Bush Legacy

America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

dlindorff — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:49:14 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of
your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose,
just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your
Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”

Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article
today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s
stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the
world’s major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the
CIA payroll.

Okay, the article was lacking much historical perspective (more on
that later), and the dead hand of top editors was evident in the overly
cautious tone (I loved the third paragraph, which stated that “The
financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence
agency and Mr. Karzai raises significant questions about America’s war
strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.” Well,
duh! It should be raising questions about why we are even in
Afghanistan, about who should be going to jail at the CIA, and about
how can the government explain this to the over 1000 soldiers and
Marines who have died supposedly helping to build a new Afghanistan).
But that said, the newspaper that helped cheerlead us into the
pointless and criminal Iraq invasion in 2003, and that prevented
journalist Risen from running his exposé of the Bush/Cheney
administration’s massive warrantless National Security Agency
electronic spying operation until after the 2004 presidential election,
this time gave a critically important story full timely play, and even,
appropriately, included a teaser in the same front-page story about
October being the most deadly month yet for the US in Afghanistan.

What the article didn’t mention at all is that there is a clear
historical pattern here. During the Vietnam War, the CIA, and its Air
America airline front-company, were neck deep in the Southeast Asian
heroin trade. At the time, it was Southeast Asia, not Afghanistan, that
was the leading producer and exporter of opium, mostly to the US, where
there was a resulting heroin epidemic.

A decade later, in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, as
the late investigative journalist Gary Webb so brilliantly documented
first in a series titled “Dark Alliance” in the San Jose Mercury
newspaper, and later in a book by that same name, the CIA was deeply
involved in the development of and smuggling of cocaine into the US,
which was soon engulfed in a crack cocaine epidemic—one that continues
to destroy African American and other poor communities across the
country. (The Times' role here was sordid—it and other leading papers, including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times—did
despicable hit pieces on Webb shamelessly trashing his work and his
career, and ultimately driving him to suicide, though his facts have
held up.) In this case, Webb showed that the Agency was actually using
the drugs as a way to fund arms, which it could use its own planes to
ferry down to the Contra forces it was backing to subvert the
Sandinista government in Nicaragua at a time Congress had barred the US
from supporting the Contras.

And now we have Afghanistan, once a sleepy backwater of the world
with little connection to drugs (the Taliban, before their overthrow by
US forces in 20001, had, according to the UN, virtually eliminated
opium production there), but now responsible for as much as 80 percent
of the world’s opium production—this at a time that the US effectively
finances and runs the place, with an occupying army that, together with
Afghan government forces that it controls, outnumbers the Taliban 12-1
according to a recent AP story.

The real story here is that where the US goes, the drug trade soon
follows, and the leading role in developing and nurturing that trade
appears to be played by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Your tax dollars at work.

The issue at this point should not be how many troops the US should
add to its total in Afghanistan. It shouldn’t even be over whether the
US should up the ante or scale back to a more limited goal of hunting
terrorists. It should be about how quickly the US can extricate its
forces from Afghanistan, how soon the Congress can start hearings into
corruption and drug pushing by the CIA, and how soon the Attorney
General's office will begin a grand jury probe into the CIA's drug
dealing.

Americans, who for years have supported a stupid, blundering and
ineffective “War on Drugs” in this country, and who mindlessly back
“zero-tolerance” policies towards drugs in schools and on the job,
should demand a “zero-tolerance” policy toward drugs and dealing with
drug pushers in government and foreign policy, including the CIA.

For years we have been fed the story that the Taliban are being
financed by their taxes on opium farmers. That may be partly true, but
recently we’ve been learning that it’s not the real story. Taliban
forces in Afghanistan, it turns out, have been heavily subsidized by
protection money paid to them by civilian aid organizations, including
even American government-funded aid programs, and even, reportedly, by
the military forces of some of America’s NATO allies (there is
currently a scandal in Italy concerning such payments by Italian
forces). But beyond that, the opium industry, far from being controlled
by the Taliban, has been, to a great extent, controlled by the very
warlords with which the US has allied itself, and, as the Times now reports, by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s own brother.

Karzai, we are also told by Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen, was a key
player in producing hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots for his
brother’s election theft earlier this year. Left unsaid is whether the
CIA might have played a role in that scam too. In a country where
finding printing presses is sure to be difficult, and where
transporting bales of counterfeit ballots is risky, you have to wonder
whether an agency like the CIA, which has ready access to printers and
to helicopters, might have had a hand in keeping its assets in control
in Kabul.

Sure that’s idle speculation on my part, but when you learn that
America’s spook agency has been keeping not just Karzai, but lots of
other unsavory Afghani warlords, on its payroll, such speculation is
only logical.

The real attitude of the CIA here was best illustrated by an
anonymous quote in the Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen piece, where a
“former CIA officer with experience in Afghanistan,” explaining the
agency’s backing of Karzai, said, “Virtually every significant Afghan
figure has had brushes with the drug trade. If you are looking for
Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

“The end justifies the means” is America’s foreign policy and military motto, clearly.

The Times article exposing the CIA link to Afghanistan’s
drug-kingpin presidential brother should be the last straw for
Americans. President Obama’s “necessary” war in Afghanistan is nothing
but a sick joke.

The opium, and resulting heroin, that is flooding into Europe and
America thanks to the CIA’s active support of the industry and its
owners in Afghanistan are doing far more grave damage to our societies
than any turbaned terrorists armed with suicide bomb vests could hope
to inflict.

The Afghanistan War has to be ended now.

Let the prosecution of America’s government drug pushers begin.
_______________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative reporter.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press,
2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

How ACORN Took Over the IL Republican Party

davidswanson — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:35:14 -0400

By David Swanson

While 50 ACORN members were in the Illinois Republican Party headquarters, the phone rang, and an ACORN member answered it "ACORN, Can I help you?"

On the other end, they said, "What, ACORN? Wait a minute, this is the Republican Party in D.C. calling the Republican Party in Illinois."

The ACORN member said, "ACORN has taken over the Republican Party in Illinois. Can I help you?"

The response: "Oh my God."

The winter of 2003 was a cold one and my third year working as communications coordinator at ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. One afternoon in January three elderly women out of a group of 50 protesters were arrested in Illinois Republican Party headquarters in Chicago where they had settled in with blankets and declared that they were spending the night.

Why would they do such a thing? Why reform Now, and not reform When It's Convenient?

These families, many without heat in their homes, were demanding that President Bush release money for energy assistance and not slash funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). At least the jail had heat. It doesn't take many days to freeze and die in an unheated home in Chicago.

Bush was scheduled to be speaking in Chicago the next day about how he would pretend to try to stimulate the economy without doing the only thing that might have worked, namely putting money in the hands of people who needed it. (We know how well his approach succeeded.) Bush believed that those who worked for a living should go on being taxed even if they had to freeze, but that money gained from investments in the stock market should not be taxed. He was willing to throw away $600 billion on people rich beyond comprehension, and to come to a city with crumbling schools and unheated homes to talk about it.

Mahaley Somerville, 81; Gwendolyn Stewart, 68; Beatrice Jackson, 53; and Virginia Goldman, a 27-year-old staff organizer, were arrested for trespassing at 32 W. Randolph, 17th floor, the offices of the Illinois and Cook County Republican Party when they went there to call on President Bush to rescind his proposed cuts in federal energy assistance.

"I'm 81 years old, and these old bones would be more comfortable in my own bed tonight," said Mahaley Somerville, longtime leader of the local ACORN chapter and organizer in Chicago's Westside Lawndale community. "But as long as there are other senior citizens living without heat tonight, we will not stop until the president hears us."

Because President Bush would be making his national speech on the economy in Chicago the next day, ACORN members called on him to add two things to his speech: Release $500 million in emergency energy assistance funds that were at his disposal; Fund the Low Income Home Energy Program (LIHEAP) at the same level as the previous year: $1.7 billion (instead of the $1.4 billion or less that Bush had threatened).

"It's too bad when the Republicans have to put senior citizens in jail and leave other seniors without heat," said Beatrice Jackson, president of Illinois ACORN. "But we won't stop until Bush understands that a leader should not let his people freeze."

More than 50 members of ACORN joined in the sit-in at Republican headquarters. The security guard in the lobby just watched as everyone trooped in, got in elevators, and headed to the 17th floor. The ACORN members went in, put down their blankets and pillows, and announced they were spending the night.

The leaders, Mrs. Somerville, Gwen Stewart and Bea Jackson, made statements. "We're willing to go to jail if that's what it takes to win heating assistance for seniors and children and families who are freezing," they said.

Doris Rodgers spoke. She was 81, had been without heat for two years, and still owed $2,400 on her bill, though she had been paying every month.

The police arrived and arrested three ACORN leaders and one staff organizer on charges of misdemeanor trespassing, but not before they took the place over and answered the phone as ACORN.

And not before the media filmed and recorded and transcribed. When Bush arrived in Chicago the next day, the only story all over the local news was that he was trying to freeze old ladies to death.

Some excellent organizations in Washington, D.C., had been working for many months to win higher funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). They had fact sheets, lobbyists, forums, and brochures. They made phone calls and churned out press statements. But none of them actually raised the funding, provided the heat, and saved lives. Old ladies with sleeping bags and a lot of courage did that. Following Bush's trip to Chicago, he released emergency funding, and Congress refused to slash regular funding as he had requested. Everything changed when ACORN members used direct action.

David Swanson was communications coordinator for ACORN from 2000 to 2003 and is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book

Is Andrew Sullivan King of America?

davidswanson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:23:09 -0400

By David Swanson

Of course, I'm going to argue no, that Andrew Sullivan is no more the king of America than is Barack Obama or George Tenet or Eric Holder or any of hundreds of other people claiming to be. But nobody other than the king or queen of the USA could overrule the Constitution and place particular people and categories of people above the law while keeping everybody else under it. Let's take a look at Sullivan's recent Atlantic article:

Americans want, and need, to move on from the debate over torture in Iraq and Afghanistan and close this tragic chapter in our nation’s history. Prosecuting those responsible could tear apart a country at war. Instead, the best way to confront the crimes of the past is for the man who authorized them to take full responsibility. An open letter to President George W. Bush.

By Andrew Sullivan

Dear President Bush,

Now, I, for one don't want to move on from talking about torture and murder and aggressive war and political prosecutions and illegal propaganda and death squads and stolen elections and warrantless spying, etc., I want to move on from the actual things themselves. Most of them are still around because they are not being prosecuted. Far from tearing apart a country, creating one in which we are all under the same set of laws would bring us together. And how exactly are we a nation at war? There is no war on our soil or threat to it. Most families have no members engaged in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The cost of the wars is being shoved off on our grandchildren. Just about the only sense in which our country is at war, other than the devastation being imposed on other countries and a relatively small number of US familes, is the consistent use of claims of war as a justification for domestic abuses. OK, maybe there's one other sense in which we are at war: Sullivan is experiencing the sort of delusional thinking that can follow battle. Bush take responsibility? Think about those words for a minute.

We have never met, and so I hope you will forgive the personal nature of this letter. I guess I should start by saying I supported your presidential campaign in 2000, as I did your father’s in 1988, and lauded your first efforts to wage war against jihadist terrorism in the wake of 9/11. Some of my praise of your leadership at the time actually makes me blush in retrospect, but your September 20, 2001, address to Congress really was one of the finest in modern times; your immediate grasp of the import of 9/11—a declaration of war—was correct; and your core judgment—that religious fanaticism allied with weapons of mass destruction represents a unique and new threat to the West—was and is dead-on. I remain proud of my support for you in all this. No one should forget the pure evil of September 11; no one should doubt the continued determination of an enemy prepared to slaughter thousands in cold blood in pursuit of heaven on Earth.

So, as of 2000, Sullivan had zero ability to judge political candidates and/or had never read Molly Ivins. Should this past record of deadly misjudgment commend his opinions to us now? As of 2001, Sullivan believed a crime constituted a war, and as of 2009, following the disaster created by that pretense, he still thinks the same thing. Following the slaughter of 1.3 million Iraqis, Sullivan still holds out as potential justification for abuses, the supposed existence of an enemy prepared to kill "thousands" of Americans. And Sullivan is -- through it all -- still proud of having supported Bush, or so deep in a deranged fantasy about winning Bush over that he's willing to tell him flattering lies.

Of course, like most advocates of the Iraq War, I grew dismayed at what I saw as the mistakes that followed: the failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora; the intelligence fiasco of Saddam’s nonexistent stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction; the failure to prepare for an insurgency in Iraq; the reckless disbandment of the Iraqi army; the painful slowness in adapting to drastically worsening conditions there in 2004–06; the negligence toward Afghanistan.

A coordinated campaign to deceive a nation about the grounds for war is an "intelligence fiasco"? Preparing for the resistance of the Iraqi people would have improved the supreme crime of aggressive war? Escalation in Afghanistan, too, would have improved that criminal and aggressive war? When Sullivan reads about mass murderers on the domestic scene, does he complain about their mistakes or their crimes? Think about exactly what Sullivan would like Bush to apologize for, and to the people of what country Sullivan wants such an apology addressed. Then ask yourself whether giving up the deterrence of major crimes in the future is a price worth paying for such an apology. Then remember that we are talking about a man who does not apologize and is as likely to apologize as Sullivan is to admit that the peace movement was and is right.

These were all serious errors; but they were of a kind often made in the chaos of war. And even your toughest critics concede that, eventually, you adjusted tactics and strategy. You took your time, but you evaded catastrophe in temporarily stabilizing Iraq. I also agree with the guiding principle of the war you proclaimed from the start: that expanding democracy and human rights is indispensable in the long-term fight against jihadism. And I believe, as you do, that a foreign policy that does not understand the universal yearning for individual freedom and dignity is not a recognizably American foreign policy.

My favorites among Bush's toughest critics have no use for this slimey defense. If what has been done to Iraq is not a catastrophe, what -- other than perhaps an embarassing TV appearance for Sullivan -- could be? Bush did not from the start claim to be expanding democracy. He pasted that over the missing WMDs and ties to 9-11. But it was hogwash, and the state of democracy and human rights in Iraq is no more secure than in the United States. Bush believes in basing foreign policy on freedom and dignity? Can Sullivan possibly mean for even Bush himself to believe that line? Should someone throw a shoe at Andrew? I'm not sure what else would snap him out of this.

Yet it is precisely because of that belief that I lost faith in your war. In long wars of ideas, moral integrity is essential to winning, and framing the moral contrast between the West and its enemies as starkly as possible is indispensable to victory, as it was in the Second World War and the Cold War.

What, pray tell, is moral about framing a moral contrast between "the West and its enemies" and who is this pair of clowns (Sullivan and Bush) to tell me who my enemies should be and what's wrong with their morality, and then to identify them with the peoples of entire continents?

But because of the way you chose to treat prisoners in American custody in wartime—a policy that degraded human beings with techniques typically deployed by brutal dictatorships—we lost this moral distinction early, and we have yet to regain it. That truth hangs over your legacy as a stain that has yet to be removed. As more facts emerge, the stain could darken further. You would like us to move on. So would the current president. But we cannot unless we find a way to address that stain, to confront and remove it.

Nothing could darken this stain further. Torture is a drop in a sea of blood created by aggressive war. But if we can perform the indescribable indecency of accepting that Sullivan simply won't address the crime of aggressive war (a crime that almost inevitably brings torture with it), then Sullivan is perfectly right in how he addresses torture -- or he would be if he were to include the significance of its illegality.

I have come to accept that it would be too damaging and polarizing to the American polity to launch legal prosecutions against you, and deeply unfair to solely prosecute those acting on your orders or in your name.

Damaging to the American polity? Establishing that a president can make laws by signing statements, executive orders, and secret memos strikes me as hugely damaging. Including among those laws the legalization of torture, aggressive war at a president's whim, and warrantless spying strikes me as devastating and, yes, polarizing. We have divided the nation into those who make the laws and live above them, and the rest of us who have no role in making the laws but live under them. Sullivan would not be the first pundit to take this position if what he means to say is that we should not prosecute high officials because the corporate media would take the opportunity to go completely insane. Frankly, I think that's a price worth paying, because we are going to pay it either way. If elected officials continue to take their orders from the corporate media, it will go insane just as surely as if its dominance is challenged. The same goes for the gangs of corporate pawns threatening racist violence at astroturfed media events; if they are what worries Sullivan he should stop and read some of his favorite hard-headed authors on the history of appeasement. But Sullivan (and Doug Feith for that matter) is exactly right that it makes no sense to prosecute Bush's subordinates for crimes he ordered without prosecuting him first.

President Obama’s decision thus far to avoid such prosecutions is a pragmatic and bipartisan one in a time of war, as is your principled refusal to criticize him publicly in his first months. But moving on without actually confronting or addressing the very grave evidence of systematic abuse and torture under your administration poses profound future dangers. It gives the impression that nothing immoral or illegal took place. Indeed, since leaving office, your own vice president has even bragged of these interrogation techniques; and many in your own party threaten to reinstate such policies in the future. Their extreme rhetoric seems likely to shape—to contaminate—history’s view of your presidency, indeed of the Bush name, and the world’s view of America. But my biggest fear is this: in the event of a future attack on the United States, another president will feel tempted, or even politically compelled, to resort to the same brutalizing policy, with the same polarizing, demoralizing, war-crippling results. I am writing you now because it is within your power—and only within your power—to prevent that from happening.

Again with the "time of war" every time a horrendous and unconstitutional abuse of power is justified. The president has no business deciding anything here. The attorney general has a duty to uphold the law. Obama has the same legal duty we all have not to obstruct justice. And such abuses are exactly as unconstitutional even when "bipartisan" and would be even if you could get 18 parties to support them. Sullivan is right to point to Cheney's bragging. Another word for it is confessing. And Bush has done the same. They have both admitted repeatedly on television to authorizing torture. Bush has signed executive orders and signing statements to the same effect. Cheney and John Yoo have both stated publicly that Bush was responsible. Sullivan's biggest fear is right on, but too theoretical. The wars and spying and rendition and lawless detention and unjustifiable secrecy and indeed torture are ongoing now. The current White House claims the power to torture if it chooses to now. This hypothetical stuff was OK eight months ago, but not any longer. The danger is more immediate and should be expressed as such. Obama is formalizing a system of indefinite preventive detention in a way that one administration alone could not have done. The same goes for the use of signing statements, orders, decrees, and secret memos.

Don’t misunderstand me. The war was compromised, not by occasional war crimes, or bad snap decisions by soldiers acting under extreme stress, or the usual, ghastly stuff that war is made of. All conflicts generate atrocities. Very few have been without sporadic abuse of prisoners or battlefield errors. As long as these lapses are investigated and punished, the integrity of a just war can be sustained.

But this war is different. It began with a memo from your office stating that—for the first time—American service members and CIA officers need not adhere to the laws of warfare that have governed Western and American war-making since before this country’s founding. The memo declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to captured terror suspects but that all prisoners would be treated humanely unless “military necessity” required otherwise. This gaping “military necessity” loophole—formally opposed in a memo by the member of your Cabinet with the most military experience, Secretary of State Colin Powell—was the beginning of America’s descent into the ranks of countries that systematically torture prisoners. You insisted that prisoners be treated humanely whenever possible, but wars with legal loopholes for abuse and torture always quickly degenerate. In its full consequences, that memo, even if issued in good faith, has done more damage to the reputation of the United States than anything since Vietnam. The tolerance of torture and abuse has recruited more terrorists than any al-Qaeda video, and has devastated morale and support at home. Your successor remains profoundly constrained even now by this legacy—compelled to prevent the release of more photographic evidence of war crimes under your command because of the damage it could still do to American soldiers in the field.

This is good as far as it goes, but this war was compromised in the way that a smaller and less horrific mass-murdering rampage could be "compromised" by other lesser crimes. And what compels Obama to withhold numerous photos, videos, memos, orders, reports, testimony, diaries, and other evidence is his willingness to spit on the Constitution, his desire to keep presidents above the rule of law (for obvious reasons), his fear of the corporate media, and his desire to please the permanent bureaucracy in Washington. If he wanted to protect soldiers he would bring them home.

No, terror suspects did not deserve full prisoner-of-war status. That argument was always a red herring. Full POW rights—regular meals, exercise, and the rest—were not applicable to stateless terror suspects who themselves had no uniform or adherence to Geneva. You were right to see that as inappropriate, if not offensive. But what these suspects did deserve—simply because they are human beings—was protection from inhuman, degrading, abusive treatment or the infliction of “severe mental or physical pain or suffering” in order to procure information. This is what Geneva’s Article 3 says: whatever the nature of the combatant, in or out of uniform, and whatever his own moral rules (or lack of them), he deserves basic respect as a human being with human rights. This principle is nonnegotiable. It is the core principle of Western civilization. Resistance to the physical force of government, especially as that force is applied to people in custody, is the core reason America exists as an independent nation.

No king, not King Bush and not King Sullivan, has the power to invent new categories of prisoners. Geneva does not apply only to people who themselves uphold it. And those not accorded the rights of prisoners of war must be accorded the rights of prisoners in peace. A third category of not-quite-as-human-but-still-fairly-human prisoners cannot be invented ad hoc by royalty if we are to operate under the rule of laws. Such a policy could be smart and sensible, but there would be nothing to prevent its mutating into something else. There is a reason we make laws, make those laws public, and hold each other to them. This is clearly lost on Sullivan who, despite now unavoidably knowing that most of the "terror suspects" imprisoned by the United States in these past several years have not been guilty of any terrorism, finds it possibly offensive to suggest that they should have had too many human rights -- even though those rights might have prevented years of imprisonment for innocent human beings.

I believe that if you review the facts of your two terms of office, you will be forced to realize that, whatever your intentions, you undermined this fundamental American principle. You may not have intended that to occur. But you were the commander in chief and president, and these were presidential-level decisions. The responsibility for all of this is yours—before the American people and before the court of history. And you need finally to own these decisions, to take full responsibility for them, to account for them, to explain them, and, yes, to apologize for their scope and brutality.

Exactly, and to turn yourself in at the nearest police station. The cops guarding your mansion in Dallas are very decent sorts. I'm sure they would be willing to keep the cuffs loose.

This was never about “bad apples.” It is no longer even faintly plausible to argue that the mounds of identical documented abuses across every theater of combat in the war as it was conducted after January 2002 were a function of a handful of reservists improvising sadism on one night shift in one prison. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the Senate Armed Services Committee, dozens of reputable well-sourced news stories and well-documented books, and the many official reports on the subject have revealed a systematic pattern of prisoner mistreatment in every theater of combat, by almost all branches of the armed services, and in every major detention facility in Iraq where interrogation took place. (Revealingly, there were very few abuses in what the Red Cross calls “regular internment facilities” in Iraq—meaning those where interrogation was not taking place.)

The Senate’s own unanimous bipartisan report, signed by your party’s 2008 nominee, John McCain, proves exhaustively that the abuse and torture documented in U.S. prisons were the results of policies you chose. The International Red Cross found your administration guilty of treating prisoners in a manner that constituted torture, a war crime. Experts in the history of torture, such as the Reed College professor Darius Rejali, make very careful distinctions between the disparate acts of torture or abuse that take place in all wars and a bureaucratized top-down policy, whereby identical techniques are replicated across the globe in different services and under different commands, with some on-the-ground improvisation as well. The history of prisoner mistreatment under your command fits the second pattern, not the first.

The techniques these various sources describe are not comic-book sadism; they are not the gruesome medieval tortures of Saddam. In fact, they are coolly modern tortures, designed to leave no physical marks that could be proffered as evidence against the regimes that use them. They have been used by democracies that want to get what they believe are the fruits of torture while avoiding all physical evidence of it. As the slogan in Iraq’s Camp Nama put it, “No blood, no foul.” But torture is not defined in law or morality by the production of blood or by any specific technique—that would simply invite governments to devise techniques other than those prohibited. Torture is defined by the imposition of “severe mental or physical pain or suffering” to the point when a human being can bear it no longer and tells his interrogators something—true or untrue—to stop what cannot be endured. That’s torture, in plain English. It was the clear goal of the policy you set in motion—and implemented with great determination across the world in ships and secret sites, at Guantánamo Bay and Bagram in Afghanistan, throughout interrogation centers in Iraq.

True enough. No investigation is needed. Sullivan can be spared that "trauma." The facts are sufficiently public for an easy conviction. What's needed is a quick prosecution and a lengthy jail sentence.

At the same time, though, you expressed what seemed to me to be genuine public revulsion at the techniques you authorized. On June 26, 2003, the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, you stated:

"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 and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy."

You did not parse torture narrowly here. You were opposed to it in “all its forms.” You also called for barring “other cruel and unusual punishment.” When four U.S. soldiers were captured early in the Iraq conflict, you stated:

I expect them to be treated, the POWs, I expect to be treated humanely, just like we’re treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.

In 2004, after the revelations of Abu Ghraib, you told al-Hurra, the U.S.-sponsored Arabic television station, “This is not America. America is a country of justice and law and freedom and treating people with respect.” You went on to say: “The people of Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent.”

Oh my goodness, you don't mean a politician could be . . . gasp . . . hypocritical?

Then how could you have authorized them? Maybe it was unclear to you at the time that most of the gruesome photographs from Abu Ghraib depicted techniques that you and your defense secretary authorized. This is an explanation in some ways, even if it is not an excuse. Photos can jar us into recognition of reality when words fail. Most of us hearing of “stress positions” or “long-time standing” or “harsh techniques” do not visualize what these actually are. They sound mild enough in the absence of further inquiry. Those photographs did us all a terrible favor in that respect: they removed any claim of deniability as to what these techniques mean. And yet you responded to Abu Ghraib by extending the techniques revealed there and codifying them in law, in the Military Commissions Act, for use by the CIA. Your administration ordered up memos in your second term to perpetuate these abuses. It is hard to escape the conclusion that you were dissembling in your initial claim of abhorrence and shock; or were in denial; or were not in control of your own administration.

It is important to note here that Bush had command responsibility and Constitutional responsibility regardless of failures to "control" his subordinates. He did not investigate or punish. He protected, concealed, and lied about what was happening.

I don’t believe you were lying. I believe you were genuinely horrified. But that means you now need to confront the denial that allowed you somehow to ignore what you directly authorized and commanded: using dogs to terrorize prisoners; stripping detainees naked and hooding them; isolating people in windowless cells for weeks and even months on end; freezing prisoners to near-death and reviving them and repeating the hypothermia; contorting prisoners into stress positions that create unbearable pain in the muscles and joints; cramming prisoners into upright coffins in painful positions with minimal air; near-drowning, on a waterboard, of human beings—in one case 183 times—even after they have cooperated with interrogators. Those Abu Ghraib prisoners standing on boxes, bent over with their cuffed hands tied behind them to prison bars? You authorized that. The prisoner being led around by Lynndie England on a leash, like a dog? You authorized that, too, and enforced it in at least one case, that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, in Guantánamo Bay.

Yes, Bush could have been horrified, although I doubt he was. But he most certainly was lying when he said the United States did not torture.

In defending these policies since you left office, you have insisted that all of these techniques were legal. But one of the key lawyers who provided your legal defense, John Yoo, is on record as saying that your inherent executive power allowed you to order the legal crushing of an innocent child’s testicles if you believed that it could get intelligence out of his father. Yoo also favored a definition of torture that allowed literally anything to be done to a helpless prisoner short of causing death or the permanent loss of a major organ. The Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture offer blanket legal bans on anything that even looks like torture. Yoo set up a mirror image: a blanket legal permission to do anything abusive to a prisoner, hedged only by the need not to kill him. If that is your defense of the legality of torture, it is a profoundly weak one.

But leave the question of legality aside. Skilled lawyers can argue anything. Examine the moral and ethical question. Could any moral person who saw the abuse of human beings at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Camp Nama, and uncounted black sites across the globe and at sea believe it was in compliance with America’s “respect” and “law and freedom”? As president, your job was not to delegate moral responsibility for these acts, but to take moral responsibility for them. You said a decade ago: “Once you put your hand on the Bible and swear in [to public office], you must set a high standard and be responsible for your own actions.”

The point of this letter, Mr. President, is to beg you to finally take responsibility for this stain on American honor and this burden on a war we must win. It is to plead with you to own what happened under your command, and to reject categorically the phony legalisms, criminal destruction of crucial evidence, and retrospective rationalizations used to pretend that none of this happened. It happened. You once said, “I’m worried about a culture that says … ‘If you’ve got a problem blame somebody else.’” I am asking you to stop blaming others for the consequences of decisions you made.

In other words, turn yourself in.

What are you responsible for, exactly? Books have been written on this.

Here's one.

Sullivan goes on to detail at length in passages I'm omitting, some of the torture Bush authorized. This is all very well written and someone should read it to the former president. At some point, however, a member of the Bush family is not going to be willing to trouble his pretty little mind with this. A prison cell would focus Dubya's concentration. Sullivan then concludes that there is no role in restoring our republic for its citizens or our representatives or our laws. Only the former dictator himself can set things right through his own benevolence:

Only you can do what’s needed. Only you can move this country forward by taking full responsibility for the past and supporting the current president in his abolition of torture and abuse and in his conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The decisions you made were complex; it may well be that you only subsequently grasped the full import of the actions you took in good faith; that you were misled about, or misunderstood, what “harsh interrogation” meant. All presidents are human, and taking responsibility does not mean self-flagellation.

And what happens when the next president disagrees with these two? What deters Sullivan's greatest fear of repetition of these crimes? The fear of having to say "sorry"? Should we apply that punishment to lesser crimes as well? Sullivan then goes on to suggest falsely, and contradicting his own evidence, that Bush can apologize without actually admitting guilt, since we can all pretend that this president did not know his subordinates were committing crimes.

The model is Ronald Reagan, who denied he had ever traded arms for hostages in Iran but eventually realized that that was indeed the consequence of the actions he took, the men he appointed, and the policy he pursued. Reagan’s speech to the nation on this matter was, in my view, his greatest, because it revealed humility and integrity. “First, let me say,” he told us in 1987,

"I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior … A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

If you read the Red Cross report and the Senate Armed Services Committee report, I believe you will reach a similar conclusion about your own record on prisoner treatment. You may not have intended to torture people, but you did; you may have wanted to protect the country within the law, but that admirable desire too easily slid into your approval of actions that are indefensible, illegal, and deeply damaging to America’s reputation and honor. You were let down, as Reagan was. He took responsibility. You need to as well.

Demanding that you alone be held accountable and no one else be scapegoated would itself be an act of honor.

Again, remember whom you are talking to!

It would draw a line between the past and the future in the same way that Lincoln’s defense of his brief suspensions of habeas corpus conceded Congress’s sole right to remove this core constitutional provision, but defended his action as a necessary emergency measure because a mass rebellion “had subverted the whole of the laws.” You do not deserve to go down in history as the president who brought torture into the American system and refused to take responsibility for it. It is also vital that torture not become a partisan issue, that any future terror attack not become an opportunity for your party to reinstitute it or wield it as a political weapon against future presidents who are following the rule of law. After the next attack, America will need unity—not a poisonous division over the issue of torture. You had that unity after 9/11. Your successors deserve the same support.

Sullivan continues in this line, asking someone he clearly considers above the law to apologize for having acted accordingly.

Who Has the Power of War?

davidswanson — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:26:39 -0400

"Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" has spent its first four days in publication ranked in the top 10 politics books on Amazon.com. You can keep it there and in the #1 spot by buying a copy for yourself, one for your congress member, two for your senators, and some for your local libraries: http://tr.im/xBt3

Two great websites plan to publish excerpts of the book. Voters for Peace will be posting an article adapted from a section of the book on the power of war. Watch for it: http://votersforpeace.us

And Alternet will have something else entirely: the power of Dick Cheney: http://www.alternet.org

In the meantime, here are two videos that are up and available for viewing right away:

David Swanson discusses the power of war and chapter 2 of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" on September 3, 2009, in Charlottesville, VA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bW0G53NiEc

David Swanson answers questions about the power of war and chapter 2 of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" on September 3, 2009, in Charlottesville, Va.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SI_T3LmoCI

And here's some audio to watch for. Last night I was on Air America for a full hour with superstar radio host Nicole Sandler. She usually posts the audio on her blog:
http://radioornot.blogspot.com

Also yesterday I was on the radio with Danny Schechter and Gareth Porter discussing Afghanistan. Danny will post the audio here:
http://schechter.progressiveradionetwork.org

This morning I recorded an interview that will be played today on KPFA in Los Angeles: http://kpfa.org

And today from 1 to 2 p.m. PT I'll be on another California radio station: KZYX & Z: http://www.kzyx.org

Oh, and please buy a copy for your local radio station :-)
http://tr.im/xBt3

Hurricane Dubya Four Years On

davidswanson — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:40:26 -0400

By David Swanson

Hurricane Katrina is not as sexy as torture, but has killed more people and ruined more lives, and -- like many non-natural disasters in recent years -- has a chief culprit who has now settled in at 10141 Daria Place, Dallas, Texas, where he clears very little brush and where -- to my knowledge -- not a single politician or journalist or author has sought his wisdom on the affairs of the past seven months. George W. Bush, who should face nonviolent protest every minute of his life while he remains at liberty, knowingly abandoned an American city and nearby towns to a predictable and predicted natural disaster four years ago this week, and for years refused to repair the damage.

Changing presidents has not dramatically improved the fate of New Orleans or of the world's changing climate, a chief cause of the storm. But we should not forget that George W. Bush refused to acknowledge the existence of global warming, hid evidence of it from the public, and took no serious action to reverse the trend. While more evidence of these abuses has emerged in recent months, I think we should also not forget that among the 35 articles of impeachment introduced two years ago by Congressman Dennis Kucinich were these:

Article XXXI
KATRINA: FAILURE TO PLAN FOR THE PREDICTED DISASTER OF HURRICANE KATRINA, FAILURE TO RESPOND TO A CIVIL EMERGENCY

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, failed to take sufficient action to protect life and property prior to and in the face of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, given decades of foreknowledge of the dangers of storms to New Orleans and specific forewarning in the days prior to the storm. The President failed to prepare for predictable and predicted disasters, failed to respond to an immediate need of which he was informed, and has subsequently failed to rebuild the section of our nation that was destroyed.

Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,282 people, with 2 million more displaced. 302,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged by the hurricane, 71% of these were low-income units. More than 500 sewage plants were destroyed, more than 170 point-source leakages of gasoline, oil, or natural gas, more than 2000 gas stations submerged, several chemical plants, 8 oil refineries, and a superfund site was submerged. 8 million gallons of oil were spilled. Toxic materials seeped into floodwaters and spread through much of the city and surrounding areas.

The predictable increased strength of hurricanes such as Katrina has been identified by scientists for years, and yet the Bush Administration has denied this science and restricted such information from official reports, publications, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency's website. Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, wrote in 2006 that "hurricane intensity has increased with oceanic surface temperatures over the past 30 years. The physics of hurricane intensity growth … has clarified and explained the thermodynamic basis for these observations. [Kerry] Emanuel has tested this relationship and presented convincing evidence."

FEMA's 2001 list of the top three most likely and most devastating disasters were a San Francisco earthquake, a terrorist attack on New York, and a Category 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans, with New Orleans being the number one item on that list. FEMA conducted a five-day hurricane simulation exercise in 2004, "Hurricane Pam," mimicking a Katrina-like event. This exercise combined the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies, resulting in the development of emergency response plans. The exercise demonstrated, among other things, that thousands of mainly indigent New Orleans residents would be unable to evacuate on their own. They would need substantial government assistance. These plans, however, were not implemented in part due to the President's slashing of funds for protection. In the year before Hurricane Katrina hit, the President continued to cut budgets and deny grants to the Gulf Coast. In June of 2004 the Army Corps of Engineers levee budget for New Orleans was cut, and it was cut again in June of 2005, this time by $71.2 million or a whopping 44% of the budget. As a result, ACE was forced to suspend any repair work on the levees. In 2004 FEMA denied a Louisiana disaster mitigation grant request.

The President was given multiple warnings that Hurricane Katrina had a high likelihood of causing serious damage to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. At 10 AM on Sunday 28 August 2005, the day before the storm hit, the National Weather Service published an alert titled "DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED." Printed in all capital letters, the alert stated that "MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. … POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS. … WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS."

The Homeland Security Department also briefed the President on the scenario, warning of levee breaches and severe flooding. According to the New York Times, "a Homeland Security Department report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, 'Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching.'" These warnings clearly contradict the statements made by President Bush immediately after the storm that such devastation could not have been predicted. On 1 September 2005 the President said "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

The President's response to Katrina via FEMA and DHS was criminally delayed, indifferent, and inept. The only FEMA employee posted in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Marty Bahamonde, emailed head of FEMA Michael Brown from his Blackberry device on August 31, 2005 regarding the conditions The email was urgent and detailed and indicated that "The situation is past critical…Estimates are many will die within hours." Brown's reply was emblematic of the administration's entire response to the catastrophe: "Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?" The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, did not declare an emergency, did not mobilize the federal resources, and seemed to not even know what was happening on the ground until reporters told him.

On Friday August 26, 2005, Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana and Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi followed suit the next day. Also on that Saturday, Governor Blanco asked the President to declare a Federal State of Emergency, and on 28 August 2005, the Sunday before the storm hit, Mayor Nagin declared a State of Emergency in New Orleans. This shows that the local authorities, responding to federal warnings, knew how bad the destruction was going to be and anticipated being overwhelmed. Failure to act under these circumstances demonstrates gross negligence.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

ARTICLE XXXII
MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, SYSTEMATICALLY UNDERMINING EFFORTS TO ADDRESS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE.

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, ignored the peril to life and property posed by global climate change, manipulated scientific information and mishandled protective policy, constituting nonfeasance and malfeasance in office, abuse of power, dereliction of duty, and deception of Congress and the American people.

President Bush knew the expected effects of climate change and the role of human activities in driving climate change. This knowledge preceded his first Presidential term.

1. During his 2000 Presidential campaign, he promised to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

2. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global body of hundreds of the world's foremost experts on climate change, concluded that "most of observed warming over last 50 years (is) likely due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities." The Third Assessment Report projected several effects of climate change such as continued "widespread retreat" of glaciers, an "increase threats to human health, particularly in lower income populations, predominantly within tropical/subtropical countries," and "water shortages."

3. The grave danger to national security posed by global climate change was recognized by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Planning Research Projects Agency in October of 2003. An agency-commissioned report "explores how such an abrupt climate change scenario could potentially de-stabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints such as: 1) Food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production 2) Decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions due to shifted precipitation patters, causing more frequent floods and droughts 3) Disrupted access to energy supplies due to extensive sea ice and storminess."

4. A December 2004 paper in Science reviewed 928 studies published in peer reviewed journals to determine the number providing evidence against the existence of a link between anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and climate change. "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

5. The November 2007 Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report showed that global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses have increased 70% between 1970 and 2004, and anthropogenic emissions are very likely the cause of global climate change. The report concluded that global climate change could cause the extinction of 20 to 30 percent of species in unique ecosystems such as the polar areas and biodiversity hotspots, increase extreme weather events especially in the developing world, and have adverse effects on food production and fresh water availability.

The President has done little to address this most serious of problems, thus constituting an abuse of power and criminal neglect. He has also actively endeavored to undermine efforts by the federal government, states, and other nations to take action on their own.

1. In March 2001, President Bush announced the U.S. would not be pursuing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, an international effort to reduce greenhouse gasses. The United States is the only industrialized nation that has failed to ratify the accord.

2. In March0f 2008, Representative Henry Waxman wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson: "In August 2003, the Bush Administration denied a petition to regulate CO2 emissions from motor vehicles by deciding that CO2 was not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. In April 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled that determination in Massachusetts v. EPA. The Supreme Court wrote that 'If EPA makes a finding of endangerment, the Clean Air Act requires the agency to regulate emissions of the deleterious pollutant from new motor vehicles.' The EPA then conducted an extensive investigation involving 60-70 staff who concluded that 'CO2 emissions endanger both human health and welfare.' These findings were submitted to the White House, after which work on the findings and the required regulations was halted."

3. A Memo to Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on May 19, 2008 stated "The record before the Committee shows: (1) the career staff at EPA unanimously supported granting California's petition (to be allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, consistent with California state law); (2) Stephen Johnson, the Administrator of EPA, also supported granting California's petition at least in part; and (3) Administrator Johnson reversed his position after communications with officials in the White House."

The President has suppressed the release of scientific information related to global climate change, an action which undermines Congress' ability to legislate and provide oversight, and which has thwarted efforts to prevent global climate change despite the serious threat that it poses.

1. In February, 2001, ExxonMobil wrote a memo to the White House outlining ways to influence the outcome of the Third Assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The memo opposed the reelection of Dr. Robert Watson as the IPCC Chair. The White House then supported an opposition candidate, who was subsequently elected to replace Dr. Watson.

2. The New York Times on January 29, 2006, reported that James Hansen, NASA's senior climate scientist was warned of "dire consequences" if he continued to speak out about global climate change and the need for reducing emissions of associated gasses. The Times also reported that: "At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone."

3. In December of 2007, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report based on 16 months of investigation and 27,000 pages of documentation. According to the summary: "The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming." The report described how the White House appointed former petroleum industry lobbyist Phil Cooney as head of the Council on Environmental Quality. The report states "There was a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change by editing climate change reports. CEQ Chief of Staff Phil Cooney and other CEQ officials made at least 294 edits to the Administration's Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties or to de-emphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming."

4. On April 23, 2008, Representative Henry Waxman wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L Johnson. In it he reported: "Almost 1,600 EPA scientists completed the Union of Concerned Scientists survey questionnaire. Over 22 percent of these scientists reported that 'selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome' occurred 'frequently' or 'occasionally' at EPA. Ninety-four EPA scientists reported being frequently or occasionally directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document. Nearly 200 EPA scientists said that they have frequently or occasionally been in situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings."

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" (Seven Stories Press, 2009). Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia and served as press secretary for Kucinich for President in 2004. Swanson is just beginning a book tour of 48 cities and hopes to see you on the road: http://davidswanson.org/book

Daybreak - Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by David Swanson. Book tour.

chammond — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:46:47 -0400

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009, 7:00 – 9:00 PM. Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. David Swanson in person will be in Columbus to discuss his new book to be published soon by Seven Stories Press. David is a co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org – see www.afterdowningstreet.org. A real champion of democracy in our times! More information on David Swanson, see www.davidswanson.org. David Swanson is also the author of the introduction to “The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush” published by Feral House and available at Amazon.com. Swanson holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a member of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice, and convener of the accountability and prosecution working group of United for Peace and Justice. This event is free and open to the public. Swanson’s new book will be available for purchase and signing by the author. This event is sponsored by the Columbus Free Press and the Progressive Peace Coalition. Location: Areopagitica Bookstore, 3510 N. High St., Columbus, Ohio. For more information, contact chammon@columbus,rr.com or http://www.davidswanson.org/book.

Is America a Sick Country or What?

dlindorff — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:19:32 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

You see, here's the thing. When you hear about the sick, twisted
things that America's torturers have been doing, courtesy of President
George W. Bush and Vice President Darth Cheney, you have to remember
that the US military and the CIA were not really all that reliable when
it came to picking up the real terrorists. In fact, their batting
average was pretty lousy.

According to even the Pentagon's own reckoning, for example,
probably 85% of the captives being held at Guantanamo over the past
eight years were not terrorists at all, and a fair number--probably the
majority--weren't even fighting anyone when they were captured. I'm
sure that the averages at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, or at the
secret prison in Iraq are no better. The military was offering bounties
in Iraq and Afghanistan for alleged terrorists, you see, and probably
still is, but in both of those lawless, tribal countries, many people
have used the offer to settle old feuds, turning in people they wanted
to punish or dispose of, and many others just turned in random people
to get the reward money.

Remember this when you hear about torture tactics that we are
learning were used by our side--things that make waterboarding sound
like a walk in the park. We're now getting confirmation of things that
we journalists were hearing rumors of earlier: faked executions using
blanks, faked executions in neighboring rooms, followed by threats of
the same to a person who had just heard the screams and a shot in the
cell next to him, threats with an electric drill, and now perhaps the
worst yet--the threat to kill a captive's children. And of course there
is the already disclosed case of a captive who had his genitals cut
with a razor, and generous use of tasers in places on the body designed
to cause maximum pain. That, and of course there are a lot raped
captives (including young boys), and a lot of bodies yet to be dug up
of captives who were simply killed during torture.

We've got a litany of horror and abuse here that sounds like the
worst kind of stories that used to come out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
or the Argentine Junta or Idi Amin's Uganda. About the only thing
missing is word that the military and CIA torturers were eating their
victims, or feeding them their own genitals, but who knows? Maybe we'll
get there yet. It's hard at this point to rule anything out.

What has become of the US? We started out the victims
of an attack in 2001, with the whole world rallying to our side, and
within a matter of weeks, our government, acting in our name, had
secretly embarked on a wholly unnecessary and totally criminal descent
into the barbarity of Middle Ages.

And now? The new administration has claimed to have put a stop to
the atrocities, but it remains adamant that it is not going to root out
the evil that was already done to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.

President Barack Obama says he does not want to look back at any
crimes that were committed. He wants to go "forward." This is not the
voice of justice, though. This is the voice of political gutlessness
and of big power exceptionalism. The same America that demands the
prosecution of war criminals in little countries like Cambodia or
Serbia or Sudan, considers itself exempt from criminal liability for
its own crimes.

Attorney General Eric Holder says he may be ready to appoint a
prosecutor to investigate cases where CIA or private contract torturers
"overstepped" the rules set by the White House and Justice Department,
but he has said he will not allow the investigation to go beyond that
to pursue the people who enabled those acts of torture--people like
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who personally instructed
torturers in Afghanistan to "take the gloves off" in one case, or
Assistant Attorney Generals John Yoo and Jay Baybee (now a federal
judge), who ruled that anything short of the destruction of bodily
organs or of a pain level equivalent to death was okay. Nor will he
allow any investigation to look at acts of torture that were
authorized, like waterboarding, if they had the sanction of the
Bush/Cheney White House.

This position taken by the new administration should sicken us all.
Worse, it should be broadly condemned, because if the descent into
barbarity which occurred with the highest White House sanction is not
investigated thoroughly, and punished fully, there is no way we can say
it will not happen again. In fact, it's safe to say that it will happen again,
the next time another charlatan gets into office and uses fear to blind
the American people to all that is right and decent, and to the
importance of maintaining the rule of law.

I know there are terrible things happening right now which demand
our attention and action--an escalating, endless war in Afghanistan
that increasingly resembles Vietnam in 1966 or 1967, a presidential
cave-on on health care reform, a sell-out on real action against
climate change, and on and on--but this particular crime--the crime of
failing to act to punish violations of the Geneva Conventions on
treatment of prisoners of war, which is being committed today by the
Obama administration--is so obscene, so directly in our faces, and is
such a stain on the whole nation, that it demands action.

We will probably never know how many innocent lives have been
destroyed by America's eight years of officially sanctioned torture,
but we can at least see to it that the people who sanctioned it, and
not just those who engaged in it (and that goes right up through the
chain of command to the Commander in Chief and to the real power behind
the throne, Dick Cheney), are put in the dock like the criminals at
Nuremberg, to face the charge of war crimes. and crimes against
humanity.

As the citizens of what we call a democracy, we can demand nothing less.
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadeelphia-area journalist. His latest
book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Dark Days But a Ray of Hope for Embattled Workers

dlindorff — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:29:33 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The Democrats in Congress have sold out their supporters in the
labor movement by giving up the so-called “card-check” feature of the
embattled Employee Free Choice Act, which makes the “reform”
legislation that has been billed as labor’s “number one issue” much
less of a reform. Instead of being hammered into line on this issue by
party leaders and by President Obama, who has long pledged to back
EFCA, conservative Democrats in the House and Senate were allowed to
join Republicans in opposing the measure, leading to its replacement
with a vague plan to require quicker secret-ballot elections in
union-organizing drives.

But largely unnoticed by the corporate media, there has been some
really important good news for working people and the labor movement:
the appointment of three people to fill the long-vacant empty seats on
the five-member National Labor Relations Board, which has the ultimate
job of adjudicating issues under the National Labor Relations Act.

The Bush administration had basically gutted the NLRA by simply
failing, since 2007, to fill the three seats that had been emptied as
prior board members’ five-year terms had expired. This had left the
NLRB with only two members, one a Democratic, pro-labor appointee, and
one a Republican pro-management appointee. Since these two members
would vote on opposite sides of most issues, the only issues they ended
up issuing decisions on were 400 particularly egregious cases, where
they could both agree—and most of those are still in legal limbo since
they have been challenged in court on the basis that board rules
require a three-member quorum.

The Obama administration, in April, announced three new
appointments to fill the vacant seats...

For the rest of this story, please go to:
www.thiscantbehappening.net
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

In Retrospect: Who is Really Un-American??

RDillon — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:00:05 -0400

Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.

You know, one thing I get so sick of hearing from all the right-wing loons is how Progressives like myself and many of you are un-American. We have our patriotism questioned on a daily basis. Right-Wing idiots on the radio rail about how we do not believe in the Constitution and the values this country was founded on. Well, details that have emerged in the last couple of days show that the Bush Administration and their shameless enablers in the Republican Party and the former Republican Congress are the ones who really do not believe in the Constitution, or the freedoms granted by it.

Despite all the accusations against Progressives and our ideals and candidates the sad truth of the matter is that Conservatives by blindly following the worst President in American history did more to shred the Constitution and the protections contained therein than any Democrat or Progressive would have ever dreamed.

Now, most Progressives were dead-set against granting such an ideologue, and reckless irresponsible man such as George W. Bush with unprecedented powers not granted him by our Constitution because of his own incompetence in stopping the terrorist attacks on 9-11. We had serious problems with rolling back generations of Constitutional protections for anyone. For that, our patriotism was questioned and we were branded as cowards, or worse yet traitors.

Details now not only should scare all Americans half to death but show that Progressives who opposed Bush, Cheney and all their enablers within our government were not only patriotic in their actions, but were dead-on right about the Republican shredding of the Constitution through their own failures and propoganda.

A team of Inspectors General has determined that the true unpatriotic and un-American actions came from the Republican side of the aisle and were much more widespread than we had feared:

WASHINGTON – Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.

The Bush White House pulled in a great quantity of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, the IGs reported. They questioned the legal basis for the effort but shielded almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.

The report, mandated by Congress last year and delivered to lawmakers Friday, also says it's unclear how much valuable intelligence the program has yielded.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090711/ap_on_go_co/us_domestic_surveillance

These Inspectors General found not only that the Bush Administration was spying on an unprecedented level, but that these programs were not sufficiently monitored and leads generated had nothing to do with terrorism:

The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be "carefully monitored."

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the "President's Surveillance Program" did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the "mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile."

Now, I do not know what FBI agents found this activity "worthwhile" but they should immediately be dismissed. Just like the failed Bush Administration they seem to think that shredding the Constitution is all right as long as it may make their jobs a little easier. I thought their job was to protect the Constitution, not shred it.

Even scarier is that it appears that only one person got to determine who could know about programs that desperately needed oversight by elected officials and of course, the Bush Administration did not admit to most of the spying they did:

The IG report said that Bush signed off on both the warrantless wiretapping and other top-secret operations shortly after Sept. 11 in a single presidential authorization. All the programs were periodically reauthorized, but except for the acknowledged wiretapping, they "remain highly classified."

Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a terse reference to other classified programs in an August 2007 letter to Congress. But Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said that when she had asked Gonzales two years earlier if the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities, he denied it.

Despite the claims of the Bush Administration it appears that these programs had little to do with counter-terrorism:

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden — the primary architect of the program — told the report's authors that the surveillance was "extremely valuable" in preventing further al-Qaida attacks. Hayden said the operations amounted to an "early warning system" allowing top officials to make critical judgments and carefully allocate national security resources to counter threats.

Information gathered by the secret program played a limited role in the FBI's overall counterterrorism efforts, according to the report. Very few CIA analysts even knew about the program and therefore were unable to fully exploit it in their counterterrorism work, the report said.

This report also shows that the Bush Administration ignored the illegal nature of these programs by interpreting the law how they wanted it to be, not how it was written:

The report questioned the legal advice used by Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo, in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The Justice Department withdrew the memos years ago.

The report says Yoo's analysis approving the program ignored a law designed to restrict the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime, and did so without fully notifying Congress. And it said flaws in Yoo's memos later presented "a serious impediment" to recertifying the program.

Yoo insisted that the president's wiretapping program had only to comply with Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure — but the report said Yoo ignored the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which had previously overseen federal national security surveillance.

But to me, the most disturbing part is that although Democrats in the House seem to want to bring more oversight to these operations the White House seems determined to keep them going without oversight:

In the wake of the new report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, renewed his call Friday for a formal nonpartisan inquiry into the government's information-gathering programs.

House Democrats are pressing for legislation that would expand congressional access to secret intelligence briefings, but the White House has threatened to veto it.

Now, we all know that the Bush Administration will be remembered as a dark stain on freedom and American history. We all know they saw the Constitution as toilet paper, and nothing that should have stopped them from doing whatever the hell they wanted to do. What is quite perplexing to me is why our current administration would see fit to veto a bill that would give the Congress oversight over these programs.

Unlike the Republicans, we simply cannot fall behind a leader of our party blindly and follow him like sheeple no matter what is done. We need Congressional oversight over these programs no matter whether Republicans or Democrats are in the White House. I for one want no part in the shredding of our Constitution and the robbing of American freedoms. That is Republican territory.

What we desperately need is for the Congress to enact legislation that allows our elected Representatives to provide oversight over these programs which the Republicans were all to eager to just trust their failed "god-king" on. Every Administration is subject to the protections of the Constitution no matter what letter is behind their names.

The Obama Administration would do well to bear this in mind:

Although the report documents Bush administration policies, its fallout could be a problem for the Obama administration if it inherited any or all of the still-classified operations.

We simply cannot afford to inherit facism and not end it.

CIA’s Lies About Secret Program Should Have Congress In Open Revolt

dlindorff — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:04:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they
were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had
lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from
9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed
secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a
state of rebellion, demanding answers.

After all, the CIA is required by law to report to at least the
majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees and to the majority and minority leaders of both houses of
Congress about such things.

But not only did the spy agency not report on what it was up to; it lied about what it was up to.

Now, given what we do know about the Bush/Cheney
administration—that it initiated a massive campaign of spying on
Americans by the Defense Department, the FBI, and the National Security
Agency, as well as other intelligence agencies, that it initiated a
campaign of torture of captives, including American citizens, while
asserting that the President didn’t even need to notify the courts or
the public about the arrest, detention, torture or even execution of an
American citizen if he, acting on his own, deemed that person to be an
“enemy combatant,” and given that we also know that Bush and Cheney
lied repeatedly about the justification for their invasion of Iraq, and
refused to be put under oath in their “interviews” by the 9-11
Commission, you would think the members of Congress, which was
railroaded into supporting everything from the USA PATRIOT Act to the
Iraq War invasion based on all these lies and deceptions, would be
demanding answers regarding this mysterious program.

For the rest of this story, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net