Silent Lucidity

Who’s Counting Bush’s Mistakes? By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real (February 19, 2006)

I’ll add to that…

9/11: Presidential Daily Briefing warns of impending attack; Bush sits and reads “My Pet Goat” in a school room in Florida as attacks are happening; unprepared, and unable to act. 2976 killed on Bush’s watch. 19 hijackers, 15 are Saudis (none are Iraqi or Afghani), 7 are still alive and well in their own countries. I know, that makes no sense, but that’s the truth. The Taliban denounced the attack and claimed that it was not connected to Osama bin Laden, the Muslim leader living in Afghanistan whom the U.S. government declared the prime suspect. Virtually all world leaders, including traditional rivals or enemies of the United States, denounced the attacks and expressed sympathy for the American people. In addition to the Taliban, this included Libyan president Moammar Qadhafi, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, and Cuban president Fidel Castro. An exception was Saddam Hussein, then ruler of Iraq, who called the attacks the fruits of U.S. crimes against humanity. We still don’t know -with certainty- Who is responsible for the attack, but even Bush admitted it wasn’t Saddam Hussein.

Bin Laden: Bin Laden initially denied responsibility for 9/11; in two 2001 statements he says : “I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation… I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States… I had no knowledge of these attacks…”. Bin Laden calls his own group “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders” and, without the Islamic credentials to do so, issued a fatwa against Americans in 1998. While common usage of the name “al-Qaeda” dates from much earlier, 2001 saw the first formal use of the name for the grouping of Jihadists when the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence using anti-Mafia (RICO) laws that required the existence of a named criminal organization. In later tapes, purportedly with bin Laden in them, he allegedly has admitted ties to al-Qaeda and involvement in the early planning stages of the attack. We don’t, however, know if the tapes are authentic (could be our own blackops), or whether bin Laden is simply using the publicity surrounding the al-Qaeda name to sustain his own leadership claims. Bin Laden is still at-large.

Bin Laden also had links to BCCI bank per Senator John Kerry at a Senate Finance Commitee (SFC) hearing on September 26, 2001. Oddly enough, the archive of the September 2001 hearings of the Senate Finance Committee is mysteriously missing from the SFC archives. Fortunately, CNN-Europe still has in it’s archives the story to corroborate Kerry’s assertion. Also note the BCCI connection to Kissinger Associates, Brent Scowcroft, State of Florida, et.al.

Also see: BBC’s The Power of Nightmares (free at GoogleVideo).

Anthrax Attacks (Sept-Oct 2001): 22 people infected, 5 killed. Authorities speculate it originated within the U.S. and that the Anthrax spores may have come from a USArmy lab; Some suggest ties to the Israeli intelligence service; Investigation is currently at a standstill – Cold case; Perpetrator(s) unknown and still at-large.

Afghanistan (Oct 2001 to present): Attack on Afghanistan, whose government harboured bin Laden’s organization, as a response to 9/11; 276 US killed, 685 US wounded, 65 coalition forces killed, ~1000-50000 (uncounted) Afghani killed. Detainees held in Afghanistan by US troops have been tortured and humiliated in the same way as those in Iraq, and elsewhere.

“The occupation of Afghanistan served only to turn the Taliban from opponents to supporters of the opium trade. Opium constitutes over a third of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product and virtually all its recordable exports. [. . .] Everyone is involved in the business, from warlords to the resurgent Taliban to members of Hamid Karzai’s government. Since the US and Britain seized the country in 2001, 87% of world trade in opium is ascribed to Afghanistan, mostly consumed by western economies. [. . .] When the Taliban were in charge things were different. The regime stopped virtually all poppy cultivation in 2001, a fact verified by UN monitors. [. . .] Afghanistan’s economy is now wholly reliant on opium as a result of the west’s ending of Taliban crop suppression and refusal to curb consumption. The policy was deliberate.” [Source]

Iraq: No ties to bin Laden or al-Qaeda, in fact, the organizations doing terrorism around the world were enemies of Saddam Hussein (he was a secular leader, not a theocrat). The Bush administration “fixed” (meaning ‘rigged’) Iraq intelligence to conform with Bush policies (see: After Downing Street). U.S. has spent ~$300 billion so far pursuing this war, and that figure climbs by $6 billion each month; 2276 US killed (53 were female), 16653 US wounded, 204 coalition forces killed, estimated ~180000 Iraqi killed, ~81 journalists killed, ~310 civilian contractors killed. Abu Ghraib torture and deaths, Gitmo, other prisons (known and secret); extraordinary renditions; indefinite detentions without legal charges or due process. Depleted uranium munitions destroying the environment and the future health of residents, both animal and human. No WMD were ever found in Iraq. Archaeological treasures from the Cradle of Civilization – looted and destroyed.

The Iraqi people, who had nothing to do with 9/11, suffered under Hussein’s police state, then US / UN sanctions, and now a primarily US-led occupation. They have no jobs, food, power, and clean water is spotty at best, and there are shortages of gasoline in a country with the second largest oil field reserves in the world. Iraq now produces less oil than it did under Saddam Hussein. Is it any wonder these people are pissed off? I’ve seen poll figures that state 70-80% of all Iraqis want the U.S. to leave their country, this is why they elected theocrats to their government.

In Iraq, the U.S. fights an enemy it hardly knows. Its descriptions have relied on gross approximations and crude categories (Saddamists, Islamo-fascists, insurgents, al-Qaeda, and the like) that bear only passing resemblance to reality. The U.S. is fighting an extremist jihad as well. Private contractors, many of whom were the ones in charge of interrogation and torture, are paid many times more than what military members are paid, and are under no legal jurisdiction in their ventures overseas. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has taken to supplying the insurgency in Iraq with suicide bombers and volunteer mujahideen.

Iran: The administration not only jinxed its Afghanistan operations by attacking Iraq (and threatening to attack Syria), but also provided Iran both the rationale for and time to move toward nuclear weapons. Both China and Russia are, even now, sidling up to Iran, as are Islamic factions within Iraq and Palestine. Last August, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, allegedly a Holocaust denier, was elected Iran’s President, although his militant speeches are not much different from those of Hamas in Palestine, in that, he does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state.

Palestine: Much to the surprise of the U.S. and other western nations, Hamas, an Islamic party and a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, won the Palestinian election in Jan 2006. Hamas does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state. Hamas’ popularity stems in part from its welfare and social services to Palestinians in the occupied territories, including school and hospital construction. The failure to see this outcome was another example of the dangerous ignorance of Mideast politics, culture, and history by the Bush administration. Furthermore, a decision by Russia to sell arms to the Palestinian Authority may be made after negotiations with Hamas leaders in Moscow next month. Ignoring dissenting views has its consequences.

North Korea: U.S. bases in South Korea for more than 50 years; tensions on the Korean Peninsula are rising and North Korea cannot help but strengthen its military deterrent force. Russia appears to be intervening in this one as well. North Korea now poses a greater nuclear danger to South Korea, Japan, and international security than in 2002 when Bush described Pyongyang as part of an “axis of evil.” We have no guarantees that North Korea will not export nuclear material or even finished nuclear weapons.

Emergency Management: Hurricane Katrina Response = Total ClusterFuck. Funds squandered — $850 million — and counting; baffling failures (.pdf) by the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, and the Bush administration. Survivors still homeless 6 months later. Surviving a natural disaster, or one created by a terrorist attack, requires planning and preparedness. This administration is still unprepared for such disasters.

Fiscal Management: Clinton surplus becomes record deficit. Republicans doubled our national debt to $8.2 trillion… and we have nothing to show for it but an additional 5.4 million Americans fallen below the poverty line, and higher gas and heating oil prices threaten the very existence of the poorest of the poor, many of whom work 2 or 3 jobs to try to make ends meet.

Medicare Drug Program: $50 billion white elephant; According to a January report by the progressive think tank Center for Economic Policy Research, the program’s cost to state and federal taxpayers is estimated at $776 billion for the next eight years — and Medicare is prohibited from negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry for lower drug prices. Under the old Medicaid drug program, the pharmaceutical industry typically guaranteed a 15% reduction in drug costs, which is no longer happening. Bottom line: this Bush plan is a bad deal for patients and taxpayers.

Social Programs: 45 million people with no healthcare; gutting of social programs; global gag rule – No U.S. assistance to any international family planning or health organization that ever even mentions abortion; Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line, yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two.

The Military: AWOL Bush and 5-deferment Cheney continue to send Americans into a quagmire with no exit strategy, and plans for more quagmires to follow; Stop-Loss keeps them obligated past the terms of their enlistment contracts; recalls to active service of older veterans, sometimes long past their terms of obligation.

Swiftboating presidential candidate John F. Kerry, slandering McCain, Murtha, Cleland; questioning who had ‘earned’ a medal (especially loathsome when done by those who never served); refusing to speak to a dead soldier’s mother and allowing her to sit in a Texas ditch in the heat. Mocking Purple Heart veterans with purple thumbs and bandaids. Bringing home deceased from the war under cover of darkness. Denying casualty count if veterans die outside of Iraq or Afghanistan (for example, in military hospitals in Germany). Running U.S. military forces into the ground, then proposing to: cut the Reserve, cut Veterans’ benefits, cut VA funding, tack on $250 veterans’ medical co-pay. Lack of body / vehicle armor.

Many military members and their families still live in substandard housing on military bases around the world; some are forced to collect welfare just to make ends meet. There should be no homeless veterans, but the shame of the matter is, there are. Bush still has not attended even one military funeral, but John F. Kerry has.

The Environment: Almost every civilized nation signed the Kyoto Protocol, except the U.S.; environmental problems are being met with ignorance, denial, and shoddy research substituting as science; failure to warn emergency workers in NYC on 9/11 and in New Orleans in 2005 of environmental dangers; failure to recognize the reality of global warming, nor to take actions to mitigate the effects; oil and natural gas drilling proposed in environmentally fragile areas in Alaska and the Rockies; strip mining in the Cumberland Mountains; synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides on our lawns, in our parks, and in the watershed. Our oceans are dying; the coral beds are only the first symptom, but once the oceans are dead, so are we. The polar caps are melting at faster rates than anyone ever thought they would, opening up the Arctic ocean to resource exploitation, international border disputes, environmental damage, etc. Washington is governed by a bipartisan consensus that somehow the laws of physics and chemistry don’t apply to us.

Trade: The commerce department reported recently that the overall trade gap climbed to an all-time high of $725.8 billion last year. The deficit was up 17.5% from ‘04, marking the fourth straight record. The trade deficits have contributed to the loss of nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since mid-’00 as U.S. companies moved production overseas to lower-waged nations. Many economists believe those manufacturing jobs will never come back. Corporate outsourcing is contributing to this problem. The $201.6 billion trade deficit with China was the highest in history ever recorded with any country.

Energy: Cut funds for alternate energy while scolding Americans for being addicted to oil (Bush and his cronies have made their fortunes on oil – remember pic of Bush holding hands with Saudi Prince Bandar); Cheney’s secret energy meetings with Big Oil onboard and refusal to release documents relating to these meetings. If nuclear energy is as safe and clean as Bush says it is, why does the United States have so much trouble safely disposing of its nuclear waste, much less telling the truth about the proposed nuclear waste storage sites?

The People: Systemic vote fraud, intimidation at polling places, purged voter rolls; Americans cling to an idealized image of our political integrity, but a look at how we run our elections tells a very different tale.

The CIA has spent the last seven years covertly sifting through millions of pages of decades-old public archives (meaning, we The People own them) and removing documents that the agency deems sensitive or embarrassing.

Torture, indefinite detention, broad-sweep illegal wiretapping and interception of communications; dissenters screened from presidential rallies and other events; free speech zones; surveillance of antiwar groups; surveillance of GLBT groups. The Justice Department is conducting an internal investigation into the illegal spying, but this is the same Justice Department, run by Alberto Gonzales, that has justified torture, approved the indefinite imprisonment of people around the world, approved extraordinary rendition of ghost prisoners, approved the illegal spying in the first place, and defended it all along. Forgive me if I’m not placated nor optimistic that anything will be done to stop it.

Unconstitutional bribes / kickbacks to various Christian churches in the Faith-Based Initiatives. The rules seem simple: the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution charges the government with guaranteeing religious freedom while prohibiting it from advancing the interests of any one church or faith. Your mission, should you decide to accept it: Find a list of funding recipients (churches or organizations) online since the inception of the program in 2001. Note that if you find this list, there is only one major faith represented. Guess which faith that is.

The Corporate establishment owns both major political parties, as well as the voting machines and the traditional media outlets (many people fail to recognize that the REAL battle is between the People and the Corporations for control of our government; it is not Republican v. Democrat). 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population – the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit’s streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown. Most have jobs, some have two or three, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening.

George Bush wants to let Dubai World Ports [a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, a nation linked to the 9/11 hijackers] take control of 6 of the largest ports in the U.S.: New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. Shipping ports are already the most vulnerable part of national security, since 95% of imported goods come by ship. Yet only 5% of cargo containers – which could easily hide WMD’s – are physically inspected. Mind you, Chinese companies control some of our other important ports, so the question begs to be asked, ‘Why aren’t these ports under control by American companies?’ Do we simply not have the expertise to run our own ports?

Bush consolidates power for himself and his cronies while seeding fear of dissent (through systematically labelling dissenters as unpatriotic or friendly to our nation’s enemies) as civil liberties and constitutional protections are dismantled via the NSA, Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the DIA, the DEA, and other policing agencies. Freedoms we should strenuously preserve have been systematically dismantled by this government, leaving us at the mercy of future tyrants.

“The public-relations gloss that has long wrapped the Bush administration is fast becoming a blemish on the White House, according to lawmakers who have uncovered some $1.6 billion in federal funds spent on promoting various administration-sponsored programs.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’s research and auditing body, tracks more than 340 contracts negotiated between several government departments and PR, advertising and media firms from 2003 through the first part of 2005.

The study, requested by the House of Representatives Democratic leadership, found that from 2003 to mid-2005, the administration racked up some $1.4 billion in contracts with advertising agencies to broadcast positive messages about its policies and initiatives. Another $200 million went to public-relations companies, and $15 million were spent building connections with media outlets. Individual members of the press received a total of $100,000 in promotional contracts.” [Source]

What a shame that money wasn’t spent on relieving poverty in the United States. Bush is more concerned with maintaining tax cuts for the already-wealthy. How compassionate and conservative of him… not.

War on Drugs: If we live in a fundamentally free society, how does confining a drug offender to 17 years in prison jibe with America’s values of equality and liberty? A marijuana grower can get life in prison without parole, while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this. A good case can be made that marijuana prohibition costs too much — in money, but also in ruined lives and harm done to society. At any one time, 59,300 prisoners charged with or convicted of violating marijuana laws (3.3% of the total incarcerated population) are behind bars, at a total cost to taxpayers of some $1.2 billion per year. We cannot address poverty and race in America, nor can we talk about needless death and expense, without addressing the failed drug war.

Our current anti-drug tactics are underminding government stabilization, the war on terrorism, and even the anti-drug tactics themselves. Billions of dollars spent, tens of thousands incarcerated, and marijuana is still as popular as ever.

‘Coca-Cola, the globally recognized soft drink manufacturer, buys 115 tonnes of coca leaf from Peru and 105 tonnes from Bolivia per year, with which it produces, without alkaloids, 500 million bottles of soda per day.’ [Source]

Human Rights: What human rights? The U.S. has already negated just about every commonly agreed to measure of what constitutes “human rights” in it’s “war on terrorism.” America (and the UK), Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, uses the same arguments as the government of PW Botha to detain prisoners without trial; no habeas corpus, no due process. There is a White House civil liberties panel that has never actually met or done anything, despite an act of Congress passed over a year ago.

In the beginning, the Bush Administration claimed the ‘detainees’ were the “the worst of the worst.” But we still don’t know who they all are. We know from released detainees and FBI personnel, from military memoranda and orders issued, that the Bush Administration, having cast aside the Geneva Convention, also dismissed the Convention against Torture, the U.S. Army interrogation manual and the longstanding U.S. military tradition against using torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment against its prisoners. We know because we’ve seen the photographs. We also know that this style of treatment migrated from the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights.

In 2005, the United States executed the 1000th person since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. More than 120 people have been released from death row since 1976 due to evidence of their innocence. The United States ranks only behind China, Iran, and Vietnam in the number of executions on an annual basis — countries responsible for other serious human rights violations condemned by the U.S. State Department. Arbitrariness, unfairness, and economic and racial bias continue to plague the death penalty, highlighting the necessity of its abolition.

Science: Killed stem cell research and lied about it; Intelligent Design, a faith-based curriculum that is best taught in churches, not publicly funded schools, is an assault on science and the scientific method; measures to suppress, intimidate, and distort science, scientists, scientific results; denial of global warming; denial of peak oil. Bush’s proposed budget for NASA and his plans for moon and Mars explorations force NASA to make troubling cuts in aeronautics, earth science, and other science programs; it’s just another big, under-funded hardware program that winds up costing more, doing less and cannibalizing other important scientific research.

And, yes, I dare say that Mr. Kerry (or even Mr. Gore) would have handled things with more competence and that he possesses more experience in shutting down political and corporate corruption. Again, I hold those who voted for Bush responsible for this litany of “mistakes” “maneuvers” or “intentions.” Only a fool wants never to learn from his mistakes. Fix it.

by Aine MacDermot

I am shocked by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and I am awed by our government’s lack of immediate response to the disaster. New Orleans is no distraction for George Bush — it’s the summation of his failures and bankrupt ideology. Hurricane Katrina laid bare the ugly truths about race and poverty in the United States, a pretty extreme illustration of what it means to be poor in this country and how very little the wealthy elite care. Millions of people who were victimized by this disaster simply didn’t have the material resources to flee, nor anywhere to go. With little information, guidance or resources, the displaced now leave on buses to equally unprepared areas throughout Louisiana, Texas, and other points around America. Some were on buses for 12 hours, only to arrive at the Astrodome to be turned away.

New York Times columnist David Brooks:

“Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years — this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.

We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of scandals that soured the public mood. You’ve seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.”

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” Bush told Diane Sawyer.

What the hell was Bill Clinton thinking Friday morning, standing there next to Bush and providing verbal cover for the administration’s ludicrous claims that the problems plaguing New Orleans were unforeseeable? That’s a lie, a damnable lie. In 2004, FEMA officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. In 2004, National Geographic covered just such a possible scenario in its October issue. PBS even broadcast a documentary that clearly spelled out that a hit by this type of hurricane could put New Orleans under water or destroy it forever.

Despite the years of warnings given by Senator Mary L. Landrieu and others about the possibility of disaster in New Orleans and all along the Gulf Coast, federal spending was continuously cut and threats of this destruction were ignored. Once again the administration claims nobody could’ve known, once again it’s lies.

The failure we are now witnessing is unforgivable. Sadly, after a generation or more of shredding our social safety net and slighting domestic public investment, this is America in 2005. The storm was not preventable, but the death and suffering were. This time, there was all the warning in the world. You have to wonder: If Homeland Security was so ill prepared for a natural disaster that everyone knew was coming, how is it equipped to handle a terrorist attack or a nuclear accident that we won’t know about in advance?

Republican leadership’s reaction to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina? You guessed it, they’re concerned with pushing through more tax cuts for the wealthy, even though their first tax cuts have done absolutely nothing to create more jobs for the poorest of Americans. They are concerned with repealing what they call the “death tax” (aka estate tax) which only affects the wealthiest Americans who otherwise protect their wealth in a myriad of tax shelters and tax loopholes. They’re concerned with cutting back even further into the safety-net programs, such as Medicaid and anti-poverty programs for our sick, poor, and elderly Americans. These are the programs that are the most needed by the thousands of survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Heartless bastards out of touch with the realities of the poverty in America? You bet. It is time we stop giving tax cuts to the rich and tax breaks to companies that move factories overseas, and it is about damned time to increase our investment in education and jobs here and fight the REAL war right here in America, the war on poverty. And, by God, it is time for Americans to awaken to our common humanity and our responsibilities towards our fellow citizens, to build a better, more inclusive society, and to stop voting against the best interests of all working Americans.

Stop voting Republican.

“Patriotism denotes positive attitudes by a person to their own nation, to its national homeland, its culture, its ‘true’ members, and to its interests. It is often associated with ethnocentrism – the belief that the national or ethnic group is superior to others, and should be used as a standard to judge them. Patriotism often implies a relatively less positive attitude to other nations, and to internal minorities which are not considered part of the nation. The word is derived from the Latin patria, fatherland, which has a much broader meaning than a geographical territory.” – Wikipedia

Patriotism : The word implies that one should put the interests of one’s own nation above personal interests, and in extreme situations even above one’s own survival. Those who boldly throw this word around today, however, seldom personally sacrifice anything, and instead use the word to imply that if one doesn’t agree with the architects of the Iraq war, that that somehow makes a person unpatriotic and unsupportive of the troops and their families who are making the ultimate sacrifice. Clearly, those who oppose the architects of the Iraq war do not blame the brave Americans in Iraq for the failure to turn this war into the “cakewalk” predicted by certain wildly optimistic armchair warriors in Washington.

Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace whose son, Casey, was killed in Iraq considers our government’s dubious (at best) objectives in Iraq to be not worth the life of her son and other Americans and Iraqis who have died and will die there, but she does consider the architects of the Iraq war responsible for his death, and by virtue of the sacrifice her son and her family have made, she is entitled to know the real reason, the “noble cause” for which he died.

Yet how dare anyone question Cindy Sheehan’s patriotism, especially those who sacrifice nothing. Ironically, those who make such statements say that soldiers die defending our freedom, but not once do they ever question how our freedom might have suffered if we had not invaded and occupied Iraq. Personally, I think that since the invasion of Iraq, we have lost more freedom than we might have had if we had never invaded Iraq at all.

Such freedoms as the ability to question authority, to demand to know where our tax dollars are being spent and to have the government accountable for every penny, to know what our government’s plans are for dealing with a wide range of problems — and I should add that if our government was as noble and as honest as it supposedly claims, there is no need to hide information from the American people especially in regards to rendition, torture, or even the background documents of Supreme Court nominees — and to know as much about our government and the financial and legal affairs of our public servants as they apparently know about us. In a country which claims to love freedom, it should not be considered unpatriotic even to ask for those things that define us as free. We shouldn’t even have to ask, those things should be a given. But since they’re not, the act of questioning authority should not be used as a litmus test for patriotism.

Those who unfailingly support anything the leaders of our government do are not patriots, and they have not earned that freedom which they say they so love. For many, it’s some form of misguided national pride in a nation that does not act honorably towards even it’s smallest minority, and let’s not forget this nation’s veterans. In terms of “supporting our troops” this nation’s record of supporting our veterans and their needs, or keeping the promises this nation made to service members and their families is certainly nothing to be proud of. Most Americans would be appalled if they knew how many times those promises were broken, and how many veterans suffer because of those broken promises.

Sticking a yellow ribbon magnet on an SUV which gulps large quantities of gasoline, in turn forcing our troops to stay in the Middle East fighting for the domination of oil fields of which they will not share in the profits, risking their lives for the sake of “big oil” interests and the military-industrial profiteers, amounts to a slap in the face, and at the very least, little more than lip service as far as “supporting our troops” is concerned. Those who buy and display such magnets, their money might be better spent taking up a collection for body armor, or prosthetics, or healthcare for reservists, or donating to the Paralyzed Veterans of America and other veteran’s groups.

Their time might be better spent putting pressure on their Senators and Congress members to keep the promises made to service members at the very least, and at best, to increase the amount of funds for disability compensation for disabled vets, or to increase the pay and benefits for active duty and reservists so that their families aren’t forced to apply for food stamps (which many, to our national shame, are forced to do). Instead, what we have is a government who cannot account for $9 billion spent in Iraq, who will not stop giving government contracts to those corporations that have proven records of overcharging for services rendered, a government who won’t submit to an audit and is willing to privatize security forces in the Middle East to private contractors. These contractors are earning pay that is many times that of our troops who are subject to the same risks as those privately contracted security squads in Iraq. One might risk being labeled “unpatriotic” by asking why are those who don’t wear the uniform paid so much better than those who do? Are they more valued than our troops? But no one seems to be supporting our troops by asking such questions, least of all the self-proclaimed patriotic troop supporters on the Right.

I’d like to ask those people how smearing the good name of the mother of a dead American soldier, or of any combat veteran of the United States military (including those running for political office) could possibly be mistaken for “supporting our troops”? I’d like to ask how those purple bandaids that Republican members of the Legislature were wearing which denigrated the sacrifices of our Purple Heart veterans could possibly be mistaken for “supporting our troops”?

Do tell, a disabled veteran wants to know.

[Image above courtesy of http://www.joinfoil.org/]

If you follow the news at all (the real news), it would seem that the whole world is at war, but the answer to defending against terrorism is not to drop more bombs and kill more people. The suffering, the grief, and the terror that so many people have already faced, and continue to face on a daily basis, needs to stop. The actions of our leaders, which I would characterize as State-sponsored terrorism, have made terror and acts of terrorism more likely, not less. If anything, the explosions in London serve to prove that Bush and Blair were wrong about “taking the fight to the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.” Not only was their theory proven wrong, both men were also proven absurdly out of touch with reality.

The absence of attacks on U.S. soil does not mean that such attacks could not take place, nor does it mean that such threats are non-existent; as we have seen in Madrid and now London, those threats not only exist but the actions of our leaders have not made us more secure, but less safe. There are currently more than 100 chemical plants in the United States where an attack would endanger the lives of a million or more people. Despite the enormity of the threat, the Republican-controlled Congress has refused to impose reasonable safety rules and provide the funding needed to ensure our safety, largely because of pressure from the chemical industry. Likewise, the federal government has poured billions into airline security, while badly shortchanging railroads, buses, sea ports, and subways.

“Since September 11, 2001, Republicans have funded less than half a billion of the $6 billion needed to secure America’s transit systems.” – Nancy Pelosi

Click that link to see what Democrats have been up to. It might surprise some to know that they haven’t just been sitting on their hands and saying “No” to everything. They do have initiatives of their own, but without a majority in Congress, they are obstructed by the Republicans from addressing the national security problems in ways that would certainly be more effective than anything this Administration has done over the last four years.

Six billion on transit security sure seems like a bargain compared to the $200 billion or more that has already been spent (and misspent) on this indefensible and illegal war in Iraq. And that’s not even counting the human wreckage of lives lost, bodies maimed, and families destroyed. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to put the money where it could have done the most good to ensure our safety at home?

Al-Qaeda is not the only terrorist group in existence. It has rivals within the Muslim diaspora, and counterparts in other parts of the world’s cultures and religions. But it is safe to assume that the cause of these bombs in Madrid and London is the unwavering support given by Spain and Great Britain to the United States in pursuit of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and covertly elsewhere. These wars and other State-sponsored terrorism abroad have jeopardized peace and security throughout the world and here at home, and have galvanized the extremists who use terrorism as a tool.

“Ever since 9/11, I have been arguing that the ‘war against terror’ is immoral and counterproductive. It sanctions the use of state terror – bombing raids, torture, countless civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq – against Islamo-anarchists whose numbers are small, but whose reach is deadly. The solution then, as now, is political, not military.” – Tariq Ali, Guardian Unlimited

Despite the assurances offered Thursday by New York Gov. Michael Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the best security system in the world is in place to protect people in the State of New York, Americans must understand that a guarantee of absolute safety is impossible. If you weren’t aware of it, I’ll tell you right now that London ranks probably somewhere near the top of the list of the most secure cities in the world; its penchant for surveillance cameras all over the city is well-known, guns have been taken out of the hands of the citizenry there, and they’ve certainly tried to be “vigilant” in preventing terrorist acts from occurring since they’ve had an awful lot of experience in dealing with the I.R.A., — but that didn’t make them invulnerable to terrorist attack. What will it take before people begin to realize that walling ourselves up inside 15-foot thick concrete bunkers with cameras watching every second of our lives and the government having total information awareness to the point of knowing what books we’ve been reading at the library — is not the answer?

Bush and his supporters are responsible for unleashing an unwinnable War on Terror after 9/11. With Afghanistan as an al-Qaeda base, Bush could at least identify it as a clear target. However, the supposed links between Saddam and al-Qaeda were as mythical as his WMDs. The Iraq invasion unleashed forces America and Great Britain have been unable to control, and they seem clueless about how to proceed from this point. Terrorists flooded into Iraq, a country left without stable government, whose military Paul Bremer disbanded.

“The reality is that the Bush administration’s choices have made Iraq into what it wasn’t before the war – a breeding ground for jihadists.” – John Kerry, NYTimes

On May 30, Cheney suggested the insurgency was in its “last throes” and that the military challenge was about to ease. (Last throes seem to last a long time, don’t they?) And then, Rumsfeld contradicted him by stating that “insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.” And Bush, of course, refuses to speculate about how long our military will be there, and urges that we “stay the course” and “show resolve” in the face of all this bad news. Meanwhile, they’re building U.S. military bases over there the size of Sacramento. I don’t think they intend for us to ever pull out of Iraq or Afghanistan. Our continued presence there, on the other hand, is clearly a risk to national security, which we can ill afford.

An Administration that can’t seem to admit to any mistakes is continuing to ask Americans to share its unswerving and unfounded belief that as long as we continue to wage war in Iraq, everything is fine in the U.S. Each day seems to bring another suicide bombing, claiming more civilian lives and adding more bodies to the death toll of U.S. troops that is now approaching 1,800. The real news about the war, news that you won’t see on television, coupled with the bombings in Madrid and London, the revelations of the Downing Street Minutes, the lies told to mislead the American people and our Congress into going to war, and the lack of any sort of plan for the occupation or even the eventual exit strategy for Iraq and Afghanistan… none of these things inspire confidence in this Administration’s ability to lead, but only to mislead.

The current approach is failing and it’s time for a change.

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Aine MacDermot is a Tech Editor at, and writes an Op/Ed column for Radio News America. This article also appears there.

Allegations and evidence of beatings, electric shocks, burned skin, puncture wounds, arbitrary arrest and broad ‘sweeps’, forced confessions and detention without trial or due process, a ‘ghost’ network of secret detention centers being operated by the Central Intelligence Agency to interrogate terrorist suspects beyond the reach of American or international law – in parallel with those officially acknowledged – that exist beyond all accountability to international human rights monitors, interrogation techniques which “violate all American anti-torture laws,” human trafficking by U.S. defense contractors,… the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

After 9/11/2001, official U.S. policy got changed to ‘extraordinary rendition’ and suspects began being shipped, not to the U.S. and into the legal system (as had been done under the Clinton Administration starting in 1998), but we have been “rendering” suspects to other countries for “aggressive” interrogation. All of them countries with records of practicing torture.

The Iraqi government has reported that its new security forces are resorting to the sort of torture and abuses of detainees seen under Saddam Hussein. Far from being the acts of a few rogue low-ranking soldiers or their units, the abuse is being committed at the behest of the government itself – or at least senior officials within it who are the policy makers. Six months ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW) laid out a catalogue of alleged abuses being applied to those suspected of terrorism in Iraq, (as well as Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and other detention centers) and called for an independent complaints body in Iraq. What is extraordinary is that despite the increasingly widespread evidence of torture, governments have remained virtually silent.

Do I really need to remind people that this kind of behaviour is what creates terrorists? One might expect me to bring a certain partisan viewpoint to the topic of torture, which considering the fact that this is the United States of America is a sad statement in itself, but my party, the party of the Democrats, doesn’t condone torturing human beings. I’m a disabled veteran of the Cold War. It’s precisely because of my devotion to our country, and my respect for our military, and my commitment to the rights and ethics I served to defend that I speak out against systematic, government-sanctioned torture and excessive abuse of prisoners during this war.

Republicans, it speaks volumes that your Party not only condones the practice of torture, but defends it. Those of you on the Right who, on the one hand, deny that U.S. personnel (and now the Iraqi security forces that we are ‘training’) have engaged in systematic use of torture while, on the other, claim that such abuse is justified, and that it’s “not as bad as Saddam” – as if the comparison is something to be proud of. I have to wonder how anyone in this once-proud nation can defend the torture of human beings, many of whom, judging by the quiet release of so many detainees, appear to be completely innocent of anything.

No matter what horrible things happen that we find out about and report on at Radio News America and at independent media outlets throughout the world, no matter if the evidence is sitting right before the public in photographs and depositions and bodies bearing the marks of viciousness packed in ice for all the world to see, here in America we are surrounded by this smug and ugly arrogance, this self-righteous, ignorant Republican ‘defense’. Even their talk show hosts laugh it off as if it were some kind of college hazing incident.

And can someone please tell me why we are paying for this:

“British and American aid intended for Iraq’s hard-pressed police service is being diverted to paramilitary commando units accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killings,…”

We have, dear readers, broken international law, the Geneva Accords, and even the International Declaration of Human Rights. The American people and our Congress have been lied to regarding the justifications (all 23 of them) for the invasion of Iraq. We don’t even really know who actually flew those planes on 9/11 because 7 of the so-called hijackers have turned up alive and well, having had their identities stolen years before (and that, in itself, is another whole ball of wax that our government is silent about). We’ve got government whistleblowers trying to tell us about national security and how we’re vulnerable, but no one in the Republican-controlled Congress seems to be taking them seriously. Our ports, borders, chemical plants, nuclear power plants, electrical grid, and transportation systems are still not secured, and even now, no one has explained how a handful of terrorists could even be prevented from launching an attack against the U.S. again on our soil, since nothing here has changed and they don’t need to bring in an Army to do it, just as they didn’t on 9/11. We have tortured and even killed those we captured and took prisoner – without filing charges, without granting due process, without providing any avenue of legal recourse – and let quite a few go free after years of detention because they were, apparently, innocent of any crimes. At least two top officials in the White House, one of them possibly Karl Rove, leaked the identity of one of our CIA operatives whose specialty was WMD’s, and now all her contacts and sources overseas are exposed. The CIA kidnapped a suspect from the streets of Italy without that country’s permission and whisked him off to be ‘dealt with’ in a country with a record of torture.

What has become clear over the past five years is that the Bush Administration’s policies are poorly reasoned and extremely shortsighted, of benefit to few and of liability to those who can ill afford them, and although we the People have been assured that there is a ‘specific plan’ for everything from Social Security to the never-ending ‘War on Terror’, no member of the public has yet seen any of these ‘plans’ on paper. We get vague speeches and promises, a sharp and steady increase in secrecy and closed government, and we can only hope that such ‘plans’ actually exist. Until then, I’ll be assuming that the various letters and documents on the Project for a New American Century website are the signed confessions for the legal tribunals I hope to see in the future.

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Aine MacDermot is a Tech Editor at, and writes an Op/Ed column for Radio News America. This article also appears there.

After his eight-day assignment to Niger in early 2002, Joseph Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations of a uranium purchase were unfounded and most likely a hoax. President Bush, in making the case to go to war with Iraq, cited, among other things, the allegations regarding the Iraq-Niger yellow cake connection in his 2003 State of the Union address, the reverse of what Wilson had reported to the CIA. Wilson, angered by the misleading information coming out of the President’s mouth, rebuked the White House for the false allegation in public, and shortly afterward two top officials from the White House leaked the identity of his wife as a CIA operative to six reporters in retaliation for Wilson’s speaking out. Novak wrote his now-infamous newspaper column alleging that Wilson had received his assignment because his wife had recommended him for the position.

“Wilson never worked for the CIA,” Novak wrote, “but his wife . . . is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger.”

The White House and CIA have since said that Plame had no role in the selection of her husband for the mission.

Of course, nobody would have even been looking into Plame’s background had White House officials — Karl Rove and an as yet unnamed official — not leaked her status as a clandestine CIA operative, and if Novak hadn’t agreed to out her for the Bush administration in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson. Karl Rove insists he wasn’t the one to leak the information and testified before a grand jury last October to that effect, but those six reporters who got phone calls could easily testify as to who it was that contacted them. A quick look at the White House and Air Force One telephone logs would also reveal who called whom, and when. Perhaps an additional look at the phone logs of Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, or Elliot Abrams would also reveal some pertinent information.

TIME magazine, on the other hand, has just agreed to turn over the notes, emails, and computer records of its reporter, Matthew Cooper. Those records purportedly show that Karl Rove was the source of the leaked, classified information that Cooper received.

We, apparently, have a White House that appears perfectly willing to go after the family members of its critics, regardless of the consequences to our intelligence agents in the field. Valerie Plame’s career is destroyed and her sources are also endangered. The act itself displays a level of viciousness that is dangerous to national security and to the functioning of this, or any, democracy.

Allegedly, Rove chose to “out” a deep-cover agent working against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in retaliation for a perceived political slight by her husband. In the process of the outing, the Administration destroyed the cover of the energy company she ostensibly worked for, ended her covert career, and endangered every foreign source and contact that she and her fellow agents had been involved with, thereby putting a national security asset out of commission at a time of war. The president should have demanded swift action to appoint an independent investigator and to remove the offender from his post. Evidence suggests that the President knew, but took no action to stop the release of Plame’s name.

If a journalist witnesses a source commit a crime and does not report it, or even writes a piece about it, is this some sort of 1st Amendment free speech issue? Miller, Cooper et. al. are not protecting a source who told them of a crime, they are witnesses to a crime, hence all the hubbub and being hauled into court. Just because they are in the habit of “not revealing sources” doesn’t mean they can steal candy, sell drugs, or participate in a criminal conspiracy and get a pass. Witnessing a crime is not a protected journalistic activity. Miller, Cooper et. al. are not being prevented from practicing free press, rather they are being enjoined to reveal the name of a criminal who, in the act of speaking of the identity of Plame as a CIA operative, committed a crime against the security of the nation — during a time of war — in the name of political revenge.

The leak may constitute a felony. According to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, a federal employee with access to classified information who is convicted of making an unauthorized disclosure about a covert agent faces up to 10 years in prison, as much as $50,000 in fines, or both. Plame’s contacts in other countries may well have been murdered because the White House revealed her identity for cheap political reasons. I would suggest that if any of Valerie Plame’s contacts have been killed, that the source of the leak could possibly be charged as an accessory to multiple murders.

And what about those forged Niger uranium documents: Who forged them and who was the source behind these documents? Indeed, there is much that is still unknown with regard to the events surrounding the outing of Valerie Plame.

This isn’t a Democrat v. Republican issue. This, the evidence that there could be a traitor to our country and to our nation’s intelligence services during a time of war among the highest levels of the Executive Branch, is a matter of national security.

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Aine MacDermot is a Tech Editor at, and writes an Op/Ed column for Radio News America. This article also appears there.