second thoughts

2006-03-15T07:02:00.000-08:00

This was a courageous move by Feingold and one that should be acknowledged and supported. It remains to be seen if this will be a watershed moment towards regaining some sanity in our governemnt, if it will be a turning point for the Democratic leadership to fight back, or if he will simply be stoned and left lying in the road to die.

REMARKS OF SENATOR RUSS FEINGOLD - INTRODUCING A RESOLUTION TO CENSURE PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
As Prepared
March 13, 2006

Mr. President, when the President of the United States breaks the law, he must be held accountable. That is why today I am introducing a resolution to censure President George W. Bush.

The President authorized an illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil, and then misled Congress and the public about the existence and legality of that program. It is up to this body to reaffirm the rule of law by condemning the President’s actions.

All of us in this body took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and bear true allegiance to the same. Fulfilling that oath requires us to speak clearly and forcefully when the President violates the law. This resolution allows us to send a clear message that the President’s conduct was wrong.

And we must do that. The President’s actions demand a formal judgment from Congress.

At moments in our history like this, we are reminded why the founders balanced the powers of the different branches of government so carefully in the Constitution. At the very heart of our system of government lies the recognition that some leaders will do wrong, and that others in the government will then bear the responsibility to do right.

This President has done wrong. This body can do right by condemning his conduct and showing the people of this nation that his actions will not be allowed to stand unchallenged.

To date, members of Congress have responded in very different ways to the President’s conduct. Some are responding by defending his conduct, ceding him the power he claims, and even seeking to grant him expanded statutory authorization powers to make his conduct legal. While we know he is breaking the law, we do not know the details of what the President has authorized or whether there is any need to change the law to allow it, yet some want to give him carte blanche to continue his illegal conduct. To approve the President’s actions now, without demanding a full inquiry into this program, a detailed explanation for why the President authorized it, and accountability for his illegal actions, would be irresponsible. It would be to abandon the duty of the legislative branch under our constitutional system of separation of powers while the President recklessly grabs for power and ignores the rule of law.

Others in Congress have taken important steps to check the President. Senator Specter has held hearings on the wiretapping program in the Judiciary Committee. He has even suggested that Congress may need to use the power of the purse in order to get some answers out of the Administration. And Senator Byrd has proposed that Congress establish an independent commission to investigate this program.

As we move forward, Congress will need to consider a range of possible actions, including investigations, independent commissions, legislation, or even impeachment. But, at a minimum, Congress should censure a president who has so plainly broken the law.

Our founders anticipated that these kinds of abuses would occur. Federalist Number 51 speaks of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances:

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Mr. President, we are faced with an executive branch that places itself above the law. The founders understood that the branches must check each other to control abuses of government power. The president’s actions are such an abuse, Mr. President. His actions must be checked, and he should be censured.

This President exploited the climate of anxiety after September 11, 2001, both to push for overly intrusive powers in the Patriot Act, and to take us into a war in Iraq that has been a tragic diversion from the critical fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates. In both of those instances, however, Congress gave its approval to the President’s actions, however mistaken that approval may have been.
That was not the case with the illegal domestic wiretapping program authorized by the President shortly after September 11th. The President violated the law, ignored the Constitution and the other two branches of government, and disregarded the rights and freedoms upon which our country was founded. No one questions whether the government should wiretap suspected terrorists. Of course we should, and we can under current law. If there were a demonstrated need to change that law, Congress could consider that step. But instead the President is refusing to follow that law while offering the flimsiest of arguments to justify his misconduct. He must be held accountable for his actions.

The facts are straightforward: Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as “FISA”, nearly 30 years ago to ensure that as we wiretap suspected terrorists and spies, we also protect innocent Americans from unjustified government intrusion. FISA makes it a crime to wiretap Americans on U.S. soil without the requisite warrants, and the President has ordered warrantless wiretaps of Americans on U.S. soil. The President has broken that law, and that alone is unacceptable. But the President did much more than that.

Not only did the President break the law, he also actively misled Congress and the American people about his actions, and then, when the program was made public, about the legality of the NSA program.

He has fundamentally violated the trust of the American people.

The President’s own words show just how seriously he has violated that trust.

We now know that the NSA wiretapping program began not long after September 11th. Before the existence of this program was revealed, the President went out of his way in several speeches to assure the public that the government was getting court orders to wiretap Americans in the United States – something that he now admits was not the case.

On April 20, 2004, for example, the President told an audience in Buffalo that: “Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way.”
In fact, a lot had changed, but the President wasn’t being upfront with the American people.

Just months later, on July 14, 2004, in my own state of Wisconsin, the President said that: “Any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order.”

Last summer, on June 9, 2005, the President spoke in Columbus, Ohio, and again insisted that his administration was abiding by the laws governing wiretaps. “Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, a federal judge's permission to track his calls, or a federal judge's permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.”
In all of these cases, the President knew he wasn’t telling the complete story. But engaged in tough political battle during the presidential campaign, and later over Patriot Act reauthorization, he wanted to convince the public that a systems of checks and balances was in place to protect innocent people from government snooping. He knew when he gave those reassurances that he had authorized the NSA to bypass the very system of checks and balances that he was using as a shield against criticisms of the Patriot Act and his Administration’s performance.

This conduct is unacceptable. The President had a duty to play it straight with the American people. But for political purposes, he ignored that duty.

After a New York Times story exposed the NSA program in December of last year, the White House launched an intensive effort to mislead the American people yet again. No one would come to testify before Congress until February, but the President’s surrogates held press conferences and made speeches to try to convince the public that he had acted lawfully.

Most troubling of all, the President himself participated in this disinformation campaign. In the State of the Union address, he implied that the program was necessary because otherwise the government would be unable to wiretap terrorists at all. That is simply untrue. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. You don’t need a warrant to wiretap terrorists overseas – period. You do need a warrant to wiretap Americans on American soil and Congress passed FISA specifically to lay out the rules for these types of domestic wiretaps.

FISA created a secret court, made up of judges who develop national security expertise, to issue warrants for surveillance of suspected terrorists and spies. These are the judges from whom the Bush Administration has obtained thousands of warrants since 9/11. They are the judges who review applications for business records orders and wiretapping authority under the Patriot Act. The Administration has almost never had a warrant request rejected by those judges. It has used the FISA Court thousands of times, but at the same time it asserts that FISA is an “old law” or “out of date” in this age of terrorism and can’t be complied with. Clearly, the Administration can and does comply with it – except when it doesn’t. Then it just arbitrarily decides to go around these judges, and around the law.

The Administration has said that it ignored FISA because it takes too long to get a warrant under that law. But we know that in an emergency, where the Attorney General believes that surveillance must begin before a court order can be obtained, FISA permits the wiretap to be executed immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours. The Attorney General has complained that the emergency provision does not give him enough flexibility, he has complained that getting a FISA application together or getting the necessary approvals takes too long. But the problems he has cited are bureaucratic barriers that the executive branch put in place, and could remove if it wanted.

FISA also permits the Attorney General to authorize unlimited warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during the 15 days following a declaration of war, to allow time to consider any amendments to FISA required by a wartime emergency. That is the time period that Congress specified. Yet the President thinks that he can do this indefinitely.

The President has argued that Congress gave him authority to wiretap Americans on U.S. soil without a warrant when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force after September 11, 2001. Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Members of Congress did not pass this resolution to give the President blanket authority to order warrantless wiretaps. We all know that. Anyone in this body who would tell you otherwise either wasn’t here at the time or isn’t telling the truth. We authorized the President to use military force in Afghanistan, a necessary and justified response to September 11. We did not authorize him to wiretap American citizens on American soil without going through the process that was set up nearly three decades ago precisely to facilitate the domestic surveillance of terrorists – with the approval of a judge. That is why both Republicans and Democrats have questioned this theory.

This particular claim is further undermined by congressional approval of the Patriot Act just a few weeks after we passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The Patriot Act made it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and spies, while maintaining FISA’s baseline requirement of judicial approval for wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. It is ridiculous to think that Congress would have negotiated and enacted all the changes to FISA in the Patriot Act if it thought it had just authorized the President to ignore FISA in the AUMF.
In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration’s request, from 24 to 72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no sense at all.

The President has also said that his inherent executive power gives him the power to approve this program. But here the President is acting in direct violation of a criminal statute. That means his power is, as Justice Jackson said in the steel seizure cases half a century ago, “at its lowest ebb.” A letter from a group of law professors and former executive branch officials points out that “every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute.” The Senate reports issued when FISA was enacted confirm the understanding that FISA overrode any pre-existing inherent authority of the President. As the 1978 Senate Judiciary Committee report stated, FISA “recognizes no inherent power of the president in this area.” And “Congress has declared that this statute, not any claimed presidential power, controls.” Contrary to what the President told the country in the State of the Union, no court has ever approved warrantless surveillance in violation of FISA.
The President’s claims of inherent executive authority, and his assertions that the courts have approved this type of activity, are baseless.

But it is one thing to make a legal argument that has no real support in the law. It is much worse to do what the President has done, which is to make misleading statements about what prior Presidents have done and what courts have approved, to try to make the public believe his legal arguments are much stronger than they are.
For example, in the State of the Union, the President argued that federal courts have approved the use of presidential authority that he was invoking. I asked the Attorney General about this when he came before the Judiciary Committee, and he could point me to no court – not the Supreme Court or any other court – that has considered whether, after FISA was enacted, the President nonetheless had the authority to bypass it and authorize warrantless wiretaps. Not one court. The Administration’s effort to find support for what it has done in snippets of other court decisions would be laughable if this issue were not so serious.

In the same speech, the President referred to other Presidents in American history who cited executive authority to order warrantless surveillance. But of course, those past presidents – like Wilson and Roosevelt – were acting before the Supreme Court decided in 1967 that our communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, and before Congress decided in 1978 that the executive branch could no longer unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap. I asked the Attorney General about this issue when he testified before the Judiciary Committee. And neither he nor anyone in the Administration has been able to come up with a single prior example of wiretapping inside the United States since 1978 that was conducted outside FISA’s authorization.

So the President’s arguments in the State of the Union were baseless, and it is unacceptable that the President of the United States would so obviously mislead the Congress and American public.

The President also has argued that periodic internal executive branch review provides an adequate check on the program. He has even characterized this periodic review as a safeguard for civil liberties. But we don’t know what this check involves. And we do know that Congress explicitly rejected this idea of unilateral executive decision-making in this area when it passed FISA.
Finally, the President has tried to claim that informing a handful of congressional leaders, the so-called Gang of Eight, somehow excuses breaking the law. Of course, several of these members said they weren’t given the full story. And all of them were prohibited from discussing what they were told. So the fact that they were informed under these extraordinary circumstances does not constitute congressional oversight, and it most certainly does not constitute congressional approval of the program.

Indeed, it doesn’t even comply with the National Security Act, which requires the entire memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee to be “fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.” Nor does the latest agreement to allow a seven-member subcommittee to review the program comply with the law. Granting a minority of the committee access to information is inadequate and still does not comply with the law requiring that the full committee be kept fully informed.
In addition, we now know that some of the Gang of Eight expressed concern about the program. The Administration ignored their protests. One of the eight members of Congress who has been briefed about the program, Congresswoman Jane Harman, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, has said she sees no reason why the Administration cannot accomplish its goals within the law as currently written.

None of the President’s arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA’s domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do.

And perhaps that is what is most troubling here, Mr. President. Even more troubling than the arguments the President has made is what he relies on to make them convincing – the credibility of the office of the President itself. He essentially argues that the American people should trust him simply because of the office he holds.

But Presidents don’t serve our country by just asking for trust, they must earn that trust, and they must tell the truth.
This President hides behind flawed legal arguments, and even behind the office he holds, but he cannot hide from what he has created: nothing short of a constitutional crisis. The President has violated the law, and Congress must respond. Congress must investigate and demand answers. Congress should also determine whether current law is inadequate and address that deficiency if it is demonstrated. But before doing so, Congress should ensure that there is accountability for authorizing illegal conduct.

A formal censure by Congress is an appropriate and responsible first step to assure the public that when the President thinks he can violate the law without consequences, Congress has the will to hold him accountable. If Congress does not reaffirm the rule of law, we will create another failure of leadership, and deal another blow to the public’s trust.

The President’s wrongdoing demands a response. And not just a response that prevents wrongdoing in the future, but a response that passes judgment on what has happened. We in the Congress bear the responsibility to check a President who has violated the law, who continues to violate the law, and who has not been held accountable for his actions.

Passing a resolution to censure the President is a way to hold this President accountable. A resolution of censure is a time-honored means for the Congress to express the most serious disapproval possible, short of impeachment, of the Executive’s conduct. It is different than passing a law to make clear that certain conduct is impermissible or to cut off funding for certain activities. Both of those alternatives are ways for Congress to affect future action. But when the President acts illegally, he should be formally rebuked. He should be censured.

The founders anticipated abuses of executive power by creating a balance of powers in the Constitution. Supporting and defending the Constitution, as we have taken an oath to do, require us to preserve that balance, and to have the will to act. We must meet a serious transgression by the President with a serious response. We must work, as the founders urged us in Federalist Number 51, to control the abuses of government.

The Constitution looks to the Congress to right the balance of power. The American people look to us to take action, to speak out, with one clear voice, against wrongdoing by the President of the United States. In our system of government, no one, not even the President, is above the law.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the resolution be printed in the Record following my remarks. I yield the floor.

THE PRESIDENT AND MR. MILLER

2006-02-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

THE PRESIDENT AND MR. MILLER
Tom Watson

Bode Miller was the perfect candidate for the packaged American Hero, a good-lucking lad who played the rebel to perfection for the image-makers, and ran with the hype and the credit card ads to the 2006 Olympics. Miller was a portable symbol of American lone rangers, the guy who did it his way and reached for the gold. Except he didn't reach. He turned up hollow and empty and unwilling to sacrifice. He skiied off the course, and he skiied off the story-line.

Just as the Bridge to Nowhere is the perfect metaphor for rudderless national leader of the Republican Party, so the ski bum Bode Miller and his devil-may-care attitude toward spectacular failure on the world stage makes a fine stand-in for the President of the United States.

Compare the scorecards. Downhill, Combined, Super-G, Giant Slalom, Slalom ... 5th, Disqualified, Did Not Finish, 6th, Did Not Finish. Spygate, Iraq, Katrina, Torture, Port Security. Or pick your own issues, any issues. No medals, folks - just ignominy and embarassment before the world. What Bode Miller is to Olympic triumph, George Bush is to Presidential history, flopping off the slick course of national politics like James Buchanan in Team USA spandex.
Of course, it's one thing to be an over-hyped, overweight slalom slacker hanging out till all hours in the bars of Turin, letting down your sponsors, your teammates, and your fans. To me, athletes never really let their countries down - that nationalistic stuff is just for T-shirt sales. The Olympic movement is about as idealistic as the Nike advertising budget. In the end, Bode Miller really disgraced no one but himself. His stupid little episode will fade, and his moment on the public stage is nearly at an end. George Bush's incredible failure will be with us for many, many years. Increasingly isolated (if that's possible) and with his dream team riddled by buckshot and scandal, our national ski bum has the country on the icy, dangerous downhill towards disaster.

George Bush in the flight suit on that carrier was Bode Miller in the Nike ads before the Olympics, all image and promise. No substance and sacrifice, no guts and inner fire. Here's what Mr. Miller told the (obviously angry) team at NBC Sports:

"The expectations were other people's. I'm comfortable with what I've accomplished, including at the Olympics ... I wanted to have fun here, to enjoy the Olympic experience, not be holed up in a closet and not ever leave your room. I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level ... I just did it my way. I'm not a martyr, and I'm not a do-gooder. I just want to go out and rock. And man, I rocked here."

Replace Olympics and Olympic with Presidency and Presidential, and how far are you really from the life and times of George W. Bush - who, after all, can always say he got to party and socialize on the Presidential level after a life partying and socializing on the silver spoon circuit.
Bode Miller is right. He is not a martyr. And he has absolutely nothing in common with the American men and women who are dying in our name in the streets of Iraqi cities as the Bush-triggered civil war rages. He has nothing in common with the 2,500 killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is nothing like the young Americans in military hospitals in Germany and Maryland and Texas and elsewhere, kids missing limbs and suffering paralysis and blindness, young people who time and time again tell the politicians and reporters who come around their beds: "I just want to get back to my unit."

Bode Miller is just another selfish American, another potent symbol of our self-satisfied society, but at least he doesn't ask more from others than he is willing to contribute himself. His failure is his own.

George Bush's failure is ours.

IT’S MUNICH IN AMERICA. THERE WILL BE NO NORMANDY.

2006-02-23T14:29:00.000-08:00

A powerful presentation of where we are headed if we can't stop the forces in power right now. This is a warning, It Can Happen Here. In fact, it is and it is just a question of whether we have the will to turn the tide.

IT’S MUNICH IN AMERICA. THERE WILL BE NO NORMANDY.
by David Michael Green

This is it, folks. This is the scenario our Founders lost sleep over. This is the day they prepared us for.

Outside the Philadelphia convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government he and his colleagues were crafting. His reply? “A republic. If you can keep it.” And that is just the question at issue today. Can we keep it?

Sure, it can sound melodramatic to use the f-word (no, not the one Churlish Cheney hurled at Patrick Leahy), and I have mostly avoided doing so for just that reason. Especially where the politically less informed are concerned, arguing that America is slipping into fascism can be the first and last point they’ll hear you make.

But, nowadays, even George F. Will is worried. You know you’re in a seriously bad place when that happens.

America may not be a fascist country today, but it’s not for want of trying. I have no question but that through Dick Cheney’s dark heart courses the blood of Mussolini. No wonder the damn thing’s so diseased. And I have no doubt that Karl Rove has only admiration and envy for Joseph Goebbels. Hey, why can’t we do that here? (Hint: We are.)

America is not a fascist country (if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this), but pardon me if I don’t defer to Bush defenders and ringside Democrats who consider me hysterical for worrying about the direction in which we’re heading.

These are the same people who’ve spent the last two decades denying the existence of global warming, while we now learn with each passing week how much worse than we had ever imagined is that environmental wreckage. These are the same people who said Iraq would be a cakewalk, and planned accordingly. These are the same people who prepared us for 9/11, the Iraq occupation, Hurricane Katrina and the prescription drug plan, and who have set new records for ineptitude in responding to those crises. These are the people who can’t get body armor on our troops, three years after launching the war, and who are getting flunking grades in terrorism preparation from the 9/11 Commission four years after that attack. These are the same people who have turned a massive surplus into a record-setting debt, and coupled it with equally breathtaking trade deficits. And now they want to cut federal tax revenue even more.

Yes, he is the president, but golly gee, Sargent Carter, he sure seems to make an awful lot of mistakes!

So forgive me if I don’t trust their judgement on matters of rather serious importance. Forgive me if I don’t stand by hoping they’re right as the two hundred year-old experiment in American democracy goes down the toilet. Besides, I thought being a conservative meant taking the prudent course, anyhow. Even if there was only a one in a hundred chance that a grenade was live, would you play with it? Wouldn’t it have been better to have acted ‘conservatively’ with the fate of the planet at stake, and assumed that global warming might be real? And, likewise, shouldn’t we worry about what is happening to American democracy now, while we still can?

The truth is, there is a government in office which seeks such complete power and dominance that even some conservatives have started to notice. Too blind to see the true intentions of this bunch, they can at least figure out that an imperial presidency created by George Bush might one day be inherited by Hillary Clinton (complete with her plans for a revolutionary dope-smoking lesbian Marxist state and global UN domination, enforced by an armada of black helicopters), so now even these fools are getting nervous about where this goes. They know that the only difference between the monarchism our Founders so reviled and contemporary Cheneyism is that the technology of our time allows George Bush to turn George III into George Orwell.

It’s Munich in America, people. We can dream the pleasant dream that if we just stand by quietly while the Boy King gobbles up some of our liberties, he won’t want any more, but that would be a lot like Chamberlain dreaming that a chunk of Czechoslovakia would be enough to appease Hitler. It wasn’t, and it won’t be.

Do I overstate the concern? The New York Times recently editorialized “We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers – and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.” The Times should know. Between rah-rah’ing the war for Bush, sitting on the Downing Street Memos as if they were banana import trade policy documents, and covering for Judith Miller while she covered for The Cheney Gang, they have about as much blood on their hands as does Donald Rumsfeld. But if even the Times can work up the concern to print a line like that, we’re in a world of hurt.

And we are, in fact, in a world of hurt. Those shreds of parchment on the floor of the National Archives aren’t from Mrs. Washington’s shopping list, I’m afraid to say.

It is true, of course, that other presidents – even the best of them – have taken enormous liberties with the Constitution, especially during wartime. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR jailed Americans on the West Coast for the crime of having Japanese ancestry, Truman and Eisenhower stood by while McCarthyism ripped a gaping hole through American civil liberties, and Nixon and his plumbers went to work on his political enemies in the name of national security. Of course, we now look back on those episodes as among the most shameful in American history. But the present crew is even more dangerous for their intentions of creating permanent war to justify permanent repression.

Already they’ve torn large chunks out of the Constitution.

Article One creates the legislative branch, that which the Founders intended to be the most powerful and consequential. Today, we have a president who makes the stunning assertion that he is the “sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs”. This Congress seems mostly to agree, even though the Founders gave them the power to declare war, to fund all governmental activities, to ratify treaties and to oversee the executive. Who, us? Bye-bye Article One.

Article Three creates a Supreme Court to adjudicate disputes (especially over governmental powers) and to protect the Constitution. But BushCo can’t be bothered to follow even the Court’s tentative interventions into due process concerning Guantánamo and beyond. And why should it? By the time they get done with loading the damn thing up with ‘unitary executive’ fifth-column shills like Roberts and Alito, it will be a moot court, just like the ones in law school. Once the Supreme Court becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch (about one vote from now), it’s bye-bye Article Three.

The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to assemble in protest. But protest is a joke in Bush’s America. People are kenneled off into pens so far from the president he is never confronted with any contrary views at all, apart from the odd funeral he has to show up at but Rove can’t script. The halls of Congress are ground zero for American democracy, much boasted about at home and jammed down the throat of the world (except when the results don’t favor American corporate or strategic interests). But go there and sit in the balcony wearing a t-shirt with the number of dead soldiers in Iraq printed on it and see how fast you get a lesson in Bush’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights. And that little display at the state of the union address was no freak event, either. That kind of thing happened all the time during the 2004 campaign. At Bush rallies, people were getting arrested for the bumper-stickers on their cars.

The First Amendment also protects freedom of the press. That freedom has not been eliminated, per se, but it has been effectively neutered beyond effectiveness. Between the White House intimidating most of the press, coopting the rest, stonewalling information requests, planting stories in the American and foreign media, and buying off journalists, today’s mainstream media has too often become a pathetic megaphone for White House lies, and that includes those supposed bastions of liberalism, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bye-bye First Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees “against unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation”. Can you say “NSA”? “Guantánamo”? “Abu Ghraib”? It’s bad enough that Bush has authorized himself to bug anybody, arrest anybody, convict anybody and silence anybody, but his NSA chief doesn’t even appear to have read the Fourth Amendment. That whole thing about probable cause was lost on him, as he and his president simultaneously trampled the separation of powers and checks and balances doctrines by eliminating two out of three branches of government from their little surveillance loop.

Meanwhile, informed estimates repeatedly assert that the majority of detainees rotting away in Guantánamo are there either because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time simply and got swept away like so much garbage into a dustpan, or were reported as al Qaeda so that one Afghan clan could use the US military to burn another. And so there they sit, unable to be charged, to be tried, to exercise habeas corpus, to have representation, to confront witnesses – unable now even to starve themselves to death in protest. If this wasn’t precisely the fear of the Founders when they put this language into the Constitution, then Dick Cheney is a poster boy for the ACLU. Strike the Fourth Amendment.

And take with it the Fifth (no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”), the Sixth (“the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”, the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense”), and the Eighth, providing against “cruel and unusual punishments”). Boom, boom, boom.

In a disgusting display of legal sophistry, the administration would argue that these provisions don’t apply because of jurisdiction, which of course was the entire purpose for putting their gulag in Guantánamo in the first place. As if it is not American territory since we ‘lease’ it from Cuba. As if Castro could send in the police to clean up the open sore of Bush’s human rights travesty there, and the US could do nothing about it, since it is Cuban land. Right.

But even if Fun With Domestic Jurisprudence is to be their game, the actions of the administration also represent a massive breach of international law, since the Geneva Conventions prohibit precisely these sorts of horrors which the Creature from Crawford has visited upon the poor SOBs caught in his dragnet.

Your scissors are probably getting a bit dull by now, but this means that not only is international law in scraps, but you can also go ahead and cut out Article Six of the Constitution as well, which provides that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”. Ah, how ‘quaint’. How very ‘obsolete’.

Such treaties may be the supreme law in some land, but apparently not in Bush Land. Or, at least not if you don’t mind another cute legal charade, in which a new category of POWs called “unlawful combatants” is fabricated with the intention of rendering – with disingenuousness extraordinaire – the detainees as falling outside the Geneva provisions.

That’s precious, as if a ‘lawful’ Bush all of a sudden got religion for the fine points of international jurisprudence. Except, of course, when it came to the need for obtaining a Security Council resolution to invade Iraq. Except when it comes to the International Criminal Court, which the Bush junta has been desperately trying to undermine at every opportunity (gee, I wonder why, given the Court’s mandate to prosecute war criminals). Except for nuclear nonproliferation. Except for the use of white phosphorus in Falluja. Apparently the only legal distinctions these guys follow are the ones Bush orders Alberto Gonzales, that paragon of legal independence and the rule of law, to create for him out of whole cloth. That international law.

There’s not much left of the Constitution now that these guys have tortured it as if it were some personal project in Lynndie England’s basement. Of course, they’ve made damn sure that the Second Amendment is fully protected, to the point where John Ashcroft wouldn’t investigate the gun purchase records of the 9/11 hijackers. You gotta love that. I wish they gave the rest of the Bill of Rights a tenth of the attention the Second Amendment gets. Heck, for that matter, I wish they’d even interpret the Second Amendment properly. Maybe in my next lifetime.

Meanwhile, arguably the three most brilliant inventions of the Constitution are separation of powers, the guarantee of civil liberties, and federalism. Even the latter – which has least to do with foreign affairs or checking executive power, and therefore has been least assaulted – is under duress as the Bush Gang attack state power any time it strays from their regressive political agenda, for instance with respect to euthanasia, medical marijuana or affirmative action.

In fact, all three of these key constitutional doctrines are suffering under a brutal assault from a regime which finds democracy and liberty fundamentally inconvenient to their aspirations for unlimited power. The administration absurdly claims to be bringing democracy to the Mid-East. (After that whole WMD thing went MIA, and Saddam’s links to al Qaeda proved equally credible, what the hell else were they going to say?). But far from the ludicrous claims that they are agents for the spread of democracy abroad, they are busy unraveling it with furious industry here at home.

It is, I’m afraid, Munich in America, and now we must decide whether to appease the bullies and pray for happy endings, or fight back to preserve a two hundred year-old experiment in democracy. Despite all its flaws and failures, Churchill was still right about it: Democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others. And that makes it worth fighting for.

But the spot we’re in now is actually worse than Munich, because there will be no Normandy in this war, and no Stalingrad. No country with the deterrent threat of a nuclear arsenal can ever be invaded by another country or group of countries, regardless of the magnitude of the latter’s own military power.

That means we’re on our own, folks. If we flip completely over to the dark side, nobody will be storming our beaches and scrambling up our cliffs to liberate us from our own folly. Hell, if they weren’t so worried about the international menace we represent, they’d probably be laughing at us, anyhow, thinking how richly we deserved the government we got.

But there’s nothing funny about this situation. Hitler dreamed of a thousand year reich, but didn’t count on the resilience of an endless army of Slavs, or the technological prowess of a nation of shopkeepers’ great-grandchildren hammering his would-be millennium down to a decade. If the US goes authoritarian (or worse), on the other hand, who will play Russia or America to our Germany? The answer is no one, and it is not apocalyptic paranoia to fear a very, very long period of unrelenting political darkness, once the curtain comes down.

Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? Maybe. I have no doubt that unchecked Cheneyism intends precisely that. It’s therefore up to the rest of us to stop it. It’s up to us to say yes to Philadelphia, and no to Munich. Because there will be no Normandy.

Now we find out if we can keep Mr. Franklin’s republic, after all.

TOP 10 'CONSPIRACY THEORIES' ABOUT GEORGE W. BUSH

2006-02-10T06:04:00.000-08:00

Maureen Farrell takes a look at what, in normal times, would be considered fantasies of the black helicopter crowd. Now, unfortunately, they represent probable realities.

TOP 10 'CONSPIRACY THEORIES' ABOUT GEORGE W. BUSH
by Maureen Farrell

"It is incumbent upon journalists, I think, to distrust conspiracy theories. But the problem with the conspiracy theory of the machine that lifted George 'Dubya' Bush to high office is that it never lets you down. . . ."
-- Ed Vulliamy, the Observer, Aug. 24, 2003

"This is a government takeover and Bush and Cheney are running it."
-- The Chattanoogan, Dec. 21, 2005

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, a friend sent me an obscure book featuring predictions by a blind Native American shaman. It was a thoughtful, but annoying, gesture. For all I knew, this "seer" could merely be a James Frey-sized figment of the author's imagination and these so-called prophecies could be nothing more than a patchwork of hunches. A prediction that the Red Sox would win the World Series would have been impressive. But wars? Economic downturns? Environmental disasters? Yawn.

This was the age of forged Nostradamus quotes and apocalyptic visions, however, and, with debunking in mind, I plodded ahead. Some predictions, which were reportedly made in 1982, were decidedly silly. Others, however, don't exactly ring foolish. Among the more noteworthy:

* Propaganda and terrorism will increase.
* Religious zealots will use the courts to try to force their views upon the general public.
* The Supreme Court will make unfortunate decisions that don't benefit the people.
* Several undeclared wars will be waged simultaneously.
* There will be high-level secrecy and clandestine agreements between nations.
* America will eventually become a police state.
* The draft will be reinstated.
* Americans will learn of government duplicity and cover-ups.

Whether or not this list is the result of guesswork, fabrications or something else, nearly a quarter of a century later, such musings have gone from the fringe to the forefront. Police state predictions? Check. Rumors of wars? Check. Clandestine agreements between nations? Check. Discoveries of government duplicity and cover-ups? Triple check.

Predictions are not the same thing as conspiracy theories, of course, but both can occur simultaneously. Sept. 11 commission co-chair Lee Hamilton's prediction that another terrorist attack is all but certain, for example, when combined with concerns about George W. Bush's imperial ambitions, creates the kind of speculation the founding fathers engaged in, long before FOX News was there to pooh-pooh concerns about tyrannical designs.

And though predictions and conspiracy theories are often speculative and contrived, it must be remembered that the term "tin foil hat" has its roots in historical fact and the tendency to tag a "gate" onto scandals proves that some conspiracy theories do, in fact, turn out to be true.

With the most secretive, power-hungry administration in recent history, George W. Bush has generated a cornucopia of theories. Many of them are ridiculous while others, like the assorted conspiracies relating to Skull and Bones, simply confirm suspicions about frat boys and prove that privilege and networking do, in fact, catapult people into high places.

Some theories, however, have Tina Turner-strength legs. For your consideration:

10. A Second Terror Attack Will Allow the Bush Administration to Complete the "Coup" that Began on Sept. 11, 2001

"September 11, 2001, played into neoconservative hands exactly as the 1933 Reichstag fire played into Hitler's hands. Fear, hysteria, and national emergency are proven tools of political power grabs. Now that the federal courts are beginning to show some resistance to Bush's claims of power, will another terrorist attack allow the Bush administration to complete its coup?"
-- Former Reagan administration official and Wall Street Journal and National Review assistant editor Paul Craig Roberts, Jan. 2, 2006

"The 9-11 attacks provided the rationale for what amounts to a Bush family coup against the Constitution."
-- James Ridgeway, The Village Voice, Dec. 30, 2005

Six years ago, anyone suggesting that the Bush administration would use terror to achieve pre-packaged goals would have been laughed out of Dodge. The signs were there, however, going all the way back to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's stints in the Ford administration through their participation in Reagan-era Doomsday drills.

Initially, there were vague murmurings over foreign airways. "There is a hidden agenda at the very highest levels of our government," a mysterious American told the BBC in Nov. 2001, regarding allegations that the FBI was told to "back off" the bin Ladens. "Unnamed sources" eventually morphed into real people, however, and by the time Pentagon insider Karen Kwiatkowski came forward with revelations about what she called "a coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon," and respected journalist Seymour Hersh proclaimed that "cultists" had "taken the government over," this theory gained traction.

Despite attempts to discredit true believers as "full-mooners," revelations continued. And now that a former Bush administration official is saying that a "cabal" led by Rumsfeld and Cheney "hijacked US foreign policy" and a former Reagan administration official is saying that America is now an "incipient dictatorship," the ideology of Loon Land is capital T Truth to some very smart people.

Gen. Tommy Franks, you might recall, famously predicted that another terror attack will militarize our society and obliterate the Constitution, former White House counsel John Dean has warned of "constitutional dictatorship" and Paul Craig Roberts has openly wondered if another terror attack will lead to a total usurpation of constitutional government and "allow the Bush administration to complete its coup."

Roberts, who served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan, also believes that a "Jacobin coup" took place after Sept. 11 and that a "police state" is fast approaching. Joining the host of others raising concerns about questionable elections and a Supreme Court poised to give the executive branch unprecedented power, he sees "America's descent into dictatorship" as the "result of historical developments and of old political battles." But, he also contends that President Bush "is unlikely to be aware that the Constitution is experiencing its final rending on his watch."

Others are not so certain.

9. President Bush is Trampling the Constitution and Turning America into a Dictatorship

"The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history... There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship." -- The Nation, Jan. 9, 2006

"After September 11, we did not, for example, change from a democracy to a dictatorship, from a nation of laws to a nation in which one man endows himself with the authority to act above the law, immune to its dictates and limitations. We are not that country. We must never become that country. However, to hear President Bush, we are that country already." -- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dec. 20, 2005.

To understand the origins of this theory, one would have to go back to America's founding, when James Madison wrote that the accumulation of power in any one of the three" separate and distinct" branches of government was the "very definition of tyranny." Fast forward to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's dream of "restoring the imperial presidency," George W. Bush's jokes about an American dictatorship, and arguments regarding the "Unitary Executive Theory of the Presidency," and suddenly Thomas Jefferson's observation that tyranny is the natural progression of all governments seems frighteningly apt.

Similar conspiracy theories were circulated during the Clinton years, too, you might recall, and when the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff called President Clinton a "serial violator of the Bill of Rights," he was tapping into an authoritarian trend that diehard Democrats preferred to ignore. (Republicans who gladly ignore the Constitution and rule of law are also guilty of putting power over principle.)

But even so, under Bush, authoritarianism thrived. "According to Bush doctrine, there are no checks and balances in American government anymore. A president can do what he pleases in the name of national security, and neither Congress nor the judiciary can stop him. At the end of the day, that is the real threat to American democracy," the Minneapolis Star Tribune explained.

Just how much of a threat? In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush installed a shadow government and restricted access to presidential records. Posse Comitatus, the law forbidding the military from being used to police US citizens, is on its last legs, -- and a new provision in the Patriot Act will create a federal police force with unprecedented power. A former Bush White House insider has described "decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy," and the Supreme Court is poised to further tilt the balance of powers towards the executive branch. Need more proof that the idea of "representative government" is an illusion? Since 9/11:

* US citizens have been detained for years without formal charges or trial.
* The president's "signing statements" have neutered bills passed by Congress - expanding presidential authority through a "unitary executive" doctrine.
* Bush has declared that he, as "commander in chief," can ignore the Geneva Conventions and laws such as the McCain amendment prohibiting torture.
* The Justice Department has concluded that there are "no limits" to the president's war-making authority.
* News of secret prisons and secret laws have come to the fore.
* The Pentagon has spied on groups that disagree with Mr. Bush's policies, including dangerous militants such as the Quakers.
* The F.B.I. has spied on the Catholic Worker's Group, Greenpeace and PETA.
* The Bush administration has ordered the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without oversight -- and did so even before Sept. 11.

Before his death in 1989, All the King's Men author Robert Penn Warren predicted that the day might come when an America president would possess too much power. "Well, it'll probably be someone you least expect under circumstances nobody foresaw," he said. "And, of course, it'll come with a standing ovation from Congress."

8. President Bush Planned to Go to War with Iraq before 9/11

"A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC)"
-- The Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002

"Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography. 'He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,' said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. 'It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.'. . . "
-- Russ Baker, GNN, Oct. 28, 2004

In 2001, the Onion ran a satirical inauguration speech, wherein Bush promised to run up the deficit, tear down the wall between church and state, and "engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years." Truth is often stranger than satire, however, and it was later discovered that well before Bush's selection as president, plans for war in Iraq had been drawn up and were waiting in the wings. "For nearly a decade a group of people exiled from power during the Clinton years had been making plans," Ed Vulliamy wrote, referring to the cast of characters tied to the Project for a New American Century, whose memos and documents signaled a hunger for battle and foretold a future of wars on multiple fronts. (And possibly even a reinstatement of the draft.)

Yes, long before George Bush vowed to uphold the Constitution, plans were in the works -- going back to the last Gulf War, when the realists in George H.W. Bush's administration felt that unseating Saddam would bog the U.S down in an un-winnable guerilla war, and the neoconservatives disagreed to the point of obsession.

This turmoil was evident in 1992, when the radical Wolfowitz Doctrine, which called for a "go-it-alone" military strategy and a policy of preemption, was leaked to the press. And by 1998, right about the time George H.W. Bush was explaining why his administration did not remove Hussein from power, Paul Wolfowitz was testing the "cakewalk theory" before Congress, shilling for the Iraqi Liberation Act and promising that the U.S would not need to send major ground forces into Iraq to do the job.

How did George W. Bush, who promised a "humble" foreign policy during the 2000 campaign get mixed up in this? Mickey Herskowitz, Bush's ghost writer on A Charge To Keep, says that Governor Bush began talking about invading Iraq in 1999, in part, he believes, due to a Reagan-era credo ascribed to Dick Cheney: "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."

"'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it," Bush told Herskowitz in one of two taped interviews. "If I have a chance to invade . . . if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

PBS' highly informative War Behind Closed Doors also examined how Bush's ideas might have taken root:

EVAN THOMAS, Asst. Managing Editor, "Newsweek": When George Bush was running for president, he essentially went to school. And various great and worthy men trooped down to Austin to teach George Bush about the world. And by and large, they told him that Iraq was unfinished, basically, but they had to be a little careful about it because, of course, George Bush's father was the one who hadn't finished the business. And if George W. Bush was elected president, he may end up having to do what his father didn't do or couldn't do, and that is killing off Saddam Hussein.

NARRATOR: In Bush, Wolfowitz saw a chance to get his ideas about a tougher American stance in the world implemented. But W, as he was known, was also being advised by Colin Powell. And during the campaign, neither side really knew where they stood with the candidate.

WILLIAM KRISTOL, V.P. Chief of Staff '89-'92: I wouldn't say that if you read Wolfowitz's defense policy guidance from 1992 and read most of Bush's campaign speeches and his statements in the debates, you would say, "Hey, Bush has really adopted Wolfowitz's world view."

Before the war began, Scowcroft penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled "Don't Attack Saddam" and both Herskowitz and author James Risen have chronicled ways George H. W. Bush counseled his son not to invade Iraq (Risen says at one point, George W. "angrily hung up the phone" during one of these conversations.). And, of course, who can forget Bob Woodward's revelation that Bush relied on "a higher father" instead of taking his earthly father's advice?

But regardless how many times administration officials say "Sept. 11 changed everything," the war in Iraq was a foregone conclusion long before Mohamed Atta became a household name. "From the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told 60 Minutes in Jan. 2004, adding that the plans to invade Iraq began days after Bush's inauguration. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"

And the rest, as they say, is history.

7. The Bush Administration Conspired with Britain and Used Deliberate Deception to Make its Case for War with Iraq

"Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white...and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity. It has been a hard learning . . . that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. . . Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents . . . this time authentic, not forged. . . "
-- Veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern, referring to the July 2002 Downing Street Memo, TomPaine.com, May 4, 2005

"The president of the United States caught conspiring to create a modern-day version of the sinking of the Maine? Talk about an impeachable offense."
-- David Corn, referring to a Jan. 2003 memo of a conversation between George Bush and Tony Blair, the Huffington Post, Feb. 2, 2006

In March, 2002, a full year before the start of the war in Iraq, former U.N. official Denis Halliday told Salon that "Saddam Hussein is not a threat to the U.S." and that "the whole weapons inspection issue is really just a ruse," echoing the sentiments Colin Powell had expressed earlier in Cairo, when he said that Hussein had "not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction" and was "unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

Six months later, members of the intelligence community began speaking out against "cooked information" and false intelligence "from various Iraqi exiles" -- assertions which were soon backed by revelations about Ahmed Chalabi's "faulty intelligence," and the U.S. government's willingness to believe a less-than-credible agent named Curveball. "Keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," a CIA official wrote in Feb. 2003, one day before Colin Powell made his regrettable presentation before the UN.

And while the Office of Special Plans (otherwise known as "the Lie Factory") generated damning evidence all by itself, the true smoking guns were found in memos uncovered by the British press. "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," the Downing Street memo read, confirming what many suspected -- that Bush wanted war and would lie to get it. (When Rep Jim McDermott said as much in Sept. 2002, the Weekly Standard and right wing hacks went on the warpath).

A subsequent memo, written in Jan. 2003, indicates that not only was Bush trying to "fix" the facts around the policy, but was willing to create another Gulf of Tonkin type crisis in the skies over Baghdad. "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach," Bush reportedly told Tony Blair, indicating that he hoped to deceive Saddam in order to provoke an attack, even as he was pressing for a second UN resolution authorizing war.

Other evidence supporting this "conspiracy theory" include revelations that:

* The President made a list of false claims including the assertion that "Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases." Declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document later proved that the Bush administration knew this information was less than credible.
* Ten days after 9/11, during a highly classified briefing, President Bush was told that there was no credible evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the terror attacks. The State Department also pinpointed countries where al-Qaeda was known to operate, and Iraq was not listed among them. Even so, the president often uttered "Iraq" and "Sept. 11" in the same breath, a ploy that would best resonate with traumatized Americans.
* Joseph Wilson wrote his op-ed "What I Didn't Find in Africa," refuting the infamous "16 words" in the President's State of the Union speech, proving that faulty information made its way into high pronouncements. (Bush also repeated the aluminum tubes lie, which had also been discounted). The Bush administration countered by "outing" Wilson's CIA agent wife.
* The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded that the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons programs and former senior US weapons inspector David Kay said that major stockpiles of WMD probably didn't exist in Iraq.
* Former US Congressman and eventual Sept. 11 co-chair Lee Hamilton told the Christian Science Monitor that he feared the Bush administration was twisting the facts. "My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence," he said in 2002. In 2005, when the Downing Street memo was leaked to the press, Hamilton was proven prescient.

Thanks to lies and innuendo, by the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 70% of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet Dick Cheney, our beleaguered vice president, still contends that accusations that the Bush administration misled the public are "dishonest," "reprehensible" and "not legitimate".

6. President Bush Knew 9/11 Was Going to Happen

"George Bush received specific warnings in the weeks before 11 September that an attack inside the United States was being planned by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, US government sources said yesterday. In a top-secret intelligence memo headlined 'Bin Laden determined to strike in the US', the President was told on 6 August that the Saudi-born terrorist hoped to 'bring the fight to America'. . ."
-- The Guardian, May 19, 2002

"By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined 'Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US,' the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. . . In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports 'Bin Laden planning multiple operations,' 'Bin Laden network's plans advancing' and 'Bin Laden threats are real.'"
-- The Washington Post, April 13, 2004

Did Bush know Al Qaeda was going to attack the U.S.? Yes. Of course he did. If this sounds "out there" to you, I have a bridge to sell you in Stepford. The fact is, Bush either knew an attack was coming, or has the reading comprehension of a 2-year-old. In April and May, 2001, President Bush received a string of reports regarding bin Laden's plans, while in July, a CIA intelligence report for President Bush read, "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests."

That same month, when Bush attended the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, the security measures were extreme -- considering the reports that Osama bin Laden might try to assassinate him -- possibly by flying a plane filled with explosives into a building. And on Aug 6, 2001, the President received a briefing entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the US."

These are but a handful of the reports pointing to foreknowledge:

* "President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday." -- ("Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says," The New York Times, April 10, 2004)
* "Even though Bush has refused to make parts of the 9-11 report public, one thing is startlingly clear: The U.S. government had received repeated warnings of impending attacks -- and attacks using planes directed at New York and Washington -- for several years. The government never told us about what it knew was coming." -- James Ridgeway, ("Bush's 9-11 Secrets: The Government Received Warnings of Bin Laden's Plans to Attack New York and D.C.," The Village Voice, July 31, 2003)
* "It seems very probable that those in the White House knew much more than they have admitted, and they are covering up their failure to take action . . . After pulling together the information in the 9/11 Report, it is understandable why Bush is stonewalling. It is not very difficult to deduce what the president knew, and when he knew it. And the portrait that results is devastating." -- John Dean, ("The 9/11 Report Raises More Serious Questions about the White House Statements On Intelligence," Findlaw.com July, 29, 2003)
* "President Bush and his top advisers were informed by the CIA early last August that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking airplanes." ("Bush was Told of Hijacking Dangers," The Washington Post, May 16, 2002)
* "U.S. Had a Steady Stream of Pre-9/11 Warnings." -- (PBS, Sept. 18, 2002)
* "I saw papers that show US knew al-Qaeda would attack cities with airplanes'" -- FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, ('I saw papers that show US knew al-Qaeda would attack cities with airplanes": Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent," The Independent, April 2, 2004)

Other headlines read: ''Bush Was Warned bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes," (The New York Times, May 15, 2002); "Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings: Reports Preceded August 2001 Memo," (The Washington Post, April 13, 2004); and "Bush Knew of Terrorist Plot to Hijack US Planes,"(the Guardian, May 19, 2002). And in case you think the "liberal media" is the lone voice saying "they knew" prominent Republican members of the Senate Committee investigating Sept. 11 and the Sept. 11 Commission have made similar observations. "I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it," Senator Arlen Specter said.

While it's clear "Bush knew," nobody really knows "why they didn't act on it." Was it laziness? Incompetence? Or something worse? Former British MP Michael Meacher has questioned if "US air security operations" might have "deliberately stood down on September 11" while Gore Vidal wondered if the "Bush junta" intentionally ignored 9/11 warnings to advance its preset agenda. Citing PNAC's observation that a "New Pearl Harbor" would be needed to enact the muscular foreign policy they foresaw and the fact that Bush's National Security Strategy, did, in fact, read like a PNAC wish list, advocates of this "let it happen on purpose" theory also cite Paul O'Neill's assertion that President Bush was looking for a reason to invade Iraq just days after his inauguration.

Others have also pointed to Operation Northwoods to substantiate their claims. "The Operation Northwoods plan shows the Pentagon was capable, according to [James] Bamford, "of launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting a (war on Cuba)," a Canadian TV show argued. "Can we be sure, therefore, that complicity by the Pentagon in the events of Sept. 11th is entirely out of the question?"

Conspiracy theorists have also wondered about John Ashcroft's "security concerns," Mayor Willie Brown's pre-9/11 warning, and Pentagon staffers' Sept. 11 flight cancellations. Throw in obvious propaganda, "problematic" explanations, class action lawsuits and the fact that George W. Bush just sat in that Florida classroom for minutes and you've added hefty speculation to the fire.

Yes, there is proof "Bush knew." But as for letting it 9/11 happen on purpose? As Robert Steinback recently pointed out in the Miami Herald, it will be years before documents concerning JFK's assassination are made public, and even longer before the Warren Commission's files are finally released. Why should anyone expect unanswered 9/11 questions to be answered any time soon?

Steinback nevertheless points to a group of PhDs who call themselves "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" who are currently asking the "hard questions" many prefer to avoid. Even so, admitting that there are inconsistencies within the official story is a far cry from accusing the U.S. government of complicity in the attacks. Suffice it to say that some questions may never be answered and some suspicions will never be laid to rest.

5. The Bush Administration Manipulated the Media to Disseminate Propaganda

"Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox 'News' and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the media is affected to some degree. "
-- Former Wall Street Journal and National Review assistant editor Paul Craig Roberts, Jan. 30, 2006

"There is no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. You never even get that idea floated in the mainstream media. If you bring it up, they hate the messenger."
-- Janeane Garofalo, the Washington Post, Jan.27, 2003 (two months before the war in Iraq began)

Given that the Government Accountability Office found that the Bush administration violated the law by engaging in "covert propaganda" within the U.S., the notion that the Bush White House manipulated the media is not even a conspiracy theory any more -- it's a conspiracy fact. In case you were out of the loop, the story went something like this: The Bush administration produced phony stories hyping everything from Medicare to federal student loan programs, which ran on American TV disguised as "news." It then turned around and paid columnist and frequent TV talk show guest Armstrong Williams $241,000 to promote its No Child Left Behind legislation. "This happens all the time," Armstrong told the Nation's David Corn, adding that "there are others."
Though columnists Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus were also on the White House payroll, speculation regarding "the others" ran rampant following one news conference, when Jeff Gannon, of Talon News and GOPUSA, asked President Bush how he could deal with Senate Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." Bloggers immediately smelled a rat and within a month, the mainstream media also began to question how Gannon, a gay escort, was given clearance to attend White House briefings -- even before he was a reporter. "Planting or even just sanctioning a political operative in the WH press room is a dangerous precedent," CBS reported, pointing to Karl Rove, The who seemed to have Gannon's egg on his face.

To be fair, there is a time-honored tradition of government and media war-time collaboration. Whether reporting on the Maine or the Lusitania or the USS Maddox, the press has historically done what was needed to help the war effort. During the first Gulf War, Americans were treated to Propaganda Plus, when a PR firm was hired to sell the war to both the Senate and the public.

The PR campaign, we later learned, actually continued throughout the 1990s, with the government covertly working to sell regime change in Iraq. The Weekly Standard did its part, devoting an entire special edition devoted to taking out Saddam in 1995. As Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post revealed in Jan. 2003, "the Dec. 1 issue of the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, headlined its cover with a bold directive: Saddam Must Go: A How-to Guide. Two of the articles were written by current administration officials, including the lead one, by Zalmay M. Khalilzad, now special White House envoy to the Iraqi opposition, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, now deputy defense secretary."

By the time Andrew Card explained why the Bush administration waited until Sept. 2002 to "market" the impending war in Iraq, American TV complied, coming up with powerful soundtracks and visuals that read "Showdown With Saddam" and "Countdown to Iraq" while making it appear as if an actual debate were taking place. When Phil Donahue tried to present the "other side," however, his show was cancelled, despite having MSNBC's highest primetime ratings. His crime? According to a study commissioned by NBC, Donahue seemed "to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives" as the competition was "waving the flag at every opportunity."

Other networks also felt the pinch, with CNN's Christine Amanpour saying that intimidation "by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News" led to "a climate of fear and self-censorship" and the unquestioning propagation of "disinformation." Those who raised questions were often smeared or worse, as Scott Ritter and Valerie Plame would later learn. "As soon as I came out against Bush, that's when my rights to free speech were taken away. It had nothing to do with indecency," Howard Stern said on his radio broadcast on March 19, 2004. "I have two sources inside the FCC. They know exactly what is going on. They had a meeting two weeks ago, freaking out. I seem to be making enough noise that people are realizing we could hurt George W. Bush in the elections. So they are trying to figure out at what point do they fine me."

Media manipulation goes way back, of course, but since the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, which paved the way for Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, propaganda has dominated the airways, making true democracy all but impossible. "The whole idea that we can govern ourselves and have an intelligent debate, free of cant, free of disinformation, I think it's dead." author John MacArthur said, with the "swiftboating of John Murtha" recently proving his point.

The culprit is not just the conservative media, however, as The New York Times was especially helpful during the push for war. Judith Miller, in particular, came under fire. See if you can connect the dots:

* In 2000, a memo from a former colleague described New York Times reporter Miller as "an advocate," whose work "is little more than dictation from government sources . . . filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies." James Bamford later asserted that Miller "had been a trusted outlet for the INC's [Iraqi National Congress'] anti-Saddam propaganda for years."
* A story by Miller, containing disinformation indicating that Saddam Hussein sought high-strength aluminum tubes to develop a nuclear bomb, ran on the front page of the New York Times. Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice took to the Sunday morning talk shows, repeating Miller's assertions -- with Rice telling CNN, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
* Miller went to jail for refusing to name her source in the Plamegate investigation, (Scooter Libby) where she was visited by John Bolton, whose nomination for UN ambassador had been called into question by "claims that he tried to manipulate US intelligence to support his hawkish views." Libby, who was later indicted in the Plame case, wrote her this cryptic letter: "You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover -- Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work -- and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers. With admiration, Scooter Libby."
Was Miller duped? Was she a pawn? Was she one of those CIA moles Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein warned of? Who knows? Regardless what drove Miller's reporting, one thing is clear: The New York Times has been a conduit for disinformation in the past and it was invaluable in helping this administration sell the war in Iraq. The "liberal media" strikes again.

4. G.W. Bush Conspired with Others to Steal the 2000 and 2004 Elections.

"There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying -- and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense. . .Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool. The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory . . Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV. The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, ESPN, Nov. 27, 2000

"[The Bush Family's] sense of how to win elections comes out of a CIA manual, not out of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution."
-- Former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips, BuzzFlash, Jan. 7. 2004

While some believe a coup began on Sept. 11, others will tell you it began with the 2000 election. Even though George Bush's first cousin declared him the winner and his brother Jeb assured him he'd won Florida, many Americans remained unconvinced.

First there was the surreal sight of the Bush family on national TV, as staged and phony as Susan Smith's tearful plea to return her "kidnapped" children. Then came the well-groomed thugs, sent on Enron and Halliburton planes to stop the Florida recount. But it wasn't just James Baker's ploys or the Supreme Court's ruling that signaled something was amiss -- it was the attitude of ordinary citizens who were more concerned about their "team" winning than about democracy itself.

Unless you rely solely on FOX news (the modern equivalent to "living under a rock"), the shenanigans that occurred in pre-election Florida are now old news, and have been dissected at length in documentaries, magazines and to some degree, in the mainstream press. A St . Petersburg Times op-ed later deemed the election "stolen," the Associated Press reported that Florida had "quietly" admitted "election fraud," and Vanity Fair devoted a sizable portion of its Oct. 2004 issue to exactly how Team Bush pulled it off. By the time CNN sued the state of Florida for its ineligible voters list in 2004, the underbelly of the beast was plainly visible.

But in Nov. 2001, when Greg Palast uncovered then Secretary of State Katherine Harris' role in the shameful voter roll purge in Florida, the news was explosive. The New York Times -- the paper that would later print front page disinformation to sell the war in Iraq -- took a pass, however, until three years later, when it was too late to do anything about it.

At first, election irregularities were featured as anomalies, like when the Washington Post covered computer glitches that literally subtracted thousands of votes from Al Gore and gave them to a Socialist candidate. By the time similar problems were reported during the 2002 midterm and 2004 primary elections, people were understandably skittish, with e-voting failures having "shaken confidence in the technology installed at thousands of precincts" -- with as many as 20 states introducing legislation calling for paper receipts on voting machines.

In early 2004, Mother Jones predicted that "Ohio could become as decisive this year as Florida was four years ago" and sure enough, Americans awoke the day after the election without a decisive winner. And though John Kerry later conceded, questions have since been raised by computer programmers, mathematicians, journalists and others. "Was the election of 2004 stolen?" columnist Robert Koehler asked, before addressing the many "numbers-savvy scientists are saying that the numbers don't make sense."

There were warnings before the election, of course, with red flags being raised by researchers at prestigious Stanford and John Hopkins Universities. But despite Diebold's CEO's promise to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's prominent role in the Bush/Cheney campaign, and the suspicious election night lock-down in Warren County, Ohio, many still believed election angst could be attributed to a super-sized case of "sour grapes."

When Christopher Hitchens, who is admittedly not a Kerry fan, also weighed in, however, that excuse flew out the window. "Whichever way you shake it, or hold it to the light, there is something about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. . . ," he wrote.

Rep. John Conyers and the Government Accountability Office also found widespread irregularities, and when statisticians picked apart the election results, Bush was not the legitimate winner. Pollster John Zogby compared the 2004 election to 1960's suspicious contest, and University of Pennsylvania professor Steven F. Freeman put the odds that exit polls were that wrong, in that many states, at 250 million to one.

The evidence was so compelling, in fact, that NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller took it upon himself to tackle the proverbial suggestion "somebody should write a book." His extensively-researched yet largely ignored Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) shines a crucial light on the "stealthy combination of computerized vote theft, bureaucratic monkey business, systematic shortages of viable equipment and old-fashioned dirty tricks. . . " that led to democracy's last debacle, and will most likely lead to the next.

Ohio's 2005 election also failed the smell test, and by late Jan. 2006, the Washington Post looked into allegations of election tampering -- without the dismissive, lazy reporting usually afforded the subject. Describing tests conducted by Florida's Leon County supervisor of elections Ion Sancho, using "relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques," the paper quickly uncovered how easy it is to steal an election. "Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?" election officials asked test participants, and though two marked their ballots "yes" and six said "no," by the time they went through Diebold's optical scan machine, the results read seven "yes" votes and one "no."

"More troubling than the test itself was the manner in which Diebold simply failed to respond to my concerns or the concerns of citizens who believe in American elections," Sancho said. "I really think they're not engaged in this discussion of how to make elections safer."

Hmmm. You don't say.

There is a reason, you see, that "None Dare Call It Stolen," and that reasons extends beyond the preponderance of evidence. "If electronic voting machines programmed by private Republican firms remain in our future, dissent will become pointless unless it boils over into revolution," former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts wrote. "Power-mad Republicans need to consider the result when democracy loses its legitimacy and only the rich have anything to lose."

James Madison predicted a similar scenario. "The day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility," he reportedly told the New York Post. "It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few."

Those would be the "one percenters." And chances are, you aren't one of them.

3. Candidate G. W. Bush Promised to Tear Down the Wall Between Church and State.

"Whatever else it achieves, the presidential campaign of 2000 will be remembered as the time in American politics when the wall separating church and state began to collapse."
-- The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 30, 2000

"Thomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers, said that we should build a wall between the church and state. That wall is being deliberately and ostentatiously, not secretly, broken down. . . "
-- President Jimmy Carter, the Daily Show, Dec. 5, 2005

Remember Bill Clinton's impeachment? Back when the rule of law mattered? Some say that the drive for impeachment did not begin with Monica Lewinski, but the Religious Rights' long held desire to takeover American politics. ("I'm for evangelicals running for public office and winning if possible and getting control of the Congress, getting control of the bureaucracy, getting control of the executive branch of government," the Rev. Billy Graham told viewers of the 700 Club in 1985).

According to Rolling Stone, the idea to impeach Clinton reportedly took root during a meeting of the Center for National Policy (CNP) in June 1997, and by 1998, disgraced House majority leader Tom DeLay -- who earned a 100% approval rating by the Christian Coalition -- provided fundamentalists with a "direct lobbying line to the U.S. Congress."

Some Senators were also on board and, with Supreme Court vacancies waiting in the wings, the Religious Right needed an executive partner.

Enter George W. Bush.

The crowning moment for America's fundamentalists reportedly came in 1999-- when candidate Bush made his "king-making speech" before CNP, wherein he was rumored to have promised to take a "tough stance against gays and lesbians" and appoint Religious Right-approved candidates to the Supreme Court. The Democratic National Committee requested a copy of the speech, but was denied, while ABC News and other organizations started asking questions, declaring CNP, which has included John Ashcroft, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell among its influential members, as the "most powerful group you never heard of."

While Bush's trip to Bob Jones University made headlines, he also made a scantly noticed pilgrimage to meet with about two dozen fundamentalist leaders who called themselves the Committee to Restore American Values, which was headed by Left Behind series co-author and CNP founder Rev. Timothy LaHaye, who Rolling Stone reported, "played a quiet but pivotal role in putting George W. Bush in the White House."

How valid is this theory? The National Council of Churches, which represents America's mainstream Protestant churches, has said that Bush is the first President since George Washington to snub traditional churches while giving unparallel access to evangelicals.

Walter Cronkite and Jimmy Carter have both expressed dismay over what Carter calls the "increasing merger in this country of fundamentalism on the religious side [and] fundamentalism on the political side." And in the aftermath of the 2000 election:

* ABC News openly speculated that Christian conservatives were responsible for Bush's presidential nomination.
* The Washington Post described Bush as the first U.S. President to double as the Religious Right's "de facto leader."
* The Guardian reported that U.S. fundamentalists are "at the heart of power."
* The Village Voice reported that the Bush White House consults with apocalyptic Christians to make sure that U.S. foreign policy conforms to End Times prophecies.
* Karl Rove consulted James Dobson (the man "Focus on the Family" co-founder Gil Alexander-Moegerle called "a tremendous threat to the separation of church state") regarding President Bush's Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.
* The Marriage Protection Act passed in the House, using an untested provision that further weakens the wobbly wall between church and state.
* The Constitutional Restoration Act of 2004, which states that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over "any matter" regarding public officials who acknowledge "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government" was reintroduced in 2005.

In Sept. 1960, Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy eased concerns that his Catholicism would interfere with his presidency. "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him," he said.

During the 2004, election, however, the GOP was caught dipping its pen into God's inkwell when the Bush campaign asked user-friendly congregations to hand over their church directories. And while one pastor even told parishioners to "vote for Bush" or leave, the IRS targeted one liberal church for giving an antiwar sermon.

While the Abramoff scandal has underscored ways the GOP has manipulated the folks Lee Atwater once referred to as "extra chromosome conservatives," concerns over "apocalyptic politics" cannot be overlooked. Today, one third of all Americans believe that Israel will soon be destroyed to make way for the second coming of Christ, sharing the same theology as the Islamofascists America's democratic quest is supposedly disarming. "And as far as the imminent apocalypse is concerned, [America's fundamentalists are] on the same page as the Mullahs in Tehran," conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan pointed out. "Just in case you were sleeping soundly at night."

2. George Bush is a Front Man for the Military Industrial Complex.

"In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about how 'we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.' That complex's recent mega-leap to power came under George H.W. Bush and even more under George W. Bush ... with the post-9/11 expansion of the military and creation of the Department of Homeland Security. But armaments and arms deals seem to have been in the Bushes' blood for nearly a century."
-- Former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 8, 2004

"The book [the Iron Triangle] opens up with a mention of Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech, in which he warned the country against the formation of this military-industrial complex. And I think that that is exactly what we're seeing today. We're seeing a very tight-knit group of companies and private military contractors that are virtually indistinguishable from various administrations and the political infrastructure of Washington, D.C. -- so much so that it's not clear whose interests we're acting on when we go to war. "
-- Dan Briody, BuzzFlash, June, 23, 2003

When Why We Fight documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki recently appeared on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked him if President Bush will be as candid as Dwight D. Eisenhower when he leaves office. "Do you see, perhaps, President Bush doing the same? Maybe coming out and say 'Beware of me. And my friends?'" Stewart asked, referring to Ike's famous and prescient parting warning against the "military industrial complex" and threats to our democracy.

Stewart was only half joking.

Eisenhower's daughter Susan later revealed that her father's insight evolved during his service as Supreme Allied commander during WWII -- when he realized that the arms race not about national defense or protection, but instilling a permanent, highly profitable national security state. (Ike's children also confessed that the "military-industrial complex" was originally called the "military-industrial-congressional complex," for reasons all too obvious).

Even before Eisenhower spoke out, Vice President Henry A. Wallace issued a similar warning against WWII war profiteers who were "clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war" and hoped "to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends." Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, was one such individual, forging a relationship with the Nazis that continued until 1951.

Kevin Phillips, a former GOP strategist, has written in length about how the Bush family was "present at the emergence of what became the U.S. military-industrial complex," modernizing Ike's warning with one of his own. "Between now and the November election, it's crucial that Americans come to understand how four generations of the current president's family have embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and personal financial links," he wrote in 2004.

Since the Sept. 11, The Christian Science Monitor, Boston Herald, the Guardian and a host of others have connected the dots between Bush administration cronies and the windfalls of war. But the most stunning accusation came from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Pointing to the "extremely powerful" influence of the "Oval Office Cabal" of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he flat-out dubbed them "member[s] of what Dwight Eisenhower [called] the military industrial complex" and warned that they have "a concentration of power that is just unparalleled." And though Halliburton's subsidiary Brown and Root was part of the military-industrial complex back when Lyndon Johnson was the company's main man in Washington, when it comes to "entanglement and money-hunting in the Middle East," Phillip reminds us that "No previous presidency has had anything remotely similar. Not one."

How bad is it? "The complex is so pervasive, it's become invisible," says Sen. John McCain, and all anyone need do is research FDR and Harry Truman's attitudes towards war profiteering compared to those of today's "public servants" -- and the "revolving door" between the Defense Department and defense contractors looks especially crusty. Or better yet, go back and read some of Eisenhower's speeches, juxtaposed against our present reality. For a stunning sense of how entrenched the military industrial complex has become, consider this snippet from a speech Ike delivered in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Eisenhower sounds like socialist compared to today's compromised Republicans and Democrats, doesn't he?

1. Bringing Osama bin Laden "to Justice" Was Never the Objective of the War on Terror.

"The White House has always seemed less compelled to capture Osama than to use him as a pretext for invading Iraq and as a political selling point. Karl Rove, coming out of his 'please don't indict me' crouch, tried to chase away the taint of the Abramoff scandal with a new round of terror-mongering for 2006: 'We need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of this moment. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for many Democrats.'"
-- Maureen Dowd, the New York Times, Jan. 21, 2006

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not
that important. It's not our priority."
-- President George W. Bush, March 13, 2002

Remember after Sept. 11? When President Bush promised to catch Osama bin Laden "dead or alive?" Or how about when he promised that Osama and his cohorts could run, but that they could not hide? Oh, sure, we've captured and "killed" Osama's head honchos a few times now (just how many lives does Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have anyway?) But it seems that reports of their deaths have often been greatly exaggerated.

With the catalogue of fibs we've been told, it is no wonder that conspiracy theories thrive. Soon after the War on Terror began, buzz about bin Laden began. It went something like this:

1. Catching Osama was not really the goal in Afghanistan, but building a pipeline to the rich oil reserves in the Caspian Sea basin was.

Though Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Dick Cheney and Enron have all been mentioned in conjunction with this theory, the meat of the matter lies in three easily-connected dots. Beginning with a Taliban delegation's trip to Texas to meet with Unocal officials to discuss a pipeline through Afghanistan, through a Unocal official's testimony before Congress, (in which he says Unocal's plans cannot go forward until a recognized government is in place in Afghanistan), this conspiracy theory concludes with president of Afghanistan and former Unocal employee Hamid Karzai's signature on such a deal. Taking a cue from Donald Rumsfeld, who said in Oct. 2001 that he doubted the U.S. would catch Osama, people who buy into this theory could have predicted early on that bin Laden would fall through the cracks in Tora Bora.

2. Catching Osama was not really the goal, but selling the pre-planned war in Iraq was.

George Bush repeatedly insinuated a link between Iraq and 9/11 -- despite the fact that ten days after 9/11, he was told there was no connection between the two. "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," he said, adding that his administration never said that Saddam was responsible for Sept. 11. Through innuendo and spin, however, he and his administration made their case for war, and by the time Operation Iraqi Freedom began, 70% of all Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was tied to the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush's assertion that his "last choice" was "the use of military power" also flew in the face of everything the Downing Street memo and subsequent evidence would later prove.

3. Catching Osama was not really the goal, but keeping Americans in a perpetual state of fear was.

Ever since John Ashcroft brought us the "Jose Padilla and the Dirty Bomb Show,"
the suspicious timing of bin Laden tapes and color-coded terror alerts have not gone unnoticed.

This is not to diminish to the terrorist threat. Most experts believe another terror attack is likely. And it's important to remember that al-Qeada has a habit of striking at five year intervals. And ironically, thanks to Operation Iraqi Freedom, equipment that could be used to make a nuclear bomb may have ended up in some very wrong hands.

Yes, terrorism is part of our new reality. We are at war, as they say, and chances are we will get hit again. But the more urgent threat -- as truly brave Americans see it -- comes from within. After all, terrorists can't defile the Constitution or take away our freedoms. Our "leaders" are the only ones in a position to do that.

There are two ways to look at this: One, that all "conspiracy theories" are garbage and the concerns outlined here are unsubstantiated nonsense. Or that the phrase "conspiracy theory" is often used to diffuse hidden truths. (Well-trained citizens scoff at the idea that anyone ever conspires to do anything, even though the US government charges people with "conspiracy" all the time.)

If all is fine and well, editorial boards across the country have simply lost their minds, and the country will "go back to normal" in time. More, likely, however, is that many US citizens will remain blind to assaults on our Constitution and democratic principles, which will become as illusive as Osama bin Laden and the Iraqis who were going to greet us as liberators.

The most pressing question, it seems, is not whether or not we'll be attacked again or who will win the next election. After all, if historian Chalmers Johnson is correct, a Democrat isn't going to save us from the "entrenched interests of the military industrial complex" either.

The question is actually an old one, first posed by a certain Mrs. Powel, at the close of the Constitutional Convention. "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" she asked Benjamin Franklin, who famously answered, "A republic if you can keep it."

The grand experiment is over, it seems, and it's time to lay the Republic to rest. "After a 230-year run, the 'unalienable rights' -- as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the Founding Fathers -- are history," Robert Parry recently wrote.

All of this must sound remarkably "conspiratorial" to a nation distracted by Scott Peterson, Natalee Holloway and America's Next Top Model. Which brings us to the final, saddest, question of all: When all said is and done, will we even realize we lost our country to try to save our own skins?

CUSTODIANS OF CHAOS

2006-02-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

This is pretty strong. This is an extract from Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country. As usual Vonnegut pulls no punches and even if you are well-read and up-to-date on the Orwellian world of Bush that we live in, his depiction still hits you in the gut.

CUSTODIANS OF CHAOS

"Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer Show
But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana.

Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.

"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution.

But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".

George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!

Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.

PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.

So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.

They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on.

I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published in early 2004, that humiliating, shameful, blood-soaked year.

In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African-Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appallingly powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed.

In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as Nazis once were.

And with good reason.

In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanised millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanised our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O'Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the first world war. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the first world war so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the second world war and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?

Gore Speech, January 16, 2005

2006-01-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

via The Raw Story, here is the Text of today's speech by Al Gore

TEXT OF GORE SPEECH, JANUARY 16, 2006

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint.

The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically - and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: "To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between President and Congress."

This is precisely the "disrespect" for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case.

It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

For example, the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer-even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.

This shameful exercise of power overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War and has been observed by every president since then - until now. These practices violate the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture, not to mention our own laws against torture.

The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.

Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons - registered a complaint to his home office about the senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: "This material is useless - we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful."

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?

The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution."

The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling. This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance.

For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it.

Similarly, the Executive Branch claimed that it could unilaterally imprison American citizens without giving them access to review by any tribunal. The Supreme Court disagreed, but the President engaged in legal maneuvers designed to prevent the Court from providing meaningful content to the rights of its citizens.

A conservative jurist on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Executive Branch's handling of one such case seemed to involve the sudden abandonment of principle "at substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts."

As a result of its unprecedented claim of new unilateral power, the Executive Branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk. The stakes for America's representative democracy are far higher than has been generally recognized.

These claims must be rejected and a healthy balance of power restored to our Republic. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of our democracy may well undergo a radical transformation.

For more than two centuries, America's freedoms have been preserved in part by our founders' wise decision to separate the aggregate power of our government into three co-equal branches, each of which serves to check and balance the power of the other two.

On more than a few occasions, the dynamic interaction among all three branches has resulted in collisions and temporary impasses that create what are invariably labeled "constitutional crises." These crises have often been dangerous and uncertain times for our Republic. But in each such case so far, we have found a resolution of the crisis by renewing our common agreement to live under the rule of law.

The principle alternative to democracy throughout history has been the consolidation of virtually all state power in the hands of a single strongman or small group who together exercise that power without the informed consent of the governed.

It was in revolt against just such a regime, after all, that America was founded. When Lincoln declared at the time of our greatest crisis that the ultimate question being decided in the Civil War was "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure," he was not only saving our union but also was recognizing the fact that democracies are rare in history. And when they fail, as did Athens and the Roman Republic upon whose designs our founders drew heavily, what emerges in their place is another strongman regime.

There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents.

When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others.

But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.

There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, "The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which he has tried to place the country is going to "last for the rest of our lives." So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity.

Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief, invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world.

The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.

This same pattern has characterized the effort to silence dissenting views within the Executive Branch, to censor information that may be inconsistent with its stated ideological goals, and to demand conformity from all Executive Branch employees.

For example, CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases.

Ironically, that is exactly what happened to FBI officials in the 1960s who disagreed with J. Edgar Hoover's view that Dr. King was closely connected to Communists. The head of the FBI's domestic intelligence division said that his effort to tell the truth about King's innocence of the charge resulted in he and his colleagues becoming isolated and pressured. "It was evident that we had to change our ways or we would all be out on the street.... The men and I discussed how to get out of trouble. To be in trouble with Mr. Hoover was a serious matter. These men were trying to buy homes, mortgages on homes, children in school. They lived in fear of getting transferred, losing money on their homes, as they usually did. ... so they wanted another memorandum written to get us out of the trouble that we were in."

The Constitution's framers understood this dilemma as well, as Alexander Hamilton put it, "a power over a man's support is a power over his will." (Federalist No. 73)

Soon, there was no more difference of opinion within the FBI. The false accusation became the unanimous view. In exactly the same way, George Tenet's CIA eventually joined in endorsing a manifestly false view that there was a linkage between al Qaeda and the government of Iraq.

In the words of George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded.

Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend the Administration's eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that if it had conducted this program prior to 9/11, they would have found out the names of some of the hijackers.

Tragically, he apparently still doesn't know that the Administration did in fact have the names of at least 2 of the hijackers well before 9/11 and had available to them information that could have easily led to the identification of most of the other hijackers. And yet, because of incompetence in the handling of this information, it was never used to protect the American people.

It is often the case that an Executive Branch beguiled by the pursuit of unchecked power responds to its own mistakes by reflexively proposing that it be given still more power. Often, the request itself it used to mask accountability for mistakes in the use of power it already has.

Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. Many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this President means that the next President will have unchecked power as well. And the next President may be someone whose values and belief you do not trust. And this is why Republicans as well as Democrats should be concerned with what this President has done. If this President's attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes unquestioned, our constitutional design of checks and balances will be lost. And the next President or some future President will be able, in the name of national security, to restrict our liberties in a way the framers never would have thought possible.

The same instinct to expand its power and to establish dominance characterizes the relationship between this Administration and the courts and the Congress.

In a properly functioning system, the Judicial Branch would serve as the constitutional umpire to ensure that the branches of government observed their proper spheres of authority, observed civil liberties and adhered to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the unilateral executive has tried hard to thwart the ability of the judiciary to call balls and strikes by keeping controversies out of its hands - notably those challenging its ability to detain individuals without legal process -- by appointing judges who will be deferential to its exercise of power and by its support of assaults on the independence of the third branch.

The President's decision to ignore FISA was a direct assault on the power of the judges who sit on that court. Congress established the FISA court precisely to be a check on executive power to wiretap. Yet, to ensure that the court could not function as a check on executive power, the President simply did not take matters to it and did not let the court know that it was being bypassed.

The President's judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure that the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a longtime supporter of a powerful executive - a supporter of the so-called unitary executive, which is more properly called the unilateral executive. Whether you support his confirmation or not - and I do not - we must all agree that he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial deference to executive agency rulemaking.

And the Administration has supported the assault on judicial independence that has been conducted largely in Congress. That assault includes a threat by the Republican majority in the Senate to permanently change the rules to eliminate the right of the minority to engage in extended debate of the President's judicial nominees. The assault has extended to legislative efforts to curtail the jurisdiction of courts in matters ranging from habeas corpus to the pledge of allegiance. In short, the Administration has demonstrated its contempt for the judicial role and sought to evade judicial review of its actions at every turn.

But the most serious damage has been done to the legislative branch. The sharp decline of congressional power and autonomy in recent years has been almost as shocking as the efforts by the Executive Branch to attain a massive expansion of its power.

I was elected to Congress in 1976 and served eight years in the house, 8 years in the Senate and presided over the Senate for 8 years as Vice President. As a young man, I saw the Congress first hand as the son of a Senator. My father was elected to Congress in 1938, 10 years before I was born, and left the Senate in 1971.

The Congress we have today is unrecognizable compared to the one in which my father served. There are many distinguished Senators and Congressmen serving today. I am honored that some of them are here in this hall. But the legislative branch of government under its current leadership now operates as if it is entirely subservient to the Executive Branch.

Moreover, too many Members of the House and Senate now feel compelled to spend a majority of their time not in thoughtful debate of the issues, but raising money to purchase 30 second TV commercials.

There have now been two or three generations of congressmen who don't really know what an oversight hearing is. In the 70's and 80's, the oversight hearings in which my colleagues and I participated held the feet of the Executive Branch to the fire - no matter which party was in power. Yet oversight is almost unknown in the Congress today.

The role of authorization committees has declined into insignificance. The 13 annual appropriation bills are hardly ever actually passed anymore. Everything is lumped into a single giant measure that is not even available for Members of Congress to read before they vote on it.

Members of the minority party are now routinely excluded from conference committees, and amendments are routinely not allowed during floor consideration of legislation.

In the United States Senate, which used to pride itself on being the "greatest deliberative body in the world," meaningful debate is now a rarity. Even on the eve of the fateful vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd famously asked: "Why is this chamber empty?"

In the House of Representatives, the number who face a genuinely competitive election contest every two years is typically less than a dozen out of 435.

And too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to continued access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good side of those who have the money to give; and, in the case of the majority party, the whole process is largely controlled by the incumbent president and his political organization.

So the willingness of Congress to challenge the Administration is further limited when the same party controls both Congress and the Executive Branch.

The Executive Branch, time and again, has co-opted Congress' role, and often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of its own power.

Look for example at the Congressional role in "overseeing" this massive four year eavesdropping campaign that on its face seemed so clearly to violate the Bill of Rights. The President says he informed Congress, but what he really means is that he talked with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the top leaders of the House and Senate. This small group, in turn, claimed that they were not given the full facts, though at least one of the intelligence committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to VP Cheney and placed a copy in his own safe.

Though I sympathize with the awkward position in which these men and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program.

Moreover, in the Congress as a whole-both House and Senate-the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption.

The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg that threatens the integrity of the entire legislative branch of government.

It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by our Executive Branch which now threatens a radical transformation of the American system.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be.

But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.

We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"-must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.

Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will."

The revolutionary departure on which the idea of America was based was the audacious belief that people can govern themselves and responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. This insight proceeded inevitably from the bedrock principle articulated by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke: "All just power is derived from the consent of the governed."

The intricate and carefully balanced constitutional system that is now in such danger was created with the full and widespread participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were, back in the day, widely-read newspaper essays, and they represented only one of twenty-four series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia.

Indeed, when the Convention had done its best, it was the people - in their various States - that refused to confirm the result until, at their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the document sent forward for ratification.

And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution.

And here there is cause for both concern and great hope. The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television - a distracting and absorbing medium which sees determined to entertain and sell more than it informs and educates.

Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is applicable in a new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements.

And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.

The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.

The Administration vigorously asserts its power to maintain the secrecy of its operations. After all, the other branches can't check an abuse of power if they don't know it is happening.

For example, when the Administration was attempting to persuade Congress to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the House and Senate raised concerns about the cost and design of the program. But, rather than engaging in open debate on the basis of factual data, the Administration withheld facts and prevented the Congress from hearing testimony that it sought from the principal administration expert who had compiled information showing in advance of the vote that indeed the true cost estimates were far higher than the numbers given to Congress by the President.

Deprived of that information, and believing the false numbers given to it instead, the Congress approved the program. Tragically, the entire initiative is now collapsing- all over the country- with the Administration making an appeal just this weekend to major insurance companies to volunteer to bail it out.

To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political appointee in the White House who had no scientific training. And today one of the leading scientific experts on global warming in NASA has been ordered not to talk to members of the press and to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the Executive Branch can monitor and control his discussions of global warming.

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, "The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will."

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President. We have had a fresh demonstration of how an independent investigation by a special counsel with integrity can rebuild confidence in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, shown neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the Executive Branch has violated other laws.

Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the President.

Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of wrongdoing -- especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch authority in the sensitive areas of national security.

Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed.

Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.

Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.

It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.

I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I can feel it in this hall.

As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WAR

2005-12-30T05:45:00.000-08:00

This one is as scary in its own way as any of the stuff coming out about our government. This is the story of the Rendon Group and how they have perfected the art of manufacturing consent or marketing war (or anything else for that matter). While a fascinating history, the pure cynicism of the concept (and its success) is frightening. The last paragraph will leave you with a chill.

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WAR
James Bamford in the Rolling Stone

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

"They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor of the industry trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."

Although Rendon denies any direct involvement with al-Haideri, the defector was the latest salvo in a secret media war set in motion by Rendon. In an operation directed by Ahmad Chalabi -- the man Rendon helped install as leader of the INC -- the defector had been brought to Thailand, where he huddled in a hotel room for days with the group's spokesman, Zaab Sethna. The INC routinely coached defectors on their stories, prepping them for polygraph exams, and Sethna was certainly up to the task -- he got his training in the art of propaganda on the payroll of the Rendon Group. According to Francis Brooke, the INC's man in Washington and himself a former Rendon employee, the goal of the al-Haideri operation was simple: pressure the United States to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

As the CIA official flew back to Washington with failed lie-detector charts in his briefcase, Chalabi and Sethna didn't hesitate. They picked up the phone, called two journalists who had a long history of helping the INC promote its cause and offered them an exclusive on Saddam's terrifying cache of WMDs.

For the worldwide broadcast rights, Sethna contacted Paul Moran, an Australian freelancer who frequently worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "I think I've got something that you would be interested in," he told Moran, who was living in Bahrain. Sethna knew he could count on the trim, thirty-eight-year-old journalist: A former INC employee in the Middle East, Moran had also been on Rendon's payroll for years in "information operations," working with Sethna at the company's London office on Catherine Place, near Buckingham Palace.

"We were trying to help the Kurds and the Iraqis opposed to Saddam set up a television station," Sethna recalled in a rare interview broadcast on Australian television. "The Rendon Group came to us and said, 'We have a contract to kind of do anti-Saddam propaganda on behalf of the Iraqi opposition.' What we didn't know -- what the Rendon Group didn't tell us -- was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work."

The INC's choice for the worldwide print exclusive was equally easy: Chalabi contacted Judith Miller of The New York Times. Miller, who was close to I. Lewis Libby and other neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years. Not long after the CIA polygraph expert slipped the straps and electrodes off al-Haideri and declared him a liar, Miller flew to Bangkok to interview him under the watchful supervision of his INC handlers. Miller later made perfunctory calls to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, but despite her vaunted intelligence sources, she claimed not to know about the results of al-Haideri's lie-detector test. Instead, she reported that unnamed "government experts" called his information "reliable and significant" -- thus adding a veneer of truth to the lies.

Her front-page story, which hit the stands on December 20th, 2001, was exactly the kind of exposure Rendon had been hired to provide. AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES, declared the headline. "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer," Miller wrote, "said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." If verified, she noted, "his allegations would provide ammunition to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr. Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to stop making weapons of mass destruction, despite his pledges to do so."

For months, hawks inside and outside the administration had been pressing for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Now, thanks to Miller's story, they could point to "proof" of Saddam's "nuclear threat." The story, reinforced by Moran's on-camera interview with al-Haideri on the giant Australian Broadcasting Corp., was soon being trumpeted by the White House and repeated by newspapers and television networks around the world. It was the first in a long line of hyped and fraudulent stories that would eventually propel the U.S. into a war with Iraq -- the first war based almost entirely on a covert propaganda campaign targeting the media.

By law, the Bush administration is expressly prohibited from disseminating government propaganda at home. But in an age of global communications, there is nothing to stop it from planting a phony pro-war story overseas -- knowing with certainty that it will reach American citizens almost instantly. A recent congressional report suggests that the Pentagon may be relying on "covert psychological operations affecting audiences within friendly nations." In a "secret amendment" to Pentagon policy, the report warns, "psyops funds might be used to publish stories favorable to American policies, or hire outside contractors without obvious ties to the Pentagon to organize rallies in support of administration policies." The report also concludes that military planners are shifting away from the Cold War view that power comes from superior weapons systems. Instead, the Pentagon now believes that "combat power can be enhanced by communications networks and technologies that control access to, and directly manipulate, information. As a result, information itself is now both a tool and a target of warfare."

It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

John Walter Rendon Jr. rises at 3 a.m. each morning after six hours of sleep, turns on his Apple computer and begins ingesting information -- overnight news reports, e-mail messages, foreign and domestic newspapers, and an assortment of government documents. According to Pentagon documents obtained by Rolling Stone, the Rendon Group is authorized "to research and analyze information classified up to Top Secret/SCI/SI/TK/G/HCS" -- an extraordinarily high level of clearance granted to only a handful of defense contractors. "SCI" stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information, data classified higher than Top Secret. "SI" is Special Intelligence, very secret communications intercepted by the National Security Agency. "TK" refers to Talent/Keyhole, code names for imagery from reconnaissance aircraft and spy satellites. "G" stands for Gamma (communications intercepts from extremely sensitive sources) and "HCS" means Humint Control System (information from a very sensitive human source). Taken together, the acronyms indicate that Rendon enjoys access to the most secret information from all three forms of intelligence collection: eavesdropping, imaging satellites and human spies.

Rendon lives in a multimillion-dollar home in Washington's exclusive Kalorama neighborhood. A few doors down from Rendon is the home of former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara; just around the corner lives current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. At fifty-six, Rendon wears owlish glasses and combs his thick mane of silver-gray hair to the side, Kennedy-style. He heads to work each morning clad in a custom-made shirt with his monogram on the right cuff and a sharply tailored blue blazer that hangs loose around his bulky frame. By the time he pulls up to the Rendon Group's headquarters near Dupont Circle, he has already racked up a handsome fee for the morning's work: According to federal records, Rendon charges the CIA and the Pentagon $311.26 an hour for his services.

Rendon is one of the most influential of the private contractors in Washington who are increasingly taking over jobs long reserved for highly trained CIA employees. In recent years, spies-for-hire have begun to replace regional desk officers, who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the agency's twenty-four-hour crisis center; analysts, who sift through reams of intelligence data; and even counterintelligence officers in the field, who oversee meetings between agents and their recruited spies. According to one senior administration official involved in intelligence-budget decisions, half of the CIA's work is now performed by private contractors -- people completely unaccountable to Congress. Another senior budget official acknowledges privately that lawmakers have no idea how many rent-a-spies the CIA currently employs -- or how much unchecked power they enjoy.

Unlike many newcomers to the field, however, Rendon is a battle-tested veteran who has been secretly involved in nearly every American shooting conflict in the past two decades. In the first interview he has granted in decades, Rendon offered a peek through the keyhole of this seldom-seen world of corporate spooks -- a rarefied but growing profession. Over a dinner of lamb chops and a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape at a private Washington club, Rendon was guarded about the details of his clandestine work -- but he boasted openly of the sweep and importance of his firm's efforts as a for-profit spy. "We've worked in ninety-one countries," he said. "Going all the way back to Panama, we've been involved in every war, with the exception of Somalia."

It is an unusual career twist for someone who entered politics as an opponent of the Vietnam War. The son of a stockbroker, Rendon grew up in New Jersey and stumped for McGovern before graduating from Northeastern University. "I was the youngest state coordinator," he recalls. "I had Maine. They told me that I understood politics -- which was a stretch, being so young." Rendon, who went on to serve as executive director of the Democratic National Committee, quickly mastered the combination of political skulduggery and media manipulation that would become his hallmark. In 1980, as the manager of Jimmy Carter's troops at the national convention in New York, he was sitting alone in the bleachers at Madison Square Garden when a reporter for ABC News approached him. "They actually did a little piece about the man behind the curtain," Rendon says. "A Wizard of Oz thing." It was a role he would end up playing for the rest of his life.

After Carter lost the election and the hard-right Reagan revolutionaries came to power in 1981, Rendon went into business with his younger brother Rick. "Everybody started consulting," he recalls. "We started consulting." They helped elect John Kerry to the Senate in 1984 and worked for the AFL-CIO to mobilize the union vote for Walter Mondale's presidential campaign. Among the items Rendon produced was a training manual for union organizers to operate as political activists on behalf of Mondale. To keep the operation quiet, Rendon stamped CONFIDENTIAL on the cover of each of the blue plastic notebooks. It was a penchant for secrecy that would soon pervade all of his consulting deals.

To a large degree, the Rendon Group is a family affair. Rendon's wife, Sandra Libby, handles the books as chief financial officer and "senior communications strategist." Rendon's brother Rick serves as senior partner and runs the company's Boston office, producing public-service announcements for the Whale Conservation Institute and coordinating Empower Peace, a campaign that brings young people in the Middle East in contact with American kids through video-conferencing technology. But the bulk of the company's business is decidedly less liberal and peace oriented. Rendon's first experience in the intelligence world, in fact, came courtesy of the Republicans. "Panama," he says, "brought us into the national-security environment."

In 1989, shortly after his election, President George H.W. Bush signed a highly secret "finding" authorizing the CIA to funnel $10 million to opposition forces in Panama to overthrow Gen. Manuel Noriega. Reluctant to involve agency personnel directly, the CIA turned to the Rendon Group. Rendon's job was to work behind the scenes, using a variety of campaign and psychological techniques to put the CIA's choice, Guillermo Endara, into the presidential palace. Cash from the agency, laundered through various bank accounts and front organizations, would end up in Endara's hands, who would then pay Rendon.

A heavyset, fifty-three-year-old corporate attorney with little political experience, Endara was running against Noriega's handpicked choice, Carlos Duque. With Rendon's help, Endara beat Duque decisively at the polls -- but Noriega simply named himself "Maximum Leader" and declared the election null and void. The Bush administration then decided to remove Noriega by force -- and Rendon's job shifted from generating local support for a national election to building international support for regime change. Within days he had found the ultimate propaganda tool.

At the end of a rally in support of Endara, a band of Noriega's Dignity Battalion -- nicknamed "Dig Bats" and called "Doberman thugs" by Bush -- attacked the crowd with wooden planks, metal pipes and guns. Gang members grabbed the bodyguard of Guillermo Ford, one of Endara's vice-presidential candidates, pushed him against a car, shoved a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. With cameras snapping, the Dig Bats turned on Ford, batting his head with a spike-tipped metal rod and pounding him with heavy clubs, turning his white guayabera bright red with blood -- his own, and that of his dead bodyguard.

Within hours, Rendon made sure the photos reached every newsroom in the world. The next week an image of the violence made the cover of Time magazine with the caption POLITICS PANAMA STYLE: NORIEGA BLUDGEONS HIS OPPOSITION, AND THE U.S. TURNS UP THE HEAT. To further boost international support for Endara, Rendon escorted Ford on a tour of Europe to meet British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Italian prime minister and even the pope. In December 1989, when Bush decided to invade Panama, Rendon and several of his employees were on one of the first military jets headed to Panama City.

"I arrived fifteen minutes before it started," Rendon recalls. "My first impression is having the pilot in the plane turn around and say, 'Excuse me, sir, but if you look off to the left you'll see the attack aircraft circling before they land.' Then I remember this major saying, 'Excuse me, sir, but do you know what the air-defense capability of Panama is at the moment?' I leaned into the cockpit and said, 'Look, major, I hope by now that's no longer an issue.'"

Moments later, Rendon's plane landed at Howard Air Force Base in Panama. "I needed to get to Fort Clayton, which was where the president was," he says. "I was choppered over -- and we took some rounds on the way." There, on a U.S. military base surrounded by 24,000 U.S. troops, heavy tanks and Combat Talon AC-130 gunships, Rendon's client, Endara, was at last sworn in as president of Panama.

Rendon's involvement in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein began seven months later, in July 1990. Rendon had taken time out for a vacation -- a long train ride across Scotland -- when he received an urgent call. "Soldiers are massing at the border outside of Kuwait," he was told. At the airport, he watched the beginning of the Iraqi invasion on television. Winging toward Washington in the first-class cabin of a Pan Am 747, Rendon spent the entire flight scratching an outline of his ideas in longhand on a yellow legal pad.

"I wrote a memo about what the Kuwaitis were going to face, and I based it on our experience in Panama and the experience of the Free French operation in World War II," Rendon says. "This was something that they needed to see and hear, and that was my whole intent. Go over, tell the Kuwaitis, 'Here's what you've got -- here's some observations, here's some recommendations, live long and prosper.'"

Back in Washington, Rendon immediately called Hamilton Jordan, the former chief of staff to President Carter and an old friend from his Democratic Party days. "He put me in touch with the Saudis, the Saudis put me in touch with the Kuwaitis and then I went over and had a meeting with the Kuwaitis," Rendon recalls. "And by the time I landed back in the United States, I got a phone call saying, 'Can you come back? We want you to do what's in the memo.'"

What the Kuwaitis wanted was help in selling a war of liberation to the American government -- and the American public. Rendon proposed a massive "perception management" campaign designed to convince the world of the need to join forces to rescue Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government in exile agreed to pay Rendon $100,000 a month for his assistance.

To coordinate the operation, Rendon opened an office in London. Once the Gulf War began, he remained extremely busy trying to prevent the American press from reporting on the dark side of the Kuwaiti government, an autocratic oil-tocracy ruled by a family of wealthy sheiks. When newspapers began reporting that many Kuwaitis were actually living it up in nightclubs in Cairo as Americans were dying in the Kuwaiti sand, the Rendon Group quickly counterattacked. Almost instantly, a wave of articles began appearing telling the story of grateful Kuwaitis mailing 20,000 personally signed valentines to American troops on the front lines, all arranged by Rendon.

Rendon also set up an elaborate television and radio network, and developed programming that was beamed into Kuwait from Taif, Saudi Arabia. "It was important that the Kuwaitis in occupied Kuwait understood that the rest of the world was doing something," he says. Each night, Rendon's troops in London produced a script and sent it via microwave to Taif, ensuring that the "news" beamed into Kuwait reflected a sufficiently pro-American line.

When it comes to staging a war, few things are left to chance. After Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it was Rendon's responsibility to make the victory march look like the flag-waving liberation of France after World War II. "Did you ever stop to wonder," he later remarked, "how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American -- and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?" After a pause, he added, "Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then."

Although his work is highly secret, Rendon insists he deals only in "timely, truthful and accurate information." His job, he says, is to counter false perceptions that the news media perpetuate because they consider it "more important to be first than to be right." In modern warfare, he believes, the outcome depends largely on the public's perception of the war -- whether it is winnable, whether it is worth the cost. "We are being haunted and stalked by the difference between perception and reality," he says. "Because the lines are divergent, this difference between perception and reality is one of the greatest strategic communications challenges of war."

By the time the Gulf War came to a close in 1991, the Rendon Group was firmly established as Washington's leading salesman for regime change. But Rendon's new assignment went beyond simply manipulating the media. After the war ended, the Top Secret order signed by President Bush to oust Hussein included a rare "lethal finding" -- meaning deadly action could be taken if necessary. Under contract to the CIA, Rendon was charged with helping to create a dissident force with the avowed purpose of violently overthrowing the entire Iraqi government. It is an undertaking that Rendon still considers too classified to discuss. "That's where we're wandering into places I'm not going to talk about," he says. "If you take an oath, it should mean something."

Thomas Twetten, the CIA's former deputy of operations, credits Rendon with virtually creating the INC. "The INC was clueless," he once observed. "They needed a lot of help and didn't know where to start. That is why Rendon was brought in." Acting as the group's senior adviser and aided by truckloads of CIA dollars, Rendon pulled together a wide spectrum of Iraqi dissidents and sponsored a conference in Vienna to organize them into an umbrella organization, which he dubbed the Iraqi National Congress. Then, as in Panama, his assignment was to help oust a brutal dictator and replace him with someone chosen by the CIA. "The reason they got the contract was because of what they had done in Panama -- so they were known," recalls Whitley Bruner, former chief of the CIA's station in Baghdad. This time the target was Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the agency's successor of choice was Ahmad Chalabi, a crafty, avuncular Iraqi exile beloved by Washington's neoconservatives.

Chalabi was a curious choice to lead a rebellion. In 1992, he was convicted in Jordan of making false statements and embezzling $230 million from his own bank, for which he was sentenced in absentia to twenty-two years of hard labor. But the only credential that mattered was his politics. "From day one," Rendon says, "Chalabi was very clear that his biggest interest was to rid Iraq of Saddam." Bruner, who dealt with Chalabi and Rendon in London in 1991, puts it even more bluntly. "Chalabi's primary focus," he said later, "was to drag us into a war."

The key element of Rendon's INC operation was a worldwide media blitz designed to turn Hussein, a once dangerous but now contained regional leader, into the greatest threat to world peace. Each month, $326,000 was passed from the CIA to the Rendon Group and the INC via various front organizations. Rendon profited handsomely, receiving a "management fee" of ten percent above what it spent on the project. According to some reports, the company made nearly $100 million on the contract during the five years following the Gulf War.

Rendon made considerable headway with the INC, but following the group's failed coup attempt against Saddam in 1996, the CIA lost confidence in Chalabi and cut off his monthly paycheck. But Chalabi and Rendon simply switched sides, moving over to the Pentagon, and the money continued to flow. "The Rendon Group is not in great odor in Langley these days," notes Bruner. "Their contracts are much more with the Defense Department."

Rendon's influence rose considerably in Washington after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. In a single stroke, Osama bin Laden altered the world's perception of reality -- and in an age of nonstop information, whoever controls perception wins. What Bush needed to fight the War on Terror was a skilled information warrior -- and Rendon was widely acknowledged as the best. "The events of 11 September 2001 changed everything, not least of which was the administration's outlook concerning strategic influence," notes one Army report. "Faced with direct evidence that many people around the world actively hated the United States, Bush began taking action to more effectively explain U.S. policy overseas. Initially the White House and DoD turned to the Rendon Group."

Three weeks after the September 11th attacks, according to documents obtained from defense sources, the Pentagon awarded a large contract to the Rendon Group. Around the same time, Pentagon officials also set up a highly secret organization called the Office of Strategic Influence. Part of the OSI's mission was to conduct covert disinformation and deception operations -- planting false news items in the media and hiding their origins. "It's sometimes valuable from a military standpoint to be able to engage in deception with respect to future anticipated plans," Vice President Dick Cheney said in explaining the operation. Even the military's top brass found the clandestine unit unnerving. "When I get their briefings, it's scary," a senior official said at the time.

In February 2002, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had hired Rendon "to help the new office," a charge Rendon denies. "We had nothing to do with that," he says. "We were not in their reporting chain. We were reporting directly to the J-3" -- the head of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Following the leak, Rumsfeld was forced to shut down the organization. But much of the office's operations were apparently shifted to another unit, deeper in the Pentagon's bureaucracy, called the Information Operations Task Force, and Rendon was closely connected to this group. "Greg Newbold was the J-3 at the time, and we reported to him through the IOTF," Rendon says.

According to the Pentagon documents, the Rendon Group played a major role in the IOTF. The company was charged with creating an "Information War Room" to monitor worldwide news reports at lightning speed and respond almost instantly with counterpropaganda. A key weapon, according to the documents, was Rendon's "proprietary state-of-the-art news-wire collection system called 'Livewire,' which takes real-time news-wire reports, as they are filed, before they are on the Internet, before CNN can read them on the air and twenty-four hours before they appear in the morning newspapers, and sorts them by keyword. The system provides the most current real-time access to news and information available to private or public organizations."

The top target that the pentagon assigned to Rendon was the Al-Jazeera television network. The contract called for the Rendon Group to undertake a massive "media mapping" campaign against the news organization, which the Pentagon considered "critical to U.S. objectives in the War on Terrorism." According to the contract, Rendon would provide a "detailed content analysis of the station's daily broadcast . . . [and] identify the biases of specific journalists and potentially obtain an understanding of their allegiances, including the possibility of specific relationships and sponsorships."

The secret targeting of foreign journalists may have had a sinister purpose. Among the missions proposed for the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence was one to "coerce" foreign journalists and plant false information overseas. Secret briefing papers also said the office should find ways to "punish" those who convey the "wrong message." One senior officer told CNN that the plan would "formalize government deception, dishonesty and misinformation."

According to the Pentagon documents, Rendon would use his media analysis to conduct a worldwide propaganda campaign, deploying teams of information warriors to allied nations to assist them "in developing and delivering specific messages to the local population, combatants, front-line states, the media and the international community." Among the places Rendon's info-war teams would be sent were Jakarta, Indonesia; Islamabad, Pakistan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Cairo; Ankara, Turkey; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The teams would produce and script television news segments "built around themes and story lines supportive of U.S. policy objectives."

Rendon was also charged with engaging in "military deception" online -- an activity once assigned to the OSI. The company was contracted to monitor Internet chat rooms in both English and Arabic -- and "participate in these chat rooms when/if tasked." Rendon would also create a Web site "with regular news summaries and feature articles. Targeted at the global public, in English and at least four (4) additional languages, this activity also will include an extensive e-mail push operation." These techniques are commonly used to plant a variety of propaganda, including false information.

Still another newly formed propaganda operation in which Rendon played a major part was the Office of Global Communications, which operated out of the White House and was charged with spreading the administration's message on the War in Iraq. Every morning at 9:30, Rendon took part in the White House OGC conference call, where officials would discuss the theme of the day and who would deliver it. The office also worked closely with the White House Iraq Group, whose high-level members, including recently indicted Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby, were responsible for selling the war to the American public.

Never before in history had such an extensive secret network been established to shape the entire world's perception of a war. "It was not just bad intelligence -- it was an orchestrated effort," says Sam Gardner, a retired Air Force colonel who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College. "It began before the war, was a major effort during the war and continues as post-conflict distortions."

In the first weeks following the September 11th attacks, Rendon operated at a frantic pitch. "In the early stages it was fielding every ground ball that was coming, because nobody was sure if we were ever going to be attacked again," he says. "It was 'What do you know about this, what do you know about that, what else can you get, can you talk to somebody over here?' We functioned twenty-four hours a day. We maintained situational awareness, in military terms, on all things related to terrorism. We were doing 195 newspapers and 43 countries in fourteen or fifteen languages. If you do this correctly, I can tell you what's on the evening news tonight in a country before it happens. I can give you, as a policymaker, a six-hour break on how you can affect what's going to be on the news. They'll take that in a heartbeat."

The Bush administration took everything Rendon had to offer. Between 2000 and 2004, Pentagon documents show, the Rendon Group received at least thirty-five contracts with the Defense Department, worth a total of $50 million to $100 million.

The mourners genuflected, made the sign of the cross and took their seats along the hard, shiny pews of Our Lady of Victories Catholic Church. It was April 2nd, 2003 -- the start of fall in the small Australian town of Glenelg, an aging beach resort of white Victorian homes and soft, blond sand on Holdback Bay. Rendon had flown halfway around the world to join nearly 600 friends and family who were gathered to say farewell to a local son and amateur football champ, Paul Moran. Three days into the invasion of Iraq, the freelance journalist and Rendon employee had become the first member of the media to be killed in the war -- a war he had covertly helped to start.

Moran had lived a double life, filing reports for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and other news organizations, while at other times operating as a clandestine agent for Rendon, enjoying what his family calls his "James Bond lifestyle." Moran had trained Iraqi opposition forces in photographic espionage, showing them how to covertly document Iraqi military activities, and had produced pro-war announcements for the Pentagon. "He worked for the Rendon Group in London," says his mother, Kathleen. "They just send people all over the world -- where there are wars."

Moran was covering the Iraq invasion for ABC, filming at a Kurdish-controlled checkpoint in the city of Sulaymaniyah, when a car driven by a suicide bomber blew up next to him. "I saw the car in a kind of slow-motion disintegrate," recalls Eric Campbell, a correspondent who was filming with Moran. "A soldier handed me a passport, which was charred. That's when I knew Paul was dead."

As the Mass ended and Moran's Australian-flag-draped coffin passed by the mourners, Rendon lifted his right arm and saluted. He refused to discuss Moran's role in the company, saying only that "Paul worked for us on a number of projects." But on the long flight back to Washington, across more than a dozen time zones, Rendon outlined his feelings in an e-mail: "The day did begin with dark and ominous clouds much befitting the emotions we all felt -- sadness and anger at the senseless violence that claimed our comrade Paul Moran ten short days ago and many decades of emotion ago."

The Rendon Group also organized a memorial service in London, where Moran first went to work for the company in 1990. Held at Home House, a private club in Portman Square where Moran often stayed while visiting the city, the event was set among photographs of Moran in various locations around the Middle East. Zaab Sethna, who organized the al-Haideri media exclusive in Thailand for Moran and Judith Miller, gave a touching tribute to his former colleague. "I think that on both a personal and professional level Paul was deeply admired and loved by the people at the Rendon Group," Sethna later said.

Although Moran was gone, the falsified story about weapons of mass destruction that he and Sethna had broadcast around the world lived on. Seven months earlier, as President Bush was about to argue his case for war before the U.N., the White House had given prominent billing to al-Haideri's fabricated charges. In a report ironically titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception," the administration referred to al-Haideri by name and detailed his allegations -- even though the CIA had already determined them to be lies. The report was placed on the White House Web site on September 12th, 2002, and remains there today. One version of the report even credits Miller's article for the information.

Miller also continued to promote al-Haideri's tale of Saddam's villainy. In January 2003, more than a year after her first article appeared, Miller again reported that Pentagon "intelligence officials" were telling her that "some of the most valuable information has come from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri." His interviews with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Miller added, "ultimately resulted in dozens of highly credible reports on Iraqi weapons-related activity and purchases, officials said."

Finally, in early 2004, more than two years after he made the dramatic allegations to Miller and Moran about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, al-Haideri was taken back to Iraq by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. On a wide-ranging trip through Baghdad and other key locations, al-Haideri was given the opportunity to point out exactly where Saddam's stockpiles were hidden, confirming the charges that had helped to start a war.

In the end, he could not identify a single site where illegal weapons were buried.

As the war in Iraq has spiraled out of control, the Bush administration's covert propaganda campaign has intensified. According to a secret Pentagon report personally approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003 and obtained by Rolling Stone, the Strategic Command is authorized to engage in "military deception" -- defined as "presenting false information, images or statements." The seventy-four-page document, titled "Information Operations Roadmap," also calls for psychological operations to be launched over radio, television, cell phones and "emerging technologies" such as the Internet. In addition to being classified secret, the road map is also stamped noforn, meaning it cannot be shared even with our allies.

As the acknowledged general of such propaganda warfare, Rendon insists that the work he does is for the good of all Americans. "For us, it's a question of patriotism," he says. "It's not a question of politics, and that's an important distinction. I feel very strongly about that personally. If brave men and women are going to be put in harm's way, they deserve support." But in Iraq, American troops and Iraqi civilians were put in harm's way, in large part, by the false information spread by Rendon and the men he trained in information warfare. And given the rapid growth of what is known as the "security-intelligence complex" in Washington, covert perception managers are likely to play an increasingly influential role in the wars of the future.

Indeed, Rendon is already thinking ahead. Last year, he attended a conference on information operations in London, where he offered an assessment on the Pentagon's efforts to manipulate the media. According to those present, Rendon applauded the practice of embedding journalists with American forces. "He said the embedded idea was great," says an Air Force colonel who attended the talk. "It worked as they had found in the test. It was the war version of reality television, and for the most part they did not lose control of the story." But Rendon also cautioned that individual news organizations were often able to "take control of the story," shaping the news before the Pentagon asserted its spin on the day's events.

"We lost control of the context," Rendon warned. "That has to be fixed for the next war."

SENATOR BYRD: NO PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW

2005-12-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

This is a speech that Senator Robert Byrd gave in Congress ond December 19 in response to Bush's revelations of authorizing spying on American citizens without judicial approval.

SENATOR BYRD: NO PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW

Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.

We have been stunned to hear reports about the Pentagon gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Those Americans who choose to question the Administration's flawed policy in Iraq are labeled by this Administration as "domestic terrorists."

We now know that the F.B.I.'s use of National Security Letters on American citizens has increased one hundred fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records. These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a permanent gag order.

Through news reports, we have been shocked to learn of the CIAs practice of rendition, and the so-called "black sites," secret locations in foreign countries, where abuse and interrogation have been exported, to escape the reach of U.S. laws protecting against human rights abuses.

We know that Vice President Dick Cheney has asked for exemptions for the CIA from the language contained in the McCain torture amendment banning cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. Thank God his pleas have been rejected by this Congress.

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

What is the President thinking? Congress has provided for the very situations which the President is blatantly exploiting. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed in the Department of Justice, reviews requests for warrants for domestic surveillance. The Court can review these requests expeditiously and in times of great emergency. In extreme cases, where time is of the essence and national security is at stake, surveillance can be conducted before the warrant is even applied for.

This secret court was established so that sensitive surveillance could be conducted, and information could be gathered without compromising the security of the investigation. The purpose of the FISA Court is to balance the government's role in fighting the war on terror with the Fourth Amendment rights afforded to each and every American.

The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the President that amount to little more than "trust me." But, we are a nation of laws and not of men. Where is the source of that authority he claims? I defy the Administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, they are allowed to steal into the lives of innocent America citizens and spy.

When asked yesterday what the source of this authority was, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had no answer. Secretary Rice seemed to insinuate that eavesdropping on Americans was acceptable because FISA was an outdated law, and could not address the needs of the government in combating the new war on terror. This is a patent falsehood. The USA Patriot Act expanded FISA significantly, equipping the government with the tools it needed to fight terrorism. Further amendments to FISA were granted under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002. In fact, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission noted that the removal of the pre-9/11 "wall" between intelligence officials and law enforcement was significant in that it "opened up new opportunities for cooperative action."

The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians. We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.

The President claims a boundless authority through the resolution that authorized the war on those who perpetrated the September 11th attacks. But that resolution does not give the President unchecked power to spy on our own people. That resolution does not give the Administration the power to create covert prisons for secret prisoners. That resolution does not authorize the torture of prisoners to extract information from them. That resolution does not authorize running black-hole secret prisons in foreign countries to get around U.S. law. That resolution does not give the President the powers reserved only for kings and potentates.

I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the Administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial Branches. The President has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality. He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizures guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution.

We are supposed to accept these dirty little secrets. We are told that it is irresponsible to draw attention to President Bush's gross abuse of power and Constitutional violations. But what is truly irresponsible is to neglect to uphold the rule of law. We listened to the President speak last night on the potential for democracy in Iraq. He claims to want to instill in the Iraqi people a tangible freedom and a working democracy, at the same time he violates our own U.S. laws and checks and balances? President Bush called the recent Iraqi election "a landmark day in the history of liberty." I dare say in this country we may have reached our own sort of landmark. Never have the promises and protections of Liberty seemed so illusory. Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled.

These renegade assaults on the Constitution and our system of laws strike at the very core of our values, and foster a sense of mistrust and apprehension about the reach of government.

I am reminded of Thomas Payne's famous words, "These are the times that try men's souls."

These astounding revelations about the bending and contorting of the Constitution to justify a grasping, irresponsible Administration under the banner of "national security" are an outrage. Congress can no longer sit on the sidelines. It is time to ask hard questions of the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the CIA. The White House should not be allowed to exempt itself from answering the same questions simply because it might assert some kind of "executive privilege" in order to avoid further embarrassment.

The practice of domestic spying on citizens should halt immediately. Oversight hearings need to be conducted. Judicial action may be in order. We need to finally be given answers to our questions: where is the constitutional and statutory authority for spying on American citizens, what is the content of these classified legal opinions asserting there is a legality in this criminal usurpation of rights, who is responsible for this dangerous and unconstitutional policy, and how many American citizens' lives have been unknowingly affected?

TIRED OF BEING LIED TO? MODERN HISTORY YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO IGNORE

2005-12-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

It is much easier toignore what is happening around us when there is not historical context. Maureen Farrell has put together a historical timeline starting with the formation of Brown & Root and continuing through October of this year. If seeing through the distortions of the Bush PR machinery - looking behind the curtain -- makes you uncomfrotable then, by all means, do not read this article.

Note: For better formatting and for the myriad of links in the article supporting the facts as presented here, see the original articles at Buzzflash.

TIRED OF BEING LIED TO? MODERN HISTORY YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO IGNORE
by Maureen Farrell
PART 1

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." ~ Harry S. Truman

A couple years ago, historian Chalmers Johnson predicted that thanks to the "entrenched interests" of the military-industrial complex, the United States can look forward to a future of perpetual war, increased propaganda, fewer Constitutional rights, and a bloated executive branch. America, he warned, "will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787" unless there is a "revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy."
The founding fathers were particularly sensitive to liberty's fleeting nature and power's corruptive tendencies. Thomas Jefferson said that "even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny," while James Madison warned that "If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." And at the close of the Constitutional Convention, when someone asked Ben Franklin what type of government the framers had drafted, he presciently replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."

But America's wisest leaders did not merely warn against the death of the republic, but about how and why its democratic principles would gradually wither away. "Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation [of power] first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence," Jefferson wrote in 1821. "We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few," Madison said in the New York Post.

Similar warnings were sounded by modern presidents. Franklin D Roosevelt said he didn't "want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of [World War II]," and Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the military/industrial complex had the potential to "endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

By late 2005, when Andy Rooney played a segment of Eisenhower's speech on CBS' 60 Minutes, the implications were evident: "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist,"

Eisenhower said in 1961. "Well, Ike was right. That's just what's happened," Rooney remarked.

Since our genocidal beginnings, there has always been a dark side to American history. Between slavery's shameful legacy, Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, and FDR's internment of Japanese Americans, democracy has not always been Priority One to its chosen guardians. But even so, something has shifted since Harry Truman declared war profiteering a form of treason.

"What has become of the American people that they permit the despicable practices of tyrants to be practiced in their name?" former Reagan administration official Paul Craig Roberts recently asked. "The Bush administration is in violation of the US Constitution, the rule of law, the Geneva Convention, the Nuremberg Standard, and basic humanity. It is a gang of criminals," he wrote.

Former President Jimmy Carter also voiced concern. "Everywhere you go, people ask, "What has happened to the United States of America?" he said, referring to international reaction to America's evolving stance on human rights, the environment and the separation of church and state.

The most striking criticism has come from Bush administration exiles, however. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently offered a scathing critique, confirming reports that a "cabal" led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had "hijacked foreign policy" and that this cabal's "insular and secret workings" led to "decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."

With government insiders now sounding such alarms, concerns cannot be attributed to the New World Order fringe. It's clear that something is amiss -- something that's eroding our character, our reputation and our values. How did this come about? Just how far have we strayed from our democratic ideals? Consider the following:

Part I -- 1937 - 1990

1937: A small company named Brown & Root (which will later become a division of Halliburton) calls upon Lyndon Johnson to procure $10 million in federal funding for the Mansfield Damn project. The freshman congressman eventually delivers the necessary authorization and funding for the project, which becomes the cornerstone of Brown and Root's financial empire. In turn, Herman Brown finances Johnson's political rise. "It was a totally corrupt relationship and it benefited both of them enormously. Brown & Root got rich, and Johnson got power and riches," LBJ biographer Ronnie Dugger later notes, adding that Johnson "wouldn't have been in the running without Brown & Root's money and airplanes."

In 2000, the Bush/Cheney campaign uses Halliburton's planes during the Florida recount, triggering a federal investigation. ''The Bush administration literally flew into power on Enron's and Halliburton's private jets," a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee charges.

1942: The New York Tribune features a front page story entitled "Hitler's Angel has $3 million in US bank," referring to Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen and his ties to Union Banking Corporation. Later that year, Union Bank official Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, is charged with "Running Nazi front groups in the United States." Bush is elected to the U.S. Senate ten years later.

1944: Former Vice President Henry A. Wallace writes an Op-ed , discussing war profiteers who are "ruthless" in their "use of deceit or violence" to gain money and power -- pointing to those who "hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends." Newly discovered government documents prove that Prescott Bush's ties to the Nazis continued until as late as 1951, and that he and his cohorts "routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators."

1945: World War II ends. Between 1945 and 1955, more than 700 Nazi scientists are smuggled into the U.S. In addition to providing the government with valuable science, "Operation Paperclip" eventually spawns more notorious programs like Operation ARTICHOKE (extreme interrogation and torture) and MK-ULTRA (mind control).
Eight years later, Dr. Frank Olson, an Army biochemist expert who runs the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, (and has ties to Operation Paperclip) falls from a New York City hotel window. "The search for the circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of Dr. Frank Olson begins in 1945, with the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany," a German documentary later reports. In 1975, after the Rockefeller Commission unearths revelations about the CIA's role in Dr. Olson's death, his family is paid $750,000 restitution, though the government continues to hide the true nature of his work. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are later implicated in the cover-up.

1947: The Central Intelligence Agency is created. Forty years later, Bill Moyers traces the advent of secretive and often grossly unethical practices to the National Security Act of 1947 -- exposing the government's "apparatus of secret power" and threats to the U.S. Constitution.

In the 1980s, Congressman Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld abscond annually to a remote location, partaking in "one of the most highly classified programs" of the era. At times the program disregards Constitutional protocol for presidential succession during a national crisis, instead using "a secret procedure for putting in place a new 'President' and his staff," while diminishing the role of the Speaker of the House and Congress. Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney routinely disappears to an undisclosed location and President George W. Bush initiates a shadow government in underground bunkers without informing Congress.

1950:
• The US government establishes the first program to develop human mind control techniques, conducting 149 separate experiments using electroshock, hypnosis and drugs on unsuspecting inmates, mental patients, minorities and others.
• Government researchers conduct secret germ tests on U.S. citizens, releasing live bacteria over San Francisco. The Army later says it conducted open air tests of biological agents 239 times between 1949 and 1969.
• Congress approves the Security Act of 1950, which contains an emergency civilian detention plan that remains in effect for more than 20 years. During the early 1980s, Oliver North helps draft secret wartime contingency plans which provide for "the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA," and more than twenty years later, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Bush administration might employ these Reagan-era security initiatives, installing "internment camps and martial law in the United States." Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, reports of civilian detention camps and plans to "herd people into sports stadiums," are punctuated by John Dean's question: "Could terrorism result in a constitutional dictator?" By late 2005, after President Bush proposes a greater role for the military during natural disasters and the imposition of marshal law should there be an avian flu outbreak, former Reagan cabinet member Paul Craig Roberts asserts that "The Police State Is Closer Than You Think."

1951: Madison's Capital Times editor John Patrick Hunter takes to the streets with a petition, (which is actually the Declaration of Independence, along with portions of the Bill of Rights) and tries to get people to sign it. Only one in 112 does. The rest find it too subversive. More than fifty years later, Harper's editor Lewis H Lapham explains that America is "blessed with a bourgeoisie that will welcome fascism as gladly as it welcomes the rain in April and the sun in June."

1953: After Iran's Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalizes Iran's oil industry. Britain pushes the U.S. to mount a coup. The CIA, led by Teddy Roosevelt's grandson Kermit Roosevelt (and with the help of Norman Schwarzkopf's father) overthrows Mossadegh during Operation AJAX. "The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms," the Guardian later notes.

In 1957, the CIA creates SAVAK, the Shah of Iran's secret police force, which routinely relies on torture -- using the same interrogation techniques the CIA imported from the Nazis. Nearly half a century later, the world learns of the CIA's network of detainment facilities and American-sanctioned torture.

1954
• France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu signals the end of a bitter struggle -- and the beginning of a divided Vietnam. Less than a year later, U.S. military aid starts trickling into Saigon and the "secret war in Laos" begins. Fifty-eight thousand Americans eventually die in Vietnam, without an official declaration of war by Congress.
• The McCarthy hearings begin. Though Ann Coulter and other revisionists later assert that Sen. McCarthy was "right," questions regarding due process and Constitutional protections leave a lasting legacy -- and have special significance during George W. Bush's presidency, when charges of a "New McCarthyism" arise.
• After Guatemala's president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmain's implements Agrarian Reform (which would have taken land away from United Fruit Company), the CIA organizes a coup against him. Following OPERATION SUCCESS, which installs Castillo Armas as dictator, President Eisenhower praises Guatemala as a "showcase for democracy." At least 100,000 civilians eventually perish under Guatemala's successive military regimes. After decades of CIA-sponsored torture and repression, President Bill Clinton issues a pseudo-apology.

1961

• President Eisenhower delivers his farewell address, warning of the military/industrial complex and the potential for a "disastrous rise of misplaced power." Former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips later chronicles how Bush dynasty founders George H. Walker and Samuel Prescott Bush were "present at the emergence of what became the U.S. military-industrial complex, in which the Bush family has been enmeshed ever since."
• The Bay of Pigs invasion, the covert paramilitary operation meant to overthrow Fidel Castro's government ends in disaster. Journalist Joseph McBride later suggests that George H. W. Bush's Zapata Offshore Oil Company was a front for this and other CIA operations. Code-named Operation Zapata, the Bay of Pigs is planned and orchestrated by several alumni of Yale's Skull and Bones secret society -- which boasts three generations of Bushes as members. (Even though a Nov. 1963 memo states that "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" is briefed by J. Edgar Hoover on "the post-assassination reaction of Cuban exiles in Miami" following the Kennedy assassination, the CIA denies Bush's involvement with the agency until he becomes its head in 1976).

1962

• Operation Northwoods, the Pentagon's plan to kill innocent Americans and blame Fidel Castro as a pretext for war against Cuba is presented to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. . . Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation," the document reads. All Joint Chiefs of Staff sign off on the plan, but it's nixed by the civilian leadership. "The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will," author James Bamford tells ABC News in May, 2001, "and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."
• Brown & Root, which will later become Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), is acquired by Halliburton.

1963

• The CIA, in collusion with the Baath party, conducts its first "regime change" in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein is reportedly involved in this coup to overthrow Iraq's leader Abdel Karim Kassem.
• John F. Kennedy and Robert McNamara discuss withdrawing 1,000 troops from Vietnam and ending U.S. involvement by 1965; Kennedy arranges to meet with Cuban officials to discuss normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba; The U.S. backs a coup against South Vietnam's leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, who is murdered on Nov. 2.
• John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Nearly four decades later, scientists prove, with 96.3 percent certainty, that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. Journalists eventually chronicle ways the government used the media to manipulate and dupe the public -- with the New York Times shilling for the Warren Commission and Life buying the Zapruder film hours after the assassination -- and locking it away until 1975 with the publisher's expressed desire to "withhold it from public viewing." In 2004, prominent authors demand that 'the CIA come clean on JFK assassination.'
• Lyndon Johnson takes office and Republicans in Congress soon wonder if Brown & Root's new government contacts aren't connected to its political contributions to the new president. The company eventually becomes part of a consortium which wins a $380 million contract to build bases, hospitals and airports for the U.S. Navy in South Vietnam. During America's War on Terror, the Halliburton subsidiary has similar luck in Afghanistan and Iraq.
1964: After the American destroyer the USS Maddox is reportedly attacked in the Gulf Of Tonkin, the Senate approves the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson the authority to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaks the Pentagon Papers to the press, proving that the pretext for this escalation was based upon distortions. Before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Ellsberg asks government officials who know that the Bush administration is deceiving the public to come clean and reiterates his plea in 2004: "Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims," he writes.
Senator Robert Byrd, in opposition to the resolution authorizing President Bush to use force against Iraq, compares the current crisis to the one lawmakers faced in 1964. "This is the Tonkin Gulf resolution all over again," he says in Oct. 2002. "Let us not give this president or any president unchecked power. Remember the Constitution."
1965: The government secretly releases Bacillus globigii at the National Airport and Greyhound bus terminal in Washington, DC.; One year later, military researchers break bacteria-filled light bulbs onto tracks in subway stations in New York City.

1967

• The General Accounting Office faults "Vietnam Builders" Brown & Root for accounting lapses; protesters target Brown & Root as a symbol of the "military-industrial complex." Decades later, historians cite parallels between Halliburton's hefty Iraq contracts and Vietnam-era controversies, including "allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering." In 2004, former Army Corps of Engineers contract officer Bunnatine Greenhouse charges that the Pentagon is improperly awarding no-bid contracts to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, which is already under investigation for overcharging the government.
• President Johnson gives speech after speech, saying that America's security and freedom depend on a U.S. victory in Vietnam. Comparing the Vietnamese struggle to the one faced by post-colonial Americans and assuring American mothers that their sons are dying for a noble cause, Johnson also promises, "We shall stay the course." LBJ's words are later echoed in President George W. Bush's defense of the war in Iraq.
• President Johnson establishes the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, assisted by an Army task force, planning to use military force to squelch civil disturbances. On May 4, 1970, four students are killed at Kent State University when the Ohio National Guard fires at unarmed protesters.

1968: Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy are assassinated. The Democratic National convention in Chicago is marked by riots.

1970: After a coup brings CIA-backed Lon Nol to power in Cambodia, the formerly neutral country is dragged into the war in Vietnam. Support for the Khmer Rouge, which was marginal before Nixon widens the war, grows, and the Khmer Rouge takes power in 1975, leading to Cambodia's infamous killing fields. "Few Americans realize that close to two million people died. . . and that the United States helped bring about the crisis that lead to the Khmer Rouge takeover," CBS later reports. Thirty-five years later, in an article entitled, "Cambodia All Over Again?" Conn Hallinan suggests that the U.S. is setting the stage to extend the war with Iraq into Syria -- a country we are already "unofficially at war with."

1971

• The "Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI" releases secret files on the FBI's domestic counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, to the press, revealing that ordinary citizens had been FBI targets, as had Albert Einstein, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Martin Luther King, John Lennon and Elvis Presley. Though Senator Frank Church later vows that "never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers a threat to the established order," in 2002, the New York Times reports that the FBI has "nearly unbridled power to poke into the affairs of anyone in the United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity." A year later, FBI Intelligence Bulletin no. 89 is sent to police departments, revealing that the federal government is advocating that local authorities spy on U.S. citizens. When the Atlanta Police Department acknowledges that it routinely places antiwar protesters under surveillance, Georgia Rep. Nan Orrock tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "This harkens back to some very dark times in our nation's history."
• Sen. Sam Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights uncovers a military intelligence surveillance system used against thousands of American citizens, and stumbles upon Operation Garden Plot, the United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2. The plan gives federal forces power to "put down" "disruptive elements" and calls for "deadly force to be used against any extremist or dissident perpetrating any and all forms of civil disorder." In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, soldiers are instructed to "shoot to kill" looters in New Orleans.

1972

• The Tuskegee experiment, in which black men were purposely infected with syphilis without their knowledge (and then left untreated to study the results), finally comes to an end. "The United States Government did something that was wrong, deeply, profoundly, morally wrong," President Bill Clinton later says. "It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens."
• A break-in at the Watergate Hotel marks the beginning of a drama that will last for more than two years, culminating in Richard Nixon's resignation. In his book, The Ends of Power, former Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman charges that the CIA scrubbed its involvement in both Watergate and John F. Kennedy's murder and that the Nixon tapes hold hidden clues. Nixon's references to the "Bay of Pigs," he says, actually refer to the JFK assassination, while references to "the Cubans" pertain to the Watergate burglars. While such assertions are impossible to prove, in one tape, President Nixon calls the Warren Commission's report, "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated."

1973: Congress passes the War Powers Act, which is soon ignored by presidents of both parties. "We've turned the war powers of the United States over to, well we are never really sure who, or what they're doing, or what it costs, or who is paying for it," Bill Moyers laments in 1987. "The one thing that we are sure of is that this largely secret global war carried on with less and less accountability to democratic institutions, has become a way of life. And now we are faced with a question brand new in our history. Can we have the permanent warfare state and democracy too?"
Sept. 11: A U.S.-led coup topples Chile's democratically-elected leader, Salvador Allende, and installs military dictator Augusto Pinochet. "Like Caesar peering into the colonies from distant Rome, Nixon said the choice of government by the Chileans was unacceptable to the president of the United States," Sen. Church later says. "The attitude in the White House seemed to be, "If in the wake of Vietnam I can no longer send in the Marines, then I will send in the CIA."

1974: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney urge President Ford to veto the Freedom of Information Act, which they believe will weaken the executive branch. Congress overrides Ford's veto.

1975
• A Harper's Magazine article entitled "Seizing Arab Oil" becomes the first in a series of articles about the U.S. government's dream of eventually taking control of Middle East oil. Nearly thirty years later, Mother Jones reminds readers that the same strategists who worked in the Ford administration are now "firmly in control of the White House." In April, 2001, months before the Sept. 11 attacks, James Baker III submits a report to Vice President Dick Cheney, recommending that the U.S. consider a "military" option in dealing with Iraq. The report states that 'the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma', with one of the 'consequences' being a 'need for military intervention'.
• Journalists investigate Operation Cable Splicer, a subplan of Operation Garden Plot, designed to control civilian populations and take over state and local governments. Nine years later, the Rex-84 "readiness exercise" program is conducted by 34 federal departments and agencies. Reportedly established to control illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/U.S. border, the exercise tests military readiness to round up and detain citizens in case of massive civil unrest. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, (and after mercenaries are brought in to patrol the streets of New Orleans) President Bush says, "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces." "This is how repressive governments operate -- mixing inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies," Josh Marshall responds. "You don't repair disorganized or incompetent government by granting it more power. You fix it by making it more organized and more competent."
• Sen. Frank Church's Committee to Study Government Operations sheds light on media manipulation, government-sanctioned civil rights abuses and the CIA's Mafia connections. The committee also learns of the CIA's "Executive Action," unit and the "Health Alteration Committee," dealing with assassinations.
• A small group of conservatives, who call themselves the "cabal" advocate a more hawkish foreign policy. Among them is Richard Perle, who finds an ally in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Robert Novak is an invaluable conduit between administration insiders and U.S. citizens.

1976: President Gerald Ford issues an executive order banning assassinations by U.S. agencies. After a failed 2002 coup to overthrow Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is linked to the Bush administration, TV evangelist Pat Robertson suggests that the U.S. should murder Chavez. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war," Robertson says, adding, "I don't think any oil shipments will stop." In Oct. 2005, Chavez says the U.S. is planning to invade Venezuela.

1977: In a Rolling Stone article, Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein estimates that "400 American journalists [have] been tied to the CIA at one point or another," -- with the New York Times being one of the CIA's prime collaborators. (The Times counters, saying that the number is closer to 800).

In 2002, disinformation printed on the front page of the New York Times is repeated by Bush administration officials on Sunday morning talk shows, helping to market the impending war in Iraq. Judith Miller, co-author of the piece, later becomes a story unto herself, when her "mysterious security clearance," and ties to Plamegate, and John Bolton raise eyebrows. A colleague depicts Miller as an "advocate," whose work is "little more than dictation from government sources. . .filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies."

While the government reportedly ends its disinformation program following the publication of Bernstein's article, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, news that one of the terrorist's passports is miraculously found amongst the rubble at ground zero is reported and repeated, with some "lucky finds" bringing to mind former CIA director William Colby's boast that "the Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any major significance in the major media."
In 2005, the General Accounting Office finds that the Bush administration violated the law by engaging in "covert propaganda" within the U.S. As former Vice President Henry Wallace once wrote: "With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public."

1977-1984: The U.S. government backs "nationalist" forces in El Salvador, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands, including American nuns who are raped, mutilated and murdered by El Salvador's death squads. In 2005, Newsweek reports that the Pentagon is considering a plan to resurrect "a still-secret strategy" from this era to use against insurgents in Iraq.

1979

Osama bin Laden leaves Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet's in Afghanistan. He eventually receives funding and training through the CIA.
On Jan. 16, the Shah of Iran, who's been in power since the U.S.-led coup in 1953, flees Iran after months of violent protests against him. The exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns on Feb. 1, and takes over Iran within days. In November, Islamic revolutionaries take more than 60 American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

1980: Dismissing televised speculation on a Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford co-presidency, Ronald Reagan makes a late-night dash to the Republican National Convention to announce that George. H.W. Bush will be his running mate. Though Bush denies meeting Iranian officials in Paris to delay the release of America's remaining 52 hostages during President Jimmy Carter's term, the Iran hostage situation is resolved the day Reagan is sworn in.

1981: Mark Hinkley attempts to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, 69 days after the new president is sworn in. In a bizarre footnote, UPI, the Houston Post, the Associated Press, and NBC's John Chancellor report that Hinkley's brother Scott was to dine with Vice President George H. W. Bush's son Neil the night of the shooting.

1983
• The U.S. invades Grenada. "The reason we gave for the intervention [in Grenada] -- American medical students there--was phony but the reaction of the American people was absolutely and overwhelmingly favorable," Irving Kristol later explains. "They had no idea what was going on, but they backed the president. They always will."
• Special envoy Donald Rumsfeld meets with Saddam Hussein. In 1984, the U.S. formerly restores relations with Iraq, after secretly supporting Saddam Hussein with military aid and intelligence for years.

1984: In a televised speech, Ronald Reagan asks Americans to support freedom fighters in Nicaragua. Two years later, the administration admits it illegally sold weapons to Iran to fund Nicaraguan Contras.

1987

• The Federal Communications Commission eliminates the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to present balanced coverage of controversial issues. As Operation Iraqi Freedom looms, balance often gives way to conformity. Radio stations sponsor Dixie Chick CD demolitions, the Bush-connected Clear Channel holds pro-war rallies and disc jockeys who openly question Bush's rationale for war suffer repercussions.
• The Miami Herald reports that former deputy director John Brinkerhoff modeled FEMA's martial law program after a proposal to squelch black militant uprisings by placing "at least 21 million American Negroes" into "assembly centers or relocation camps."
• The Iran/contra hearings take place. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush emerge virtually unscathed. Following George H. W. Bush's 1992 pardons of Iran/contra felons, Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh says that Bush's actions prove that "powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office - deliberately abusing the public trust - without consequence." Several Iran/contra figures are later awarded top jobs in George W. Bush's administration.
• Coalition on Revival head Jay Grimstead begins planning for a "long-range social and political takeover" of American politics. Five years later, author Frederick Clarkson writes, "Never in the wildest dreams of the far right, nor for that matter, the rest of the GOP, did anyone think such people could get this far." When George W. Bush takes office in 2001, the Washington Post reports that, "For the first time since religious conservatives became a modern political movement, the president of the United States has become the movement's de facto leader." In the spring of 2004, the Guardian reports that "US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy" and the Village Voice asserts that "Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move."

1988: The Reagan era comes to a close. When George W. Bush's administration later compares itself to the Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan, Jr. objects. "Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s," he says. "But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's -- these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people."

1989: The US invades Panama, overthrowing its dictator, General Manuel Noriega, a former CIA asset.

1990: Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.

PART 2 -- 1990- 2000

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein
"Be loyal to your country always, and to the government only when it deserves it." ~ Mark Twain

1990

• In Sept.1990, five months after Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, the White House claims that satellite images prove that Iraqi troops are gathering at the Saudi border. The St. Petersburg Times acquires two commercial Soviet satellite images from the same vicinity, during the same time period, and discovers miles of empty desert. "It was a pretty serious fib," journalist Jean Heller says. "That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn't exist."
• After Hill & Knowlton, a public relations firm with ties to George H.W. Bush, is hired by the Citizens for a Free Kuwait to sell the looming war in Iraq, the perfect pitch comes in the form of an attractive young woman who tells a Congressional committee that she saw Iraqi soldiers take 15 Kuwaiti babies out of incubators only to leave them "on the cold floor to die." The woman is later revealed to be the 15-year-old daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S.-- and hospital employees contend that the incubator incident never happened. Even so, President George H. W. Bush repeats the story several times during the lead-up to war, convincing lawmakers to authorize the use of force against Iraq. In 2002, as America teeters on the brink of yet another Gulf war, experts question senior officials' claims. "These are all the same people who were running [the war propaganda] more than 10 years ago," author John MacArthur says. "They'll make up just about anything ... to get their way." In an assessment later confirmed by the Downing Street memo, former US Rep. Lee Hamilton tells the Christian Science Monitor, "My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence."

1991

• Five days after Congress authorizes the use of force in Iraq, the Gulf War begins. On Feb. 28, a cease-fire is declared and the Bush administration decides on a containment strategy that includes sanctions, U.N. inspections and no-fly zones. Richard Perle, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives are not happy about the decision to keep Saddam Hussein in power, however, and six years later, Kristol co-founds the Washington-basked think tank, Project for the New American Century. (PNAC) Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz are listed among PNAC's supporters.
• The Rendon Group is hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Previously paid $100,000 a month by the Citizens for a Free Kuwait to help market the war, by the time the Gulf War ends, "perception management" expert John Rendon becomes, as James Bamford puts it, "Washington's leading salesman for regime change." In time, Rendon assembles the Iraqi National Congress, helps install Ahmed Chalabi as its leader, and becomes the INC's lead advisor and media guru, with considerable help from New York Times journalist Judith Miller. Between 2000 and 2004, the Pentagon awards the Rendon Group at least thirty-five contracts worth millions -- including a hefty contract three weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.

1992

• "The Wolfowitz Doctrine," written by Pentagon analysts Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby, is leaked to the New York Times, creating a stir with plans for preemptive strikes and a go-it-alone military strategy. The document's aggressive and controversial recommendations are later removed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.
• 1992's "Ruby Ridge" incident and the federal government's 1993 intervention against the Branch Dividians in Waco cause people on the political right to question if America is turning into a police state. By the time Elian Gonzalez makes headlines in 1999, many are convinced -- even though most Americans support the Clinton administration's decision to return Elian to his father in Cuba. When Congress and the president intervene in the Terry Schiavo case in 2005, however, the far right sanctions government intervention -- even though 80% of Americans say the federal government should not become involved in citizens' private lives.
• Mother Jones raises questions about George W. Bush's Harken stock sale and ties to the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

1993

• Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf explains why the U.S. didn't unseat Saddam during the first Gulf War. "From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit -- we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation," he writes in his autobiography. Other "realists" later make similar observations.
• The World Trade Center is bombed, six are killed. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the attack, is later tried, convicted, and sentenced to 240 years in prison. In 1995, during the course of the investigation, the FBI uncovers "Project Bojinka," a terrorist plot which includes plans to hijack commercial airplanes and crash them into buildings.
• President Bill Clinton bombs Iraqi intelligence centers, in retaliation, he says, for Saddam Hussein's attempted assassination of President George H. W. Bush. Iraq's involvement in the assassination attempt is later called into question.

1994

• A memo leaked from the Director of Resource Management for the Department of the Army discusses plans to "establish civilian prison camps on [military] installations," with Rep. Henry Gonzalez later admitting that there are "standby provisions" and "statutory emergency plans. . . whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism, apprehend, invoke the military, and arrest Americans and hold them in detention camps." Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Sydney Morning Herald investigates these plans and author James Mann discloses a top secret program which could circumvent the Constitution in case of a national crisis. A Washington state county commissioner later says he has copy of documents indicating that his county has been pegged as a potential "concentration camp" location.
• During the "Republican Revolution," the GOP wins back control of Congress after 40 years. Predicated upon a promise to fight against "government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money," the movement fails to deliver. By 2005, true conservatives rail against the Bush administration's "big government" policies.

1995: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is bombed, 168 people are killed. Timothy McVeigh is later found guilty and executed. In April, 2005, in response to persistent rumors that Iraq was behind the Oklahoma City bombing, FOX News anchor John Gibson speculates that McVeigh was wrongly executed, and that Bush invaded Iraq because he realized "that Iraq was behind a lot of the attacks on the U.S. and it was time for it to stop." Aside from mentioning a book by Jayna Davis and a lawsuit filed by Oklahoma bombing victims' family members, Gibson offers no proof that Iraq was behind "a lot of the attacks." Others on FOX also cover this story, but when Stanley Hilton, a former aid to Sen. Bob Dole, files a $7 billion class action suit against top government officials on behalf of Sept 11 family members, he and his "ridiculous lawsuit" are attacked on FOX's Hannity and Colmes.

1996

• In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress passes the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the first of three pieces of controversial anti-terrorism pieces of legislation which trouble civil libertarians. In response to this legislation, the Nation calls President Bill Clinton a "serial violator of the Bill of Rights."
• Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad tells U.S. federal agents that he was learning to fly a plane so that he could crash into CIA headquarters.
• The Pentagon releases training manuals from the U.S. Army School of Americas (SOA) located in Fort Benning, Georgia. SOA alumni (including Manuel Noriega) are schooled in execution and torture, and participate in some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Though the name of the school is later changed, the "terrorist training" remains the same -- with SOA graduates reportedly fighting in the "dirty war" in Colombia.
• The cover of the Dec. 1 edition of Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard declares, "Saddam Must Go: A How-to Guide" and contains articles written by Zalmay M. Khalilzad (who later becomes White House envoy to the Iraqi opposition) and Paul Wolfowitz.

1997

• Power Geyser, a secret counterterrorism program using Special Operation commandos inside the U.S. is created. Such "extra-legal missions" call into question the future of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the military from being used to police U.S. citizens.
• Members of Afghanistan's Taliban travel to Texas to meet with Unocal officials to discuss plans to construct a gas pipeline across Afghanistan. Two months later, a Unocal official testifies before Congress, saying that construction of their proposed pipeline cannot begin "until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place." Following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, President Harmid Karzai (who previously worked for Unocal) signs a deal to build a pipeline through Afghanistan.
• The Florida legislature passes a reform law designed to eliminate registration of ineligible voters. In 1998, Florida's secretary of state hires lone bidder Database Technologies (DBT) to remove ineligible voters, paying $4.3 million for a task that cost $5,700 beforehand. Between May 1999 and Nov. 2000, Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her predecessor (who are both proteges of Governor Jeb Bush) order 57,700 "ex-felons" to be removed from voter rolls. An inordinate number of those "scrubbed" are not actually felons.

1998

• PNAC writes a letter to President Bill Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress asking for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power." Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, William Kristol, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Armitage and eleven others sign the memo.
• President Clinton contemplates action against Iraq, but Republican Senator Arlen Specter reminds him to respect the Constitution. "Bomber and missile strikes constitute acts of war," he writes in a letter to the president. "Only Congress has the constitutional prerogative to authorize war." In 2002, White House lawyers contend that President Bush can preemptively attack Iraq without Congressional approval.
• Paul Wolfowitz testifies before Congress, urging it to pass the Iraqi Liberation Act. Help the Iraqi people "remove him [Saddam Hussein] from power," Wolfowitz says, denying that the use of American force would be necessary. "The estimate that it would take a major invasion with U.S. ground forced seriously overestimates Saddam Hussein," he says. Later that year, President Bill Clinton signs the Act into law.
• U.S. intelligence reports that Osama bin Laden's "next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport and detonating it" with a second report explicitly warning against attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
• At a gathering at the Cato Institute, Dick Cheney underscores his distaste for sanctions against Iraq, Iran, Libya and other oil-rich countries. "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States," he says. Though Cheney later calls Iran "the worlds' leading exporter of terror," as CEO and chairman of Halliburton, he lobbies to have economic sanctions against Tehran lifted.
• "George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft co-author A World Transformed -- portions of which appear in Time under the heading, "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam." Saying that a "march into Baghdad" would force soldiers "to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war," which "could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability," Bush also says that if coalition forces had unseated Saddam, "the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
• President Clinton orders a strike against Iraq, saying that "Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons." Scott Ritter later tells Buzzflash that by 1996-1997, "Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed, meaning that there was no chance of viable weapons of mass destruction existing in Iraq."

1999

• President William Jefferson Clinton, after being impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives is acquitted by the Senate of perjury and obstruction of justice. At the height of the impeachment, only 33 percent of Americans polled say they think Clinton should resign, while in 2005, 50 percent of those polled say that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq. In addition to questions about American democracy, Clinton's impeachment shines a spotlight on the secretive Richard Mellon Scaife and the anti-Clinton Arkansas Project.
• Candidate George W. Bush makes his rumored "king-making" speech before the Council of National Policy, fueling speculation that, if elected, he will appoint anti-abortion-rights judges to the Supreme Court and take measures against gays and lesbians. Bush also meets with the Committee to Restore American Values, chaired by Left Behind co-author Timothy LaHaye -- foretelling a time when high-ranking government officials will consult Christian fundamentalists before setting policy and selecting Supreme Court nominees. "Whatever else it achieves, the presidential campaign of 2000 will be remembered as the time in American politics when the wall separating church and state began to collapse," the New York Times Magazine later asserts.
• The Library of Congress publishes a report saying that Al Qaeda "could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives. . . into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House."
• NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) begins running drills, simulating hijacked airliners crashing into buildings.
• Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, co chairs of the United States Commission on National Security, report that "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers" as the result of a terrorist attack.

2000

• British intelligence warns U.S. intelligence agencies of a plot to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings.
• The 2000 GOP platform calls for "the removal of Saddam Hussein" as a way to promote "peace and stability in the Persian Gulf," and wags a finger at the Clinton administration for failing to coddle Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. In time, Chalabi's disinformation worms its way into the New York Times and into the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. Though Chalabi supplies false intelligence to the U.S. and is later accused of passing off top secret information to Iran, he is welcomed with open arms by Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials in 2005.
• Candidate George W. Bush makes a speech at Bob Jones University -- raising questions concerning just how "compassionate" he truly is; Questions regarding George W. Bush's National Guard's service arise and persist.
• During the 2000 presidential campaign, Cheney admits that though Halliburton conducted business with Iran and Libya, he held a "firm policy" against dealing with Iraq. In June, 2001, however, the Washington Post reports that "Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company."
• PNAC publishes "Rebuilding America's Defenses," outlining several "core missions" for the U.S. military, including to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." This aggressive foreign policy will take years to come to fruition, unless, as the reports states, there is "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor." Thomas Freeman later explores how the neconservatives used 9/11 to advance their agenda. "Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. . .I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened," he says. Former Middle East envoy General Anthony Zinni tells 60 Minutes that "everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do."
• The USS Cole is bombed in Yemen, in an attack masterminded by Osama bin Laden. Seventeen sailors are killed.
• After George W. Bush's brother assures him he's won Florida and his cousin declares him the winner on national TV, the 2000 presidential election raises serious questions about the health of our republic. The election is marked by scrubbed voter rolls, millions of lost votes and out-and-out thuggery.
• The Washington Post reports that "Something very strange happened on election night" in Volusia County, FL. Al Gore, it seems, was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000 at one point, but a half hour later, "Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters." America gets its first whiff of e-voting election fraud.
• Journalist Greg Palast uncovers the shameful Database Technologies voter roll purge in Florida, but the New York Times refuses to carry the story. A little more than three years later, when it's too late to do anything about it, the paper admits that something's rotten in the state of Florida. "In 2000, the American public saw in Katherine Harris's massive purge eligible voters in Florida, how easy it is for registered voters to lose their rights by bureaucratic fiat," the Times reports.
• The U.S. government publishes a 90 page study regarding Gulf War veterans suffering from Gulf War Illness and "concludes that stress is likely a primary cause of illness in at least some Gulf War veterans." Veteran groups suspect a cover-up, with many experts believing that depleted uranium, which is used in US munitions, is the culprit. Dr. Doug Rokke, who headed the DU clean-up program for the U.S. Army in Iraq, speaks out against its use, despite repeated warnings by US military officials and subsequent threats and harassment.
• Al Gore concedes the presidential election after the Supreme Court installs George W. Bush President of the United States. Unsettling questions regarding the future of American democracy arise. "The people have not been heard. They will not be heard. And each of those uncounted ballots is a cry of reproach against the act of judicial arrogance that has now forever silenced them," Salon.com laments.

Part III: 2001- 2005

2001

"All men having power ought to be mistrusted." ~James Madison

January: Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, co-chairs of the U.S. Commission on National Security, brief Bush administration officials on the looming terror threat. On Sept. 12, 2001, Hart tells Salon that Congress appeared to be ready to act on the commission's recommendations, but Bush said, "'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort." The Sept. 11 Commission's recommendations are similarly ignored. "God help us if we have another attack," chairman Thomas Kean says more than four years later, after the government fails to implement many of the recommendations made in July, 2004.

February: During a visit to Cairo, Colin Powell admits that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction" and is "unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

April
• A report entitled, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century," commissioned by former Secretary of State James Baker, is presented to Vice President Dick Cheney. The study examines America's looming energy crisis and suggests 'military intervention' as a potential remedy.
• In April and May, intelligence reports bearing the headlines, "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real" are presented to President Bush.

June
• John O'Neill, the FBI's foremost bin Laden expert, meets with former French intelligence analysts in Paris, reportedly telling them, over the course of two visits, that "the main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism [are] U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia." Two months later, O'Neill makes headlines and on Sept. 11, is among the 3000 killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Journalist Greg Palast later reports that the FBI was told to "back off" investigations into the Saudis.
• German intelligence tells the CIA that Middle Eastern terrorists are training for hijackings and plan on attacking American interests.

July
• White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke gathers top officials from a dozen federal agencies and tells them that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."
• A CIA intelligence report for President Bush reads, "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
• An FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona warns that suspected Islamic terrorists are attending U.S. flight schools. "Federal authorities have been aware for years that suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving flight training at schools in the United States," the Washington Post later reports.
• George Bush attends the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, following reports that Osama bin Laden might try to assassinate him -- possibly by flying a plane filled with explosives into a building.
• CBS News reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft has stopped flying on commercial airlines due to security concerns.
• Condoleezza Rice tells Larry King that the U.S. is able to "keep arms from [Saddam Hussein]" and that Saddam's "military forces have not been rebuilt."

August
• On August 6, President Bush receives a President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." By this time, he, Dick Cheney, and other top officials have already seen several such warnings.
• In late summer 2001, Jordan intelligence intercepts a message stating that a major attack (code-named Big Wedding) is being planned inside the US and that aircraft will be used. The message is forwarded to U.S. authorities.
• Suspected "20th hijacker" Zacharias Moussaoui is arrested. An FBI agent later testifies that weeks before Sept. 11, he warned the Secret Service that terrorists might hijack a plane and "hit the nation's capital."

September
• "Hart predicts terrorist attacks on America," Montreal newspapers declare, referring to Sen. Gary Hart's repeated warnings that "the terrorists are coming." On Sept. 6, Hart meets with Condoleezza Rice, reportedly telling her, "Get going on homeland security, you don't have all the time in the world." In 2005, Sept. 11 commissioners adopt Hart's former role. "We believe that another attack will occur. It's not a question of if. We are not as well-prepared as we should be," vice chairman Lee Hamilton says.
• The National Security Agency intercepts two messages on Sept. 10. "Tomorrow is zero hour," reads one. "The match begins tomorrow," says the other. NSA does not translate the messages until Sept. 12.
• Pentagon officials cancel travel plans for Sept. 11. As Newsweek reports, "On Sept. 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns." That same day, California mayor Willie Brown receives a similar warning.
September 11
• The CIA runs "a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building." ("I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile. . . ," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice later says, despite reams of evidence otherwise. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds later tells Britain's Independent, "I saw papers that show [the] US knew al-Qaeda would attack cities with airplanes.'" )
• The Carlyle Group holds its annual investor conference in Washington, DC. Former Secretary of State James Baker and Shafiq bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's brother, are in attendance. "The gathering was the perfect metaphor for Washington's strange affair with Saudi Arabia," author Robert Baer later writes. Further evidence of this "strange affair" surfaces following the 9/11 attacks. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, when the nation's airspace is restricted, the White House allows airplanes to pick up Saudi VIPS, including members of the bin Laden family. And when victims' families file a $1 trillion law suit against the Saudi royal family, James Baker's law firm represents the Saudis.
• Donald Rumsfeld attends a meeting. "I had said at an 8:00 o'clock breakfast that sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, 10, 12 months, there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people, again, how important it is to have a strong, healthy Defense Department," he later tells Larry King. "And someone walked in and handed a note that said that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center." Rumsfeld later tells the 9/11 commission that it took more than two hours for him to "gain situational awareness."
• Four planes are hijacked, three hit their targets, 3000 are killed in the worst terror attacks on American soil. "I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it," Sen. Arlen Specter later says of the government's failure to protect U.S. citizens.
• NPR's Congressional correspondent David Welna describes a conversation he had during the evacuation of the Capital building. "I spoke with Congressman Ike Skelton. . . who said that just recently the Director of the CIA warned that there could be an attack -- an imminent attack -- on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected," he says. The BBC later states that "the threat of an attack from within America had been considered so small that the entire US mainland was being defended by only 14 planes," with "just four fighter pilots on alert covering the north eastern United States."
• Bush's reaction upon seeing the first plane is "That's some bad pilot. After the second plane hits, chief of staff Andrew Card tells Bush, "We are under attack." Bush continues reading My Pet Goat to elementary school students.
• Five hours after the attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly tells aides to look for a way to attack Saddam Hussein, even though intelligence points to Osama bin Laden.
• President Bush activates a shadow government in underground bunkers, without consulting Congress.
Mid-September to September 30
• The Project for a New American Century signs an open letter to George W. Bush, pushing him to attack Iraq and possibly Iran and Syria -- a country we're already "unofficially at war with" in 2005.
• Anthrax-laced letters are mailed to newsrooms and to two U. S. Senate offices. Five people are killed. After it is disclosed that White House staffers began taking the antibiotic Cipro on Sept. 11 (a week before the first anthrax attack), Judicial Watch chairman Larry Klayman wants to know why.
• The Associated Press reports that one of the terrorist's passports is miraculously found amongst the rubble at ground zero and recycles the story three years later. On the first anniversary of Sept. 11, an ATM card belonging to one of the passengers on American Airlines Flight 11 is found at ground zero and sent to his parents. "How could a plastic card survive the fire of the terrorist attack of the Black Tuesday on the USA?" they ask, thinking it a sign from heaven.
• Ten days after 9/11, during a highly classified briefing, President Bush is told that there is no credible evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the terror attacks. The State Department later pinpoints countries where al-Qaeda is known to operate. Iraq is not listed among them.
• Two weeks after Sept. 11, a secret memo written by Justice Department John Yoo concludes that there are "no limits" to the president's war-making authority and that Bush can "preemptively" attack terrorist groups or countries supporting such groups, even if they have no ties to the 9/11 attacks. "I was dumbfounded by the way the Bush Administration pushed aside the Constitution to launch their war on terrorism," Sam Dash later tells John Dean.
• Three weeks after Sept. 11, the Pentagon sets up the top secret Office of Strategic Influence -- an operation designed to plant disinformation in the media. Though the program is later scrapped, reports that the U.S. military is "covertly" paying the Iraqi press to run "news" stories favorable to the US mission in Iraq surface in 2005. "Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," a Pentagon says regarding the planting of propaganda.

October
• The War on Terror begins on Oct. 7, 2001, with the first strikes in Afghanistan. Though President Bush vows to capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," bin Laden's significance is downplayed after he reportedly escapes through the mountains at Tora Bora in late November.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, the head of Pakistan's intelligence service (ISI), has been fired after being connected to a $100,000 payment wired to Mohamed Atta -- reportedly to help fund the Sept. 11 terror attacks. WSJ's Bernard-Henri Levy later speculates that reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered by the ISI after getting too close to the truth about its ties to al-Qaeda and investigative journalist Gerald Posner addresses possible links between Osama bin Laden, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- with many believing that the 28 pages censored from Washington's official report on 9/11 refer, as Newsweek later explains, to "connections between high-level Saudi princes and associates of the hijackers."
• Copper Green, the codename for a program which allegedly involves sexual humiliation and extreme interrogation of detainees, is initiated in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Journalist Seymour Hersh later reports that the directive was approved by Donald Rumsfeld, while Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, says that Dick Cheney was also involved. "The secretary of defense under cover of the vice president's office. . . began to authorize procedures within the armed forces that led to what we've seen," Wilkerson tells NPR, referring to subsequent abuse scandals.
• The Patriot Act is railroaded through Congress and the Senate, without the benefit of committee hearings or extended debate, shortly after Democratic legislators are targeted in yet-to-be solved anthrax attacks. Four years later, early concerns about abuses are realized, with the FBI once again spying on ordinary Americans. Though the Act contains a "sunset clause," in July, 2005, Congress votes to renew the provisions set to expire.

November
• The Bush administration issues executive orders allowing for the use of special military courts and empowering the attorney general to detain non-citizens indefinitely.
• President Bush blocks access to presidential records. Thomas Blanton, the Executive Director of the National Security Archive, later tells Bill Moyers that this is "the first time that vice presidents have ever been given their own executive privilege, separate from the president." The first vice president who gets to take advantage of this privilege is George H. W. Bush.
• After the Kabul offices of al-Jazeera are bombed, the Guardian asks, "Did the US mean to hit the Kabul offices of Al-Jazeera TV?" Less than two years later, similar questions are raised as the war in Iraq approaches. Before bombing even begins, BBC reporter Kate Adie tells an Irish radio station that the Pentagon is threatening to shoot down independent journalists' satellite uplinks, while author Phillip Knightley says the Pentagon is warning that it "may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side."
Reminiscent of President Bill Clinton's bombing of a Serbian TV station during the war in Kosovo, al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices are bombed in 2003 and a hotel in Basra being used as a base by al-Jazeera's team of correspondents also receives direct hits. After Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, which houses foreign journalists, is also targeted, the Committee to Protect Journalists demands an investigation -- as does Amnesty International, which says that the Palestine Hotel is protected under international humanitarian law. When details of an April, 2004 dialogue between Bush and Tony Blair are later leaked to the press (in which Bush reportedly "made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere"), the White House calls the accusation "outlandish" and Britain's attorney general imposes a gag order on the British press.

December
• The Boston Herald reports on those most likely to profit from the War on Terror, pointing to George H. W. Bush and his connection with the Carlyle Group. Former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips later traces how four generations of the Bush family "embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and personal financial links."
• Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft says concerns about Constitutional protections "aid terrorists" and "scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty"; Lynn Cheney's American Council of Trustees issues a list of 117 anti-American statements, including Rev. Jesse Jackson's observation that the U.S. "build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls."
• The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA), which was introduced to governors of all 50 states in October, is revised, using language that sounds less authoritarian. The plan calls for forced vaccinations and confiscation of citizen's real estate, food and other assets without adequate compensation.
• Ahmed Chalabi introduces an Iraqi exile named Curveball to the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," a CIA official later writes, in an e-mail published in Newsweek. In Nov., 2005, the Los Angeles Times says that the U.S. fell under Curveball's "spell," quoting German intelligence officials who say that the Bush administration "repeatedly exaggerated [Curveball's] claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq."

2002

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac." ~George Orwell

January
• White House counsel Alberto Gonzales writes a memo to President Bush, advising him to declare Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters exempt from Geneva Convention safeguards. Citing the War Crimes Act of 1996, which prohibits Americans from committing "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales warns that even top U.S. officials could be susceptible to charges of war crimes without this exemption.
• President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney personally ask Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit the congressional investigation into Sept. 11. Eighteen months later, Sept. 11 family members claim that the White House continues to thwart every effort to get to the bottom of the 9/11 terror attacks.

February
• Former FEMA deputy director John Brinkerhoff writes a paper for the Anser Institute for Homeland Security defending the Pentagon's desire to deploy troops on American streets.
• The Counterintelligence Field Activity Agency (CIFA) is created by the Pentagon. In 2005, the White House pushes for broader powers for CIFA -- including authorizing it to engage in domestic surveillance. "We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, says.

March: A full year before the start of the war in Iraq, former U.N. official Denis Halliday asserts that "Saddam Hussein is not a threat to the U.S." and that "the whole weapons inspection issue is really just a ruse." When Scott Ritter later makes similar claims, he is accused of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid.

May: Veteran FBI agent Colleen Rowley sends a 13 page "whistle blower" letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller describing how FBI officials thwarted an investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui. FBI officials who undermined investigations into Zacarias Moussaoui's computer are later promoted and rewarded.

July
• Peter Kirsanow, a Bush appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, warns that should America be attacked again, the public will clamor for Arab-Americans to be placed in internment camps.
• British national security aide Matthew Rycroft meets with Tony Blair and several advisers, writing what will later be referred to as the Downing Street Memo. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," the memo reads.

August: Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee writes a memo, citing William Rehnquist's defense of Nixon's 1970 foray into Cambodia as a precedent for loosening restrictions on torture. The Nation later reports on how this and other memos "facilitate torture as public policy" and, "articulate a philosophy of the presidency best described as authoritarian."

September
• The Bush administration begins to ardently push for war with Iraq, with Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card explaining why they waited until September. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he says
• The Office of Special Plans -- created in the days following Sept. 11 attacks and later compared to a "shadow government" -- begins to rival the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. as the President's main source of intelligence on Iraq. Former Pentagon employee Karen Kwiatkowski later chronicles the rise of the OSP -- speaking out against what she refers to as the "neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon." Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former Bush administration insider, confirms that a secretive "cabal" led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "hijacked foreign policy" and partook in "decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."
• President Bush asserts that Iraq is 'six months away' from building a nuclear weapon" ("I don't know what more evidence we need," he says); One month later, he makes a list of false claims, including the assertion that "Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases." Declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document later prove that the Bush administration knew this information was less than credible.
• A story by Judith Miller indicating that Saddam Hussein is seeking high strength aluminum tubes to develop a nuclear bomb runs on the front page of the New York Times. This disinformation is cited by Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice on the Sept 8, 2002 Sunday morning talk shows, with Rice telling CNN, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Miller's ties to Bush administration neoconservatives and Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi later raise eyebrows, with author James Bamford asserting that Miller "had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years." A memo from a former colleague describes Miller as "an advocate," whose work "is little more than dictation from government sources . . . filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies."
• President Bush releases the "National Security Strategy of the United States," and officially unveils the doctrine of preemption, borrowing heavily from the Project for a New American Century's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and by proxy, the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution discloses America's hidden plan for Iraq, including plans for "permanent military bases." Though Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denies such claims, reports later reveal that the U.S. is building "giant new bases in Iraq."

October

• The US military creates a Northern Command to assist in homeland defense. Gen. Ralph Eberhart, the NORAD commander in charge of air defense on Sept. 11, is later named by George W. Bush to serve at its head. "We should always be reviewing things like Posse Comitatus and other laws if we think it ties our hands in protecting the American people," Eberhart says.
• Former CIA counterintelligence chief Vincent Cannistraro tells the Guardian that "cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements" and that "CIA assessments are being put aside by the Defense department in favor of intelligence they are getting from various Iraqi exiles." Between Chalabi's faulty intelligence, Curveball's questionable influence, Dick Cheney's CIA "visits" and the batch of fibs being concocted at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, it's difficult to believe that Mr. Cheney is truly outraged when he later describes accusations that the Bush administration misled the public as "dishonest," "reprehensible" and "not legitimate".
• Congress authorizes the use of force against Iraq. "I am very disturbed by President Bush's determination that the threat from Iraq is so severe and so immediate that we must rush to a military solution. I do not see it that way," Senator Jim Jeffords says. Jeffords is one of only 23 Senators voting against the Iraq resolution.
• Senator Paul Wellstone is killed in a plane crash. Though his amendment preventing companies using overseas tax shelters from getting homeland security contracts passes the Senate "seemingly unanimously on voice votes," the amendment is later gutted from the final homeland security legislation.

November

• During the run up to the November elections, Vietnam veteran and triple amputee Max Cleland is shamelessly depicted as "unpatriotic" for voicing concerns over homeland security legislation. Though polls show Cleland leading Republican candidate Saxby Chambliss," Chambliss defeats the Georgia senator in a surprising upset. A former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse later contends that the company installed "patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials." During the 2002 midterm elections, e-voting continues to produce disturbing glitch-induced results; Exit polls are scrapped.
• After the 32 page Homeland Security Bill balloons to nearly 500 pages overnight, and is railroaded through the Senate and Congress, it is signed into law. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says the bill "expands the federal police state," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) says it represents "the most severe weakening of the Freedom of Information Act" in 36 years.
• Following months of intensive lobbying by Sept 11 family members, an independent commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks is finally formed. Henry Kissinger is initially chosen to head the commission, but is later replaced by Gov. Thomas Kean. "This was not something that had to happen," Kean later says of the Sept. 11 attacks.

December
• In the wake of Jose Padilla's May arrest, the Washington Post warns that the Bush administration "is developing a parallel legal system" without the protections "guaranteed by the ordinary system." When Padilla is finally charged four years later (minus the chilling "dirty bomb' allegations made by Attorney General John Ashcroft on American TV), his attorneys vow to take the case to the Supreme Court. "Americans need to wake up," former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts later writes. "The only danger to Americans in Iraq is the one Bush created by invading the country. The grave threat that Americans face is the Bush administration's police-state mentality."
• Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is fired after disagreeing with Bush's policies on tax cuts. He later says that unseating Saddam Hussein was Priority One just days after Bush's inauguration.
• The Washington Post reports on America's alleged use of torture to interrogate detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

2003

"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War." ~ John LeCarre.

January
• The Economist reports that "American intelligence agents have been torturing terrorist suspects, or engaging in practices pretty close to torture." In Nov. 2005, the publication lambastes the Bush administration for its hypocrisy and deceit on the torture issue. "To add a note of farce to the tragedy, the administration has had to explain that the CIA is not torturing prisoners at its secret prisons in Asia and Eastern Europe -- though of course it cannot confirm that such prisons exist," the magazine says.
• Bush delivers his State of the Union with those infamous "16 words" claiming that Iraq is attempting to purchase uranium from Niger. Bush's claim about Saddam's "high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production" is also included, even though it too has already been debunked.
• Richard Clarke resigns and later vents his frustrations to Larry King. Citing President Bush's confession to Bob Woodward that he "didn't feel a sense of urgency" regarding terrorism, Clarke asks, "Well, how can you not feel a sense of urgency when George Tenet is telling you in daily briefings, day after day, that a major al Qaeda attack is coming?"

February
• Secretary of State Colin Powell goes to the United Nations to make the case for war. The American media largely buy into his claims, but some remain rightly skeptical.
• President Bush addresses the UN, saying that "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons, the very weapons the dictator tells the world he does not have." In an ironic twist, the Pentagon later admits that US forces used white phosphorus during the 2004 assault on Fallujah. -- an act Guardian columnist George Monbiot deems "a war crime within a war crime within a war crime."
• Confidential draft legislation entitled "The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," is leaked to the Center for Public Integrity and Executive Director Chuck Lewis deems it "five to ten times" worse than the original PATRIOT Act.
• At least a 10 million people take to streets worldwide to protest against the impending war in Iraq. Hundreds of retired military officers, the Pope, the majority of Christian churches and an ex-president also warn against military action in Iraq. By late 2005, Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom says he believes the invasion of Iraq "will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history," while Martin van Creveld, one of the world's most influential military historians,
accuses Bush of "launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them."
• After a study commissioned by NBC says that television host Phil Donahue "seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives," Donahue is canceled, despite having MSNBC's highest ratings. Some say that the media purposely marginalizes anti-war voices while others blame a "climate of fear and self-censorship" for its shameful performance. CNN's Christiane Amanpour later admits that television reporters were "intimidated by the [Bush] administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News."
• The Army War College's strategic study on "Reconstructing Iraq" warns against unseating Saddam without a clear post-invasion plan. "Without an overwhelming effort to prepare for occupation, the US may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America's own making," the study says. In 2005, the Downing Street Memo confirms that there was "little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action," while Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, says that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and "certain people in the Defense Department" were responsible for the 'post invasion planning,' which, he says, "was as inept and incompetent as perhaps any planning anyone has ever done."
• Three weeks before the start of the war, Gen. Eric Shinseki testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying that the U.S. will need several hundred thousand troops to occupy post-invasion Iraq. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz calls this estimate "wildly off the mark" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld deems it "far off the mark."
• Veteran State Department official John Brady Kiesling resigns. "Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson," he writes. "We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security."

March
• Josh Marshall discloses the "startling amount of deception" in the neoconservatives' plans for the Middle East -- with chaos being the desired goal. Paul Wolfowitz later admits that the WMD rationale was made for "bureaucratic reasons" and was "the one reason everyone could agree on."
• President Bush warns the Mexican government that there will be a "certain sense of discipline" if it doesn't support the U.S. position on Iraq and a leaked secret document shows that the U.S. plans to bug key UN security council member's phones and e-mails. Despite intensive "arm twisting," the UN refuses to legitimize Operation Iraqi Freedom.
• Dick Cheney appears on Meet the Press, making one last sales pitch for the approaching war in Iraq. "We believe [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," he says. The alternative media later exposes 10 "appalling lies" about the war in Iraq, while the foreign press comes up with 20.
• Rand Beers, the National Security Council's senior director for combating terrorism, resigns. "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism," he later asserts. "They're making us less secure, not more secure."
• Operation Iraqi Freedom begins on March 20, 2003. "An illegitimate war, a country in defiance of the UN. That was supposed to be Iraq's role in this drama. Instead, it seems to be the U.S. part," asserts Canada's Globe and Mail. "With each passing day, the U.S.-led coalition of the willing. . . looks more like the coalition of the bribed and the kicking
and screaming." The coalition weakens in 2005, when Italy, Hungary, Norway, and other US allies begin pulling troops from Iraq.
• Paul Wolfowitz promises that Iraqi's oil revenues will pay for the country's post-war reconstruction. "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money," he tells the House Appropriations Committee. "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." In May, 2005, the Christian Science Monitor reports that the U.S. government is spending approximately $5 billion a month in Iraq.
• Eight days after the invasion, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace puts a crinkle in the "cakewalk" myth when he tells the Washington Post, that "The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against."

April
• Saddam's Hussein's statue is toppled in Baghdad on April 9 and photos later reveal that the event was not the mob scene depicted on American television. Private Jessica Lynch and sports icon Pat Tillman are also later used for U.S. propaganda.
• Army secretary Thomas White resigns, at Donald Rumsfeld's request. Rumsfeld is reportedly furious with White for agreeing with Gen. Shinseki regarding the number of troops needed to occupy post-invasion Iraq.

May
• The Los Angeles Times speaks out against U.S. detention policies, comparing Uncle Sam's network of secret prisons to a "gulag." Newsday, the Seattle Times and other media outlets also use the "g" word in subsequent op-eds. In 2005, Amnesty International's secretary general Irene Khan issues a press statement, announcing that the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo "has become the gulag of our times." This charge is accompanied by allegations of "ghost detentions," which Khan says do not merely evoke "images of" Stalin's camps, but actually "bring back" the "practice of 'disappearances' so popular with Latin American dictators in the past."
• George Bush lands on the USS Lincoln, with a "Mission Accomplished" banner in the background. Conservatives lambaste Democrats for making fools of themselves in their criticism of Mr. Bush in his flight suit -- with some braying about the "victorious" commander-in-chief's manly attributes.

June: President Bush makes a speech in honor of the International Day in Support of Torture Victims. "I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture," he says. More than two years later, after Bush asserts "We do not torture," people can't believe their ears. "Fine," Kevin Drum responds. "Then shut down the black sites, tell Dick Cheney to stop lobbying against the McCain amendment, and allow the Red Cross unfettered access to prisoners in our custody."

July
• Responding to the insurgency in Iraq, President Bush says, "Bring 'em on." By late 2005, more than 2,100 soldiers are killed in the war in Iraq
• Ambassador Joseph Wilson's Op- ed, "What I didn't find in Africa," appears in the New York Times. When columnist Robert Novak "outs" CIA agent Valerie Plame eight days later, former Nixon counsel John Dean immediately weighs in. "If I thought I had seen dirty political tricks as nasty and vile as they could get at the Nixon White House, I was wrong. . .this is arguably worse," he writes. "Nixon never set up a hit on one of his enemies' wives."
• Select documents from Dick Cheney's secretive energy task force are released, proving that the Vice President was "examining Iraq's oil assets two years before the latest war began."

August: Iran-contra figure John Poindexter, chosen to head the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness Program, resigns amidst controversy concerning plans to develop an online futures market for predicting terrorist attacks.

November: Gen. Tommy Franks warns that if terrorists unleash "a weapon of mass destruction. . . somewhere in the Western world" it may "begin to militarize our country" and "unravel the fabric of our Constitution."

2004

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. " ~ George Orwell

January
• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concludes that the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons programs. Former senior US weapons inspector David Kay says major stockpiles of WMD probably didn't exist in Iraq.
• Military analyst David Segal says that the volunteer army is "stretched too thin" and "closer to being broken today than ever before in its 30-year history." One year later, the Project for a New American Century writes a letter to Congress, citing a statement by the chief of the Army Reserve, that "overuse" in Iraq and Afghanistan could be leading to a "broken force." PNAC says that we "are close to exhausting current U.S. ground forces" and that Congress needs to act. Many see this as a call for a return of the draft. By the close of 2005, however, Rep. John Murtha calls for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq --saying that the Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth."
• A study from RABA Technologies finds that Diebold voting machines have security problems that could allow for the manipulation of elections.

February: On Feb. 26, Major General Antonio Taguba publishes his internal Army report regarding charges of abuse by U.S. military personal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. These findings are later made public when photos depicting instances of abuse appear in the media. Additional Abu Ghraib photos reportedly show American soldiers raping a female prisoner, videotaping Iraqi guards raping young boys, and beating a prisoner almost to death. The military initially tries to pass the scandal off as the actions of a "few bad apples," but as Seymour Hersh later writes: "The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."

March
• Mother Jones predicts that Ohio will be the #1 election day hotspot to watch. "Ohio could become as decisive this year as Florida was four years ago," the magazine says.
• After the Federal Marriage Amendment banning gay marriage is defeated, House leaders cite an obscure provision of the U.S. Constitution (Article III, Section 2) and vote to pass the Marriage Protection Act, a bill which will prevent the Supreme Court from considering the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The New York Times calls its "a radical assault on the Constitution" and Atlanta Journal Constitution's Jay Bookman calls it "a power grab of breathtaking consequences."

April: During the 2004 election primaries, the Associated Press reports that e-voting failures have "shaken confidence in the technology installed at thousands of precincts" -- with as many as 20 states introducing legislation calling for paper receipts on voting machines.

May:
• Nick Berg, an American who often worked on a tower near Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison, is beheaded on tape. The video raises more questions than it answers.
• Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi's Baghdad compound is raided by Iraqi and American authorities. U.S. officials say they have "evidence Chalabi passed intelligence to Iran about U.S. operations in Iraq" -- information that, as one official puts it, "could get Americans killed." Though still under investigation by the FBI, Chalabi is greeted with open arms by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice in Nov. 2005, and speaks at the American Enterprise Institute, where Lynn Cheney serves as a board member. Photos of Chalabi arriving at the Pentagon and at the State Department are strictly forbidden.

July
• A series of FOX e-mails are leaked to the press, revealing the network's less than fair and balanced underbelly. In Nov, 2005, FOX runs a scroll asking, "Why All The Fuss About Torturing People?"
• The Sept. 11 Commission issues its report, and is criticized for downplaying the roles played by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and for omitting information regarding "Able Danger" -- a counterterrorism unit that existed from 1999 until it was "unceremoniously axed" in Feb. 2001. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer later says that "there was a significant amount of information that was totally deleted or not provided to the 9/11 commissioners" and shares the frustration he felt at not being able to share information with the FBI -- especially since he knew that four of the hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, were in America a year before the attacks. (It's still unclear, however, how, without this information, the FBI knew exactly which ATM machine in Portland Maine would reap a picture of Atta on 9/11.). Sept. 11 widow Kristen Breitweiser later calls the 9/11 report "utterly hollow" and James Ridgeway, author of The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11: What the 9/11 Commission Report Failed to Tell Us, compares Patrick Fitzgerald's Plamegate investigation to its 9/11 counterpart -- saying that while Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame have the satisfaction of seeing Scooter Libby "under indictment and out of a job " there "is no such whiff of justice" for the Sept. 11 victims and their families.

August
• Walden O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold, promises that he's "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year"; a demonstration on e-vote insecurity teaches Howard Dean how easy it is to steal an election.
• The Washington Times reports that high ranking officials from the former Office of Special Plans are investigated by the FBI, "on suspicion that one of them passed highly classified U.S. military information to the government of Israel. . . "

September: Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who also happens to be co-chair of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, blocks new voter registration in his state.

October
• Just months after Nicholas Kristof writes back to back articles on the possibility of "an American Hiroshima," the International Atomic Energy Agency tells the UN that equipment which could be used to make a nuclear bomb has disappeared from Iraq. The equipment, which had been part of Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb program before the first Gulf War (and had been under the IAEA's watch since 1991), is reportedly dismantled and carted away during Operation Iraqi Freedom. "It's equipment that is very specialized, very hard to come by, that's tightly controlled, so it could be very helpful for [those] seeking to build weapons," proliferation expert Jon Wolfsthal tells Christian Science Monitor. "It's very troubling that any of this stuff should be unprotected, let alone go missing," he says.
• In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Seymour Hersh reports that U.S. has been "disappearing" people since December, 2001 and in 2005, the Washington Post confirms that the CIA is using a Soviet-era compound to interrogate captives. "The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba" the Post reports.
• Greg Palast reports on the GOP's confidential "caging lists" -- "rosters of thousands of minority voters targeted to prevent them from voting on election day."

November
• Stanford computer specialist David Dill tells Newsweek that the risk of a stolen election is "extremely high."
• On election night, polls show John Kerry winning, and the following day, Ohio's results are called into question. The GOP proposes to do away with exit polls, for being "unreliable," but a University of Pennsylvania professor places odds that the exit polls were that wrong in that many states at 250 million to one. Pollster John Zogby later likens the 2004 presidential election to 1960's suspicious contest. "Something is definitely wrong," Zogby says, adding "we're talking about the Free World here."
• President Bush provides a tape of himself, sitting in the White House, commenting on his impending victory on election night - even though no sitting president has ever addressed the nation while polls were still open. The Bush family filmed a similar made-for-TV moment in 2000, when they promised that Florida would go to George W. Bush.
• Warren County, Ohio, locks down its administration building, blocking anyone from observing the vote count.
• The day after the election, the AP reports on "problems with electronic voting machines," with citizens complaining that though they intended to choose John Kerry, computers registered for President Bush instead. Researchers at the highly respected UC Berkeley say that electronic voting machines may have added between 130,000 to 260,000 (or more) votes to President Bush's tally in Florida, while researchers at John Hopkins University had previously reported that Diebold machines functioned "below even the most minimal security standards" and were "unsuitable for use in a general election."
• House Democrats ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate voting machine irregularities. The GAO issues its report in 2005, finding that concerns about electronic voting machines are valid -- with votes being lost and miscounted during recent elections. Rep. John Conyers also examines "What Went Wrong in Ohio."

2005

"Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions." ~ Ulysses S. Grant

January
• Columnist and frequent TV talk show guest Armstrong Williams is paid $241,000 by the Bush administration to promote its No Child Left Behind legislation. "This happens all the time," Armstrong tells the Nation's David Corn in Jan. 2005, adding that "there are others." The General Accounting Office later finds that the Bush administration violated the law by engaging in "covert propaganda" within the U.S.
• During a news conference, Jeff Gannon, of Talon News and GOPUSA, asks President Bush how he could deal with Senate Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." Bloggers smell a rat. Within a month, the mainstream media also begin to question how Gannon, a gay escort, was given clearance to attend White House briefings -- even before he was a "reporter." CBS asks if there is a "Rove-Gannon connection."

February: An article by Deon Roberts bemoans the fact that expenditures for hurricane and flood protection projects in New Orleans have been reduced by 44.2 percent since 2001. When President Bush later says that "nobody could anticipate a breach of the levee," after Hurricane Katrina, the Baltimore Sun cites research studies and articles by the Scientific American, National Geographic and Louisiana journalists who have been "doing precisely that for decades," and says that Bush "should be laughed out of town as an impostor."

March: Lawmakers introduce the Constitutional Restoration Act of 2005 which states that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over "any matter" regarding public officials who acknowledge "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."

May: The Downing Street Memo is leaked to the Times of London. One month later, Congressional Democrats hold an informal hearing, trying to draw attention to accusations that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" during the lead up to the war in Iraq. Revisionists later cite Bill Clinton's Iraqi Liberation Act as proof that the "official policy" of the US was set in 1998, failing to mention that the goal, as Paul Wolfowitz testified, was to "help the Iraqi people liberate themselves." In marked contrast to mushroom cloud claims made before the Iraq invasion, Wolfowitz also tells Congress that "Saddam is in a position of great weakness."

July: Vice President Cheney visits key Republicans, lobbying them to reject John McCain's amendment preventing the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

August
• President Bush bypasses the Senate and appoints John Bolton Ambassador to the UN, despite that fact that Bolton's appointment has been blocked for months by Senators demanding that the Bush administration release classified pertaining to Bolton's past, including, as the Guardian puts it, "claims that he tried to manipulate US intelligence to support his hawkish views."
• Four years after signing their first "friendship treaty" in more than half a century, Russia and China conduct their first joint military exercises. Two months later, a security bloc led by both countries calls for the U.S.to set a deadline for the withdrawal of its troops from Central Asia.
• Bunnatine Greenhouse, an Army Corps of Engineers officer who was openly critical of the Pentagon's decision to award Halliburton no-bid contracts is demoted.
• Hurricane Katrina is met with a disastrous response. Newsweek later explores the underlying dysfunction that plagues the Bush presidency, in an attempt to answer how "the president of the United States could have even less 'situational awareness' . . . than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century." Though pundits start blaming local and state authorities, FEMA reportedly turns away generators, trailer trucks of water and gallons of diesel fuel, while urging first responders not to respond.

September
• As government officials issue statements that do not jive with televised images coming out of New Orleans, journalists finally cut through the government-issued pabulum, presenting vivid and emotional depictions of the horror unfolding at the convention center and elsewhere.
• After admitting that he did not realize that thousands of people were stranded at the New Orleans convention center without food or water (though it had been reported on all US television stations), FEMA Director Michael Brown resigns -- while staying on the government's payroll. When Brown's e-mails are leaked to the press, the public gets a better understanding of the "fashion god" Bush applauded for doing a "heck of a job." 'Can I quit now?' Brown asks as Katrina batters New Orleans.
• The military conducts a highly classified "Granite Shadow demonstration" in Washington, DC. --raising more red flag regarding the "military's extra-legal powers" and the end of Posse Comitatus.
• On Sept. 24, 2005, during a massive anti-war rally in Washington, DC, six biological-weapons sensors detect small amounts of deadly bacteria called Francisella tularensi, one of a half a dozen biological agents officials fear could be used against U.S. citizens. Some question if Uncle Sam isn't once again using U.S. citizens as guinea pigs, as was the case in the 1950s and 1960s.
• In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Pentagon develops plans to give the military a larger role in responding to "catastrophic" events within the U.S. -- even though such action is illegal under Posse Comitatus.
• The New York Times reports that more than 80 percent of FEMA's $1.5 billion in post-Katrina contracts have been "awarded without bidding or with limited competition" and criticizes these "Cronies at the Til" -- pointing to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root in particular. Halliburton's stock value triples between the March 2003 start of the war in Iraq and Sept. 2005.
• Captain Ian Fishback, the decorated West Point graduate who testified to the inhumane treatment of detainees before and after Abu Ghraib, is sequestered and interrogated at Fort Bragg, along with fellow whistle-blowers. "If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession," Fishback writes to Sen. John McCain, adding, "I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is 'America.'"
• House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is indicted on conspiracy charges. Before stepping down from his leadership role, DeLay frequently caters to the Religious Right -- calling for the rightful role of religion in public places, facilitating the flow of Christian Right legislation and personally addressing Christian Zionists. His ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former aide Michael Scanlon shed a spotlight on the Republican playbook, which, as Salon explains, involves a three-prong strategy: "target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives."

October
• President Bush announces that the U.S. military may be used to enforce quarantines if there is an outbreak of Bird Flu. Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate Dean of Columbia University's School of Public Health for Disaster Preparedness, calls Bush's plan an "extraordinarily draconian measure" and says "the translation of this is martial law in the United States."
• The U.S. Senate votes 90-9 to enact legislation preventing the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees, but the White House threatens to veto this legislation --- with Vice President Dick Cheney later once again lobbying lawmakers "for a CIA exemption" to McCain's amendment.
• The Financial Times reports that the Bush administration is considering sponsoring a military coup in Syria -- and is already debating who should replace Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
• Plamegate investigator Patrick Fitzgerald indicts Scooter Libby on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. Two days later, the New York Times addresses the larger implications of the indictment, saying it " lifts a veil on how aggressively Mr. Cheney's office drove the rationale against Saddam Hussein and then fought to discredit the Iraq war's critics."

November

• A UN audit reports that the U.S. should repay up to $208 million to Iraq for contract work assigned to Kellogg, Brown and Root, recalling a similar controversy from 1967, when the General Accounting Office faulted "Vietnam Builders" Brown & Root for accounting lapses amid "allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering."
• Ohio's 2005 election raises eyebrows once again, as polls on certain referendums do not match the reality in the ballot box. Journalist Robert C. Koehler, one of the few high profile journalists to question the 2004 election, blasts the mainstream media for refusing to adequately address voting irregularities. "Hmm, we have widespread confusion in the voting process, a recent GAO report that cites many glaring insecurities in e-voting, and our own polls indicating big victories that turn into big defeats," he writes. "Could it be ...? Nah! What are we thinking? This is the world's greatest democracy. Relax."
• The US Senate votes 49 to 42 to overturn the US Supreme Court's 2004 ruling that allows prisoners held at Guantanamo to challenge their detentions. "U.S. Can Confine Citizens Without Charges, Court Rules," announces the Washington Post. "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 is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist," Winston Churchill said, more than a half a century ago -- describing practices currently supported by American lawmakers.
• "Reporters Without Borders" publishes its annual worldwide press freedom index, showing that the U.S. ranks 44th in freedom of the press -- down from 22nd place the previous year and 17th place in 2002.
• Admiral Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director, blasts the Bush administration's policies. "I am embarrassed that the USA has a vice president for torture," he says. "I think it is just reprehensible." Stansfield apparently missed the chapter in CIA history where the agency imported extreme interrogation methods from the Nazis - a secret Dick Cheney once reportedly tried to cover up.
• US hawks continue to speak out against the war -- with Rep. John Murtha comparing our current situation in Iraq to the one America faced in Vietnam in 1963.

December
• One week after news of Diebold's possible comeback in California, reports surface regarding threats to election transparency in North Carolina.
• After it's discovered that the U.S. is paying Iraqi papers to publish pro-American propaganda, concerns about the use of propaganda and its effect on policy and domestic opinion are addressed by author James Bamford on the Dec. 1, 2005 edition of Hardball:
JIM BAMFORD:. . . The entire lead-up to the Iraq war was created by a propaganda company, by a public relations company, the Rendon Group. It was the Rendon Group, a private public relations company in the U.S. that created the INC, the Iraqi National Congress, that helped put Chalabi in there, that funneled CIA money into the INC.
MATTHEWS: Was the Rendon -- I know Rendon from campaigns past, but he worked with Carter and all. But let me ask you this. Is Rendon involved in influencing American media opinion, or is it always domestic -- over there, I mean, Iraqi opinion?
BAMFORD: Well, it's international opinion, but the thing is there's no firewall between international communications and U.S. that connect Europe to the United States or up there in the Internet.
Bamford later puts this in an historical context...
MATTHEWS: So what did the Rendon Group and the INC people do?
BAMFORD: Well, they were the ones who created this opposition for us, for the opposite, Saddam Hussein. It's sort of like if the Kennedy administration during Bay of Pigs, outsourced the invasion to J. Walter Thompson's public relations company.
• The Sept. 11 Commission issues a report card, grading the federal government's performance on measures to make America safer. Uncle Sam receives more Ds and Fs than As and Bs. "While the terrorists are learning and adapting, our government is still moving at a crawl," says former Governor Tom Kean. "Four years after 9/11, we are not as safe as we could be, and that's simply not acceptable." Former commissioner Jamie Gorlick also weighs in. "You remember the sense of urgency that we all felt in the summer of 2004. The interest has faded," she says. "You could see that in the aftermath of Katrina. We assumed that our government would be able to do what it needed to do and it didn't do it."

So, there you have it. The good news, however, is that despite government distortions and PR campaigns, polls show that the majority of Americans are finally waking up to some uncomfortable truths about the war in Iraq and the people who misled us into it. And as America's founders so rightly understood, the country's citizens, armed with the truth, are the best defense against a government run amok. "The U.S. still has a strong civil society that could, at least in theory, overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex," historian Chalmers Johnson wrote. "I fear, however, that the U.S. has indeed crossed the Rubicon and that there is no way to restore Constitutional government short of a revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy. Without root and branch reform, Nemesis awaits. She is the goddess of revenge, the punisher of pride and arrogance, and the United States is on course for a rendezvous with her."

What will it take for us to again equate Truth and Justice with the American Way? And worse yet, what will happen if we don't start demanding more accountability and transparency from our leaders? "When people think of fascism, they imagine rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare," Paul Bigioni recently wrote.

Take a walk though America's recent history in light of the founders' many warnings and ask yourself: Isn't it careless to assume it can't happen here?

THE CONSTELLATION OF IMPEACHMENT

2005-11-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

I have never taken the talk of impeachment seriously if for no other reason than who is going to assume the Presidency? The line of succession doesn't look all that appealing either. Then there is the obvious question of whether it could even happen under the present circumstances. Regardless of that, Stirling Newberry's ruminations on the subtext of the calls for impeachment are interesting and valid in their own right.

THE CONSTELLATION OF IMPEACHMENT
Stirling Newberry

In the last week the nation has turned the corner on impeaching George W Bush. It has gone from a cry of protest and anger, to being the subtext of what is said and done at the highest levels of government. The tumblers are whirring, and one by one falling into place. The force of gravity is now on the side of it occurring, rather than it not occurring. Impeachment is a Trial by Constitution, and the search for probable cause has begun.

The reason for this is that scandals do not happen, they are allowed to happen. Either they are the product of desperation, as a side that is defeated in a political bout grabs for any weapon to use in a last ditch attempt, or they are the product of a general disgust and desire to force out a government that has lost all connection with those it governs.

Once the star of impeachment was only glimpsed in the distance, now the planets are aligning. Inching closer with each new confirmation that the case for going to war in Iraq was a crude forgery - the "Italian Job's” source is now established fact, not speculation.

In the last week the nation has turned the corner on impeaching George W Bush. It has gone from a cry of protest and anger, to being the subtext of what is said and done at the highest levels of government. The tumblers are whirring, and one by one falling into place. The force of gravity is now on the side of it occurring, rather than it not occurring. Impeachment is a Trial by Constitution, and the search for probable cause has begun.
The reason for this is that scandals do not happen, they are allowed to happen. Either they are the product of desperation, as a side that is defeated in a political bout grabs for any weapon to use in a last ditch attempt, or they are the product of a general disgust and desire to force out a government that has lost all connection with those it governs.

Once the star of impeachment was only glimpsed in the distance, now the planets are aligning. Inching closer with each new confirmation that the case for going to war in Iraq was a crude forgery.

The Unspoken Act

Lest anyone doubt that impeachment is the subtext of what is said and done at the highest levels of power, let me quote from Senator Harry Reid's statement before a rare Rule XXI hearing in the Senate:

The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.
As a result of its improper conduct, a cloud now hangs over this Administration. This cloud is further darkened by the Administration's mistakes in prisoner abuse scandal, Hurricane Katrina, and the cronyism and corruption in numerous agencies.

And, unfortunately, it must be said that a cloud also hangs over this Republican-controlled Congress for its unwillingness to hold this Republican Administration accountable for its misdeeds on all of these issues.

There are all the elements for impeachment: high crimes and misdemeanors and the need for public accountability. His language echos a poll of Americans that had 50% saying they favored accountability through impeachment "if Bush lied to go to war in Iraq".

Bush's poll numbers continue to set new lows continuing a slide that began, virtually the day after the elections of 2004.

A Crisis of Economy

Scandals don't happen, they are allowed to happen. the US leading economic indicators continue to lag and consumer confidence plunges. even as asset inflation and borrowing drive GDP growth. Inflation is eroding savings, and it is eroding earning power. And worse still, it is in the volatile march of gasoline prices which briefly touched the sky, coming with in a few points of the real highs in 1981.

With economic numbers being lost in a fog, the difference between the paper economy and the real economy is as large as it has been at any time since 1979. People don't like to freeze in the dark. And an economy that, during a boom phase adds only 46,000 seasonally adjusted payroll positions is one that isheaded in the wrong direction.

The long term economic crisis can be summed up in a simple phrase: we are repeating the mistakes of the late 1920's, when wages were allowed to erode, while easy credit masked the loss of buying power. The short form of this is that we have deflation for what Americans sell, and inflation for what we buy, and we are borrowing to hide the difference.

This crisis in the economy is producing a crisis in the budget. While it is not widely discussed is that this crisis is about to kick off massive tax increases targeted at Democratic areas of the country. The deeper problem is that there is a lack of investment supply. This is being called a "global savings glut", in the same way that Garfield the cat used to say "I'm not overweight, I am under tall."

This means that unless the Republican Congress is slowed down, and the country given something else to focus on, there is massive economic damage coming for the bicoastal economy, which has been floated on the housing bubble, even as the basis for its economic prosperity – high tech jobs growth, exports and investment supply creation – have been destroyed by the Bushconomy.

Crisis of Government

George Bush's policy ideas when coming into office were two fold: bail out the idiot investing class with massive tax breaks so that they would not be hosed down by the crash of 2000, and invade Iraq to give America cheap oil to run the sprawlconomy: knock down trees, put up houses. Great for the red states, and for the disorganized working class – the core of Republican populism.

The problem is that Iraq is falling apart. According to Republicans Iraq should be Texas annex, and a very polite society, since it is so well armed. The reality is reconstruction was behind schedule a year ago and has a deteriorating security situation,. With the US dependent on mercenaries. The GAO has scrubbed its report on how much Iraq would cost, so embarassingly off were the figures.

The reality is that Iraq is a huge dry hole, gone are the enormously optimistic estimates that Iraq is another Saudi Arabia. This should be no surprise, they came form the same sources as the wildly inflated estimates of Iraq's pre-invasion WMD capacity.
Instead of being a buoy to the economy, Iraq is a vast sink. A sink that is about to be paid for.

This is on top of reconstruction in the wake of Katrina and Rita, and the host of other problems which were allowed to slide during the obsession with Iraq. This is a failure of basic government policy. Recessions are the time to allow "creative destruction" to take hold, and use the lowered costs of materials and manpower to address long term structural problems. We build infrastructure during the down turn, not just because it keeps people employed, because that is the cheapest time to do it.

Crisis of Legitimacy

The public voted for all of this carnage. The public gave this President 90% approval ratings for allowing Arabs to fly planes into buildings. This decade is going to be the reverse of the 1960's – the joke about the 1960's was that if you remember them, you weren't really there. This decade will be one that, if you were really here, you won't own up to remembering them. The public, particularly the conservative and moderate public, is desperately scrambling for an excuse to deflect responsibility from themselves. They weren't greedy fools who bought a pig in a poke and sat idly by as America marched to an illegal war funded by robbing their grand children. Americans simply will not accept the enormity of their arrogance and stupidity. They need a way out.
With the weight of history staring them back in the face, they have to find someone at fault. Someone whose criminal actions lead them astray, because only in that way can Americans continue to live with themselves as a people. Can you imagine anyone being asked by a child "so daddy what did you do at the turn of the century?" and saying "Oh I voted to have a bunch of thieves and war criminals loot 3 trillion dollars and drag the country into a spiral of economic and political decay by raping the constitution darling." And yet that is what the country did.

At this point Americans must believe that some exceptional circumstance caused them to make the wrong decision. This means they must believe that either force or fraud compelled them to act as they did. On the left, that means an obsession with ballot boxes – even though the rigging of elections generally does not involved rigging the vote counts. That's force, the excuse that "we did enough to stop Bush, but the election was stolen". 2000 was, but 2004 was not – the Republicans bought that one fair and square.

They key is that over the last year, independents are now polling more and more like Democrats. They need an exit strategy - from having supported Bush.

But moderates will no more face the idea that our election system is unreliable than they will face the reality that our monetary system is crumbling – they will, instead, prefer to believe that someone lied to them. And that someone must be at the top of he political heap. To assuage deep guilt, and deflect responsibility, the person sacrificed must be proportional to the guilt to be expunged – so much Hyam Maccoby's The Sacred Executioner tells us. That means that Scooter Libby – porn novelist pal of Cheney – is simply nowhere near large enough to take the fall for the American public. Nor is Cheney. Only one person is the symbol of all that has gone wrong. And that is the President himself.

The reality is that we are on the verge of a new constitutional order, the system of consensus which held up the Liberal Democracy is broken. That system has yet to be replaced, even though we are, piece by piee, building a new, and more parlaimentary, order to follow it

The rest of the story is simply America saying "nice doggie" while they search in the dark for a rock.

GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT10.17.2005

2005-10-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

This article was posted in Steve Gilliard's The News Blog. It originated in with STRATFOR (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.). Despite the rather strange conservative v. liberal add-on at the end, it explains the NOC system rather clearly and why this whole Plame incident is important.

GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT10.17.2005
The Importance of the Plame Affair
By George Friedman

There are three rules concerning political scandal in the United States. First, every administration has scandals. Second, the party in opposition will always claim that there has never been an administration as corrupt as the one currently occupying the White House. Three, two is almost never true. It is going to be tough for any government to live up to the Grant or Harding administrations for financial corruption, or the Nixon and Lincoln administrations for political corruption -- for instance, was Lincoln's secretary of war really preparing a coup d'etat before the president's assassination? And sex scandals -- Clinton is not the gold standard. Harding was having sex with his mistress in the Oval Office -- and no discussion was possible over whether it was actually sex. Andrew Jackson's wife was unfairly accused of being a prostitute. Grover Cleveland had an illegitimate child. Let's not start on John F. Kennedy.

Political scandal is the national sport -- the only unchanging spectator activity where a fine time is had by all, save the turkey who got caught this time. That is the fourth rule: Americans love a good scandal, and politicians usually manage to give them one. Thus, the Tom DeLay story is the epitome of national delight. Whether DeLay broke the law or the Texas prosecutor who claims he did is a Democratic hack out to make a name for himself matters little. A good time will be had by all, and in a few years no one will remember it. Does anyone remember Bert Lance or Richard Secord?

As we discussed in previous weeks, scandals become geopolitically significant when they affect the ability of the president to conduct foreign policy. That has not yet happened to George W. Bush, but it might happen. There is, however, one maturing scandal that interests us in its own right: the Valerie Plame affair, in which Karl Rove, the most important adviser to the president, and I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to the vice president, apparently identified Plame as a CIA agent -- or at least did not vigorously deny that she was one when they were contacted by reporters. Given that this happened during a time of war, in which U.S. intelligence services are at the center of the war -- and are not as effective as the United States might wish -- the Plame affair needs to be examined and understood in its own right. Moreover, as an intelligence company, we have a particular interest in how intelligence matters are handled.

The CIA is divided between the Directorate of Intelligence, which houses the analysts, and the Directorate of Operations, which houses the spies and the paramilitary forces. The spies are, in general, divided into two groups. There are those with official cover and those with non-official cover. Official cover means that the agent is working at the U.S. embassy in some country, acting as a cultural, agricultural or some other type of attaché, and is protected by diplomatic immunity. They carry out a variety of espionage functions, limited by the fact that most foreign intelligence services know who the CIA agents at the embassy are and, frankly, assume that everyone at the embassy is an agent. They are therefore followed, their home phones are tapped, and their maids deliver scraps of paper to the host government. This obviously limits the utility of these agents. Being seen with one of them automatically blows the cover of any potential recruits.

Then there are those with non-official cover, the NOCs. These agents are the backbone of the American espionage system. A NOC does not have diplomatic cover. If captured, he has no protection. Indeed, as the saying goes, if something goes wrong, the CIA will deny it has ever heard of him. A NOC is under constant pressure when he is needed by the government and is on his own when things go wrong. That is understood going in by all NOCs.

NOCs come into the program in different ways. Typically, they are recruited at an early age and shaped for the role they are going to play. Some may be tracked to follow China, and trained to be bankers based in Hong Kong. Others might work for an American engineering firm doing work in the Andes. Sometimes companies work with the CIA, knowingly permitting an agent to become an employee. In other circumstances, agents apply for and get jobs in foreign companies and work their way up the ladder, switching jobs as they go, moving closer and closer to a position of knowing the people who know what there is to know. Sometimes they receive financing to open a business in some foreign country, where over the course of their lives, they come to know and be trusted by more and more people. Ideally, the connection of these people to the U.S. intelligence apparatus is invisible. Or, if they can't be invisible due to something in their past and they still have to be used as NOCs, they develop an explanation for what they are doing that is so plausible that the idea that they are working for the CIA is dismissed or regarded as completely unlikely because it is so obvious. The complexity of the game is endless.

These are the true covert operatives of the intelligence world. Embassy personnel might recruit a foreign agent through bribes or blackmail. But at some point, they must sit across from the recruit and show their cards: "I'm from the CIA and...." At that point, they are in the hands of the recruit. A NOC may never once need to do this. He may take decades building up trusting relationships with intelligence sources in which the source never once suspects that he is speaking to the CIA, and the NOC never once gives a hint as to who he actually is.

It is an extraordinary life. On the one hand, NOCs may live well. The Number Two at a Latin American bank cannot be effective living on a U.S. government salary. NOCs get to live the role and frequently, as they climb higher in the target society, they live the good life. On the other hand, their real lives are a mystery to everyone. Frequently, their parents don't know what they really do, nor do their own children -- for their safety and the safety of the mission. The NOC may marry someone who cannot know who they really are. Sometimes they themselves forget who they are: It is an occupational disease and a form of madness. Being the best friend of a man whom you despise, and doing it for 20 years, is not easy. Some NOCs are recruited in mid-life and in mid-career. They spend less time in the madness, but they are less prepared for it as well. NOCs enter and leave the program in different ways -- sometimes under their real names, sometimes under completely fabricated ones. They share one thing: They live a lie on behalf of their country.

The NOCs are the backbone of American intelligence and the ones who operate the best sources -- sources who don't know they are sources. When the CIA says that it needs five to 10 years to rebuild its network, what it is really saying is that it needs five to 10 years to recruit, deploy and begin to exploit its NOCs. The problem is not recruiting them -- the life sounds cool for many recent college graduates. The crisis of the NOC occurs when he approaches the most valuable years of service, in his late 30s or so. What sounded neat at 22 rapidly becomes a mind-shattering nightmare when their two lives collide at 40.

There is an explicit and implicit contract between the United States and its NOCs. It has many parts, but there is one fundamental part: A NOC will never reveal that he is or was a NOC without special permission. When he does reveal it, he never gives specifics. The government also makes a guarantee -- it will never reveal the identity of a NOC under any circumstances and, in fact, will do everything to protect it. If you have lied to your closest friends for 30 years about who you are and why you talk to them, no government bureaucrat has the right to reveal your identity for you. Imagine if you had never told your children -- and never planned to tell your children -- that you worked for the CIA, and they suddenly read in the New York Times that you were someone other than they thought you were.

There is more to this. When it is revealed that you were a NOC, foreign intelligence services begin combing back over your life, examining every relationship you had. Anyone you came into contact with becomes suspect. Sometimes, in some countries, becoming suspect can cost you your life. Revealing the identity of a NOC can be a matter of life and death -- frequently, of people no one has ever heard of or will ever hear of again.

In short, a NOC owes things to his country, and his country owes things to the NOC. We have no idea what Valerie Plame told her family or friends about her work. It may be that she herself broke the rules, revealing that she once worked as a NOC. We can't know that, because we don't know whether she received authorization from the CIA to say things after her own identity was blown by others. She might have been irresponsible, or she might have engaged in damage control. We just don't know.

What we do know is this. In the course of events, reporters contacted two senior officials in the White House -- Rove and Libby. Under the least-damaging scenario we have heard, the reporters already knew that Plame had worked as a NOC. Rove and Libby, at this point, were obligated to say, at the very least, that they could neither confirm nor deny the report. In fact, their duty would have been quite a bit more: Their job was to lie like crazy to mislead the reporters. Rove and Libby had top security clearances and were senior White House officials. It was their sworn duty, undertaken when they accepted their security clearance, to build a "bodyguard of lies" -- in Churchill's phrase -- around the truth concerning U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Some would argue that if the reporters already knew her identity, the cat was out of the bag and Rove and Libby did nothing wrong. Others would argue that if Plame or her husband had publicly stated that she was a NOC, Rove and Libby were freed from their obligation. But the fact is that legally and ethically, nothing relieves them of the obligation to say nothing and attempt to deflect the inquiry. This is not about Valerie Plame, her husband or Time Magazine. The obligation exists for the uncounted number of NOCs still out in the field.

Americans stay safe because of NOCs. They are the first line of defense. If the system works, they will be friends with Saudi citizens who are financing al Qaeda. The NOC system was said to have been badly handled under the Clinton administration -- this is the lack of humint that has been discussed since the 9-11 attacks. The United States paid for that. And that is what makes the Rove-Libby leak so stunning. The obligation they had was not only to Plame, but to every other NOC leading a double life who is in potentially grave danger.

Imagine, if you will, working in Damascus as a NOC and reading that the president's chief adviser had confirmed the identity of a NOC. As you push into middle age, wondering what happened to your life, the sudden realization that your own government threatens your safety might convince you to resign and go home. That would cost the United States an agent it had spent decades developing. You don't just pop a new agent in his place. That NOC's resignation could leave the United States blind at a critical moment in a key place. Should it turn out that Rove and Libby not only failed to protect Plame's identity but deliberately leaked it, it would be a blow to the heart of U.S. intelligence. If just one critical NOC pulled out and the United States went blind in one location, the damage could be substantial. At the very least, it is a risk the United States should not have to incur.

The New York Times and Time Magazine have defended not only the decision to publish Plame's name, but also have defended hiding the identity of those who told them her name. Their justification is the First Amendment. We will grant that they had the right to publish statements concerning Plame's role in U.S. intelligence; we cannot grant that they had an obligation to publish it. There is a huge gap between the right to publish and a requirement to publish. The concept of the public's right to know is a shield that can be used by the press to hide irresponsibility. An article on the NOC program conceivably might have been in the public interest, but it is hard to imagine how identifying a particular person as part of that program can be deemed as essential to an informed public.

But even if we regard the press as unethical by our standards, their actions were not illegal. On the other hand, if Rove and Libby even mentioned the name of Valerie Plame in the context of being a CIA employee -- NOC or not -- on an unsecured line to a person without a security clearance or need to know, while the nation was waging war, that is the end of the story. It really doesn't matter why or whether there was a plan or anything. The minimal story -- that they talked about Plame with a reporter -- is the end of the matter.

We can think of only one possible justification for this action: That it was done on the order of the president. The president has the authority to suspend or change security regulations if required by the national interest. The Plame affair would be cleared up if it turns out Rove and Libby were ordered to act as they did by the president. Perhaps the president is prevented by circumstances from coming forward and lifting the burden from Rove and Libby. If that is the case, it could cost him his right-hand man. But absent that explanation, it is difficult to justify the actions that were taken.

Ultimately, the Plame affair points to a fundamental problem in intelligence. As those who have been in the field have told us, the biggest fear is that someone back in the home office will bring the operation down. Sometimes it will be a matter of state: sacrificing a knight for advantage on the chessboard. Sometimes it is a parochial political battle back home. Sometimes it is carelessness, stupidity or cruelty. This is when people die and lives are destroyed. But the real damage, if it happens often enough or no one seems to care, will be to the intelligence system. If the agent determines that his well-being is not a centerpiece of government policy, he won't remain an agent long.

On a personal note, let me say this: one of the criticisms conservatives have of liberals is that they do not understand that we live in a dangerous world and, therefore, that they underestimate the effort needed to ensure national security. Liberals have questioned the utility and morality of espionage. Conservatives have been champions of national security and of the United States' overt and covert capabilities. Conservatives have condemned the atrophy of American intelligence capabilities. Whether the special prosecutor indicts or exonerates Rove and Libby legally doesn't matter. Valerie Plame was a soldier in service to the United States, unprotected by uniform or diplomatic immunity. I have no idea whether she served well or poorly, or violated regulations later. But she did serve. And thus, she and all the other NOCs were owed far more -- especially by a conservative administration -- than they got.

Even if that debt wasn't owed to Plame, it remains in place for all the other spooks standing guard in dangerous places.

GORE SPEECH ON THE THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

2005-10-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

GORE SPEECH ON THE THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Remarks by Al Gore as prepared
Associated Press / The Media Center
October 5, 2005

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace?

Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests in order to buy 30-second TVcommercials for their next re-election campaign.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.

In fact there was a time when America's public discourse was consistently much more vivid, focused and clear. Our Founders, probably the most literate generation in all of history, used words with astonishing precision and believed in the Rule of Reason.

Their faith in the viability of Representative Democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry. But they placed particular emphasis on insuring that the public could be well-informed. And they took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas in order to ensure the free-flow of knowledge.

The values that Americans had brought from Europe to the New World had grown out of the sudden explosion of literacy and knowledge after Gutenberg's disruptive invention broke up the stagnant medieval information monopoly and triggered the Reformation, Humanism, and the Enlightenment and enshrined a new sovereign: the "Rule of Reason."

Indeed, the self-governing republic they had the audacity to establish was later named by the historian Henry Steele Commager as "the Empire of Reason."

Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others -- but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.

Their world was dominated by the printed word. Just as the proverbial fish doesn't know it lives in water, the United States in its first half century knew nothing but the world of print: the Bible, Thomas Paine's fiery call to revolution, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution , our laws, the Congressional Record, newspapers and books.

Though they feared that a government might try to censor the printing press - as King George had done - they could not imagine that America's public discourse would ever consist mainly of something other than words in print.

And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 28 minutes every day -- 90 minutes more than the world average.

When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average American has. And for younger Americans, the average is even higher.

The internet is a formidable new medium of communication, but it is important to note that it still doesn't hold a candle to television. Indeed, studies show that the majority of Internet users are actually simultaneously watching television while they are online. There is an important reason why television maintains such a hold on its viewers in a way that the internet does not, but I'll get to that in a few minutes.

Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation's leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.

But all the while, television's share of the total audience for news and information continued to grow -- and its lead over newsprint continued to expand. And then one day, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succinctly described a new reality in America's public discourse: "If it's not on television, it doesn't exist."

But some extremely important elements of American Democracy have been pushed to the sidelines . And the most prominent casualty has been the "marketplace of ideas" that was so beloved and so carefully protected by our Founders. It effectively no longer exists.

It is not that we no longer share ideas with one another about public matters; of course we do. But the "Public Forum" in which our Founders searched for general agreement and applied the Rule of Reason has been grossly distorted and "restructured" beyond all recognition.

And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas that accounts for the "strangeness" that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation.

Whether it is called a Public Forum, or a "Public Sphere" , or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades.

In fact, our first self-expression as a nation - "We the People" - made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.

The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were:

1) It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry, save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all;
2) The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent Meritocracy of Ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them;
3) The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a "Conversation of Democracy" is all about.

What resulted from this shared democratic enterprise was a startling new development in human history: for the first time, knowledge regularly mediated between wealth and power.

The liberating force of this new American reality was thrilling to all humankind. Thomas Jefferson declared, "I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
It ennobled the individual and unleashed the creativity of the human spirit. It inspired people everywhere to dream of what they could yet become. And it emboldened Americans to bravely explore the farther frontiers of freedom - for African Americans, for women, and eventually, we still dream, for all.

And just as knowledge now mediated between wealth and power, self-government was understood to be the instrument with which the people embodied their reasoned judgments into law. The Rule of Reason under-girded and strengthened the rule of law.

But to an extent seldom appreciated, all of this - including especially the ability of the American people to exercise the reasoned collective judgments presumed in our Founders' design -- depended on the particular characteristics of the marketplace of ideas as it operated during the Age of Print.

Consider the rules by which our present "public forum" now operates, and how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the easy and free access
individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.

Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers.

Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens.

Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.

The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. The production of programming has been centralized and has usually required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of the television programming in America.

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.

So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.

Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.")

In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.

Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to "glue eyeballs to the screen" in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on and on and on.

And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.

One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in hopes of seeing information about an important world event that had happened earlier that day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been hiccupping for three years. And I must say, it was interesting; he had trouble getting dates. But what I didn't see was news.

This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of "The Daily Show," when he visited CNN's "Crossfire": there should be a distinction between news and entertainment.

And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.

One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.

That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.

Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.

And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.

Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.

The advertising of products, of course, is the real purpose of television. And it is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our society. In the 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith first described the way in which advertising has altered the classical relationship by which supply and demand are balanced over time by the invisible hand of the marketplace. According to Galbraith, modern advertising campaigns were beginning to create high levels of demand for products that consumers never knew they wanted, much less needed.

The same phenomenon Galbraith noticed in the commercial marketplace is now the dominant fact of life in what used to be America's marketplace for ideas. The inherent value or validity of political propositions put forward by candidates for office is now largely irrelevant compared to the advertising campaigns that shape the perceptions of voters.

Our democracy has been hallowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

Like you, I recoil at Lippman's cynical dismissal of America's gift to human history. But in order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth.

I don't know all the answers, but along with my partner, Joel Hyatt, I am trying to work within the medium of television to recreate a multi-way conversation that includes individuals and operates according to a meritocracy of ideas. If you would like to know more, we are having a press conference on Friday morning at the Regency Hotel.

We are learning some fascinating lessons about the way decisions are made in the television industry, and it may well be that the public would be well served by some changes in law and policy to stimulate more diversity of viewpoints and a higher regard for the public interest. But we are succeeding within the marketplace by reaching out to individuals and asking them to co-create our network.

The greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet. Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared. We also rely on the Internet for the two-way conversation that we have every day with our viewers enabling them to participate in the decisions on programming our network.

I know that many of you attending this conference are also working on creative ways to use the Internet as a means for bringing more voices into America's ongoing conversation. I salute you as kindred spirits and wish you every success.

I want to close with the two things I've learned about the Internet that are most directly relevant to the conference that you are having here today.

First, as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of bandwidth connections (including the so-called "last mile" to the home), it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion video.

Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that neuroscientists call "the establishing reflex." And that is the brain syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, "glue eyeballs to the screen," is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an average of four and a half hours a day.

It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.

The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy's future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom.

BARACK OBAMA

2005-10-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is from Barack Obama's post on the Daily Kos. It is in response to criticisms of the Democrats who voted for John Robert's nomination to SCOTUS. As usual with Obama, he expands this to a discussion of how to bring about meaningful change in the United States. It is also an example of raising the level of discussion on any matter.

BARACK OBAMA

There is one way, over the long haul, to guarantee the appointment of judges that are sensitive to issues of social justice, and that is to win the right to appoint them by recapturing the presidency and the Senate. And I don't believe we get there by vilifying good allies, with a lifetime record of battling for progressive causes, over one vote or position. I am convinced that, our mutual frustrations and strongly-held beliefs notwithstanding, the strategy driving much of Democratic advocacy, and the tone of much of our rhetoric, is an impediment to creating a workable progressive majority in this country.

According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in "appeasing" the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.

I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don't think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don't think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.

It's this non-ideological lens through which much of the country viewed Judge Roberts' confirmation hearings. A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don't think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence, a judge appointed by a conservative president who could have done much worse (and probably, I fear, may do worse with the next nominee). While they hope Roberts doesn't swing the court too sharply to the right, a majority of Americans think that the President should probably get the benefit of the doubt on a clearly qualified nominee.

A plausible argument can be made that too much is at stake here and now, in terms of privacy issues, civil rights, and civil liberties, to give John Roberts the benefit of the doubt. That certainly was the operating assumption of the advocacy groups involved in the nomination battle.

I shared enough of these concerns that I voted against Roberts on the floor this morning. But short of mounting an all-out filibuster -- a quixotic fight I would not have supported; a fight I believe Democrats would have lost both in the Senate and in the court of public opinion; a fight that would have been difficult for Democratic senators defending seats in states like North Dakota and Nebraska that are essential for Democrats to hold if we hope to recapture the majority; and a fight that would have effectively signaled an unwillingness on the part of Democrats to confirm any Bush nominee, an unwillingness which I believe would have set a dangerous precedent for future administrations -- blocking Roberts was not a realistic option.

In such circumstances, attacks on Pat Leahy, Russ Feingold and the other Democrats who, after careful consideration, voted for Roberts make no sense. Russ Feingold, the only Democrat to vote not only against war in Iraq but also against the Patriot Act, doesn't become complicit in the erosion of civil liberties simply because he chooses to abide by a deeply held and legitimate view that a President, having won a popular election, is entitled to some benefit of the doubt when it comes to judicial appointments. Like it or not, that view has pretty strong support in the Constitution's design.

The same principle holds with respect to issues other than judicial nominations. My colleague from Illinois, Dick Durbin, spoke out forcefully - and voted against - the Iraqi invasion. He isn't somehow transformed into a "war supporter" - as I've heard some anti-war activists suggest - just because he hasn't called for an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He may be simply trying to figure out, as I am, how to ensure that U.S. troop withdrawals occur in such a way that we avoid all-out Iraqi civil war, chaos in the Middle East, and much more costly and deadly interventions down the road. A pro-choice Democrat doesn't become anti-choice because he or she isn't absolutely convinced that a twelve-year-old girl should be able to get an operation without a parent being notified. A pro-civil rights Democrat doesn't become complicit in an anti-civil rights agenda because he or she questions the efficacy of certain affirmative action programs. And a pro-union Democrat doesn't become anti-union if he or she makes a determination that on balance, CAFTA will help American workers more than it will harm them.

Or to make the point differently: How can we ask Republican senators to resist pressure from their right wing and vote against flawed appointees like John Bolton, if we engage in similar rhetoric against Democrats who dissent from our own party line? How can we expect Republican moderates who are concerned about the nation's fiscal meltdown to ignore Grover Norquist's threats if we make similar threats to those who buck our party orthodoxy?

I am not drawing a facile equivalence here between progressive advocacy groups and right-wing advocacy groups. The consequences of their ideas are vastly different. Fighting on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not the same as fighting for homophobia and Halliburton. But to the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, "true" progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive "checklist," then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.

Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority. We won't be able to transform the country with such a polarized electorate. Because the truth of the matter is this: Most of the issues this country faces are hard. They require tough choices, and they require sacrifice. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress may have made the problems worse, but they won't go away after President Bush is gone. Unless we are open to new ideas, and not just new packaging, we won't change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy or fiscal policy that calls for serious sacrifice. We won't have the popular support to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorism while avoiding isolationism and protecting civil liberties. We certainly won't have a mandate to overhaul a health care policy that overcomes all the entrenched interests that are the legacy of a jerry-rigged health care system. And we won't have the broad political support, or the effective strategies, required to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens out of numbing poverty.

The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives' job. After all, it's easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it's harder to craft a foreign policy that's tough and smart. It's easy to dismantle government safety nets; it's harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It's easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it's harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that's our job. And I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that the Democrats should trim their sails and be more "centrist." In fact, I think the whole "centrist" versus "liberal" labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark. Too often, the "centrist" label seems to mean compromise for compromise sake, whereas on issues like health care, energy, education and tackling poverty, I don't think Democrats have been bold enough. But I do think that being bold involves more than just putting more money into existing programs and will instead require us to admit that some existing programs and policies don't work very well. And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. This is more than just a matter of "framing," although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It's a matter of actually having faith in the American people's ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.

Finally, I am not arguing that we "unilaterally disarm" in the face of Republican attacks, or bite our tongue when this Administration screws up. Whenever they are wrong, inept, or dishonest, we should say so clearly and repeatedly; and whenever they gear up their attack machine, we should respond quickly and forcefully. I am suggesting that the tone we take matters, and that truth, as best we know it, be the hallmark of our response.

My dear friend Paul Simon used to consistently win the votes of much more conservative voters in Southern Illinois because he had mastered the art of "disagreeing without being disagreeable," and they trusted him to tell the truth. Similarly, one of Paul Wellstone's greatest strengths was his ability to deliver a scathing rebuke of the Republicans without ever losing his sense of humor and affability. In fact, I would argue that the most powerful voices of change in the country, from Lincoln to King, have been those who can speak with the utmost conviction about the great issues of the day without ever belittling those who opposed them, and without denying the limits of their own perspectives.

In that spirit, let me end by saying I don't pretend to have all the answers to the challenges we face, and I look forward to periodic conversations with all of you in the months and years to come. I trust that you will continue to let me and other Democrats know when you believe we are screwing up. And I, in turn, will always try and show you the respect and candor one owes his friends and allies.

THE NOOSE AROUND THE HYDRA

2005-09-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

This post comes from Hullabaloo and references an article in The New Republic. It covers ground that I think is extremely important. The Republicans have gained and maintained power over the last thirty years by creating a whole system from think tanks to media. Another characteristic has been the funding of the Youth education into the Republican brotherhood. This article discusses the structure of the system at the College Republican level where the participants learn the ropes to become active members of the Rovian gang. Important reading.

THE NOOSE AROUND THE HYDRA

Franklin Foer has written an absolutely must-read article this week in The New Republic (which, unfortunately, is subscription only.) He writes about the College Republicans, who are key to understanding the modern Republican party. I know that sounds absurd, but it is absolutely true. His thesis is that the operatives of the GOP learn to fight the Democrats by fighting with each other. Before the election of new leadership this year, the College Republicans, fresh faced little gangsters that they are, had already been accused of corrupt fundraising by bilking little old ladies out of large sums of money. As with all College Republican elections, this one was distinguished by dirty tricks, betrayal and strong arm tactics:

Everyone who watched this summer's race for College Republican National Committee (crnc) chair with any detachment has a favorite moment of chutzpah they admire in spite of themselves. Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent's "homosexuality"; rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don't; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters. I can understand the perverse appeal of each of these incidents. But I cast my vote for the forged letter.

He goes on to describe a beautiful little piece of ratfucking that will stand the victor in good stead when he's called upon to destroy political opponents in the future. And there is much more. But the thing that is most interesting about this is that he points out what very few people seem to realize --- that this is not just a bunch of kooky co-eds having fun. It is officially sanctioned and run by the Republican establishment. After all, it was the training ground for the entire political apparatus of the modern GOP --- including a bunch of names we've seen a lot of recently in association with words like "arrest," "indictment" and "federal investigation." And there's money involved, of course.

Behind the scenes, in the campaign war rooms, small armies of veteran Republican operatives and congressional staffers toil. That's because there's much more at stake in the elections than a swish post-college gig. After campaign finance reform, the College Republicans reinvented themselves as a big-time 527--a group legally allowed to spend an infinite amount of its own money on campaigns--with a budget of over $17 million. They have a massive network of operatives to send into the field to bolster candidates, and they have patronage to spread among friends and through direct-mail firms. In other words, it's well worth tearing a Shermanesque path to the sea to control College Republicans, no matter the carnage--and no matter the expense. Michael Davidson said he spent an estimated $200,000--raised off high-rollers who normally sign checks to senators and presidential wannabes--trying to claim the grand prize.

But the significance of the crnc goes beyond that. The Committee is the place where Republican strategists learn their craft and acquire their knack for making their Democratic opponents look like disorganized children. Many of the biggest-brand Republican operatives--from Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, to Charlie Black and Roger Stone, to Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist--got their starts this way. Walking through the halls of the convention, it is easy to see the genesis of tactics deployed in the Florida recount and by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Republicans learn how to fight hard against Democrats by practicing on one another first. "There are no rules in a knife fight," Norquist instructed the young conventioneers in a speech. And, while Norquist described a knife fight, the Gourley-Davidson rumble transpired around him.

[...] Gourley received the blessing of the outgoing chairman, Eric Hoplin. But, in reality, he had won the blessing of a force more powerful than a single politician. He had won the blessing of an entity that College Republicans speak of in hushed tones and that they compare to the Empire in Star Wars--the Establishment.

When College Republicans invoke the Establishment, they mean a clique of former College Republicans--now grown-ups playing politics at the highest level--who will trample anyone to maintain their clique's control of the organization. Like all good cabals, it is hard to know exactly who belongs to the Establishment and how Machiavellian their meddling is. Before his tumble from grace, the lobbyist Jack Abramoff would lend College Republicans his skybox at the MCI center, donate money, and lead training sessions. (In 2002, the crnc paid Jack Abramoff for "accounting & legal services.") Rove reportedly keeps tabs, and Norquist invites the group's chair to attend his celebrated Wednesday gathering of conservative big shots. But the convention offered some more suggestive examples of the Establishment's methodology. Just past 2 a.m. on Saturday, wavering delegates from Louisiana received calls from Morton Blackwell, the legendary veteran of the Goldwater and Reagan campaigns, urging them to vote for Gourley. It was a perfectly calibrated tactic. "A 19-year-old Republican will generally do whatever a demigod of the conservative movement like Morton tells them," one Davidson supporter griped.

And they are even more likely to respond to entreaties from a congressman. Patrick McHenry, a dough-faced 29-year-old freshman representative from North Carolina and former crnc treasurer, went to war on Gourley's behalf. "I got a call. They said, 'The congressman is on the line,'" University of North Carolina junior Jordan Selleck told me. "He basically said that we'd be screwed if we didn't switch to Gourley. Our careers in politics would be over." As Jennifer Holder, who served as a state chair in the '90s, lamented, "There are a lot of sharks infesting the kiddie pool."

Does everyone remember how Bush was extolled as the guy who would bring honor and integrity back to the White House? How the grown-ups were in charge? These are his people:

Back in 1981, Abramoff and his campaign manager, Norquist, promised their leading competitor, Amy Moritz, the job of crnc executive director if she dropped out of the race. Moritz took the bait, but it turned out that Abramoff had made the promise with his fingers crossed. Norquist took the executive director job and named Moritz his deputy. That demotion didn't last long, either. After discovering the talented Ralph Reed, Norquist handed the Christian Coalition godfather Moritz's responsibilities and her office space. They placed all of Moritz's belongings in a box labeled amy's desk. Even 25 years later, she hasn't shed her role as College Republican doormat. Abramoff used her think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, to funnel nearly $1 million into a phony direct-mail firm with an address identical to his own.

While College Republicans have a vague understanding of Abramoff's ascent, they all can recite the ballad of Rove and Atwater--the ultimate object lesson in how the Establishment strikes back. In 1973, Rove was the Establishment candidate, and Atwater, the original Sun Tsu-quoting College Republican, was his prime campaign operative. They spent the spring of 1973 crisscrossing the country in a Ford Pinto, lining up the support of state chairs--basically the right-wing version of Thelma and Louise. But, in point of fact, Rove was hardly the right-winger in the race. His two opponents, Terry Dolan and Robert Edgeworth, were. And, when Dolan threw his support to Edgeworth, Rove had no other alternative. He had to cheat.

When the College Republicans gathered for their convention at the Lake of the Ozarks resort in Missouri, Rove and Atwater relentlessly challenged the legitimacy of Edgeworth's delegates, even if the evidence did not justify their attacks. Because of Rove's allegations, the convention ended in deadlock. In revenge, Dolan went to The Washington Post with recordings that captured training seminars where Rove boasted of his campaign techniques, including rooting through opponents' garbage cans and other forms of campaign espionage. The Post broke the story under the headline "gop probes official as teacher of tricks." The Republican National Committee chairman, one George H.W. Bush, however, didn't punish Rove for his less-than-high-minded behavior. Instead, he gave Rove the chairmanship and sent Edgeworth a scathing letter accusing him of disloyalty. "He wrote me out of the party," Edgeworth told James Moore and Wayne Slater, the authors of the biography Bush's Brain.

(Where do you suppose anyone would get the idea that Karl Rove might be the type of person to purposefully out a CIA agent for political purposes?) These tactics have worked well since the Nixon administration and those who use them are responsible for building the most powerful and successful political machine in the modern era. Way back when, in the glory days when Abramoff, Norquist and Reed ran the college Republicans, Norquist is quoted as saying:

[Stalin] was running the personnel department while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. Trotsky got an ice ax through his skull, while Stalin became head of the Soviet Union. He understood that personnel is policy.

Brownie was no accident; the placing of hacks in positions of responsibility is not just ad hoc political payback. The cronyism is by design.

Needless to say, none of these people had a clue --- or any interest --- in actual governance. They are political hit men. But they control the party apparatus and when they finally achieved what they had been dreaming of for many years, they got greedy. I wrote the other day about the idea that the only thing that can stop these people is the legal system. This is because the press and politics are too easily manipulated by entertainment values, spin and confusion right now. It's a lot harder to bullshit someone who has the power to subpoena your records and arrest you for lying. Federal prosecutors squeeze anyone and everyone they can to get someone to flip on big fishes. And there are a lot of little fishes now.

And medium sized fishes too.Every one of these former college Republicans (the Establishment) are now in the cross hairs of the legal system. Norquist hasn't been officially named, but his affiliations with all the people who are coming under legal scrutiny are so close that it's just a matter of time. Safavian, especially, is an interesting connection because he also feeds into a nervousness among the fervent neocons about Grover's unseemly closeness to Muslims:

Norquist has for some years now been promoting Islamist organizations, including even the Council on American-Islamic Relations; for example, he spoke at CAIR's conference, "A Better America in a Better World" on October 5, 2004. Frank Gaffney has researched Norquist's ties to Islamists in his exhaustive, careful, and convincing study, "Agent of Influence" and concludes that Norquist is enabling "a political influence operation to advance the causes of radical Islamists, and targeted most particularly at the Bush Administration."

But if Norquist is indeed a convert to Islam, it could be that he is not just enabling the Islamist causes but is himself an Islamist. (April 14, 2005)

That's Daniel Pipes, neocon prince. Norquist marrying a Palestinian American woman sent him into an absolute tizzy. But Norquist has been involved with the Muslim community for some time --- for purely political reasons, in my opinion. Norquist's cause and religion is Republicanism. He was just doing what he does --- building the coalition. They've been courting Christians for decades and he thought he could court Muslims too --- except he apparently couldn't finesse the neocon fixation with Israel or the violent fixation of Osama bin Laden. The man is not a miracle worker after all.

Safavian is an Iranian American from Detroit, the home of the biggest Islamic population in the US. He's a political hack in the Norquist/Abramoff posse. Still, it is more than amusing that Norquist's ties to the Islamic community have been so well tolerated by all the right wing gasbags who have been one handedly typing the word "islamofascist!" for the past four years --- amusing but not surprising. After all, nobody but a few cranks at Horowitz's operation cared that Norquist and his pal Dana Rohrabacker were hanging out with the Taliban right up until 9/11.

But Norquist and Safavian (and Abramoff, the allegedly pious Jew) were involved with some unsavory characters that this scandal is going to bring to the surface. Grover may be in the kind of trouble his big brother Rove is in --- national security style trouble. At the very least, his effectiveness is going to be curtailed as these investigations circle around him. Money people get nervous at times like this.

I have long agreed with the old saying that if you want to kill the snake you've gotta go for the head. In the case of the modern Republican Party, it's a four headed hydra consisting of Karl Rove (strategy), Tom DeLay (party enforcer), Ralph Reed (christian right) and Grover Norquist (movement organizer.) They all interact with one another at the nexus of K Street and the RNC. They may be taken down by one guy -- their good friend, ex uber-lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. (Uncle Karl, of course, is likely in even deeper shit.)

The Democrats have never exploited (or never been able to exploit) the sheer criminality of this gang. They all learned the ratfucking business while still little sprouts in the College Republican organization. According toe Rick Perlstein's fine book about the Goldwater campaign "Before The Storm," as early as 1964, college student Morton Blackwell -- who later named the "Moral Majority" and ran Jeff Gannon Guckert's alma mater, the (GOP) Leadership Institute --- was sabotaging the competition at the GOP convention. They've been at this a long, long time.

Back in May, I wrote:

These are [Nixon's] political heirs, raised and nurtured on the mother's milk of corruption and dishonesty; scarred while very young by the ignominious downfall of their political father; driven to wreak revenge and recapture what they perceived as their rightful ownership of American politics. They are the spawn of Watergate resentment and this country will never be healthy until this group of radicals are removed from positions of power.

Watch this Abramoff scandal. It may go nowhere, but the potential for a lethal, if not mortal, wound to the conservative movement resides inside it.

The baby bad guys were on display at the College republican election --- and the baddest baby bad guy won. But the article shows that the win was really accomplished with the collusion of the anointed bad boy with the professional operatives. If they go down this chain may be broken.

As I said, I don't think that normal political processes will be able to deal with this gang of crooks. But it looks like greed and hubris may have pushed them into the sights of the justice system. There are no guarantees, of course, but it's just possible that with this particular mob of political criminals under the gun --- and some of them out of the picture --- the Nixon era may finally come to a close.

ANOTHER COUNTRY

2005-09-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

This one is guaranteed to scare the wits out of you.

ANOTHER COUNTRY
Jim Kunstler

Take a good look at America around you now, because when we emerge from the winter of 2005 - 6, we're going to be another country. The reality-oblivious nation of mall hounds, bargain shoppers, happy motorists, Nascar fans, Red State war hawks, and born-again Krispy Kremers is headed into a werewolf-like transformation that will reveal to all the tragic monster we have become.

What we will leave behind is the certainty that we have made the right choices. Was it a good thing to buy a 3,600 square foot house 32 miles outside Minneapolis with an interest-only adjustable rate mortgage -- with natural gas for home heating running at $12 a unit and gasoline over $3 a gallon? Was it the right choice to run three credit cards up to their $5000 limit? Was I chump to think my pension from Acme Airlines would really be there for me? Do I really owe the Middletown Hospital $17,678 for a gall bladder operation that took forty-five minutes? And why did they charge me $238 for a plastic catheter?

All kinds of assumptions about the okay-ness of our recent collective behavior are headed out the window. This naturally beats a straight path to politics, since that is the theater in which our collective choices are dramatized. It really won't take another jolting event like a major hurricane or a terror incident or an H4N5 flu outbreak to take things over the edge -- though it is very likely that something else will happen. George W. Bush, and the party he represents, are headed into full Hooverization mode. After Katrina, nobody will take claims of governmental competence seriously.

The new assumption will be that when shit happens you are on your own. In this remarkable three weeks since New Orleans was shredded, no Democrat has stepped into the vacuum of leadership, either, with a different vision of what we might do now, and who we might become. This is the kind of medium that political maniacs spawn in. Something is out there right now, feeding on the astonishment and grievance of a whipsawed middle class, and it will have a lot more nourishment in the months ahead.

There are two things that the newspapers and TV Cable News outfits are not covering very well. One is that the Port of New Orleans is not functioning, with poor prospects for a quick recovery, and with it will go much of the Midwestern grain harvest. Another thing that has fallen off the radar screen is the damage done to the oil and gas infrastructure around the Gulf Coast, especially the onshore facilities for storing and transporting stuff, and for marshaling the crews and equipment to fix stuff. The US is going to run short of its customary supplies for a long time. The idea that these things will not affect an economy of ceaseless mobility is not realistic.

These serious problems on-the-ground are going to affect the more ephemeral elements floating around in the financial ether: the value of the dollar, the hazard in hedge funds, the credibility of institutions. By October, the hurricane season will be ending and the stock market crash season will be underway. It is hard to imagine that companies like WalMart really believe they will keep their profits up when their customers are paying twice as much as they did a year ago to heat their houses and fill their gas tanks.

Meanwhile, does anybody remember a place called Iraq? A bomb that killed thirty people was reported on page 12 of the Sunday New York Times. That's how important Iraq has become. But, I guess, a nation can hardly pay attention to a bullet in the foot when it has a sucking chest wound.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

2005-09-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

I couldn't find a good way to excerpt this article and as I kept reading it I found both more interesting and more important. This post by billmon in Whiskey Bar offers some insight into the overall philosophy or strategy underlying the Bush/Cheney/Rove government. One basic principle of Rovian politics is to focus discussion on wedge issues while the real agenda is being pursued behind the scenes. This is a peek at the big picture.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Not surprisingly, the post-Katrina autopsy is focusing fresh attention on the Cheney administration's bold "disinventing government" initiative -- although in this case I probably should call it the Rove administration's initiative, since it's been more Karl's pet project than the veep's.

If Cheney had his way, there wouldn't be any government left to disinvent -- just a service desk for the pipeline companies to call when they need to get the power back on. And Halliburton could easily handle that.

Rove, on the other hand, recognizes that government agencies has their uses, especially now that "to the victor go the spoils," has been firmly reestablished as the operative principle of the federal personnel management system. Let dweebs like Al Gore worry about making government work, the Rovians understand that the important thing is to make it work for them.

Paul Krugman and Matt Yglesias both have a go at describing Rove's achievements -- with Yglesias reviewing the political resumes of various cabinet secretaries, past and present, and Krugman looking at the effect the modern spoils system is having further down the totem poll, among the senior career executives who generally keep the lights on and the water running at most agencies, or try to.

But the most interesting take comes from Mark Schmitt, a fellow at the newish Democrat New America Foundation who also blogs as The Decembrist. In a post over at TPM Cafe (I know the attribution is getting thick, but bear with me here) Schmitt argues that the real problem isn't the quality of the political appointees, but the fact that the Rovians apparently believe that controlling even the most minute bureaucratic functions directly from the White House is an adequate substitute for competent management at the agency level. He points to this line from Mike Allen's piece in Time (previously discussed here):

"Katrina has shown the incredible weakness of the notion that you can have weak players in key spots because the only people who matter are in the White House," said a lobbyist who is tight with the Administration. "You can't have a Mike Brown at FEMA unless you can guarantee that there isn't going to be a catastrophe." (emphasis added)

This is, of course, a crazy way to run a $2.5 trillion enterprise -- unless your idea of administrative excellence is the old Soviet central planning monster, Gosplan. But it's a very good way to take political control of decisions that are supposed to be made through the regulatory process, whether that's approving the "morning after pill" at the FDA, updating fuel economy standards at NHTSA, or issuing ergonomic safety rules at OSHA. In a sense, what the Rovians have created is a parallel government, in which the real channels of power run through the party apparatus, not the organizational charts of the various departments and agencies. This, says Schmitt, is the real story -- not the creative resume writing skills of guys like Mike Brown:

That's why it's so important to . . . focus some attention on the system that made it all possible -- a radical, unprecedented system of centralized, politicized control that is guaranteed to fail.

Radical, yes. Unprecedented, no. While the Rovians have taken centralization and party control to new extremes, I saw some of the same trends at work during the Reagan administration, which I covered as a cub reporter for a small trade paper that specialized in issues affecting the federal civil service -- or "the govvies," as we used to semi-affectionately call them.

It was Reagan, after all, who created the infamous Office of Regulatory Review, which allowed the White House to step in and review the economic impact of any proposed regulation. This became known as the "black box" of OMB (because it worked in total secrecy) and "the roach hotel" (regulations checked in, but never checked out.) The Reaganauts also tried, albeit with little success, to give OMB greater control over both agency budgets and budget-related policy decisions.

But the Reagan administration also wasn't the first GOP team to try to bring the federal beast to heel. While I was on the "govvie" beat, I came across a book called The Plot that Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency, which recounted Tricky Dick's efforts to neuter his cabinet and gain direct control over the bureaucracy. This struggle took various forms -- including the creation of OMB, upstaging cabinet secretaries (like Kissinger's end runs around the State of State Bill Rodgers), inserting Nixon loyalists in key subcabinet postitions, and impounding appropriated funds (to show the agencies they couldn't cut their own deals with Congress.)

As the title of the book suggests, the campaign ultimately foundered on the rocks of Vietnam, Watergate and Nixon's own paranoia, which led him to do completely wacky things like sending his personal hatchet man to count the number of Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which Nixon suspected was cooking the unemployment stats to make him look bad.

It's easy to see a common thread here. Ever since the New Deal, successive GOP administrations have regarded the federal government as hostile territory to be occupied and, if possible, pacified. Under Nixon and, to a lesser degree, Reagan, cabinet secretaries were seen as unreliable, and prone to "go native" -- especially since many of them were ideological moderates, who were appointed to mollify powerful interest groups with a vested interest in the status quo.

For conservatives, this made the White House the political equivalent of the Green Zone -- a fortified command and control center beyond the reach of the insurgent bureaucrats. And out in the agencies, hard-edged conservative subcabinet appointees began to take on something of the role of political commissars in the Soviet military, monitoring both their nominal superiors and their career subordinates for signs of disloyalty.

Like I said, the Rovians may have taken these trends to new extremes, but they didn't invent them. What is radical and unprecedented about the Rovian machine -- what makes it stand out from previous GOP efforts at bureaucratic control -- is that it stands completely outside the normal structure of government.

Nixon and Reagan tried to centralize administrative control within the Executive Office, and OMB in particular. Rove has made it an explicitly political function -- a kind of branch operation of the Republican National Committee. Not since FDR's famous order to "clear it with Sydney" (Sydney Hillman, the CIO's political director) has so much bureaucratic power been vested in a presidential fixer.

Which means that in the Cheney administration, policy, particularly domestic policy, is simply a basket of hot button issues -- stem cells, climate change, grazing fees, wetlands regulation -- that have to be managed on behalf of the various interest groups that make up the Republican coalition. Even the big domestic initiatives, like Social Security "reform," are treated more like election campaigns than serious policymaking exercises. (The one exception, energy policy, was controlled by Cheney, and was treated like a Soviet state secret.)

Outside of these political hot spots, the federal bureaucracy has been floating in a vaccum -- ignored not just by the Rovians and their pet president, but by the media, the public and, it seems, by many of the dispirited, apathetic career executives laboring under the hard-eyed scrutiny of the political commissars. Until the hurricane hit.

In a sense, we were warned that something like this might happen, way back when John DiIulio -- Bush's first faith-based initiatives czar -- coined the phrase "Mayberry Machiavellis" to describe the kind of people he encountered in Rove's world.

DiIulio's letter to Ron Suskind, which became the basis for a revealing piece in Esquire magazine, is worth rereading now:

In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical, non-stop, 20-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but, on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking -- discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue.

. . . This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis -- staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible. These folks have their predecessors in previous administrations (left and right, Democrat and Republican), but, in the Bush administration, they were particularly unfettered.

One passage in particular has a sharp resonance now. It's DiIulio's description of the political manuevering that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security:

Contrast that, however, with the remarkably slap-dash character of the Office of Homeland Security, with the nine months of arguing that no department was needed, with the sudden, politically-timed reversal in June, and with the fact that not even that issue, the most significant reorganization of the federal government since the creation of the Department of Defense, has received more than talking-points caliber deliberation. This was, in a sense, the administration problem in miniature: Ridge was the decent fellow at the top, but nobody spent the time to understand that an EOP entity without budgetary or statutory authority can't "coordinate" over 100 separate federal units, no matter how personally close to the president its leader is, no matter how morally right they feel the mission is, and no matter how inconvenient the politics of telling certain House Republican leaders we need a big new federal bureaucracy might be. (emphasis added)

The point is not that the Rovians were wrong to oppose the creation of the DHS. In hindsight, they may have been right. It might have been wiser to leave bad enough alone. But if DiIulio is correct, the initial decision, and the subsequent flip flop, had little or nothing to do homeland security, and everything to do with preserving Bush's political capital.

It's weirdly appropriate that DiIulio, in the best tradition of the Stalinist show trials (or like John Cleese, hung by his heels out a window in A Fish Named Wanda) later denounced himself for his slanderous comments. Because what the Rovians have constructed is a kind of comic opera caricature of a totally politicized one-party state: Joe Stalin meets Huey Long meets the Wizard of Oz -- or at least, the little man behind the curtain. Previous GOP administrations only tried to control the federal bureaucracy; the Cheney administration has turned it into a running joke, like the Vogans in the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Which would be pretty funny, if it weren't for all the casualties.

THE INNER W.

2005-09-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

I originally posted this in Memory Pause but, as I mentioned in the opening post there, I post those before I have a chance to read them because of their length. After reading this one I decided to put it here because regardless of his politics, there is something definitely not quite right with Dubya. This provides a little insight.

THE INNER W
Three new psychological portraits of George W. Bush paint him as a control freak driven by rage, fear and an almost murderous Oedipal competition with his father. And that's before we get to Mom.
By Laura Miller

June 16, 2004 Through a glass, darkly. That's how most Americans see the character and personality of George W. Bush. The only difference is the tint: Bush's supporters look at him through a rosy filter that makes him look like a man of moral fiber and resolve, unpretentious and commonsensical. His detractors see everything he does with a sallow brown tinge, tainted by greed, dishonesty, bellicosity, self-righteousness and ignorance. But even the most alarmist descriptions of him clash: The Bush-bashers' Bush is either a scheming, shameless champion of the rich and powerful or their empty-headed puppet, a soulless tool of corporate power or a religious fanatic convinced he's preparing the nation for the Second Coming. None of these versions jibes very well with the accounts of people who actually know him, and so -- once you step outside the cartoon universe of pure polemics -- Bush himself has never quite come into focus.

"Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," by Justin Frank, a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center, is supposed to offer a more in-depth portrait. To say that it succeeds would be to give Frank and his publisher too much credit. This is a sloppily written and edited book, padded with repetitions and laced with dubious psychological theories. It is also -- despite Frank's avowed intention to "preserve a distinction between my personal questions about President Bush's politics and my psychoanalytic evaluation of his character," far too partisan a work to make any claim to being a judicious examination of Bush the man.

Nevertheless, if you can hack your way through the underbrush, "Bush on the Couch" brings together a lot of provocative information, and some genuinely enlightening hypotheses, from which the resourceful reader can assemble a portrait of Bush that accounts for his seeming contradictions. Combine it with Peter Singer's "The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush," a clear-headed and superbly reasoned dissection of Bush's much-touted morality, and the forthcoming "Personality, Character and Leadership in the White House: Psychologists Assess the Presidents," a comparative evaluation of Bush and his predecessors in the office, by Steven J. Rebenzer and Thomas R. Faschingbauer, and the portrait gains more heft.

What emerges is the image of a man shaped by rage and fear. Frank, who subscribes to the variant of psychoanalysis formulated by Melanie Klein, has his own ideas about where Bush's anger and anxiety come from. Some of those ideas are silly and difficult to support, like the belief that newborn infants blame themselves for their expulsion from the paradise of the womb, and feel both guilt about and fear of their own destructive capabilities. Others make sense, like the probability that Bush, who surely experienced the usual sibling rivalry, felt some unconscious guilt over the death of his younger sister Robin, from leukemia, when he was 7 and she was 3.

Bush's parents dealt with Robin's death by squelching any expression of grief; there was no funeral and they played golf the day after she died. This, according to Frank, is a key example of the family's approach to all such painful emotions, and the result was to distort and cripple the psyche of their firstborn son. Frank provides an elaborate description of how the healthy process of psychological "integration" is supposed to work, some of which is based on such unconvincing Kleinian theories as the "good mother" and the "bad mother." But in general, his thesis is credible: If a child's parents teach him that his feelings of suffering, fear, weakness and rage are so unacceptable that they can't even be acknowledged, he is likely to spend his life projecting those feelings onto other people and punishing them for it. It's one of the ways bullies are minted.

George W. would find plenty of opportunities to practice the art of projection as he grew up. Frank, who is always on firmest footing when he's working from concrete biographical material, points out that from an early age, George W. Bush consistently failed in everything at which his father excelled. He got poor grades at the same schools where his father did well, and was a disaster in the same industry (oil) where his father made his fortune. His father was a varsity athlete; George W. had to settle for the cheerleading squad. His father was a torpedo plane pilot in World War II; George W. was a desultory member of the Texas Air National Guard.

Frank's psychoanalytic training pays off in one aspect by giving him an eye for the eloquent detail. There's George W.'s first, abortive engagement at 20, the same age at which his father married. And then there's George W. celebrating his role in the purchasing of the Texas Rangers by printing up baseball cards with his picture on them, a pathetically transparent effort to erase the fact that "he could never be the baseball star his father was." Even the exhaustively analyzed "Mission Accomplished" charade on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 takes on new meaning when you interpret it as a "pantomime of [George W.'s] father's war heroism."

Some observers have read George W.'s obsession with ousting Saddam Hussein as motivated by revenge for Saddam's attempted assassination of his father. It could also be seen as the determination to pull off something that his father failed to achieve. But dig a little deeper and it also looks like an attempt to exorcise what must be one nasty case of Oedipal resentment. By Frank's formula, families like the Bushes, where difficult emotions are banished, produce children who cast other people as the symbols of their own unintegrated negative urges and feelings: "I don't want to kill my father, he does, and to prove that I'm devoid of such bad impulses, I'll take him out."

Of course, not everyone faced with such a nightmarish Oedipal setup as George W. Bush's deals with it by simply playing through. Most, in fact, probably do something like what George W. himself did in his youth: act out, get in trouble and stifle the internal conflicts with booze. Bizarrely, seen in context, George W.'s drinking actually starts to look like a relatively straightforward way to confront a miserable situation, as in the notorious 1973 incident in which the 26-year-old George W., called on the carpet for driving drunk with his teenage brother, crashed through some garbage cans and called out his father to "go mano a mano right here!" Sure, it's a messed-up way of venting, but it's better than starting a war.

Now (ostensibly) sober, George W. toes the family line, and when he's not letting off steam geopolitically, he uses the outlets favored by his mother, a less-discussed but probably more significant influence on his character. By most reliable accounts a truly scary piece of work, Barbara Bush is known around the Bush home by the nickname "the Enforcer." (A family friend described her to George W. biographer Bill Minutaglio as "the one who instills fear.") Barbara seems to be the source of George W.'s penchant for teasing, that overtly chummy but covertly hostile technique he especially likes to use on the press, who alarm and intimidate him. The animosity swirling beneath the placid surface of the Bush family keeps leaking out in little puffs of chilly spite disguised as jokes, whether it's George W.'s cracking wise about his mother's cooking, referring to his wife as "the lump in the bed next to me," or telling the press that a daughter recently hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy might join the family for a Florida vacation, but "if not, she can clean her room."

How much do these personality traits affect Bush's performance as president? As unsavory as they are, they aren't necessarily guarantors of a disastrous presidency. As Rebenzer and Faschingbauer point out in "Personality, Character and Leadership in the White House," several presidents rated by biographers and historians as vindictive and domineering are also considered effective leaders, Lyndon B. Johnson being one prime example. The president whose personality assessment most closely matches George W. Bush's is Andrew Jackson, a controversial but undeniably accomplished man, rated as "near-great" by most of the historians polled. (Native Americans, of course, would strenuously disagree.)

Jackson, however, was also rated as a particularly creative leader by the same respondents, and creativity is not a quality anyone, not even his supporters, would attribute to Bush. He's just not that flexible or adventurous. Frank, who considers Bush to be "an intelligent person whose access to his intelligence [is] hampered by his disabilities" (he suspects attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia), comes up with several reasons for this and other behaviors that cause many to dismiss Bush as stupid. Above all, he points to the president's rigidity. In some of the most insightful passages of "Bush on the Couch," he suggests that Bush's semiparalytic manner when speaking publicly, his insistence on rigorously scripting such appearances and the obviously enormous effort he puts into maintaining his focus during official occasions point to a horror of spontaneity, even if it comes in the form of a rudimentary dialogue.

While the conventional wisdom might suggest that Bush fears being unmasked as a dolt, Frank believes that Bush's rigidity -- also manifest in his ironclad daily routine -- protects him from inadvertently revealing the darker emotions he's never come to terms with. In addition to the fear of not living up to his father's example, there's the anger at being expected to, and the fear of the destructive power of that anger should it ever be unleashed. The primitive moral vision Bush subscribes to -- in which the world is divided into the good, "freedom-loving" people of America and "evildoers" like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein -- is another inflexible schema that imposes order on the internal chaos that's always threatening to rise up and swamp him. Maintaining such control takes a considerable amount of energy, according to Frank, which may be one reason why Bush needs so much sleep and finds it so hard to concentrate.

Bush's born-again Christianity, an anomaly in his patrician East Coast clan, serves a similar function. For Bush, faith is less about the joyful worship of God in a community of believers (as Frank points out, he seldom attends church) than it is about forcing a structure on both the world and his own life without the risks inherent in a genuine attempt to understand either one. As Frank shrewdly observes, unlike your garden variety AA member, the born-again Christian need not ever examine his pre-conversion past; it can be partitioned off and dispensed with as irrelevant, which is just what Bush has done. The rowdy George W. who drank too much and, when soused, actually owned up to his wrath at his father and his own lot in life, now no longer exists.

Unfortunately, not all of Frank's insights are so welcome. If political commentators often resort to overly simplistic notions of character, psychoanalysts tend to overly personalize politics. Frank regards every act of the Bush administration as a direct emanation from the psyche of George W. himself. He seems unaware that a presidency is a collaboration, or that sincerity is not always a viable political option. What can you say about a book that deplores the vindictive dirty tricks the administration uses on its critics yet never once mentions the name of Karl Rove? Likewise, when a politician reneges on a campaign promise to supply funds to one downtrodden constituency or another, the motivation is much more likely to be expedience than a sadistic delight in seeing the needy disappointed. It's unlikely that Bush personally decided to release photographs of the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons, and in any case, the more plausible motive was the stated one, to forestall Iraqi rumors of a hoax, not to crow over the victory and gross out the world. A lot of what the administration does is driven by simple greed and political calculation, not complicated unconscious desires.

Psychoanalysts also have an annoying propensity to interpret every behavior that they don't approve of as a manifestation of pathology, teeming with hidden meanings. As a result, Frank, your basic liberal, never honestly engages with the conservative ideology that Bush espouses and all the counterarguments it makes to liberal ideals of good government. The underlying premise of "Bush on the Couch" is that because Bush is a conservative, he must be suffering from "an array of multiple, serious and untreated symptoms." Bush may indeed be gravely troubled emotionally, but that conclusion doesn't automatically follow from his conservatism and it's neither respectful nor adult to act as if it does.

That's why Peter Singer's "The President of Good and Evil" is a necessary companion to "Bush on the Couch." Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton, subjects the various moral and policy pronouncements of the president to rigorous but fair scrutiny, unveiling them as a mass of contradictions and inconsistencies. "The President of Good and Evil" is no semihysterical denunciation, and it's more credible for that. Yet, interestingly enough, this stringently impersonal survey of Bush's ethics conveys a sense of how Bush thinks that jibes well with "Bush on the Couch" in many areas.

Of course, there's something slightly absurd about applying the reasoning of a philosopher to what's essentially an instinct-based moral code. "I'm not a textbook player," Bush told Bob Woodward, "I'm a gut player." Still, at every point where Bush's stated values come into conflict with his actions or other stated values, a little flash of light goes off, and what's illuminated is a vision of life rooted in fury and terror and a need to dominate the self and others as a way of containing both. Maybe that's one reason why George W. Bush is always talking about freedom. He'd probably like to know what it feels like.

10 POINT WITHDRAWAL PLAN

2005-08-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

This is a plan for phased withdrawal from Iraq by Juan Cole. I am including only the plan itself. For the entire article go to the link. There are a number of good points here. It also brings up the question of why the Bush Administration cannot come with more detailed and nuanced foreign policy plans -- other than we will stay the course, etc.

So here is what I would suggest as a responsible stance toward Iraq. Others, including Iraqi politicians, have already suggested most of these things, but I think the below hang together and could avert a tragedy while allowing us to get out.

1) US ground troops should be withdrawn ASAP from urban areas as a first step. Iraqi police will just have to do the policing. We are no good at it. If local militias take over, that is the Iraqi government's problem. The prime minister will have to either compromise with the militia leaders or send in other Iraqi militias to take them on. Who runs Iraqi cities can no longer be a primary concern of the US military. Our troops are warriors, not traffic cops.

2) In the second phase of withdrawal, most US ground troops would steadily be brought out of Iraq.

3) For as long as the elected Iraqi government wanted it, the US would offer the new Iraqi military and security forces close air support in any firefight they have with guerrilla or other rebellious forces. (I.e. we would replicate our tactics in Afghanistan of providing the air force for the Northern Alliance infantry and cavalry.) I concede that this tactic will get some US Blackhawks shot down from time to time, and won't be painless. But it could prevent the outbreak of fullscale war. This way of proceeding, which was opened up by the Afghanistan War of 2001-2002, and which depends on smart weapons and having allies on the ground, is the major difference between today and the Vietnam era, when dumb bombs (and even carpet bombing) couldn't have been deployed effectively to ensure the enemy did not take or hold substantial territory. [I am not advocating bombing civilian neighborhoods of cities; I am talking about intervening in set-piece battles of the sort that will become possible in the absence of US ground troops.]

4) With the agreement of the elected Iraqi government, the US would prevent any guerrilla force from fielding any large number of fighters for set piece battles. Such large units of militiamen attempting to march from Anbar on Baghdad, e.g., would be destroyed by AC-130s and other US air weaponry suitable to this purpose. This tactic cannot prevent the current campaign of car bombings, but it can stop a full-scale Lebanon or Afghanistan-style civil war from erupting.

5) In addition to the service of its air forces, the US would offer targeted military aid to ensure the stability of the Iraqi government. It would help protect key political figures from assassination, and it would give the Iraqi government help in preventing pipeline sabotage so as to increase Iraqi petroleum revenues and strengthen the new government.

6) The US would help rapidly build an Iraqi armor corps. The new Iraqi military's lack of tanks is almost certainly because the US is afraid they might be turned on US troops in a crisis. Once US ground troops are out, there is no reason not to let the Iraqi military just import a lot of tanks and train the new Iraqi army in using them.

7) The US should demand as a quid pro quo for further help that elections in Iraq henceforward be held on a district basis so as to ensure proper representation in parliament for the Sunni Arab provinces. This step is necessary if there is to be any hope of drawing the Sunni Arab political elites into the new government.

8) The US should demand as a quid pro quo for further help that the Iraqi government announce an amnesty for all former Baath Party members who cannot be proven to have committed serious crimes, including crimes against humanity. Former Baathists who have been fired from the schools and civil bureaucracy must be reinstated, and no further firings are to take place. (This step is key in convincing the old Sunni Arab elites that they won't be screwed over in the new Iraq.)

9) Congress must rewrite the laws governing US reconstruction aid to Iraq so as to take out provisions that Iraqis must where possible use US companies or materiel. All of the reconstruction money should go directly to Iraqi firms, so as to help jump-start the economy.

10) The US should join the regular meetings of the foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors, with Condi Rice in attendance, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, employing a 6 + 2 diplomatic track to help put Iraq back on its feet through diplomacy and multilateral aid. This step will require that the Bush administration cease threatening regularly to bomb Tehran or to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. For the sake of getting out of Iraq without a world-class economic disaster, the US will just have to deal with the real world, which contains Iran and Syria. The US is now a Middle Eastern Power, not just a New World one, and as such it needs to use Iraq's neighbors to calm their clients within Iraq. This goal cannot be achieved through simple intimidation, more especially since, with half of all fighting units bogged down in Iraq, the US is in no position to follow through on its threats and everyone knows it.

I can't guarantee that these steps will resolve the crisis in the short or even medium term. But I do think that, if taken together, they would allow us to get the ground troops out without risking a big civil war or a destabilization of the Middle East. Once Iraq can stand on its own feet, I am quite sure that the Grand Ayatollah in Najaf will just give a fatwa for complete US withdrawal, and the US will have to acquiesce, as it did in similar circumstances in the Philippines.

TWO NATIONS AT WAR

2005-08-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

TWO NATIONS AT WAR
By Stirling Newberry

There are two nations at war in America. One has its founding holiday on July 4th, in memory of the declaration, in Congress assembled of 13 United States. It is a nation that is often at odds with itself, contentious, pressing interest against interest, faction against faction - as it was meant to do, in order to preserve the freedoms of all from the tyranny of a passing majority.
The other nation is not America, and it has as its founding national holiday September 11th. For it is on that day that it was able to turn a bare majority in the House of Representatives, a questionable election for the Presidency, and a tie in the Senate, into an overwhelming mandate to remake the country. That effort centered around invading Iraq, and then demanding personal fealty to the military from all US citizens.

That attempt has failed, which is why this second nation now urges war against the constitution. As the core of support for the ill considered, and indeed illegal and unconstitutional policies pursued has grown weaker, the movement for this other nation has grown more naked in its hatred of the Bill of Rights.

This is not an isolated incident. In recent days more and more violence has been used against protesters. Cross have been knocked down to dishonour the dead.

We have reached a near complete reversal of the 1960's. In the 1960's the left was the source of the most extreme groups. To some extent there were social causes, including discrimination against African Americans, and a war which claimed as many dead in a month as Iraq has in 3 years. However, as importantly, the members of the extreme parts of the left, and here I speak of organizations such as the Red Brigade in Europe, did not recognize the value of civil society. This was echoed in rhetoric by others, and was used as a broad brush to paint all of the left.
For the last 20 years, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. It has not been the left which has advocated violence, but the right. There have been bombings against clinics, there have been militia movements, there was the Oklahoma city bombing, which is still the worst act of domestic terrorism in the United States since the Civil War.

The right has increasingly placed an eliminationist and liquidationist rhetoric at the center of its political stance.

To understand how far we have come, let me recount a story from 1992. I was working at the American Legion in San Francisco, at 2 am in the morning, a member called up and said "David Duke is a pig fucker. I want you to know that." Well, now someone who is as extreme as David Duke heads that organization, and has joined the select company of those who engage in ovine fornication.

I do not, and cannot, believe that the majority of veterans have forgotten who serves who in the military. It is our line of defence against the dangers of a standing army - indeed the founding fathers feared a standing army as a great threat to liberty. By circumstances and our roll in the world, we have been forced to have a standing army and navy. Which means that we must be doubly vigilant, as a faction of that standing army has every chance to grow in power and influence.

To participate in civic dialog, to peaceably assemble and petition leaders for a redress of grievances, to be free in speech and in the press are fundamental rights of Americans. To use them in the process of deciding as a sovereign people the policy and purpose of government action is a duty. Those who cannot uphold their oath to protect and defend the constitution, should not serve.

There will always be times when this seems to be a hinderance to our fighting ability. However, America has an almost unbroken record of victory in war. This is because while dictatorships may seem more efficient, they are also prone to the weaknesses of a single man. As many brilliant strikes as Hitler exeucted, he blundered as often. While he was able to swallow almost all of Europe, his unfree state could not digest it. While Stalin had the ability to plan for decades, without a civil society, his Soviet Union blundered over and over again, and millions of Russians paid the ultimate penalty for it.

Thus participation is not a weakness, but a strength.

The second nation, the one that celebrates September 11th with concerts and a festive atmosphere, has forgotten these and many other lessons from American history. Indeed they wish to erase American history, and replace it with another history, one alien to the American character. Dogmatic, militaristic, unquestioning, recklessly violent, heedless of consequences and uncomprehending of precedent.

It is time for Americans to realize that this second nation is not merely a faction of their own, but a threat to their way of life, and the liberties which they cherish and use every day. That it's glowering warnings to "watch what you say" are not merely political rhetoric, but fundamental belief.

The reason this has boiled over now is simple. Until recently, the phrase "support our troops" and the "military families" were presumed to be mantras for the Republicans and for Bush. Cindy Sheehan, for all of her flaws as a spokes person, has taken that away from them. They must aggressively move to take that back. They must force military personnel and veterans to circle the wagons.

It is time for those who have worn our nation's flag in the line of duty - in whatever line of duty - to repudiate this second nation, which does not share their national holiday, nor their sense of who serves who while in uniform. They must repudiate unAmerican sentiments. America will not win this war by being what we are not. This nation overcame the most terrible civil war fought until that time, this nation beat the greatest imperial power in the world, twice. This nation defeated a surging Teutonic nationalism, twice, and at the same time humbled the empire of the sun. It outlasted a rigid ideological political empire that at its peak held in thrall nearly half the world's population.

And while at times and in places it failed to live up to the letter and spirit of its creed, it never engaged in a wholesale abandonment of those truths which it holds to be self-evident. What Cadmus of the American Legion demands is tyranny, and is a nation fit to be ruled over by tyrants alone. It is time to recognize that this kind of extremism must come to an end now, or most assuredly, it will come to an end later.