we’re all future detainees

The president bush is not wasting any time to put the nails in the coffin of what we used to call the US Constitution. We need to only look at the statements that cheney, bush, and their cohorts have made in the past few years to know who’s going to be detained sooner or later if they manage to get this through the craven and corrupt congress.

No matter what your political inclinations are, this proposal should cause an outcry. We already know what the administration thinks about dissent. But even bush allies should be thinking about this: the bush will toss you to the wolves when you are no longer useful to him. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again. And would you really want President Hillary to have this kind of power? Remember how you treated her Bill when he was President. She might still be pissed off. Sleep on that.


Bush submits new terror detainee bill
By Anne Plummer Flaherty, Associated Press Writer
July 28, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/28/bush_submits_new_terror_detainee_bill/

WASHINGTON --U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.

A 32-page draft measure is intended to authorize the Pentagon's tribunal system, established shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks to detain and prosecute detainees captured in the war on terror. The tribunal system was thrown out last month by the Supreme Court.

Administration officials, who declined to comment on the draft, said the proposal was still under discussion and no final decisions had been made…
[...]


The Bush Administration Draft Hamdan Response Bill
byMarty Lederman
Thursday, July 27, 2006
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/bush-administration-draft-hamdan.html

Here's one version of the draft legislation that the Bush Administration is considering in the wake of Hamdan. I believe it's the same version that the New York Times and Washington Post have reported on in recent days. (NOTE: FWIW, I did not receive it from anyone in the Administration or those two newspapers. My sense is that it's been floating all around town today.)
[…]

One general matter: Section 104(a) appears to authorize the President to use his "constitutional authority" to establish other commissions, independent of those prescribed in the Act, "should circumstances so require."
[…]

it covers any and all "enemy combatants" against the U.S. and its allies in any conflict, anywhere and at any time. And "unlawful enemy combatant" is defined to include -- but not be limited to -- an individual who is or was "part of or supporting" Taliban or Al Qaeda forces, or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or its coalition partners. If I'm reading this right, if you're a citizen alleged to have "supported" a hostile group "associated" with Al Qaeda, you can be (i) detained until the "cessation of hostilities" (with whom? doesn't say); and (ii) tried before a military commission.
[…]

The Peculiar Disappearance of the War in Iraq

By Frank Rich
July 30, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
http://donkeyod.blogspot.com/2006/07/peculiar-disappearance-of-war-in-iraq.html

AS America fell into the quagmire of Vietnam, the comedian Milton Berle joked that the fastest way to end the war would be to put it on the last-place network, ABC, where it was certain to be canceled. Berle’s gallows humor lives on in the quagmire in Iraq. Americans want this war canceled too, and first- and last-place networks alike are more than happy to oblige.

CNN will surely remind us today that it is Day 19 of the Israel-Hezbollah war — now branded as Crisis in the Middle East — but you won’t catch anyone saying it’s Day 1,229 of the war in Iraq. On the Big Three networks’ evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60 percent between 2003 and this spring, as clocked by the television monitor, the Tyndall Report. On Thursday, Brian Williams of NBC read aloud a “shame on you” e-mail complaint from the parents of two military sons anguished that his broadcast had so little news about the war.

This is happening even as the casualties in Iraq, averaging more than 100 a day, easily surpass those in Israel and Lebanon combined. When Nouri al-Maliki, the latest Iraqi prime minister, visited Washington last week to address Congress, he too got short TV shrift — a mere five sentences about the speech on ABC’s “World News.” The networks know a rerun when they see it. Only 22 months earlier, one of Mr. Maliki’s short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi, had come to town during the 2004 campaign to give a similarly empty Congressional address laced with White House-scripted talking points about the war’s progress. Propaganda stunts, unlike “Law & Order” episodes, don’t hold up on a second viewing.

The steady falloff in Iraq coverage isn’t happenstance. It’s a barometer of the scope of the tragedy. For reporters, the already apocalyptic security situation in Baghdad keeps getting worse, simply making the war more difficult to cover than ever. The audience has its own phobia: Iraq is a bummer. “It is depressing to pay attention to this war on terror,” said Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on July 18. “I mean, it’s summertime.” Americans don’t like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality.

The specter of defeat is not the only reason Americans have switched off Iraq. The larger issue is that we don’t know what we — or, more specifically, 135,000 brave and vulnerable American troops — are fighting for. In contrast to the Israel-Hezbollah war, where the stakes for the combatants and American interests are clear, the war in Iraq has no rationale to keep it afloat on television or anywhere else. It’s a big, nightmarish story, all right, but one that lacks the thread of a coherent plot.

Certainly there has been no shortage of retrofitted explanations for the war in the three-plus years since the administration’s initial casus belli, to fend off Saddam’s mushroom clouds and vanquish Al Qaeda, proved to be frauds. We’ve been told that the war would promote democracy in the Arab world. And make the region safer for Israel. And secure the flow of cheap oil. If any of these justifications retained any credibility, they have been obliterated by Crisis in the Middle East. The new war is a grueling daily object lesson in just how much the American blunders in Iraq have undermined the one robust democracy that already existed in the region, Israel, while emboldening terrorists and strengthening the hand of Iran.

But it’s the collapse of the one remaining (and unassailable) motivation that still might justify staying the course in Iraq — as a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Iraqi people — that is most revealing of what a moral catastrophe this misadventure has been for our country. The sad truth is that the war’s architects always cared more about their own grandiose political and ideological ambitions than they did about the Iraqis, and they communicated that indifference from the start to Iraqis and Americans alike. The legacy of that attitude is that the American public cannot be rallied to the Iraqi cause today, as the war reaches its treacherous endgame.

The Bush administration constantly congratulates itself for liberating Iraq from Saddam’s genocidal regime. But regime change was never billed as a primary motivation for the war; the White House instead appealed to American fears and narcissism — we had to be saved from Saddam’s W.M.D. From “Shock and Awe” on, the fate of Iraqis was an afterthought. They would greet our troops with flowers and go about their business.

Donald Rumsfeld boasted that “the care” and “the humanity” that went into our precision assaults on military targets would minimize any civilian deaths. Such casualties were merely “collateral damage,” unworthy of quantification. “We don’t do body counts,” said Gen. Tommy Franks. President Bush at last started counting those Iraqi bodies publicly — with an estimate of 30,000 — some seven months ago. (More recently, The Los Angeles Times put the figure at, conservatively, 50,000.) By then, Americans had tuned out.

The contempt our government showed for Iraqis was not just to be found in our cavalier stance toward their casualties, or in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There was a cultural condescension toward the Iraqi people from the get-go as well, as if they were schoolchildren in a compassionate-conservatism campaign ad. This attitude was epitomized by Mr. Rumsfeld’s “stuff happens” response to the looting of Baghdad at the dawn of the American occupation. In “Fiasco,” his stunning new book about the American failure in Iraq, Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post’s senior Pentagon correspondent, captures the meaning of that pivotal moment perfectly: “The message sent to Iraqis was far more troubling than Americans understood. It was that the U.S. government didn’t care — or, even more troubling for the future security of Iraq, that it did care but was incapable of acting effectively.”

As it turned out, it was the worst of both worlds: we didn’t care, and we were incapable of acting effectively. Nowhere is this seen more explicitly than in the subsequent American failure to follow through on our promise to reconstruct the Iraqi infrastructure we helped to smash. “There’s some little part of my brain that simply doesn’t understand how the most powerful country on earth just can’t get electricity back in Baghdad,” said Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi exile and prominent proponent of the war, in a recent Washington Post interview.

The simple answer is that the war planners didn’t care enough to provide the number of troops needed to secure the country so that reconstruction could proceed. The coalition authority isolated in its Green Zone bubble didn’t care enough to police the cronyism and corruption that squandered billions of dollars on abandoned projects. The latest monument to this humanitarian disaster was reported by James Glanz of The New York Times on Friday: a high-tech children’s hospital planned for Basra, repeatedly publicized by Laura Bush and Condi Rice, is now in serious jeopardy because of cost overruns and delays.

This history can’t be undone; there’s neither the American money nor the manpower to fulfill the mission left unaccomplished. The Iraqi people, whose collateral damage was so successfully hidden for so long by the Rumsfeld war plan, remain a sentimental abstraction to most Americans. Whether they are seen in agony after another Baghdad bombing or waving their inked fingers after an election or being used as props to frame Mrs. Bush during the State of the Union address, they have little more specificity than movie extras. Chalabi, Allawi, Jaafari, Maliki come and go, all graced with the same indistinguishable praise from the American president, all blurring into an endless loop of instability and crisis. We feel badly ... and change the channel.

Given that the violence in Iraq has only increased in the weeks since the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist portrayed by the White House as the fount of Iraqi troubles, any Americans still paying attention to the war must now confront the reality that the administration is desperately trying to hide. “The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists and Saddamists and terrorists,” President Bush said in December when branding Zarqawi Public Enemy No. 1. But Iraq’s exploding sectarian warfare cannot be pinned on Al Qaeda or Baathist dead-enders.

The most dangerous figure in Iraq, the home-grown radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is an acolyte of neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam but an ally of Iran who has sworn solidarity to both Hezbollah and Hamas. He commands more than 30 seats in Mr. Maliki’s governing coalition in Parliament and 5 cabinet positions. He is also linked to death squads that have slaughtered Iraqis and Americans with impunity since the April 2004 uprising that killed, among others, Cindy Sheehan’s son, Casey. Since then, Mr. Sadr’s power has only grown, enabled by Iraqi “democracy.”

That the latest American plan for victory is to reposition our forces by putting more of them in the crossfire of Baghdad’s civil war is tantamount to treating our troops as if they were deck chairs on the Titanic. Even if the networks led with the story every night, what Americans would have the stomach to watch?

Far beyond moral

The delivery of at least 100 GBU 28 bunker busters bombs containing depleted uranium warheads by the United States to Israel for use against targets in Lebanon will result in additional radioactive and chemical toxic contamination with consequent adverse health and environmental effects throughout the middle east.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ww3/du_situation_worsens.htm
July 24, 2006


The half-life of depleted uranium is 4.5 billion years. The radioactive dust from these munitions will be poisoning the bodies and the environment of everybody in those areas where it has been used, Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia, Afghanistan, and now Lebanon. We only have to look at the 1/4 million affected veterans of the 1991 Iraq war to see just some of the effects, the so-called Gulf War Syndrome turns out to be radioactive poisoning. Additionally, uranium is a heavy metal, akin to lead and mercury, with the same toxic effects. The people living in the areas saturated by the dust left from DU munitions use have no way to escape exposure. It’s in their food, their water, the dust that gets kicked up by passing vehicles. or just scuffling their feet. And that is everywhere now in the war theaters.

How can this be anything less than a crime against humanity, an obscenity? This is the freedom that we bring them?

No matter what you think, the people we’re sentencing to a life of dealing with the effects of our wars (I include the recent attacks on Palestine and Lebanon among our wars), are not stupid. I will remind you that the Arab culture gave us our numbers and our system of mathematics, as well as astronomy. They are NOT going to forget. How can they? They’re going to be living with it daily for the rest of their lives. Is there any sane person who doesn’t think that they may wish to exact some revenge on the perpetrators?

Here in America, we’re all aquiver over the thought that some ‘terrorist’ will pop a ‘dirty bomb’ somewhere. So scared in fact, that we’ve allowed the bush administration to gut the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, hoping that will keep us safe. And that would affect only a small area. Think about living in a country where everywhere is contaminated. And yet, we think nothing of doing that to another people. People with the same hopes and dreams as us. And worse, we’re also doing it to their children, and their children’s children. Think about that when you tuck your kids in tonight.

For more information about DU: http://www.idust.net/Docs/EnviroAudit.htm

Another 9-11 Anniversary is just around the corner.

By Vincent L. Guarisco
July 22, 2006

"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth"~~Voltaire

Once again, that time-clock of terrifying consternation is poised to chime yet again as we approach the 5th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Be as it may, if Americans paid even a little attention all these years, surely by now they have a clue as to what really happened. Even a cursory search of the Internet yields many surprising discrepancies that totally destroy the official fairytale that has been literally shoved down our throats for years. But this knowledge could only be achieved if we are wise enough to disregard, or avoid, the twisted lies of the mainstream new media. If so, then it comes as no surprise. We already know it was an inside job.

Regardless of what we think we know in terms of justice, the killers believe they have pulled off the crime of the Century and will continue to politically exploit everyone and everything to pedal their propaganda and agenda. As history has shown, more times than not the guilty ones with cruel ideologies walk free. In this case, they arrogantly had the brass balls to smirkingly pin medals on themselves and give the accomplices promotions into high-level positions. And all they had to do was follow without question the blueprint of the neo-con New World Order. One thing for sure, thus far -- NO person has been held accountable for his or her actions. It blows my mind that so many people still consider these traitors as "heros." Wow! Controlling one's gag reflex is all but impossible....

While I'm on the subject of "up-chucking," do you remember when Bush hammered the iron bell at his 2001 State of the Union Address and slyly labeled other nations (especially those with oil) as an"Axis of Evil?" In my view, that was the moment that many of us foolishly fell for this administration's war trickery and became an "Axis of Assess" in this deadly war-for-profit game. Do any of us still think the battle isn't being fought here at home? Do we really think there isn't a special deck of War Cards, just for us here at home?

I hope you aren't expecting a mushy 9/11 birthday cake with five bloody candles on it. If so, the best you'll get out of me is a silent prayer for those who died...followed by extreme rage for those who killed them. And it's not just the madmen in the administration who are to blame -- their corporate media toadies are just as guilty for rushing American citizens off to their death. Most writers will willingly follow tightly scripted journalistic guidelines because their paychecks depend on it. Many are well known for twisting the truth within their nominal, polite linguistic perimeters, and are fork-tongued experts when it comes to damage control with their fast-footed word jargon on just about everything they say or write. Let's get real -- almost without exception, the US media are pimped-out whores on a mind-bending mission to keep us confused, scared and compliant. And, after performing their daily lip-service, they pack up their kneepads and quickly scurry off -- paychecks in hand -- already planning their next behavior-modification head-job. It's a rare occurrence when a bit of truth escapes their lips.

I say to hell with that crap. Considering everything that has happened, we have serious problems. We have decisions to make, and we'd better do it fast. I'm not simply preaching to the choir, I've already seen enough of that circulating around to know it doesn't accomplish much of anything. All of us must get involved in saving our republic. We must be assertive and actively protest in every way humanly possible. Time is running out.

Yes sir, it all went down like clockwork when Poppy and sons, Cheney and the Project for a New American Century boys fulfilled their wicked dream of yet another Pearl Harbor in order to fraudulently rock our peace-loving world for their wicked power-grab. Believe it or not, 9/11 is just a small cog in a larger gear that runs their great corporate quest for complete imperialistic control over the world's natural resources, including a cheap labor force absent of any unions, oversight and environmental restrictions, to exploit.

Oh my, the stacks of money must be taller than Mount Everest by now All made possible by attacking our own country, blaming someone else for it, and then giving the bill to the US tax-payers. Hundreds of billions wasted to finance two false wars with more on the horizon. Hell, with a "privatized" Military Industrial Complex, they are more than happy to accommodate a good profitable conflict, or two, or three, or four...

What a waste All that hard earned money falling into the Pentagon's bottomless pit. You know, that deep, dark hole where funds disappear forever and the accounting books never balance out. Well, that's not the only thing getting "swallowed up." Just like our national treasury, the US Constitution and Democracy -- the hourglass of freedom -- is almost empty too. Think about it.

The pendulum swings for the 5th consecutive year that each of us has had to endure ongoing hardships. This nightmare must end. We cannot continue to be bombarded with stolen elections, soaring cost-of-living hikes, massive poverty increases, a diminishing middle class, hoards of homeless people living in the streets, unbelievable amounts of hunger and starvation, astronomical national debt, a trade debt getting as f**king high as the space station, endless wars (with many more on the chalkboard), secret gulag torture chambers strategically placed abroad, marathon amounts of displacement, destruction and death for mass populations at home and overseas, and of course -- our continuing wholesale servitude to our Masters of the Universe whom without our hard labor, funds and sacrifice they may never have been able to enjoy their royal life of rich pleasure. It's a hard job, but someone's gotta move the battle lines from side to side on the geopolitical map, inside the corporate board rooms. Are we enjoying this yet? Sometimes I wonder...

And the beat goes on. Bush has unraveled our country to a third-world standard, and the Albatross of blame hangs around the people's neck for what he has done in our name. The international community rightfully holds us accountable for allowing these warmongers to steal our elections and launch the 9/11 attacks and then take control of the most powerful helm on the planet to red-bait and attack innocent nations with impunity using the largest arsenal known to mankind. We deserve our dishonored place in the world arena for allowing this carnage to continue unchecked. Perhaps it's better that most of us don't speak a second or third language, we may not like what they have to say about us as a "civilized" nation.

It's sad, but life in this "Land of Opportunity" is gonna get very rough indeed. Our country is nearly bankrupt. Regardless of what the lying corporate economists say, the USA is almost broke. In fact, it might behoove us to contact older family members or friends for a few pointers on scratch survival. Preferably those who lived through the 1930's. Because we're gonna need it. Get real, this is exactly where we're headed, straight down poverty lane into another great depression. As Federal programs diminish and social funding comes to a screeching halt, there will be no handouts or assistance to ease our suffering; our hunger. And for those of us who think we are sitting on a safety cushion because we have lots of toys and stuff to sell? Forget about it, we can't sell anything when others have no money to purchase it.

And for those of us who own our homes outright, well -- we still gotta pay those taxes, don't we? Indeed. Just because Uncle Sam's pants pockets are hanging out to dry doesn't mean we get a free ride. Remember that old 60's saying -- Ass or grass, no one rides for free? Yeah, it kind of takes on new meaning when we're the ones thumbing at the bottom of the food chain. For those who refuse to wake up and see what is happening around them, we'll likely have time to continue this discussion at a later date, perhaps on Pennsylvania Avenue huddled around a trash can in front of the White House -- just for shit and giggles. Hey we may even get a wave from George. Can you feel the love? Wake up before it's too late.

As I keep repeating, back-to-back stolen elections and the 9\11 attacks have been the catalyst of where we are today. I shake my head in disgust when I hear Congress is debating our right to desecrate the American Flag as a public display of protest and dissent. In reality, the flag should remain at half mast, because we are dying as a nation. But that's not how it works. It's now socially and legally acceptable for policymakers and legislators to limit our hard-earned ability to practice our rights while they hypocritically and disgracefully trash Old Glory down into the mud with their hideous words and actions.

Yeah sure, that's a real morale booster. That's the quickest way to get us to snap to attention and sing "America the Beautiful" while watching CNN coverage of bombs bursting in air on civilian targets. In fact, let me crash this keyboard shut, grab my car keys, and rush my children straight down to the military recruiter's office to sign them up pronto Heck, they may even return home alive. And we can we can feel good all over again about adding their names to a very long list of untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) patients enjoying a quality life reliving the memories of Uncle Sam's war for profit.

For me, this whole nightmare is quite graphic and real. Some nights I wake up in a cold sweat, horrified by the sounds of gargled screams drawing their last blood-filled breath as razor sharp rubble tears flesh from limb to limb as I imagine what happened inside the twin towers. Or sometimes I hear the rapid, desperate pounding of footsteps, radio chatter and frantic chaos of brave fireman running up the seemingly endless stairwells attempting to save innocent lives; only to be greeted with screeching, disintegrating debris of twisting molten metal falling back at them. Or, I think about what it must have been like for those poor unfortunate souls who weren't lucky enough to die instantly. The ones trapped for hours or even days whose lonely cries for help slowly diminished into a whispered death-sentence and then forced to rot beneath the tons of rubble. As an American, do you ever have this experience? As an American -- why not?

For me, the 5th anniversary of 9/11 is just like the four previous ones -- a shrill, never-ending scream of what should never have been allowed to happen. We should have stopped it, but we just stood there, transfixed by terror. Because of our inaction, we will never be the same. The horror of 9/11 will forever remain embedded in all of us as an evil lesson of what can happen -- what will surely happen -- to a nation's people when they lose control of their leaders' actions.

Will you join me in that birthday prayer I spoke of earlier? "Please God help us find our way, I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do."

Vincent L Guarisco is a freelance writer from Bullhead City, Arizona, a contributing writer for many web sites, and a lifetime founding member of the Alliance of Atomic Veterans. Replies welcomed at: vincespainting1@hotmail.com

© 2006 Vincent L Guarisco

timeline

On June 9 2006, in the midst of it’s usual shelling of the Occupied Territories, Israel shelled a beach in Gaza, packed with families. Among the seven killed were 3 children.

“The Israeli army said it "regretted" the deaths and called a halt to the shelling.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1794536,00.html

Thus ended the truce between Hamas and Israel. Shortly after, Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, and Israel went batshit crazy, thrashing about in Gaza like a captured alligator, killing and destroying. While this was going on, an atrocity in its own right, Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

And Israel attacked. Attacked like a rabid dog. And is still attacking. Killing hundreds of innocent Lebanese, wounding tens of thousands, and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees. Israel is destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure, and attacking its army units. Giving ultimatums that they know the Lebanese government has no means to fulfill.

Yes. Hezbollah is firing its ineffective rockets into Israel. But, and this is the big but, the rockets started after Israel attacked Lebanon.

That is the timeline, my friends. It seems that the incident on the beach has been forgotten. All the bullshit everyone is pushing is just that bullshit. Israel is committing an atrocity. A war crime. I can’t even read the numbers anymore. Among the innocent dead are hundreds of children. THAT is the reality.

As much as georgie’s Iraq adventure has been a war crime, an obscenity, so is Israel’s vicious attack on Gaza, still ongoing, and Lebanon, still ongoing.

So. I don’t want to hear your bleating about Israel defending itself. The Israelis have joined the Americans and British in the sex-death dance. The perversion of killing children has gripped them, and all else has paled for them. They have joined the Americans in turning the Middle East into a cesspool of obscenity. And there is no end in sight.

Your suffering doesn't matter to them

Posted by BobcatJH in General Discussion: Politics
Thu Jul 20th 2006, 12:46 PM at the Democratic Underground
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2732471

Republicans love to boast about their president, President Bush, being consistent. He says what he means, they say, and he means what he says. His faith, which he conveniently found after his life hit rock bottom, is, to hear it, his guide. But above all else, he's consistent. And they may be right, as Wednesday's news proved. In vetoing legislation that had the potential to improve - and even save - lives, the president again proved his supporters right. He has been consistent. Bush has consistently supported pain. Consistently supported suffering. Consistently supported death.

But that's not all. When announcing his veto of the legislation, Bush said, "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect", later adding "America must never abandon our fundamental morals." Bush, therefore, has also consistently been a hypocrite. And so has his party. Your suffering, after all, is their electoral gain. Your suffering excites their base. Your suffering doesn't matter to them.

You know what "crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect", Mr. President? Sending our armed forces into Iraq based on a pack of lies. Then, once they're there, denying them the proper equipment while serving them spoiled food and contaminated water. Then, once they return home - if they're lucky enough to return home - cutting their benefits while seeking to redefine what constitutes a "veteran" in order to further cut costs. Those things, to me, cross a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.

You know what "crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect", Mr. President? Overseeing widespread human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Operating secret prisons. Sending terror suspects for detention and interrogation to nations known for torturing prisoners. Using chemical weapons in Iraq while claiming at one point to have invaded the nation to prevent it from developing weapons of mass destruction. Looking the other way as a few bad apples turn their time in Iraq into a civilian killing spree, while the Pentagon relaxes recruitment guidelines so much so that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said that hate groups are infiltrating the military. Those things, to me, cross a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.

You know what "crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect", Mr. President? Picking up a guitar while thousands died along the Gulf Coast. Then, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, using firemen as props instead of lifesavers. And claiming that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" despite the fact that the president was warned ahead of time - in grave terms - that disaster was fast approaching. Not only that, but also asking no questions and saying "We are fully prepared" during these briefings. Those things, to me, cross a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.

You know what "crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect", Mr. President? Claiming to be a "compassionate conservative" and promoting a "culture of life" while, when you were governor of Texas, presiding over 131 executions. "I've said once and I've said a lot that in every case," you said, "we've adequately answered innocence or guilt." You added that defendants "had full access to the courts. They've had full access to a fair trial." How, Mr. President, do you square your statements with the fact that of those cases, 43 of the 131 defense attorneys were later disciplined or disbarred for their legal ineptitude. Some didn't even present evidence. This, to me, crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.

You know what "crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect", Mr. President? Thanking your financial backers by putting many of them in high-ranking government positions. Positions with responsibility for, among other things, mine safety. Then, to further scratch the back of the energy industry that had so supported your campaigns, relaxing regulations and slashing budgets. What's more, looking the other way as violations rose at the Sago mine. I'm sure you remember what happened there, don't you, Mr. President? Those things, to me, cross a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.

But this isn't about respecting moral boundaries is it, Mr. President? No, it's about pandering to your base, those stupid Americans who, in some cases, amount to a scant 3 percent. What's more, pandering to your base using arguments which not only don't hold water, but also aren't supported by a majority of Americans. At every turn - medicinal marijuana, forcing Americans to seek less expensive prescription drugs from Canada, end-of-life issues and now stem cell research - this administration has taken a pro-pain, pro-suffering, pro-death stance. And for what? Certainly not political expediency, as America isn't on the administration's side on this issue, as it isn't on so many others. In fact, the commercials this fall ought to write themselves. No, this was done to appease the extremist fringe that still manages to support this president. Congratulations, guys, your continued ignorance can remain responsible for continued suffering.

"If this bill would have become law, American taxpayers would, for the first time in our history, be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos," Bush said Wednesday with his trademark smug arrogance. "And I'm not going to allow it." Tough talk from a president whose cowboy diplomacy has been silenced in the face of global events beyond his intelligence. Tough talk from a president whose administration just had its bluff called by North Korea. Tough talk from a president who is shirking his responsibilities as a global diplomat because he would rather attack Iran than work for peace. I suppose it's far easier to talk tough when those on the receiving end are innocent Americans. So, when you look around at the millions who could have benefited from government-sponsored stem cell research and who instead suffer, thank a Republican. Your suffering doesn't matter to them.

The G-DOH-P

You know in your heart he's right.

The G-DOH-P
by A. Alexander, July 20th, 2006
http://www.progressivedailybeacon.com/more.php?page=opinion&id=1213

The Republicans, other than being incredibly incompetent in their governance and hypocrites of the highest order, have become nothing more than caricatures of themselves. If there is a cartoon or joke in existence that highlights a Republican flaw, they've co-opted the punch-line as their platform. It would almost be funny, if they weren't so amazingly pathetic and dangerous.

Consider the issues Republicans and Bush have been debating, making into bills, and vetoing while the world literally implodes: They've debated stem-cell research and in the process made up entirely out of their overactive political imaginations, something they call "fetus farming". Something so gruesome could only originate in a weak and very sick mind. Fetus farming, which doesn't actually occur anywhere in America or in the world, according to Republicans is the practice of a woman growing a baby in her uterus for the sole purpose of allowing doctors to "harvest" the organs and tissue. Again, it is a non-practice practice that doesn't exist anywhere except in the extremely warped minds of Republicans. Yet, they put all their imaginative energy into creating an atrocity that doesn't exist, while Israel bombed Lebanon to the brink of an all out regional conflict.

For George Bush's part, as Israel busied themselves blowing to smithereens the last fragments of Mid-East stability and Turkey threatened to invade Northern Iraq, he was occupied vetoing stem-cell research. His administration had even gone so far as to call stem-cell research "murder". Murder? Yes, murder!

Bush claimed he couldn't possibly sign a bill that would make use of frozen embryonic cells in order to save and improve human lives, because doing so would be "immoral" and a "taking of life". No hypocrisy there!

Bush and Republicans had no problem whatsoever, lying the country into a war in which more than 2,500 young Americans have been killed. Bush and Republicans didn't even blink an eye when 6,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were slaughtered in the months of May and June. As for the estimated 50,000-to-150,000 total Iraqi deaths since the war began...Bush and Republicans are cool with that too. Surely, then, on the day Bush vetoed the "immoral" and "murderous" taking of "life" stem-cell bill, and the toll of innocent Lebanese civilians caused by Israeli strikes reached 300 - surely, Bush and Republicans expressed genuine concern over that taking of life? Um...not a peep!

When it comes to the wholesale slaughter of innocent walking, talking, breathing, thinking, and feeling human beings Bush and Republicans wholeheartedly support that. However, when the topic is a lump of frozen cells without thought, heart, mind, feelings, family, emotion, fingers, legs, lungs, brains, cognition or any other trait that would identify them as "human"...Bush and Republicans draw the line in the "morality" sand. The death of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of American soldiers, Iraqi civilians, Lebanese citizens, and actively cheerleading wars they create - all perfectly moral for Bush and Republicans. Curing paralysis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease with the use of some frozen cells...completely immoral!

Still not convinced the Republicans have become pathetic caricatures of themselves? While Iran threatens nuclear weapons; while North Korea figures out how to make a missile fly a few more miles, or at all; while Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas cut each other's throats and Turkey threatens to invade Northern Iraq - Republicans passed a bill that would ''...protect the Pledge of Allegiance from federal judges who might try to stop schoolchildren and others from reciting it because of the phrase 'under God.'"

Republicans and Bush certainly have things in hand...in a Homer Simpson kind of way.

a mouse-click away

idiots. the bush people are just plain dumb. do they even understand what’s happening in Lebanon? and this is the republican party that some Americans are even thinking about voting for?



In Beirut, Embassy Tells Stranded Americans: Evacuation Is a Mouse-Click Away
By Justin Rood - July 19, 2006, 11:58 AM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001164.php

Lebanon: Telephone service is spotty -- both land lines and cellular networks are on-again, off-again in war-struck areas. Some even say that cellular telephone networks are down entirely. Electricity is out in parts of Beirut and southern Lebanon, probably as a result of Israeli bombing runs which targeted civilian infrastructure, including power plants and transformers.

An estimated 25,000 Americans were in Lebanon when the bombing began, according to CNN. A couple hundred appear to have made it out -- and the State Department says it plans on evacuating "as many as" 2,400 by Thursday. The rest -- by my count, more than 23,000 -- are being told to sit tight as the Israeli bombing continues, wait by their phones for a call, and check the embassy Web site for more information. So says undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns: "We have an open line to all American citizens. We're in touch with them by Web site."

Yes, Burns assured CNN, "[The evacuation is] very well thought out."

Heckuva job, Condi?

the idiot hand in Pandora’s Box

The people living in the Middle East had enough problems on their hands without the idiot bush and his minions inflicting their fantasies on them. America’s occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and threatening Syria and Iran. The idiot little georgie cult pushed the whole region onto a knife-edge of tension and instability. The death of Arafat, Sharon’s stroke, the overthrow of Hussein, all added to a vacuum of leadership and diplomacy. And the bush administration has set the standard for the new diplomacy, raw power dictates.

And so, here we are.

Fucking Israel has gone absolutely batshit crazy. I really don’t give a crap what their excuses are, their actions are criminal. Let’s take a short look back, shall we?

This whole new explosion of insane obscenity did not start with the “kidnapping” of an Israeli soldier. It started 2 weeks earlier with the shelling of the beach in Gaza.

For the past couple of months Israel has been raining 100 or so artillery shells a day on Gaza. Now, I don’t know if you know how big Gaza is. According to www.theodora.com, it’s roughly twice the size of Washington, DC, (360 sq km). Washington has about 500,000 people, Gaza has about 1.5 million people. A few less now. With a median age of around 16 years old. So what that works out as is about 10,000 people per sq mi. That’s pretty crowded to be dropping artillery around, unless you figure to kill randomly.

Of course, this isn’t considered terrorism if Israel or the US does it. And then, the atrocity at the beach, and the shit hits the fan.

The oil traders and war profiteers are getting fat and happy. All the Palestinians and Iraqis get is “too bad, so sad.” They’re just collateral damage after all. untermenchen

Death on the beach: seven Palestinians killed as Israeli shells hit family picnic
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Saturday June 10, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1794536,00.html

A barrage of Israeli artillery shells rained down on a busy Gaza beach yesterday, killing seven Palestinians, three of them children. The attack put further strain on the 16-month truce between Israel and the governing Hamas movement.

Witnesses described several explosions that also injured dozens of other people who lay on the beach, screaming and pleading for help. Some ran into the sea for fear of more shells hitting the sands at Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza strip.

Among the dead were three children, aged one, three, and 10. Their sister was swimming and survived.

The beach was packed with picnicking families enjoying the Muslim day of rest, and the explosions landed among them, scattering body parts along the dunes. Television footage showed a woman and a child laying dead on the sand, and another child screaming in agony while a lifeless man was carried away by an ambulance crew.

Associated Press reported that a tearful man held the limp body of what appeared to be a girl or young woman. "Muslims, look at this," he shouted.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called the killings a "bloody massacre" and demanded international intervention.

"No doubt what's going on in Gaza is a bloody massacre against our people, our civilians, without discrimination," he said. "I call upon the international community, the UN security council, the quartet [the EU, the US, Russia and the UN], to put an end to this Israeli killing policy."

The prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader and a political opponent of Mr Abbas, went further, calling the deaths a "war crime". He urged Jordan and Egypt, both mediators in past Israeli-Palestinian talks, to intervene.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said that the attack showed "the Zionist occupation insists on killing ... and does not distinguish between civilian children and freedom fighters".

But the most furious reaction of all came from Hamas's militant wing, which called off its 16-month ceasefire with Israel and threatened revenge attacks. "The earthquake in the Zionist towns will start again and the aggressors will have no choice but to prepare their coffins or their luggage," the military wing said in a statement. "The resistance groups ... will choose the proper place and time for the tough, strong and unique response." There was no immediate comment from the political wing of Hamas.

The Israeli army said it "regretted" the deaths and called a halt to the shelling. It offered help to get the survivors to Israeli hospitals. The shells that hit Beit Lahia beach were the latest of more than 6,000 fired into the Gaza Strip by Israel over the past two months. One possibility is that they had fallen short when being fired at areas on the outskirts of Beit Lahia used by armed Palestinian groups to launch rockets into Israel.

"The military definitely would not target a beach full of people," said an army spokesman. The military said that although many of the shells fired yesterday were from Israeli gunboats, it believed the explosives that hit the beach were from army artillery. Israel said it has fired thousands of artillery shells into the Gaza Strip in response to armed Palestinian groups such as Islamic Jihad firing hundreds of homemade rockets into Israel. Israeli shells have killed about 15 civilians this year, including five children. The Palestinian rockets have not claimed any lives but have wounded several Israelis.

Human rights groups have described the persistent Israeli shelling as a form of collective punishment, particularly after the military changed its rules to allow shells to explode within 100 metres of a built-up area.

On Thursday an Israeli air force attack killed one of the most prominent Palestinian leaders in the area - the head of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, Jamal Abu Samhadana.

thought crimes are prosecutable

In fascist America, thought crimes are prosecutable
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
Jul 11, 2006, 01:01
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_981.shtml


Engage in certain types of talk and you can be arrested for thought crimes.

Whether they are gathered in a Miami warehouse or an Internet chatroom, if males, especially those of swarthy complexions, engage in big talk about doing evil things, even if they have neither the means nor expertise to carry them out, they stand the chance of being arrested and charged with being terrorists by US authorities.

On the other hand, if an estranged husband or boyfriend threatens to kill his wife or girlfriend, police maintain they can do nothing until he takes action, which oftentimes means the woman winds up brutally beaten or dead. In the meantime, the only recourse the woman has is to seek a restraining order that, as often as not, turns out to be meaningless.

Does that mean a woman's life has less value than groups of males who titillate themselves with talk of blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago or the Holland Tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey?

Oh, says the Bushies, we can't wait to find out if these guys are going to carry out their plots and never mind that we send in infiltrators to encourage their pipe dreams.

"We don't wait until someone has lit the fuse to step in," Homeland [In]Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was quoted by the New York Times as saying at a news conference last Friday about the "New York plot."

Of course, they don't call them "thought crimes" arrests. They call them "preemptive action." And while it's viewed as a feather in George W.'s bogus "war on terror" cap if those arrested are convicted of something -- and a number of the 261 "preemptively" arrested and charged have been "persuaded" to cop pleas to some lesser charge, which still makes the "terrorist" label stick -- convictions are not all that important.

Why Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland [In]Security Committee, told the Associated Press (AP), "You may end up not winning it in court, but you get a bad guy off the street."

A bad guy? A person who hasn't done anything but shoot off his mouth?

The AP reported, "Law enforcers, they said, are now willing to act swiftly against al-Qaida sympathizers, even if it means grabbing wannabe terrorists whose plots may be only pipe dreams."

Ah yes, "al CIAduh sympathizers." Now that's enough to give any red-blooded American the chills.

If swarthy men can be arrested for pipe dreams, what about that emaciated blond, who shall remain nameless to deprive her of more publicity, that has repeatedly called for the death of people and even went so far as to say it was a shame Timothy McVeigh didn't blow up the New York Times Building? Hmm? What about the not so good reverends, Falwell and Robertson, who have called for all sorts of madness and mayhem? Roberston even called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And the list goes on and on . . . What about them, huh? Are theirs approved "pipe dreams?"

Oh my, lawyers have the audacity to question the arresting of people for thought crimes.

New York defense lawyer Martin R. Stolar told the Times, "Talk without any kind of an action means nothing. You start to criminalize people who are not really criminals."

Golly gee, no kidding? We have been criminalizing people for nonsense for years. Remember when you could have your property confiscated if a passenger dropped a marijuana seed in your car? And when we weren't arresting them for that, we were arresting the cash they were carrying if law enforcement thought the amount was too much (they had to be planning to spend it on something not good, right?).

Congress even passed a law making it a crime to threaten the president (back when we had one). Like the average person can walk right up to a prez. But shoot off your mouth in public about how you'd like to do some bodily harm to the occupant of the Oval Office and some upstanding citizen will be on the phone to the Secret Service who will come and whisk you away.

University of Richmond (Va.) law professor Carl W. Tobias wonders if there is politics is a factor in arresting pipe dreamers on terrorism charges.

Tobias told the Times, "There is some kind of public relations gained by making Americans on the one hand feel concerned that the Sears Tower in Chicago or some tunnel in Manhattan is targeted yet on the other hand feel comforted that the government is on top of it."

That's called playing the fear card, professor. It's a great diversionary tactic. The first Homeland [In]Security secretary, Tom Ridge, was very good at it with his color-coded "terror" alerts, which he raised and lowered in accordance with the amount of doo-doo Bush stepped in at a given time. His successor, Chertoff, is even better at it.

Instead of fooling around with color-coded alerts, Chertoff goes for raw meat: arresting a bunch of loose talking dreamers who would love to harm us, but lack the money, the tools and the ability to do so. But it plays well to the flag-waving, "God Bless America" crowd and keeps the rest of the clueless in check so they don't notice how the arrests of "wannabe terrorist" coincide with Bush's poll numbers.

Face it, folks, Larry Pinkney is right. Fascism is an American reality. Today, it's mostly swarthy men being arrested for thought crimes. Tomorrow, it can be you.

Remember former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer warned that Americans "need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

no dissent in our endless war

The need to know: No questions, no dissent in our endless war

When the House declares that it 'expects the cooperation of all news media organizations,' it is a seminal moment.

by Paul Scott
July 09, 2006
Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/562/story/539594.html

When they write the history of how America became a nation permanently at war and permanently willing to invoke the cause of war in defense of a vast trove of state secrets -- when every last corner of your life becomes the business of this newly permanent climate of war -- I hope they remember how our Republican Congress voted on the Friday before Independence Day to intimidate the press for letting us know what was happening.

For those who have not been paying attention, please put down your iPods and read the following: Reps. John Kline, Gil Gutknecht, Colin Peterson, Mark Kennedy and Jim Ramstad all voted to declare that Congress "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations. ... "

Chances are tomorrow's historians will remember House Resolution 895, but they will not be able to criticize it. Chances are that when the policies set in motion under the deplorable presidency of George W. Bush have reached their fruition, the state-approved history of our time will have omitted the steady erosion of dissent first initiated on Fox News and ultimately embraced by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The scoundrels who make their living feeding the flames of right-wing outrage will tell you that a newspaper, the New York Times, committed the treasonous act of reporting the existence of a secret program to monitor banking transactions with terrorist ties. They will tell you that this reporting put American lives at risk and gave help to the enemy. They will tell you that it is time for the arrest and prosecution of journalists in America, and that no other action will help us win this "war."

They will not tell you that the president had repeatedly and publicly pledged to monitor banking transactions. They will not tell you that Congress publicly asked him to do so in the Patriot Act. They will not tell you, as recently reported in the Boston Globe, that the counterterrorism efforts of the consortium in question, SWIFT, was already a matter of public record in a U.N. document. They will not tell you, as recently reported in the Washington Post, that SWIFT makes clear on its very own website that it cooperates with state authorities tracking criminal activity.

Who are these people clamoring for the prosecution of the press? Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, yes, not to mention the dingbat talker out of California named Melanie Morgan who said that if Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, "were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber." But even thoughtful commentators put the nation's free press in their kill zone. William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, offered on Fox News Sunday that "I think the Justice Department has an obligation to consider prosecution." His reason: "This is a U.S. government secret program in a time of war." Kristol's "time of war" rationale was echoed by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, which published a Times-bashing editorial subtitled "What are the obligations of the press during wartime?"

And maybe it is this wartime mentality that is the real enemy. "The war on terrorism" is no war; it is a policy objective, a publicity campaign for a state-sponsored police action. It happens to be a very necessary and worthwhile state-sponsored police action. But by definition, both terrorism and the hateful Islamists currently targeting Americans are not, and never will be, a threat that war can resolve. Terrorism will never be put to rest in a treaty signing at sea. There will be no D-Day in this war.

As such, changes in law that take place during a war without end, as was the decision to monitor banking records, are not simply "war plans" whose disclosure makes one into a traitor. They are permanent changes in the laws of the land. We need to know about permanent changes in the laws of our land if we are to live in a free and open society.

The outrage currently directed at the Times should be directed at Bush and the congressional Republicans who are now preparing the American psyche for the raiding of newspaper offices by federal marshals. They used to intimidate the president's opponents with spin, but that stopped working, so now they need to raise the fear of jail and death. Just as they always do in failing governments intolerant of criticism and contemptuous of the press.

Paul Scott is a writer in Rochester, Minn.

Fooled Again

by Larry Sakin
July 7, 2006
OpEd News
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_larry_sa_060707_fooled_again.htm


You can always tell when it's campaign season. Suddenly, all kinds of terror plots across the US are getting foiled, and groups of suspicious men meeting in skanky Florida warehouses are arrested and accused of working in tandem with Al Qaeda. The terrorism threat color wheel remains at "yellow" or elevated risk of terrorist attacks. President Bush gets tough with the media, calling them traitors if they don't tow the line and just run the White House press releases. Oh, 21st century democracy is a beautiful thing to behold.

Yes, the short attention spans of the American people have been distracted back to that old bugaboo, the supposed "war on terrorism". What happened to the big hullabaloo over domestic phone and internet spying? And what happened to the indignation over the Iraqi abuse and murder charges in Haditha, Abu Ghrab, Mahmudiyah, Falluja, and a hundred other places around the war-torn area? And the mass demonstrations by people concerned about the immigration issue? Poof! Gone like a fart in the wind. All the conservative leadership in the US has to do is pull out the old "terrorists are out to get you" card, and suddenly the American people fall strangely silent.

Americans are generally good folks, but we can be such rubes. Conservatives have been playing this game for sixty years in this country, and we fall for it every time. During the Korean War, we went through the fear mongering of Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who made Communists to be the greatest threat to our democracy since King George III. At the same time, Republican leaders were paving the way for Nazi's to make their way into the United States. In the 1980's, President Ronald Reagan made Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi a threat to our way of life, even asserting that Qaddafi had sent three assassins to the US to kill him, admitting later that the Libyan assassins were a fabrication. But just for good measure, Reagan bombed Libya in an attempt to assassinate Qaddafi. While all this was going on, Reagan was engaged in a traitorous enterprise selling weapons to Iran, another sworn enemy of the US. The weapons sales proceeded in order to gain the release of American hostages held by the Palestinian Hezbollah and to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.

And so conservative Republicans are at it again, this time covering their real intentions of occupying the Middle East, controlling oil distribution in the area, and transferring taxpayer funds into the hands of greedy government contractors and the financial elites under the thin patina of terrorism. And it'll work, too, because as long as we remain afraid for ourselves and our families, we'll gladly vote in our dear leaders again, and let them trample all over our rights without so much as a peep. We won't question the reasons why they so conveniently trot out the terror threat every two years, nor will we recognize the similarities between the latest threat to our lives, and to the ones in the past. That would take time away from performing our patriotic duty; being good little consumers spreading our miniscule wealth among the Wal-Marts and Target's that make our country so strong.

We Americans loved to get fooled; we want the false sense of security we gain by all the macho rhetoric of the Republican right. As long as our dear leaders tell us they have everything under control and don't ask us to do anything more than feed the collection plates at church, or shop 'til we drop, we'll happily be lulled to sleep, and be fooled yet again when the prophets of doom come 'round in another two years.

www.mytown.ca/sakin

Larry Sakin is a former non-profit medical organization executive and music producer. His writing can be found on Mytown.ca, Blogcritics, OpEd News, The People's Voice, Craig's List and The Progressive magazine. He also advocates for literacy and directs The Progressive Principles Project.

Trust Is A Mutual Affair

by Mary Pitt
7/5/06

If there are two words in the English language which should raise one's level of alertness, those words are, "Trust me". In our personal lives, it takes time and experience with another to reach a comfortable level of trust and there are few who earn it. We trust those persons who deal with us honestly, who do not lie to us, and who treat our possessions and our personal interests even more carefully than their own, and do not keep secrets from us unnecessarily. Now we are asked from those in government and their supporters to invest absolute trust in a President who ascended to power over our lives and our future through two successive questionable elections and his personal appointees to the Executive Branch of our government. We are told that this is necessary because "we are at war!" Let us examine that war and the basis for the reasoning behind them.

It is true that we all watched the planes fly into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and we all realize the devastation which that caused every citizen of the United States. However, to this day, we are not sure of the identity of those who perpetrated that atrocity beyond some names that we were given by the President and his appointed hirelings. Those who were accused, we are told, were members of a group which we had trained, armed and sent into Afghanistan to assist that nation in resistance against Russian invaders. Once that was accomplished, they stayed there and by their presence and their natural inclination, had assumed virtual control of that long-beleaguered country.

President Bush publicly demanded that this nation, having been bombed into the Stone Age and living in a tribal culture, "turn over" to our custody the entire band of people whom we had sent to them and those who had come to support them. This, of course, was an impossibility for them to accomplish and so we invaded, bombing and killing indiscriminately, towns and villages containing innocent women, children, and elderly. Our titular targets were Osama bin Laden and his followers and anything else was merely "collateral damage" and not to be considered. The main group of Al Qaida escaped into the mountains of Pakistan and their whereabouts are still unknown. And so we still occupy Afghanistan, the people still suffer from privations beyond our understanding, and there is no government or law outside the capital while our sons, brothers, and husbands remain in mortal danger as an occupying army.

Immediately after the WTC incident, we are told by "reliable sources", the CIA and other agencies were instructed to find a way to tie Iraq to the act. Being unable to do so, we and Congress were given false information including Weapons of Mass Destruction, mushroom clouds and stainless steel tubes along with an "attack in 45 minutes" as reason to invade that nation. Only recently were we privy to the testimony of those who knew the truth as they spoke to the Democratic Pre-Iraq Intelligence Hearings, which are still available at www.c-span.org/ for those who missed them.

We heard about their warnings to the administration that information which had been gleaned from such Iraqi informants as Ahmed Chalabi and the man known only as "Curveball" had indeed been delivering curve-balls in the form of self-serving and fallacious information. The "Weapons of Mass Destruction" were an illusion, the "mushroom cloud" was a figment of somebody's imagination, and the "stainless steel tubes" were exactly that, no more and no less! Rather than being able to launch an attack on the West "within forty-five muntes", Saddam Hussein was toothless and virtually helpless, thanks to long years under the United Nations boycott and the incessant flights over and outside of the "no-fly zone". Despite the vocal protests of the U.N. inspectors, who stated unequivocably that there were no WMD in Iraq except some chemical and biological weapons which we had supplied to them during the Iran-Itaq War, which had deteriorated over time until they were useless.

Still, we are urged to "trust our President". Rather, we suggest that we ask whether our President trusts us! We now know that the process of spying, not only on enemies or potential enemies, but on Americans citizens was begun before September 11, 2001 though, according to the information which is released by the White House press, this is done only "in the interest of national security". Almost the first action taken when Mr. Bush assumed office was to close the papers of all former Presidents, back to and including those of Ronald Reagan from study by historians into the unforeseeable future. The White House has been converted to the Presidential Palace and what goes on there is considered to be none of the people's business. As the Congressional Republicans were occupied in rejoicing over their "control" of the nation, their own control over the Executive Branch was being usurped as the President, while failing to veto anything they passed, routinely added notations that none of those provisions applied to the Executibe Branch of government.

The military was ordered to make secret arrests and to fly "suspects to off-shore prisons in nations where it was legal to torture prisoners, A "secret" prison was built at Guantanamo Bay where "illegal combatants", by edict of the President, could be lawfully tortured and held indefinitely, waiting for "secret tribunals" to determine whether they would be put to death or would spend the rest of their lives in that miserable place. Citizens were arrested as "suspects" on minimal information and held in comunicado without hearings, telephones and communication records were and are tapped without warrant and "on suspicion" inside the United States while bank records are opened for inspection at an international transfer data base. News sources that learn of these things and report them are damned by the administration as "helping the enemy" and "traitorous" in allowing the citizens of the United States to know about the activities that are being undertaken against us in violations of our Constitutional rights.

This man, who ascended to the position via a Supreme Court decision, who has failed at the only war in which we are justified as well as the one which was brought about by his own will, who has bankrupted our government, shredded our Constitution, is trying to destroy the social fabric which we have built up over two centuries, and is by treaty selling off and giving away our national resources, has the temerity to stand before the cameras and ask, "Trust me!" I think not.

Editor's Note: The stainless steel tubes were aluminum tubes.

Shadows On The Wall

By Sheila Samples
Monday, July 03, 2006

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." ~~Winston Churchill

And so we sit, shackled by self-imposed chains of fear, captivated by shadowy forms that move discordantly across the walls of our perception. Once again we are eager to accept appearance for reality. The Supreme Court ruling last week rejecting George Bush's military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees casts a huge shadow on the wall. Many are saying it not only curbed Bush and Cheney's unlimited presidential power grab, but absolved us of the responsibility of having to do anything about it.

Everybody's talking about this stunning victory for democracy. That'll show Bush that he doesn't get to decide everything. The New York Times opined the victory would "likely force negotiations over presidential power." In a separate editorial, "A Victory for the Rule of Law," the Times wrote the decision "is far more than a narrow ruling on the missue of military courts. It is an important and welcome reaffirmation that even in times of war, the law is what the Constitution, the statute books and the Geneva Conventions say it is -- not what the president wants it to be."

The Washington Post chimed in with, "For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, he let it...Now the Supreme Court has struck at the core of his presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country."

The Post's David Ignatius writes, "The Hamdan ruling should be a cause for celebration, at home and abroad, because it demonstrates that the self-correcting mechanisms of American democracy remain healthy." Thanks to checks and balances from the courts, Congress and the press, Ignatius believes "this administration's mistakes are being reversed."

And you have to smile at the Post's wonderfully talented Eugene Robinson, whose relief was palatable when he wrote, simply, "Finally. It seemed almost too much to hope for, but the Supreme Court finally called George W. Bush onto the carpet yesterday and asked him the obvious question: What part of 'rule of law' do you not understand?"

Such giddiness -- wishful thinking -- can almost be excused when you consider this is the first time in more than five years Bush has been confronted with a single check or balance. Almost excused. The media's refusal to delve into the shadows and ferret out the reality behind them is cowardly, dishonorable -- a blot on the Fourth Estate. Anyone who thinks this Straussian pack of jackals whose thirst for power borders on madness will back up and adhere to the rule of law or obey the Geneva Conventions doesn't know Jack about George. Or Alberto. Or Donald.

The Court's ruling offers no relief to the more than 450 prisoners serving life sentences at Guantanamo, nor does it address the hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of those detained without charge in Orwellian Room 101 prisons in other countries. These poor creatures are being held like caged animals in countries infamous for torture without legal consequence. They are of no further use to Bush. They cast no shadow on Congressional or media radar screens.

Guantanamo Bay is but a mere scab on the corrupt boil of secret CIA "rendition" operations. In a revealing Jan. 14, 2005 piece in the UK Guardian, Jonathan Steele writes that one CIA officer told the Washington Post, "The whole idea has become a corruption of renditions. It's not rendering to justice. It's kidnapping."

Steele says, "The administration sees the US not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world's prison warder. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives -- a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers." Since then, with The Decider's enthusiastic approval, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and the CIA have done exactly that.

So, what was the Supreme Court really up to in its shadowy 5-3 decision that did not challenge Bush's policy of indefinitely detaining enemy combatants -- the worst of the worst -- forever, if need be, without access to due process? It was simply telling him it was time for him to cover his ass by forcing Congress to make tribunals legal and then he could continue to do whatever the hell he wants. It provided a distraction from the torture, murder and suicides that have become hallmarks of the Guantanamo Bay gulag and of the United States itself. It placated the media, and calmed things down for the upcoming elections. Democracy is alive and well. Why change horses in the middle of the stream in a time of war?

When news of the ruling broke, a tight-lipped Decider stared woodenly into the cameras, saying only that he would look at the findings of the court "very seriously," while working with the Congress to continue the tribunals. Bush watchers, however, know that behind the shadow of this concession lies the stubborn insistence that he is the Commander-in-Chief; a war president who is not just above, but outside the law. Bush is prone to brag that he is the most powerful man in the world and, as such, will accept no limits on his power. Back off? Cut and run? Not likely.

The "Military Order" Bush issued two months after 9-11 concerning detention of non-citizens and their trials, if any, by military tribunals in his war on terror remains in effect. In that order, Bush flatly states that any non-citizen whom he determines from time to time in writing caused -- or even "aims" to cause -- adverse effects on the US will be detained and will "not be privileged to seek any remedy" in any court of the United States or any court of any foreign nation or any international tribunal.

The Congress was dragged reluctantly from the shadows to perform a nonpartisan role foreign to them, that of oversight. The Republicans chose instead to attack the "traitors" on the Supreme Court and the cowardly "cut and run" Democrats who are on the side of the terrorists.

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts,Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and 9-11 Commission cover-up chief, was visibly angry. He shouted indignantly at CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "The Supreme Court gave the protection of the Geneva Conventions to people who don't qualify -- the Supreme Court made a pact with Al Qaeda -- it ursurped presidential authority!"

The Democrats scrambled to assert their total alligience, not to the US Constitution and the rule of law, but to The Decider, and promised to give him everything he wants to continue his perpetual war against enemy combatant plotters and planners and killers.

And so it goes. We are oblivious to the reality of impending martial law, strict media censorship, and the vanishing power of any government entity over The Decider and his minions. We are blissfully unaware that we have been transplanted into another realm -- a dark place from which there is no escape -- and nothing to do but sit here and watch the hideous shadows on the wall.

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.

© 2006 Sheila Samples

Republican Obscenity

GOP Seeks Advantage In Ruling On Trials
National Security Is Likely Rallying Cry, Leaders Indicate
By Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff WritersSaturday, July 1, 2006; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001737.html

[…]
A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is still being debated internally, seemed to hint at the potential political implications in Congress. "Members of both parties will have to decide whether terrorists who cherish the killing of innocents deserve the same protections as our men and women who wear the uniform," this official said.
[…]


What a strange quote from the bush administration. You know, the same one that delights, absolutely delights, in killing innocent people. How else to explain the “we don’t do body counts” as the bodies stack up like cordwood at the Baghdad morgue, and countless others that we don’t hear about? The fact is, that the bush administration doesn’t care about the life of innocent people, no matter where they’re found. But the absolute delight in killing them that they’ve shown is obscene. Who has forgotten about bush pumping his fist in the air (“Feels good!”) just before he announced launching “shock and awe” upon Iraq? Who has forgotten the circus with the recent killing of Zarqawi with the bigger than life-sized poster of his dead head? I didn’t hear them mention the death of the 5 year old girl that was killed by the same bomb. No pictures either. Snuffed her as if she never existed.

[…]
Fri Jun 30, 10:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Guantanamo camp may have only 30 to 40 "real" cases and the US detention center should be shut down by 2007, the president of the Belgian Senate, who headed a European inspection team there, said.

Presenting her findings in Washington on behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Anne-Marie Lizi recommended the shutting down of the US "war on terror" detention center by end of 2007 because the actual number of dangerous detainees was low.
[…]

That’s out of about 465 ‘detainees’ remaining. Fucking Israel is going absolutely batshit over the kidnapping of ONE of their soldiers. The US has kidnapped thousands, with only a handful being even remotely guilty. And of course, we wouldn’t know, would we? Because the president bush doesn’t even allow them a fucking trial, or even a fair hearing.

But, I digress.

I’m just plain sick and tired of hearing ANY republican talk about morality. The party has joined into the bloodbath, the murder of children, the rape of men, women, and children, the looting and poisoning of TWO countries, and joined wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. And, by the way, how many innocents died in the Katrina disaster while bush strummed the guitar? How many children are going to die this year due to the administration’s policies?

These are people who would go into their neighbor’s house and rip the guts out of their children if they thought it help them hold onto power. And look you right in the eye, and tell you it was worth it, and besides, it was ‘collateral damage’. And these are people the CCMA (Consolidated Corporate Media of America) think have any valid ideas? Well, I got a flash for them. When your usefulness is over, you’ll be tossed aside like used toilet paper. Remember Dan “when the president tells me to jump, I jump” Rather of Autumn of 2001, went to Dan “the traitor” Rather by the Autumn of 2004. As well, the same for anybody else, like Cunningham, Lay, Libby, and others. Used kleenex now.

The boy king georgie enjoys killing people, and so do his acolytes. It shows in every policy they push. That’s why they are so adamantly anti-abortion. The cult needs to have the kids born so they can kill them. That’s why they keep the worker class struggling. That way the military becomes a glittering option out of their situation. That gives the cult a two-fer. They can send their soldier kids out to kill other kids, and then get killed themselves. But, of course, it’s ALWAYS somebody else’s child.

Those who advocate war, “…cherish the killing of innocents…” They have lost any moral standing they may have once had to judge the innocence or guilt of anybody. And, by the way, the Nazis justified all of their actions as necessary for “National Security“, just like the ‘Cult of the bush’ does. This “cut and run” administration (remember they all avoided service during the Vietnam war), would have you believe that only they can save you from the bogeyman, while every one of their policies have been failures, or wreaked havoc on innocent people. And, by the way, don’t give me any shit about bush’s Air National Guard service. Fuck. There was a waiting list for the Army National Guard for chrissakes, and a lot of them actually were being sent to Vietnam, unlike the Texas Air National Guard. The rich little shit weaseled his way in on his name, and then couldn’t even bother to show up when they wouldn’t let him fly planes anymore while he was snorting cocaine.

Are these the people we want making decisions for us? Did you ever ride on the back of a motorcycle with a drunk driver speeding through city traffic? I have. And I’ll tell you, so is America right now. We could get lucky, I did, but the odds are seriously long. Sooner or later, it’s going to crash.

But who knows? Maybe America would buy a used car from those guys. As I’ve heard, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. I guess that would explain the success of the Limbaugh Losers (sponsored by Viagra).

Gonna be a hot day in Redneck City this weekend. This is just a fine weekend to confront them, being July 4th and all. Can’t pass up the opportunity to remind them about it’s meaning. And “Take no guff, when you strut your stuff”.