Document 199-I and The FBI’s Words to Chill The Soul by Greg Palast

On November 9, 2001, when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI, “were told to back off the Saudis.”

We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked, “SECRET” across the top and “199-I” - meaning this was a national security matter.

The secret memo released agents to hunt down two members of the bin Laden family operating a “suspected terrorist organization” in the USA. It was dated September 13, 2001 — two days too late for too many. What the memo indicates, corroborated by other sources, was that the agents had long wanted to question these characters … but could not until after the attack. By that time, these bin Laden birds had flown their American nest.

Back to the high-level agent. I pressed him to tell me exactly which investigations were spiked. None of this interview dance was easy, requiring switching to untraceable phones. Ultimately, the insider said, “Khan Labs.” At the time, our intelligence agencies were on the trail of Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, A.Q. Khan, who built Pakistan’s bomb and was selling its secrets to the Libyans. But once Bush and Condoleeza Rice’s team took over, the source told us, agents were forced to let a hot trail go cold. Specifically, there were limits on tracing the Saudi money behind this “Islamic bomb.”

Then we made another call, this time to an arms dealer in the Mideast. He confirmed that his partner attended a meeting in 1995 at the 5-star Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris where, allegedly, Saudi billionaires agreed to fund Al Qaeda fanatics. We understood it to be protection money, not really a sign of support for their attacks. Nevertheless, rule number one of investigation is “follow the money” — but the sheiks’ piggy banks were effectively off-limits to the US agents during the Bush years. One of the men in the posh hotel’s meeting of vipers happens to have been a Bush family business associate.

Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, let me tell you that we found no evidence — none, zero, no kidding — that George Bush knew about Al Qaeda’s plan to attack on September 11. Indeed, the grim joke at BBC is that anyone accusing George Bush of knowing anything at all must have solid evidence. This is not a story of what George Bush knew but rather of his very-unfunny ignorance. And it was not stupidity, but policy: no asking Saudis uncomfortable questions about their paying off roving packs of killers, especially when those Saudis are so generous to Bush family businesses.

Yes, Bill Clinton was also a bit too tender toward the oil men of Arabia. But this you should know: In his last year in office, Clinton sent two delegations to the Gulf to suggest that the Royal family crack down on “charitable donations” from their kingdom to the guys who blew up our embassies.

But when a failed Texas oil man took over the White House in January 2001, demands on the Saudis to cut off terror funding simply stopped.

And what about the bin Laden “suspected terrorist organization”? Called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the group sponsors soccer teams and summer camps in Florida. BBC obtained a video of one camp activity, a speech exhorting kids on the heroism of suicide bombings and hostage takings. While WAMY draws membership with wholesome activities, it has also acted as a cover or front, say the Dutch, Indian and Bosnian governments, for the recruitment of jihadi killers.

Certainly, it was worth asking the bin Laden boys a few questions. But the FBI agents couldn’t, until it was too late.

In November 2001, when BBC ran the report on the spike of investigations of Saudi funding of terror, the Bush defenders whom we’d invited to respond on air dismissed the concerns of lower level FBI agents who’d passed over the WAMY documents. No action was taken on the group headed by the bin Ladens.

Then, in May this year, fifty FBI agents surrounded, invaded and sealed off WAMY’s Virginia office. It was like a bad scene out of the ‘Untouchables.’ The raid took place three years after our report and long after the bin Ladens had waved bye-bye. It is not surprising that the feds seized mostly empty files and a lot of soccer balls.

Why now this belated move on the bin Laden’s former operation? Why not right after the September 11 attack? This year’s FBI raid occurred just days after an Islamist terror assault in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Apparently, messin’ with the oil sheiks gets this Administration’s attention. Falling towers in New York are only for Republican convention photo ops.

The 199-I memo was passed to BBC television by the gumshoes at the National Security News Service in Washington. We authenticated it, added in our own sleuthing, then gave the FBI its say, expecting the usual, “It’s baloney, a fake.” But we didn’t get the usual response. Rather, FBI headquarters said, “There are lots of things the intelligence community knows and other people ought not to know.”

Ought not to know?

What else ought we not to know, Mr. President? And when are we supposed to forget it?

**************

Greg Palast’s reports for BBC Television Newsnight and The Guardian paper of Britain (with David Pallister) on White House interference in the investigation of terrorism won a 2002 California State University Journalism School ‘Project Censored’ Award.

The BBC television reports, expanded and updated, will be released this month in the USA as a DVD, “Bush Family Fortunes,” produced by BBC’s Meirion Jones.

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WaPo recently printed an anonymous editorial by a recipient of a possibly illegal yet somehow binding FBI Security Letter.

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.
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The following article recently appeared in The Progressive:

Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos. But all we hear in the nation’s capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about “unity” and “bipartisanship,” in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course.

These are the Democrats who were brought to power in November by an electorate fed up with the war, furious at the Bush Administration, and counting on the new majority in Congress to represent the voters. But if sanity is to be restored in our national policies, it can only come about by a great popular upheaval, pushing both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will.

The Declaration of Independence, revered as a document but ignored as a guide to action, needs to be read from pulpits and podiums, on street corners and community radio stations throughout the nation. Its words, forgotten for over two centuries, need to become a call to action for the first time since it was read aloud to crowds in the early excited days of the American Revolution: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.”

The “ends” referred to in the Declaration are the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” True, no government in the history of the nation has been faithful to those ends. Favors for the rich, neglect of the poor, massive violence in the interest of continental and world expansion—that is the persistent record of our government.

Still, there seems to be a special viciousness that accompanies the current assault on human rights, in this country and in the world. We have had repressive governments before, but none has legislated the end of habeas corpus, nor openly supported torture, nor declared the possibility of war without end. No government has so casually ignored the will of the people, affirmed the right of the President to ignore the Constitution, even to set aside laws passed by Congress.

The time is right, then, for a national campaign calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Representative John Conyers, who held extensive hearings and introduced an impeachment resolution when the Republicans controlled Congress, is now head of the House Judiciary Committee and in a position to fight for such a resolution. He has apparently been silenced by his Democratic colleagues who throw out as nuggets of wisdom the usual political palaver about “realism” (while ignoring the realities staring them in the face) and politics being “the art of the possible” (while setting limits on what is possible).

know I’m not the first to talk about impeachment. Indeed, judging by the public opinion polls, there are millions of Americans, indeed a majority of those polled, who declare themselves in favor if it is shown that the President lied us into war (a fact that is not debatable). There are at least a half-dozen books out on impeachment, and it’s been argued for eloquently by some of our finest journalists, John Nichols and Lewis Lapham among them. Indeed, an actual “indictment” has been drawn up by a former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega, in a new book called United States v. George W. Bush et al, making a case, in devastating detail, to a fictional grand jury.

There is a logical next step in this development of an impeachment movement: the convening of “people’s impeachment hearings” all over the country. This is especially important given the timidity of the Democratic Party. Such hearings would bypass Congress, which is not representing the will of the people, and would constitute an inspiring example of grassroots democracy.

These hearings would be the contemporary equivalents of the unofficial gatherings that marked the resistance to the British Crown in the years leading up to the American Revolution. The story of the American Revolution is usually built around Lexington and Concord, around the battles and the Founding Fathers. What is forgotten is that the American colonists, unable to count on redress of their grievances from the official bodies of government, took matters into their own hands, even before the first battles of the Revolutionary War.

In 1772, town meetings in Massachusetts began setting up Committees of Correspondence, and the following year, such a committee was set up in Virginia. The first Continental Congress, beginning to meet in 1774, was a recognition that an extralegal body was necessary to represent the interests of the people. In 1774 and 1775, all through the colonies, parallel institutions were set up outside the official governmental bodies.

Throughout the nation’s history, the failure of government to deliver justice has led to the establishment of grassroots organizations, often ad hoc, dissolving after their purpose was fulfilled. For instance, after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, knowing that the national government could not be counted on to repeal the act, black and white anti-slavery groups organized to nullify the law by acts of civil disobedience. They held meetings, made plans, and set about rescuing escaped slaves who were in danger of being returned to their masters.

In the desperate economic conditions of 1933 and 1934, before the Roosevelt Administration was doing anything to help people in distress, local groups were formed all over the country to demand government action. Unemployed Councils came into being, tenants’ groups fought evictions, and hundreds of thousands of people in the country formed self-help organizations to exchange goods and services and enable people to survive.

More recently, we recall the peace groups of the 1980s, which sprang up in hundreds of communities all over the country, and provoked city councils and state legislatures to pass resolutions in favor of a freeze on nuclear weapons. And local organizations have succeeded in getting more than 400 city councils to take a stand against the Patriot Act.

Impeachment hearings all over the country could excite and energize the peace movement. They would make headlines, and could push reluctant members of Congress in both parties to do what the Constitution provides for and what the present circumstances demand: the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Simply raising the issue in hundreds of communities and Congressional districts would have a healthy effect, and would be a sign that democracy, despite all attempts to destroy it in this era of war, is still alive.
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I hear that the Bush administration is trying to silence Flynt Leverett. Which is why I've posted this here:

Since leaving government service in 2003, I have been publicly critical of the Bush administration's mishandling of America's Iran policy -- in two op-eds published in the New York Times, another published in the Los Angeles Times, an article published earlier this year in The American Prospect, and a monograph just published by The Century Foundation, as well as in numerous public statements, television appearances, and press interviews. All of my publications on Iran -- and, indeed, on any other policy matter on which I have written since leaving government -- were cleared beforehand by the CIA's Publication Review Board to confirm that I would not be disclosing classified information.

Until last week, the Publication Review Board had never sought to remove or change a single word in any of my drafts, including in all of my publications about the Bush administration's handling of Iran policy. However, last week, the White House inserted itself into the prepublication review process for an op-ed on the administration's bungling of the Iran portfolio that I had prepared for the New York Times, blocking publication of the piece on the grounds that it would reveal classified information.

This claim is false and, I have come to believe, fabricated by White House officials to silence an established critic of the administration's foreign policy incompetence at a moment when the White House is working hard to fend off political pressure to take a different approach to Iran and the Middle East more generally.

The op-ed is based on the longer paper I just published with The Century Foundation -- which was cleared by the CIA without modifying a single word of the draft. Officials with the CIA's Publication Review Board have told me that, in their judgment, the draft op-ed does not contain classified material, but that they must bow to the preferences of the White House. The White House is demanding, before it will consider clearing the op-ed for publication, that I excise entire paragraphs dealing with matters that I have written about (and received clearance from the CIA to do so) in several other pieces, that have been publicly acknowledged by Secretary Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and that have been extensively covered in the media.

These matters include Iran's dialogue and cooperation with the United States concerning Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and Iran's offer to negotiate a comprehensive "grand bargain" with the United States in the spring of 2003.

There is no basis for claiming that these issues are classified and not already in the public domain. For the White House to make this claim, with regard to my op-ed and at this particular moment, is nothing more than a crass effort to politicize a prepublication review process -- a process that is supposed to be about the protection of classified information, and nothing else -- to limit the dissemination of views critical of administration policy. Within the last two week, the CIA found the wherewithal to approve an op-ed -- published in the New York Times on December 8, 2006 -- by Kenneth Pollack, another former CIA employee. This op-ed includes the statement that "Iran provided us with extensive assistance on intelligence, logistics, diplomacy, and Afghan internal politics."

Similar statements by me have been deleted from my draft op-ed by the White House. But Kenneth Pollack is someone who presented unfounded assessments of the Iraqi WMD threat -- the same assessments expounded by the Bush White House -- to make a high-profile public case for going to war in Iraq.

Mr. Pollack also supports the administration's reluctance to engage with Iran, in contrast to my consistent and sharp criticism of that position. It would seem that, if one is expounding views congenial to the White House, it does not intervene in prepublication censorship, but, if one is a critic, White House officials will use fraudulent charges of revealing classified information to keep critical views from being heard.

My understanding is that the White House staffers who have injected themselves into this process are working for Elliott Abrams and Megan O'Sullivan, both politically appointed deputies to President Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.

Their conduct in this matter is despicable and un-American in the profoundest sense of that term. I am also deeply disappointed that former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency have proven so supine in the face of tawdry political pressure. Intelligence officers are supposed to act better than that.
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Here's an article by Reagan's Treasury Secretary, about the planning of the present wars.

We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East
by Paul Craig Roberts

The old adage, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" does not apply to Americans, who have shown that they can be endlessly fooled.

Neoconservatives deceived Americans into an illegal attack and debilitating war in Iraq. American neoconservatives are closely allied with Israel's Likud Party. In the past, some neocons lost their security clearances because of "mishandling" of classified information. According to In sight magazine, "the Pentagon has banned security clearance to Americans with relatives in Israel. Government sources and attorneys said the Pentagon has sought and succeeded in removing security clearance from dozens of Americans, mostly Jews, who either lived, worked, or have relatives in Israel."

Despite questions of dual loyalties, neocons hold high positions in the Bush regime. Ten years ago these architects of American foreign and military policy spelled out how they would use deception to achieve "important Israeli strategic objectives" in the Middle East. First, they would focus "on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." This would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks from Hezbollah. The attacks would let Israel gain American sympathy and permit Israel to seize the strategic initiative by "engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as the
principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."

Today, this neoconservative plan is unfolding before our eyes. Israel has used the capture of two of its soldiers in Lebanon as an excuse for an all-out air and naval bombardment against Lebanese civilian targets. However, a number of commentators have pointed out that such a massive attack requires weeks if not months of preparation that could not be done overnight in response to the capture of the soldiers.

Regardless, in the first two days of the Israeli military attack on Lebanon more than a hundred civilians, including Canadians, have been killed by Israeli bombs (gifts from U.S. taxpayers).

The Beirut International Airport has been repeatedly bombed, as have residential neighborhoods, roads, bridges, ports, and power stations. Soldiers are a legitimate military target. Civilians, civilian neighborhoods, tourists, and international airports are not.

Under the Nuremberg standard used to sentence Nazi war criminals to death, the Israeli government is clearly guilty of war crimes. Meanwhile, the Israelis are committing identical war crimes in Gaza. Again Israel's excuse is the capture of an Israeli soldier.

However, the distinguished Israeli professor Ran HaCohen said that the Israeli army "had been demanding a massive attack on Gaza long before the Israeli soldier was kidnapped." . . .
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This 2004 excerpt, penned by Zizek reflecting on Shrub's relection, rings very true even today:

However, the main advantage has to do with international politics. If Kerry had won, liberals would have had to face up to the consequences of the Iraq war, and the Bush camp would have been able to ascribe to them the results of its own catastrophic decisions.

We still must wonder when conservatives (en masse) will start "facing up to" the consequences of the war.

In 1979, in her essay "Dictators and Double Standards", Jeanne Kirkpatrick elaborated the distinction between "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" regimes which served as the justification for the US policy of collaborating with rightist dictators while attempting to destabilise Communist regimes: authoritarian dictators are pragmatic rulers who care about their power and wealth and are indifferent to ideological issues, even if they pay lip service to some big idea. In contrast, totalitarian leaders are selfless ideological fanatics who are ready to put everything at stake for their ideals. Authoritarian rulers react rationally and predictably to material and military threats - they can be dealt with. Totalitarian leaders are much more dangerous and have to be confronted directly. The irony is that this distinction perfectly encapsulates what went wrong with the US occupation of Iraq: Saddam was a corrupt authoritarian dictator guided by brutal pragmatic considerations. The US intervention has generated a much more uncompromising, "fundamentalist" opposition which rejects pragmatic compromises.

And this is where we now find ourselves, spending billions (eventually, a trillion?!) on a fundamentally flawed policy which is not in our own interests.


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The Postal Service created a stamp with a picture of President Bush. The stamp was not sticking to envelopes. This enraged the President, who demanded a full investigation. After a month of testing, a special Presidential commission presented the following findings:

1. The stamp is in perfect order.
   
2. There is nothing wrong with the applied adhesive.
   
3. People are spitting on the wrong side.
   

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The following article, penned by Alex Sabbeth, appeared in Consortium News on February 16, 2006. Sabbeth provides an excellent look back at the Bush Administration's "accomplishments."

Article : Editor’s Note: As an investigative news Web site, we often concentrate on the details of some very interesting trees and thus can be accused at times of missing the full panorama of the forest. Indeed, we do focus on specific facts, in part, because we believe that if our readers are armed with enough reliable information, they can reach their own wise judgments. We also trust in the old news axiom, “show, don’t tell.” But there are times when an overview can be helpful in recognizing patterns or coming to broader conclusions. In this guest essay, author Alex Sabbeth applies a wider lens to America’s present political crisis:

Take a look at New Orleans today. It resembles the burned out blocks of Detroit, not rebuilt since riots decades ago, testifying to a basic truth. America's wealth and power are not directed towards our well-being and security. Maybe it's easier to grasp this when pondering Sept 11. Our vaunted military did not protect us from low-tech attacks. America has over 800 military bases strung across the globe, but the fact is New York and Washington were not protected.

Doubtful? We were warned about Katrina for years. Newt Gingrich is right when he asks how we can think we're safe when New Orleans was destroyed under our noses. [Fox News, Sept. 6, 2005]Before continuing, I want to point out an obvious fact. The Bush administration purveys falsehoods as a matter of policy. Those who prove this are disparaged as the "reality community." [Boston Globe, quoting writer Ron Suskind, Nov. 5, 2004] These obvious falsehoods are directed to the administration’s political base, which either doesn't realize this, or doesn’t care. A few examples of very significant deceptions are in order. Bush claimed he invaded Iraq because Saddam refused to allow inspectors into Iraq (while they were there). Also, Bush said Saddam refused to disarm. [Nationwide radio address, Feb. 21, 2004, Office of the Press Sec. July 14, 2003] It's well documented that the inspectors were in Iraq from November of 2002 to just before the invasion, when Bush warned them to leave. CBS publicized their reaction to Powell's speech while in Iraq, in a story called “The Man Who Knew.” Also, our own inspectors say Saddam disarmed in the early 1990s, and was left with idle programs. [CBS Oct. 17, 2003, Associated Press, Feb. 13, 2004] Bush traveled the country, repeatedly emphasizing that warrants were required for government wiretaps, while he had been wiretapping without them for years. [AFP, Dec. 12, 2005]

Regarding Sept. 11, do you remember Condoleezza Rice telling us the August 2001 Presidential Brief was mostly “historical” in nature, vague, not concerned with an impending attack? The brief warned that Osama bin-Laden was preparing an attack in America, using planes, activating cells already here. [Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2004] You get the point.

America Hurt

I want to show that Bush’s policies hurt America and our national interests. Despite detailed warnings of both Sept. 11 and Katrina, we were unprepared and unprotected. We invaded Iraq, although our intelligence officers warned that terrorism would increase as a result. [The Guardian, Feb. 24, 2003] While we were told that the invasion made Iraq and the world safer, the State Department issued a warning of increased al-Qaeda activity against U.S. personnel and interests worldwide. [State Department Worldwide Caution] The invasion was supposed to make Israel more secure, but their security officers have recently warned the chaos in Iraq makes the region more unstable and dangerous. [Guardian, Feb. 9, 2006] All this was foretold by U.S. and British intelligence.Military resources were redeployed away from the hunt for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, to a country that absolutely was no threat to us. Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, wrote that Saudi Arabia’s role in financing the Sept. 11 attacks was covered up, as proved in the deleted pages of the Congressional report about Sept 11. [Graham’s “Intelligence Matters”] Our budget deficits have private-sector and government analysts warning of a genuine financial meltdown. Even the mellifluous Alan Greenspan has been warning these deficits are not sustainable.Our country's safety has been neglected, according to the Sept. 11 Commission, which issued failing grades to the government's response to its recommendations. In 2004, undercover teams slipped weapons past security barriers in 15 U.S. airports. [USA Today, Sept. 23, 2004] In 2005, a mock attack in Boston revealed complete disarray among the terror response units. [AP, Dec. 27, 2005]

Government scientists warning about climate change, mercury and soot levels, and contaminants at Ground Zero, were overruled by political managers. Fifty Nobel prize winners signed a complaint that science is corrupted by this Administration. As a result, we miss out on the benefit of scientific guidance. [Reuters, June 20, 2004]

Our military and intelligence officers warned that an invasion of Iraq would harm our international standing just when cooperation was most needed to coordinate information and responses to terrorist threats.

Military Stress

Also, our troops would be endangered by incompetent assault planning, and our economy would be stressed dangerously. The Army itself would be stretched to breaking because of repeated tours, morale-crunching stop-loss orders, insufficient protective armor, etc. [Los Angeles Times, July, 4, 2004; Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2004] We’re told our troops will begin to leave Iraq because of improvements in security. The attacks continue daily, and the real reason, admitted by Colin Powell, is that current troop levels can’t be sustained without serious damage to the Army, including recruitment problems. [AP, Dec. 18, 2005] When undercover agents are most needed in the war on terror, Valerie Plame was outed for political sport, showing that our agents are not safe from their own government. Would you risk your life overseas knowing that?

To those who believe in the President, I say you live in a dream world. The President routinely does the opposite of what he says. Therefore, you have no idea what it is you support. Mr. Bush campaigned in 2000 on a “humble” foreign policy, deriding nation-building. But he clearly planned the Iraq invasion before Sept 11, and Condi Rice testified that the administration decided to remake the entire Middle East. [UPI, Oct. 19, 2005; Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, Judicial Watch Web site, March 2004] How humble is that? How do you think they're doing so far? Does Katrina make you pretty confident? They are enacting goals written in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz, long before Bush was elected. [Carnegie Endowment for Peace, March 19, 2003] Did you know that during the 2000 campaign?

Bush was going to restore honor and integrity to the White House. Have you ever heard of Abramoff? Did you see articles reporting how Rove is threatening Republicans if they revolt against NSA wiretaps? [Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, Feb. 7, 2006] How about the Medicare actuary threatened if he revealed the true cost of the seniors' drug benefit? [CBS, March 16, 2004, “Medicare administrator warns actuary, Rick Foster to not tell Congress the price tag.”] Bush traveled the country assuring us that court warrants are still required for wiretaps. He guaranteed that. Yet years before, he had ordered wiretaps contrary to the FISA requirements. Who still has faith in what Bush says? Why listen at all? Bush scared us with dire threats of WMDs in Iraq. Wolfowitz slipped up by saying WMDs were only a bureaucratic device to gain agreement among individual planners. [AP, May 30, 2003] But Bush, faced with absence of WMDs, told Fox News he would have ordered the invasion knowing they weren't there. [Fox News, anchor Brit Hume, Dec. 14, 2005] They didn't matter at all!

Mushroom Cloud

Remember the mushroom cloud? Scott Ritter, the lead U.N. inspector, reported the U.S. knew Iraq had no WMDs since 1995! [Newsday, June 4, 2004] Blair's minister, Robin Cook, wrote that he was told by the chief of British intelligence that Saddam had no usable WMDs before the invasion. [Guardian, July 12, 2004] Our top CIA analyst in the Middle East (Paul Pillar) just wrote that the Administration corrupted the intelligence on Iraq, and invaded for entirely different reasons. [AFP, Feb. 10. 2006]We’re told Bush needs wiretaps to keep us safe. Did you know that he permitted the evacuation of dozens of Saudis, without proper interviews, right after Sept. 11, while commercial planes were grounded? [NYT, quoted in AFP, March 28, 2005] Or that hundreds of hours of Arabic language intercepts remain untranslated? [Justice Department inspector general's report released in September 2004] Who knows what’s on those tapes. Does that make you feel safe?I want to draw the obvious conclusion underlying these few examples. Bush has been governing like a King, not a democratically elected President. He lied to Congress about the weapons in Iraq, and then said their absence made no difference. He lied to all of us by assuring that warrants were required for wiretaps, while he was wiretapping thousands of innocent citizens with no court order. [NYT, Jan. 17, 2006] He has devised a veto of Congressionally enacted statutes by signing statements, which declare his refusal to honor the clear intent of the law. [Boston Globe, Jan. 4, 2006] He claims authority to ignore explicit laws under theories which caused Justice Department officers to resign, and which Gonzales admitted Congress would not have granted. [Newsweek, Feb. 6, 2006; Council on Foreign Relations Feb. 3, 2006] Republican senators have pointed this out, but have no stomach for forcing him to follow the law. They enact a charade of hearings, according Mr. Gonzales credence while he lied about existing wiretaps. [Washington Post, Jan. 31, 2006] Instead of censuring Gonzales, they continue the theatrics, knowing full well he’ll say whatever is needed to distract attention from the criminality of the secret surveillance. Most importantly, the lie is given to the “everything changed after Sept. 11” canard. New York Times reporter James Risen writes that these wiretaps were established right after Mr. Bush’s inauguration, eight months before Sept. 11. [Risen’s State of War] After the attacks, thousands of innocents were tapped, causing the FBI to be flooded with useless information. Does this sound like a “highly targeted” tap on only U.S. to overseas communications?

Dear readers, the truth doesn’t matter today in Washington. The Administration assumes nobody pays attention, cares, or notices the bulk of its disinformation. If we don’t wake up, the America we learned about in school will remain only a shimmering dream. The British magazine, The Economist, is right for calling Bush incompetent. [The Economist, Oct. 28, 2004] But worse, he’s dangerous, and has harmed America and the world.

Author Alex Sabbeth acts as an informal researcher and organizer for several retired intelligence officers who share his concerns about America's future.
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I guess this could have been a suicide . . . but it sounds very suspicious:

Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions.
By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

"War is the hardest place to make moral judgments."

Col. Ted Westhusing, Journal of Military Ethics

WASHINGTON — One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head. The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq. The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

His death stunned all who knew him. Colleagues and commanders wondered whether they had missed signs of depression. He had been losing weight and not sleeping well. But only a day before his death, Westhusing won praise from a senior officer for his progress in training Iraqi police.

His friends and family struggle with the idea that Westhusing could have killed himself. He was a loving father and husband and a devout Catholic. He was an extraordinary intellect and had mastered ancient Greek and Italian. He had less than a month before his return home. It seemed impossible that anything could crush the spirit of a man with such a powerful sense of right and wrong.

On the Internet and in conversations with one another, Westhusing's family and friends have questioned the military investigation.

A note found in his trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question.

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?

Even at Jenks High School in suburban Tulsa, one of the biggest in Oklahoma, Westhusing stood out. He was starting point guard for the Trojans, a team that made a strong run for the state basketball championship his senior year. He was a National Merit Scholarship finalist. He was an officer in a fellowship of Christian athletes.

Joe Holladay, who coached Westhusing before going on to become assistant coach of the University of North Carolina Tarheels, recalled Westhusing showing up at the gym at 7 a.m. to get in 100 extra practice shots.

"There was never a question of how hard he played or how much effort he put into something," Holladay said. "Whatever he did, he did well. He was the cream of the crop."

When Westhusing entered West Point in 1979, the tradition-bound institution was just emerging from a cheating scandal that had shamed the Army. Restoring honor to the nation's preeminent incubator for Army leadership was the focus of the day.

Cadets are taught to value duty, honor and country, and are drilled in West Point's strict moral code: A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal — or tolerate those who do.

Westhusing embraced it. He was selected as honor captain for the entire academy his senior year. Col. Tim Trainor, a classmate and currently a West Point professor, said Westhusing was strict but sympathetic to cadets' problems. He remembered him as "introspective."

Westhusing graduated third in his class in 1983 and became an infantry platoon leader. He received special forces training, served in Italy, South Korea and Honduras, and eventually became division operations officer for the 82nd Airborne, based at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

He loved commanding soldiers. But he remained drawn to intellectual pursuits.

In 2000, Westhusing enrolled in Emory University's doctoral philosophy program. The idea was to return to West Point to teach future leaders.

He immediately stood out on the leafy Atlanta campus. Married with children, he was surrounded by young, single students. He was a deeply faithful Christian in a graduate program of professional skeptics.

Plunged into academia, Westhusing held fast to his military ties. Students and professors recalled him jogging up steep hills in combat boots and camouflage, his rucksack full, to stay in shape. He wrote a paper challenging an essay that questioned the morality of patriotism.

"He was as straight an arrow as you would possibly find," said Aaron Fichtelberg, a fellow student and now a professor at the University of Delaware. "He seemed unshakable."

In his 352-page dissertation, Westhusing discussed the ethics of war, focusing on examples of military honor from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Israeli army. It is a dense, searching and sometimes personal effort to define what, exactly, constitutes virtuous conduct in the context of the modern U.S. military.

"Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge," he wrote in the opening pages.

As planned, Westhusing returned to teach philosophy and English at West Point as a full professor with a guaranteed lifetime assignment. He settled into life on campus with his wife, Michelle, and their three young children.

But amid the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he told friends that he felt experience in Iraq would help him in teaching cadets. In the fall of 2004, he volunteered for duty.

"He wanted to serve, he wanted to use his skills, maybe he wanted some glory," recalled Nick Fotion, his advisor at Emory. "He wanted to go."

In January, Westhusing began work on what the Pentagon considered the most important mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from U.S. troops.

Westhusing's task was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations.

In March, Gen. David Petraeus, commanding officer of the Iraqi training mission, praised Westhusing's performance, saying he had exceeded "lofty expectations."

"Thanks much, sir, but we can do much better and will," Westhusing wrote back, according to a copy of the Army investigation of his death that was obtained by The Times.

In April, his mood seemed to have darkened. He worried over delays in training one of the police battalions.

Then, in May, Westhusing received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS.

The writer accused USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or participated in the killing of Iraqis.

A USIS contractor accompanied Iraqi police trainees during the assault on Fallouja last November and later boasted about the number of insurgents he had killed, the letter says. Private security contractors are not allowed to conduct offensive operations.

In a second incident, the letter says, a USIS employee saw Iraqi police trainees kill two innocent Iraqi civilians, then covered it up. A USIS manager "did not want it reported because he thought it would put his contract at risk."

Westhusing reported the allegations to his superiors but told one of them, Gen. Joseph Fil, that he believed USIS was complying with the terms of its contract.

U.S. officials investigated and found "no contractual violations," an Army spokesman said. Bill Winter, a USIS spokesman, said the investigation "found these allegations to be unfounded."

However, several U.S. officials said inquiries on USIS were ongoing. One U.S. military official, who, like others, requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the inquiries had turned up problems, but nothing to support the more serious charges of human rights violations.

"As is typical, there may be a wisp of truth in each of the allegations," the official said.

The letter shook Westhusing, who felt personally implicated by accusations that he was too friendly with USIS management, according to an e-mail in the report.

"This is a mess … dunno what I will do with this," he wrote home to his family May 18.

The colonel began to complain to colleagues about "his dislike of the contractors," who, he said, "were paid too much money by the government," according to one captain.

"The meetings [with contractors] were never easy and always contentious. The contracts were in dispute and always under discussion," an Army Corps of Engineers official told investigators.

By June, some of Westhusing's colleagues had begun to worry about his health. They later told investigators that he had lost weight and begun fidgeting, sometimes staring off into space. He seemed withdrawn, they said.

His family was also becoming worried. He described feeling alone and abandoned. He sent home brief, cryptic e-mails, including one that said, "[I] didn't think I'd make it last night." He talked of resigning his command.

Westhusing brushed aside entreaties for details, writing that he would say more when he returned home. The family responded with an outpouring of e-mails expressing love and support.

His wife recalled a phone conversation that chilled her two weeks before his death.

"I heard something in his voice," she told investigators, according to a transcript of the interview. "In Ted's voice, there was fear. He did not like the nighttime and being alone."

Westhusing's father, Keith, said the family did not want to comment for this article.

On June 4, Westhusing left his office in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone of Baghdad to view a demonstration of Iraqi police preparedness at Camp Dublin, the USIS headquarters at the airport. He gave a briefing that impressed Petraeus and a visiting scholar. He stayed overnight at the USIS camp.

That night in his office, a USIS secretary would later tell investigators, she watched Westhusing take out his 9-millimeter pistol and "play" with it, repeatedly unholstering the weapon.

At a meeting the next morning to discuss construction delays, he seemed agitated. He stewed over demands for tighter vetting of police candidates, worried that it would slow the mission. He seemed upset over funding shortfalls.

Uncharacteristically, he lashed out at the contractors in attendance, according to the Army Corps official. In three months, the official had never seen Westhusing upset.

"He was sick of money-grubbing contractors," the official recounted. Westhusing said that "he had not come over to Iraq for this."

The meeting broke up shortly before lunch. About 1 p.m., a USIS manager went looking for Westhusing because he was scheduled for a ride back to the Green Zone. After getting no answer, the manager returned about 15 minutes later. Another USIS employee peeked through a window. He saw Westhusing lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

The manager rushed into the trailer and tried to revive Westhusing. The manager told investigators that he picked up the pistol at Westhusing's feet and tossed it onto the bed.

"I knew people would show up," that manager said later in attempting to explain why he had handled the weapon. "With 30 years from military and law enforcement training, I did not want the weapon to get bumped and go off."

After a three-month inquiry, investigators declared Westhusing's death a suicide. A test showed gunpowder residue on his hands. A shell casing in the room bore markings indicating it had been fired from his service revolver.

Then there was the note.

Investigators found it lying on Westhusing's bed. The handwriting matched his.

The first part of the four-page letter lashes out at Petraeus and Fil. Both men later told investigators that they had not criticized Westhusing or heard negative comments from him. An Army review undertaken after Westhusing's death was complimentary of the command climate under the two men, a U.S. military official said.

Most of the letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied," it says. "I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

"Death before being dishonored any more."

A psychologist reviewed Westhusing's e-mails and interviewed colleagues. She concluded that the anonymous letter had been the "most difficult and probably most painful stressor."

She said that Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw.

"Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. "He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."

One military officer said he felt Westhusing had trouble reconciling his ideals with Iraq's reality. Iraq "isn't a black-and-white place," the officer said. "There's a lot of gray."

Fil and Petraeus, Westhusing's commanding officers, declined to comment on the investigation, but they praised him. He was "an extremely bright, highly competent, completely professional and exceedingly hard-working officer. His death was truly tragic and was a tremendous blow," Petraeus said.

Westhusing's family and friends are troubled that he died at Camp Dublin, where he was without a bodyguard, surrounded by the same contractors he suspected of wrongdoing. They wonder why the manager who discovered Westhusing's body and picked up his weapon was not tested for gunpowder residue.

Mostly, they wonder how Col. Ted Westhusing — father, husband, son and expert on doing right — could have found himself in a place so dark that he saw no light.

"He's the last person who would commit suicide," said Fichtelberg, his graduate school colleague. "He couldn't have done it. He's just too damn stubborn."

Westhusing's body was flown back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Waiting to receive it were his family and a close friend from West Point, a lieutenant colonel.

In the military report, the unidentified colonel told investigators that he had turned to Michelle, Westhusing's wife, and asked what happened.

She answered:

"Iraq."


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Robert Parry recently wrote the following article that frankly tells us why the U.S. is really in Iraq.

When Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly decried the Bush administration’s bungling of U.S. foreign policy, the focus of the press coverage was on Wilkerson’s depiction of a “cabal” headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that had hijacked the decision-making process.

Largely overlooked were Wilkerson’s frank admissions about the importance of oil in justifying a long-term U.S. military intervention in Iraq. “The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption,” the retired Army colonel said in a speech on Oct. 19.
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And you thought that "Who Would Jesus Bomb" bumper sticker would never get a response...

Someone has actually written a book (No More Christian Nice Guy) advising Christian men to be more macho and manly. Now, instead of attacking the infidel wherever he roams, we can all bare out chests as we drop the bombs on his villages.
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Tax Havens hold nearly one-third of the world's assets.

Now ask yourself: Do you personally know anyone with money in a tax haven? Who are these people? Isn't it amazing to think that many of us may never even rub shoulders with a class of people (1% of the world population) who monopolizes 1/3 of all the world's wealth?

The Tax Justice Network Report has listed some of the things we could purchased if this wealth were subject to taxation (quoted below):

• Fund Gordon Brown’s request for an additional US $50 billion a year in aid to the developing world over the next decade, in just two years;

• At US $30-40 per head, cover what the World Health Organisation classifies minimum financing needs for health services for every single person on the planet; and

• If US $255 billion had been given in aid every year from 2002, by the end of 2015, global poverty would be permanently eradicated, way beyond the goals of the international targets on halving global poverty by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals.
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Talks with North Korea have started up again. This time, the conference table is lined with carrots--to include a very generous electricity offer from the South along with a U.S. offer to work towards diplomatic relations. There's debate within the academic community over whether the North Korean regime plans to open up its economy, following the Chinese example, but the general consensus is that North Korea is seeking a different path: opening up just enough to ensure the regime's economic viability. Of course, hand-outs become addictive so it's to be seen whether the regime will really be able to reign in all liberalizing tendencies once they begin.
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The right is constantly saying that the Palestinians should protest peacefully instead of resorting to violence to achieve their political objectives. Recent nonviolent protest in the village of Bilin provide a good testing ground for rightwing rhetoric. Isreal is clearly in the wrong. The villagers aren't resorting to violence as they seek political support for their cause. What's the right's reaction?

Thanks to Doug Ireland (via Empire Notes) for this story.
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from an article by Robert Shetterly:

Let's consider an item from the news of about two weeks ago:

A British citizen leaked a memo to London's Sunday Times. The memo was of the written account of a meeting that a man named Richard Dearlove had with the Bush administration in July 2002. Dearlove was the head of the England's MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA. On July 23, 2002, Dearlove briefed Tony Blair about the meeting. He said that Bush was determined to attack Iraq. He said that Bush knew that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists, that there was no imminent danger to the U.S. from Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war, "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." "Fixed" means faked, manufactured, conjured, hyped - the product of whole cloth fabrication.

So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks, fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals strategizing on the "news" shows, with us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their corporate owners who would profit from the war. Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib.

It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan but greed and empire in the first place.

What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.

Richard Nixon was impeached for a cover-up of a two-bit break-in. William Cohen, a young Maine Republican, played an important role for the prosecution in those proceedings. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex with an intern. Now we have the irrefutable evidence that George W. Bush lied about the reasons for taking the United States to war. The intelligence wasn't flawed. The weapons weren't hidden. Our elected leaders were lying.

Democracy, like any sound relationship between people, is built on trust. We trust our leaders to tell the truth so that the consent that we give them is honestly informed. If the consent is won through manipulation, propaganda, fear or lies, the basis of our democracy has been subverted. It is no longer democracy at all, but we continue to call it that because we have not the courage or stamina to demand its overhaul.

We live a lie when we fail to hold leaders accountable for their lies. By not calling now for impeachment, we are saying that we condone hypocrisy, pseudo-democracy, and murdering thousands of Americans and Iraqis for strategic control of energy resources that we have no right to. Patriotism demands that we insist on the ideals of democracy, not that we support the "leaders" who cynically destroy them.

What's curious is why anyone like me should have to even point this out. Don't our senators and congressmen feel betrayed? Are they content to continue the murdering rather than do what truth demands? Do they think they can lie to history, too? Do they think that this little Iraq problem will somehow just go away, that the courageous resistance to the United States occupation will give up and hand Bush the keys to the oil wells? Do they think that any of the grave crises facing the world now - energy consumption, global warming, species extinction - can be solved by lying about them?

We are living in an age of no accountability. It's also an age upon which may hang the survival of human life on this earth. One should not bet one's future on people who abjure responsibility. The first courageous step is to come to terms with what we know is true: America's president lied to America's people to create an unnecessary war. I ask Sens. Snowe and Collins, Reps. Allen and Michaud to take that step. Begin impeachment proceedings. It's really no more or less than their duty. It's also the first step toward restoring America's integrity.

Robert Shetterly is a writer and artist who lives in Brooksville, Maine.
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I realize that old news isn't technically "news" at all, but it's sometimes interesting to step back and marvel at our government's consistency. According to TBO, the Homeland Security Department is still focusing on possible terror threats from radical environmental and animal rights activists while ignoring the risks that might be posed by right-wing extremists. Reading this, we'll all sleep better tonight knowing we are safe from the antics of redwood tree squatters and rabid puppy lovers. At the same time, America can rest assured that we will not violate the rights of the Timothy McVeighs of the world.

This rabid hatred of the left, contrary to all reason, has a long history. Many years ago (beyond the memory limits of the collective psyche), the U.S. government decided to support a strong leader in Iraq who could unify the country, harrass Iran, and massacre the leftist commies running around the Middle East. This great leader then set out killing his opponents, many of whom were Communist, using lists that were partly provided by the U.S. CIA. Unfortunately, this man that the U.S. fell in love with happened to be a genocidal maniac. But what can you expect? People do what they are hired to do.

Of course, vilification of the left has a long history in the U.S. Years ago, our tax dollars were being spent to pay FBI agents to constantly tail a very threatening figure by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. who was spreading (gasp!) the teachings of non-violence. I wonder how many FBI agents are currently tailing Charlton Heston or Jerry Falwell.
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In a follow up to my previous post, The Washington Post today has a story titled Terrorism Tempers National Moves to Openness." One segment of the article discusses Kuwaiti political movements, and discusses (somewhat inadvertently) the severe repression of the people by the current government (which was put back in power by the U.S.) The article talks about the conservative Islamic movements (e.g., the Kuwait University Student Union and the Muslim Brotherhood) that are leading factions pushing for democratic involvement in the country. Since the U.S. put the current regime back into power, the only conclusion possible is that the U.S. supports democracy only when it happens to support the U.S. government's agenda. When it doesn't, dictatorship and oppression are considered to be preferrable.


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The Washington Post yesterday had an interesting article about Kuwaitis (including many women) using text messaging on their cell phones to organize sudden underground protests. What the article failed to mention was the irony that the current Kuwaiti dictatorship was placed back in power by the U.S.! Of course, Shrub and co. would have us believe that the current regime-changes in the Middle East are all inspired by the altruistic hopes that them dagnab A-rabs will convert to more democratic ways. But what could have been simpler than to simply hold elections in Kuwait after the liberation? The current royal family could have been held in Guantanamo pending torture charges while the U.S. left the country in the hands of the phone-messaging democratic mobs. In this case, the U.S. could have had its "bastion of democracy" in the Middle East with the sign of a pen.

Perhaps them wacko physicists are right and there truly are separate universes out there. On the one hand, we have the idealistic universe of the Quiet American, willing to do anything to make the world safe for civilization (=Christianity =Capitalism). In this world, Kuwait has been rescued from a terrible Hitler-wannabe who is later pulled out of his hole in the sand; the dust-speckled bearded poppy-growers of Afghanistan have been conquered by blue-eyed Green Berets.

But in a parallel universe, we watch fundamentalist regimes (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt) being propped up by American money and intelligence, a growing fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan (the Taliban) and Iraq, both of whom rose to power based on U.S. support, and sky-rocketing drug-exports that seem to coincide with the first American boot touching down in a country (e.g., Panama and Afghanistan.)

So who are we supposed to root for? The Kuwaiti dictators and their henchmen that our tax dollars and military placed in power? Or those mad mobs of middle-eastern text-messagers dodging secret police as they insist on radical notions such as female suffrage?

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Rightwing radio and TV never tire of talking about the American "heartland." Through the sheer force of repetition, the term is now being served up as standard fare in the mainstream media. In the popular imagination, the term conjures up warm images of the "real" America in its pristine state, away from the kalifornication and moral grayness of the fringe coastal states. Has anyone noticed how the American heartland, by some strange coincidence, seems to coincide with predominantly white areas of the U.S. Evidently, the black jazz musician playing his music (one of the only true American art-forms) at a bar in D.C. has no "heart." Nor does the ethnic Vietnamese person living in L.A. Such psuedo-Americans live on the heartless fringe of society.

This being the case, the Democratic Party, we are led to believe, must get back to its roots in the American heartland and stop listening to all these heartless fringe-people. Only then will it be able to channel the American spirit--and manifest America's higher purpose and destiny.

Actually, this heartland rhetoric is nothing new. It's simply racism with a refurbished, shiny exterior. And like those self-replicating demonic robots in science-fiction lore, racism will keep reinventing itself with each succeeding generation. It is up to us to continually discredit it.

For a related post, check out Democrats Aren't Serious on the PBA site.

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In the dark halls of the blogosphere, Joe Patriotism and Jane Rights can be seen necking in the corner of every rightwing blog. When we look askance at the two lovers, we are sternly told that the inherent compatibility of the two is beyond question. The truth is that the two can smooch all they want—they’ll never make it as a couple. You see, they’re actually from different families. (Joe Patriotism actually comes from across the tracks.)

Of course, any nation that recognizes basic human rights (quaint ideas such as opposition to torture and equality before the law) is wise to do so. But this doesn’t mean we should let Joe drag Jane down the aisle. There are some irreconcilable differences from the onset. The fact is the idea of a right being “inalienable” and the idea of it being bestowed on us by a benign government go together like mustard on apple pie. For that matter, the very ideals that underlie the noble concepts of human rights and fundamental human dignity are intrinsically at odds with parochial notions such as tribe or nation.

There’s little to hope for in the forced marriage of this incompatible couple. After all, once we thank daddy government for giving us our “inalienable” rights, these rights suddenly become much more alienable. It isn’t long before our daddy is telling us that he has to temporarily (?!) take away our rights in order to protect us, that the rights really aren’t rights at all but are instead a privilege, or that the rights are only for those holding a passport. So I say we send dirty ol’ Patriotism away. He can marry Ms. Jingoism or that flashy divorcee Ms. Fascism over there on his side of the tracks. We need to save Ms. Rights for the right sort of man.
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