their ancestors originated.

I have a few other questions.

Where is the modern version of Black Wall Street?

Why are so many contemporary black cultural icons purveyors of thug life - why don't blacks make an effort to speak clear and concise english rather than speaking as if they had a mouth full of runny oatmeal?

African Americans finally have as good a chance at grabbing the brass ring as any other race in the melting pot and this is the best they can do?

Is this really the example they wish to set for their children - is this kind of lifestyle worthy of emulation?

Would the people in that audience wish such a life on their own child?

Would you?

I think not...

For every Condi Rice or Colin Powell there are millions of potential guests for the Jerry Springer show or candidates for incarceration in Americas prisons.

In 2003 43.9 of the inmates of state and federal prisons in the United States were of African American descent.

I suppose a person could try to blame whitey for this, but in my estimation every African American who is, or will become a parent might want to look in the mirror before pointing a finger at anyone else.

2006-07-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

^ The Answer is Obvious.

The Voice of the GOP.

2006-07-10T10:55:00.000-05:00

Propaganda

... is a specific type of message presentation directly aimed at influencing the opinions of people, rather than impartially providing information. Literally translated from the Latin gerundive as "things which must be disseminated," in some cultures the term is neutral or even positive, while in others the term has acquired a strong negative connotation. Its connotations can also vary over time.

For instance, in English, "propaganda" was originally a neutral term used to describe the dissemination of information in favor of a certain cause. Over time, however, the term acquired the negative connotation of disseminating false or misleading information in favor of a certain cause. Strictly speaking, a message does not have to be untrue to qualify as propaganda, but it may omit so many pertinent truths that it becomes highly misleading.

In English the term propaganda overlaps with distinct terms like indoctrination (ideological views established by repetition rather than verification) and mass suggestion (broader strategic methods). In practice, the terms are often used synonymously. Historically, the most common use of the term propaganda is in political contexts; in particular to refer to certain efforts sponsored by governments, political groups, and other often covert interests.

Individually propaganda functions as self-deception. Culturally it works within religions, politics, and economic entities like those which both favor and oppose globalization. At the left, right, or mainstream, propaganda knows no borders; as is detailed by Roderick Hindery. Hindery further argues that debates about most social issues can be productively revisited in the context of asking "what is or is not propaganda?" Not to be overlooked is the link between propaganda, indoctrination, and terrorism. Mere threats to destroy are often as socially disruptive as physical devastation itself.

Purpose of Propaganda

The aim of propaganda is to influence people's opinions actively, rather than merely to communicate the facts about something. For example, propaganda might be used to garner either support or disapproval of a certain position, rather than to simply present the position. What separates propaganda from "normal" communication is in the subtle, often insidious, ways that the message attempts to shape opinion. For example, propaganda is often presented in a way that attempts to deliberately evoke a strong emotion, especially by suggesting illogical (or non-intuitive) relationships between concepts.

An appeal to one's emotions is, perhaps, a more obvious propaganda method than those utilized by some other more subtle and insidious forms. For instance, propaganda may be transmitted indirectly or implicitly, through an ostensibly fair and balanced debate or argument. This can be done to great effect in conjunction with a broadly targeted, broadcast news format. In such a setting, techniques like, "red herring", and other ploys are often used to divert the audience from a critical issue, while the intended message is suggested through indirect means.

This sophisticated type of diversion utilizes the appearance of lively debate within, what is actually, a carefully focused spectrum, to generate and justify deliberately conceived assumptions. This technique avoids the distinctively biased appearance of one sided rhetoric, and works by presenting a contrived premise for an argument as if it were a universally accepted and obvious truth, so that the audience naturally assumes it to be correct. By maintaining the range of debate in such a way that it appears inclusive of differing points of view, so as to suggest fairness and balance, the suppositions suggested become accepted as fact

The method of propaganda is essential to the word's meaning as well. A message does not have to be untrue to qualify as propaganda.

In fact, the message in modern propaganda is often not blatantly untrue. But even if the message conveys only "true" information, it will generally contain partisan bias and fail to present a complete and balanced consideration of the issue. Another common characteristic of propaganda is volume (in the sense of a large amount). For example, a propagandist may seek to influence opinion by attempting to get a message heard in as many places as possible, and as often as possible. The intention of this approach is to a) reinforce an idea through repetition, and b) exclude or "drown out" any alternative ideas.

Famed public relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays in his classic studies eloquently describes propaganda as the purpose of communications. In Crystallizing Public Opinion, for example, he dismisses the semantic differentiations (“Education is valuable, commendable, enlightening, instructive. Propaganda is insidious, dishonest, underhand, misleading.”) and instead concentrates on purposes. He writes (p. 212), “Each of these nouns carries with it social and moral implications. . . . The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.”

The reason propaganda exists and is so widespread is because it serves various social purposes, necessary ones, often popular yet potentially corrupting. Many institutions such as media and government itself are literally propaganda-addicts, co-dependent on each other and the fueling influence of the propaganda system that they help create and maintain. Propagandists have an advantage through knowing what they want to promote and to whom, and although they often resort to various two-way forms of communication this is done in order to make sure their one-sided purposes are achieved.

Types of Propaganda

Propaganda shares techniques with advertising. In fact, advertising can be thought of as propaganda that promotes a commercial product, though the word "propaganda" more typically refers to political or nationalist uses, or promotion of a set of ideas. Propaganda also has much in common with public information campaigns by governments, which are intended to encourage or discourage certain forms of behavior (such as wearing seat belts, not smoking, not littering, or so forth). Again, the emphasis is more political in propaganda.

Propaganda can take the form of leaflets, posters, TV, and radio broadcasts and can also extend to any other medium.

In the case of the United States, there is also an important legal distinction between advertising (a type of overt propaganda) and what the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of the United States Congress, refers to as "covert propaganda."

Journalistic theory generally holds that news items should be objective, giving the reader an accurate background and analysis of the subject at hand. On the other hand, advertisements generally present an issue in a very subjective and often misleading light, primarily meant to persuade rather than inform. If the reader believes that a paid advertisement is in fact a news item, the message the advertiser is trying to communicate will be more easily "believed" or "internalized."

Such advertisements are considered obvious examples of "covert" propaganda because they take on the appearance of objective information rather than the appearance of propaganda, which is misleading. Federal law specifically mandates that any advertisement appearing in the format of a news item must state that the item is in fact a paid advertisement.

Propaganda, in a narrower use of the term, connotates deliberately false or misleading information that supports or furthers a political cause or the interests of those in power. The propagandist seeks to change the way people understand an issue or situation for the purpose of changing their actions and expectations in ways that are desirable to the interest group.

Propaganda, in this sense, serves as a corollary to censorship in which the same purpose is achieved, not by filling people's minds with approved information, but by preventing people from being confronted with opposing points of view. What sets propaganda apart from other forms of advocacy is the willingness of the propagandist to change people's understanding through deception and confusion rather than persuasion and understanding. The leaders of an organization know the information to be one sided or untrue, but this may not be true for the rank and file members who help to disseminate the propaganda.

Employing Propaganda

Propaganda is a mighty weapon in war. In this case its aim is usually to dehumanize and create hatred toward a supposed enemy, either internal or external. The technique is to create a false image in the mind. This can be done by using special words, special avoidance of words or by saying that the enemy is responsible for certain things he never did. Most propaganda wars require the home population to feel the enemy has inflicted an injustice, which may be fictitious or may be based on facts. The home population must also decide that the cause of their nation is just.

Propaganda is also one of the methods used in psychological warfare, which may also involve false flag operations.

The term propaganda may also refer to false information meant to reinforce the mindsets of people who already believe as the propagandist wishes. The assumption is that, if people believe something false, they will constantly be assailed by doubts. Since these doubts are unpleasant (cognitive dissonance), people will be eager to have them extinguished, and are therefore receptive to the reassurances of those in power. For this reason propaganda is often addressed to people who are already sympathetic to the agenda. This process of reinforcement uses an individual's predisposition to self-select "agreeable" information sources as a mechanism for maintaining control.

Propaganda can be classified according to the source and nature of the message.

White propaganda generally comes from an openly identified source, and is characterized by gentler methods of persuasion, such as standard public relations techniques and one-sided presentation of an argument.

Black propaganda is identified as being from one source, but is infact from another. This is most commonly to disguise the true origins of the propaganda, be it from an enemy country or from an organization with a negative public image.

Gray propaganda Is propaganda without any identifiable souce or author. In scale, these different types of propaganda can also be defined by the potential of true and correct information to compete with the propaganda.

For example, opposition to white propaganda is often readily found and may slightly discredit the propaganda source. Opposition to gray propaganda, when revealed (often by an inside source), may create some level of public outcry. Opposition to black propaganda is often unavailable and may be dangerous to reveal, because public cognizance of black propaganda tactics and sources would undermine or backfire the very campaign the black propagandist supported.

Propaganda may be administered in very insidious ways. For instance, disparaging disinformation about history, certain groups, or foreign countries may be encouraged or tolerated in the educational system. Since few people actually double-check what they learn at school, such disinformation will be repeated by journalists as well as parents, thus reinforcing the idea that the disinformation item is really a "well-known fact," even though no one repeating the myth is able to point to an authoritative source. The disinformation is then recycled in the media and in the educational system, without the need for direct governmental intervention on the media.

Such permeating propaganda may be used for political goals: by giving citizens a false impression of the quality or policies of their country, they may be incited to reject certain proposals or certain remarks, or ignore the experience of others.

^ Excerpts from: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Now that you've read the primer.

Molding Opinion Through the Undisclosed use of Third Parties.

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As an American I find this offensive, and I am afraid for the future of America when a political party can so casually undermine the founding principal that a free press is a necessary Constitutional guarantee.

It's something Joseph Goebbels would do...