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Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say

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Bolivian leader to visit Cuba

Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons

Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons

Kurds plan to invade South

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It’s for Your Own Good!

It’s for Your Own Good!
Tapping, Torturing and Secrets

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Texas county attorney weighs Reed inquiry

Texas county attorney weighs Reed inquiry

A charity led by Frist funded close aides

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Echoes of Nazi Germany

Echoes of Nazi Germany

Bigger brother

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Leftist set for Bolivia victory

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Earle probes DeLay tie to California donor

Bush can settle CIA leak riddle, Novak says

Bush can settle CIA leak riddle, Novak says

GOP Official Convicted in Phone-Jamming

Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 ­- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

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No elections will be credible while occupation continues

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Too few of us care that Bush keeps on lying

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Horn of Africa 'crisis', UN warns

History Lesson For Military Superpower

Opponents fight one type of war, our military fights another type of war, there is a military stalemate and eventually the U.S. returns home. Is anyone learning anything?
By Stewart Nusbaumer

Frankfurt, Germany -- There is an awful truth stalking America -- one too uncomfortable for Americans to speak, even to think, and too dangerous for the mainstream media to report.

Americans spend $450 billion annually on defense, which is nearly as much as all of the world’s military budgets combined, yet our astronomically expensive military cannot catch a 6’5” Arab in a small corner of the world? Our awesomely powerful military can blow up the world, yet it could not subdue a few dizzy fanatics setting off crude road bombs that has now spiraled into a full fledge insurgency? We have the most expensive and most the powerful military, but can it do anything?

I’m thinking this while zipping through Germany on a super smooth train -- unlike our roller coaster kidney mixers crawling at camel speed. I’m looking out at a prosperous and secure Germany. There are not gutted-out cities here, not abundantly abandoned factories, not legions of homeless and armies of criminals, not a depopulation of the impoverished heartland as in America. And there is not a public that would elect as president an ignorant nut case. Germany has moved on, but it learned from its horrible mistake. And today Germany is being rewarded for learning from its history.

Meanwhile America is moving backwards. It refuses to learn from its ugly past, so today it is in another ugly mess. The disaster in Iraq was clearly foreseeable, it would have been avoided if Americans, especially George Bush and his handlers, respected history. But George Bush doesn’t like history. History is confining, history talks of limitations and says, “Don’t do that!” George Bush the tough Texan doesn't like to told what not to do.

In Vietnam, where Geroge never was, our troops blew up rice patties and then the Vietnamese attacked us from the jungle. We defoliated the jungle and they attacked us from rice paddies. We blew up both the rice paddies and defoliated the jungle and they attacked us from the village. We leveled the village and they attacked us from the city. When we arrived in mass, they dispersed; when we departed, they massed again and then attacked. U.S. strategy had our highly mobile military racing all over Vietnam, often to where the enemy was not -- until we fell into their attack trap. Frustrated and tired, eventually we gave up and left Vietnam.

And did America learn? Did our military change? Take a wild guess.

What Was Not Learned

According to the mainstream media, the primary lesson of the Vietnam War is that Americans should not spit in the faces of our returning soldiers, a bogus lesson since Americans never did. On the other hand, little is said about the lesson of not getting our soldiers faces blown off in a useless war. The bogus is everywhere in America, the crucial is hardly heard. The American media doesn’t like history either.

Learning genuine lessons requires studying history, which superpower America won’t do. So today in Iraq a limited if not primitive military force is applying asymmetrical warfare and has stymied the world’s most powerful military. The Iraqi insurgents avoid our massive firepower, the U.S. searches for them mostly unsuccessfully. The guerrillas rely on stealth mobility while the all-powerful U.S. depends upon advanced technology. When our troops attack, the Iraqis disperse; when our troops leave, the insurgents return. The Iraqi opposition is not fighting our type of war and the U.S. military refuses to fight their type of war. The result will be a military stalemate. In military stalemates, however, the visiting army almost always loses.

Unwilling to burden the continuing cost in blood and money, which are significant for our expensive military machine and our vulnerable modern soldiers, the U.S. will quit this endless stalemate. But Iraqis will remain, it is their home. It is their country, not our country. And the discredited local government installed by the departed United States will fall like a stack of cheap Vegas cards.

All this is written in history, the history that all Superpowers refuse to read. After our defeat in Vietnam, the Soviet Union rushed to defeat in Afghanistan, now we are on our way to defeat in Iraq, possibly Afghanistan. Superpower militaries don’t change how they fight wars even when losing wars -- hey, they have super power!

The awful truth that Americans do not face and the media is uninterested in discussing is although we spend a fortune on defense, although our military has the most sophisticated and expensive weaponry in the world, although our troops are the best trained, our military is lousy at fighting today’s wars. The big wars are over, the little wars are todays wars. And they can bleed and tear down a great superpower military.

Osama bin Laden and his crew run free in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Security and order was never established in Iraq, now the country is in total chaos. Forces with little money and crude weapons outsmart our military leaders, fighting wars our military cannot fight, wars our arrogant, bloated, corporate-led military leaders refuse to fight. And when defeat is confirmed, when our troops return home in defeat, our generals will again, like after Vietnam, blame those “traitorous antiwar demonstrators,” our “liberal media,” those “back-stabbing politicians,” but never their outsmarted selves.

Of course the U.S. military has tinkered with its war strategy. For a while the buzz words have been “special operations,” but for those who seek to challenge the U.S. on the battlefield, all war is special operations. The Pentagon has made changes in troop training, but nothing to alter its cherished “way of war.” Yet our conventional war is successfully circumvented by our opponents -- well, Saddam Hussein didn’t in the Gulf War, but the world watched that slaughter and learned the lesson not to fight that kind of war against the U.S. military. There is new equipment, but more sophisticated and expensive -- great for defense corporations’ profits, but lousy for fighting the unconventional wars of today.

We have quarter-billion dollar B-1 bombers sitting in Kansas, yet our soldiers in Iraq do not have simple armor for their vehicles. The Army’s 10th Mountain Division was ill prepared to fight in the mountains of Afghanistan, sluggish and disorganized. Some Marines are already on their third tour in Iraq, which will exhaust and degrade our elite corps. Soldiers speak of not understanding how to win a war where there are no boundaries and the enemy is unclear, their officers say push on. And Americans ask, why are our soldiers dying? Answers from Washington have stopped coming.

When the U.S. finally leaves Iraq -- after massacring thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis, after insuring the country degenerates into a vicious civil war, after earning the disrespect of nearly the entire world -- Americans will then evade these awful facts as it evaded the awful facts of Vietnam and the media will rush to a new disaster in the world which makes the avoidance relatively easy. And the U.S. military will return to training the best soldiers in the world and equipping them with the most expensive hardware imaginable, while the generals return to planning a new invasion of some Normandy. And in history, everyone will read about the terrible mistake Germany made, and how the Germans learned from their terrible mistake.

Perhaps all of us, elected representatives, military generals, regular citizens, need to take a trip to Germany and learn not what Germany did but what it is doing. What it is doing is not doing the awful that it once did. When will superpower Americans learn that?

Note: Stewart Nusbaumer is editor of Intervention Magazine. You can email Stewart at Stewart@aol.com.

	The man who released the Pentagon Papers talks about the quagmire and why the Bush Administration won’t withdraw our troops from Iraq. By Brad Kennedy Two obstacles stand in the way of the prompt and safe return of U.S. troops from Iraq, according to Daniel Ellsberg. First, a real “mission accomplished” is unlikely any time soon. Second, President Bush doesn’t want their prompt return. Ellsberg disavows claim to expertise in Mid-Eastern affairs, but without question he has deep experience with wars of insurgency and with embattled American presidents. He incurred the ire of President Richard Nixon by making public the Department of Defense’s secret history of the Vietnam War, commonly known as the Pentagon Papers, which he helped compile. His firsthand knowledge of our Vietnam policy serves as his prism for viewing our involvement in Iraq, and it reveals disturbing parallels. Ellsberg aired his views publicly several times in New Jersey, starting November 12, 2005 at a fund-raiser for New Jersey Peace Action and later at local colleges, and he sat for a 90-minute interview to round out his views for this article. His appearances are part of the promotion of his personal account, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Penguin Books, 2003). The Fatal Flaw In Ellsberg’s view, the fatal flaw of the 2003 invasion of Iraq has always been that it made the U.S. an occupying power vulnerable to a war of insurgency. He’s hardly out of step when he asserts this. Military chroniclers since Julius Caesar have bemoaned the risks and hardships of occupation. Avoiding these very perils governed US policy during the first Gulf War, recalls General Brent Scowcroft. The president’s National Security Advisor at that time, Scowcroft said in a recent New Yorker interview that President Bush senior had no trouble grasping the risks of extending the war to Baghdad. Since World War II only one outside power, the British in Malaysia, has fought a successful counter-insurgency war. Whatever magic Sir Robert Thompson, the mastermind of that British effort, may have possessed failed to rub off on the U.S. effort in Vietnam during his separate stints advising both Presidents Kennedy and Nixon. Ellsberg spent two years -- from 1965 to 1967 -- working for the State Department evaluating the U.S. pacification program in Vietnam, where he saw firsthand how being an occupier worked against the American efforts. Ellsberg explains that an occupier is seen as a foreigner, an invader, an outsider. Nobody likes an outsider telling them what to do. Nobody trusts an outsider to keep inside interests ahead of outside interests. When forced to choose between a fellow native or an outsider, most natives will choose another native. This closing of local ranks makes it near impossible to get advance intelligence of an ambush or Improvised Explosive Device (I.E.D.) attack. “A lot of Americans lost their lives in Vietnam from American shells that didn’t go off when they hit the ground but were later command-detonated by the VC,” says Ellsberg. “And the French laid their earlier loss in Vietnam to ‘the ambush problem.’ ” A Direct Backlash The same suspicions and resentments against outsiders also make it difficult for outsiders to broker negotiations between competing Iraqi factions as part of rallying support for a coalition government, Ellsberg says. U.S. troop support determines who is the dominant faction and enables it to avoid negotiating necessary workable compromises. This leads the other factions to see U.S. presence as an obstacle to workable peace. “The major Sunni violence is because we are there,” says Ellsberg. In other words, it is a direct backlash to our presence. But such a backlash also provides protective cover for those seeking to hijack any groups of true nationalistic resistance, be the hijackers communists as in Vietnam or Wahhabi extremists as in Iraq. These problems are inherent to any strategy of occupation, Ellsberg feels, and will lead to self-perpetuation of the occupation. That measured against the vast cost of the occupation to both Iraqis and Americans has led him to call for a shift in policy -- the immediate withdrawal of American troops on a fixed timetable. Ellsberg readily acknowledges American troop withdrawal to be a painful solution but he says there are no good solutions. Great pain may accompany U.S. withdrawal, but that pain largely will be the inevitable consequence of the improper strategy of occupation at the outset, just as is the pain suffered on a daily basis in Iraq now. Withdrawal is the solution, not the problem. It is the only solution because “there isn’t going to be any improvement if the U.S. stays in Iraq.” As both a participant in and a careful student of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg is no stranger to such pain. He understands the hardships and sacrifices American troops suffer every day trying to improve the lives of Iraqis and to make the world safer. He saw plenty of the same in Vietnam. He also saw what happens when you refuse to face the realities of the battlefield and execute a disorderly withdrawal, such as the pandemonium engulfing the evacuation of the American embassy in Saigon in 1975. “That was a horrible way to leave and disgraceful. The idea that we would abandon our friends, the Vietnamese who worked with us, is dishonorable. I have personal friends who were left there, one of whom I’ll be seeing soon. As late as March '75, the U.S. could have arranged for an orderly departure, taking with us the Vietnamese who had worked closely with us that wanted to leave. The problem was Ambassador Graham Martin denied the gravity of the situation and so those steps weren’t taken.” Getting Out “If we will not make things better by staying,” Ellsberg says, we must “set a definite timetable for getting out, three or six months and we’re totally out. I would make averting civil war a secondary objective, but to think that can be done only by an American occupation is hogwash. We should get out of Iraq the way Gorbachev got out of Afghanistan, the way De Gaulle got out of Algeria, and the way Mendes-France got the French out of Indochina. Getting out doesn’t mean we don’t use diplomacy to try and moderate the situation and that we don’t contribute to the rebuilding of Iraq. Contributing $150 billion for rebuilding Iraq would be far cheaper than where we are headed now.” The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the U.S. costs of war in Iraq at current rates will pile up fast enough to reach $600 billion by the year 2010, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Once again, Ellsberg appears less out of step than out front by advocating withdrawal of the 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as the December elections approach there. Clearly, there is no more “cut and run” in Ellsberg, a former Marine officer, than there is in John Murtha, a decorated Vietnam vet who retired as a colonel in the Marine Reserves. The ranking Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Sub-committee, Murtha called on the floor of Congress on November 17th for an immediate redeployment of U.S. forces in Iraq and cited a British poll that 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition forces and about 45% believe attacks against American troops are justified. He went on to report that General George W. Casey, Jr., Multinational Force-Iraq Commander, said at a September 2005 House committee hearing that the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency. Murtha also cited General John Abizaid, Commander, U.S. Central Command, as stating in the same hearing that reducing the visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.” At the Iraqi reconciliation conference on November 21st in Cairo, sponsored by the Arab League, the Iraqi factions memorialized the one point upon which they could agree: “a withdrawal of foreign troops on a specified timetable, dependent on an immediate national program for rebuilding the security forces.” So, the Army, the Iraqis, Ellsberg, and Murtha agree that withdrawal of some sort is necessary, with the latter two holding that withdrawal should be immediate and independent of events controlled by the Iraqis. Why Bush Won’t Budge Where Ellsberg stands apart is by asserting that President Bush and his advisors are the obstacle to a timely, safe return of U.S. troops. “The problem is that the President wants to stay. You have to want to get out, and he’s not remotely interested in hearing about it.” When and how the President wants to get out of Iraq has to do with why he went in. But that isn’t so easy to figure given the failure to find WMDs, the failure to provide border security, basic services, and economic renewal, and the failure to free the Iraqi people from a life of terror. The President’s strategy document released November 30th reads like his letter to Santa in that it wishes for the best of everything without concern for what it costs others. Nonetheless, it does make plain his intention to stay in Iraq until all good things come to pass, short of hell freezing over. Thus, it vindicates Ellsberg from any charge of overstatement. The President does want to stay. It may be tempting to think that President Bush is ashamed to admit a mistake. The Bush policy ignored each one of the lessons canonized as the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine by the Reagan Administration, and the American nation is paying dearly for it, none more so than the military -- except for the Iraqis. Perhaps the greatest of his mistakes was the President’s embarkation for Iraq without the enlightened consent of the American people. How could the people’s consent be enlightened if they were misled? Forget the cherry-picking of intelligence regarding the WMD’s for now because, whether it was honest error or deceit, it was never central to why Bush has insisted on a US force in Iraq. The White House’s Iraq Group, the “cabal” headed by the Vice-President that pushed for war, asserted that taking down Saddam was a key to effectively fighting the War on Terror. To make that case, it invoked the WMD threat and vastly exaggerated the tenuous connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam, even going so far as to imply Saddam played a vital role in 9/11. The Bush Administration won a lot of support on that basis, but as the facts emerged that support has slipped away. Like the WMD’s, though, the allegations against Saddam -- true or false -- never were central to Bush’s doctrinaire belief that Iraq was a key to fighting global terrorism. The White House Iraq Group’s doctrine, in a nutshell, has ample evidence that the Saudis, including the royal family, are up to their eyeballs in financing Wahhabi extremism, and this includes Al Qaeda. The royal family has financed terrorist operations for years, both directly and indirectly, particularly through their funding of the madrassas, the local Islamic schools that recruit for the terror organizations. The royals do so, at least in part, to buy protection from Al Qaeda attacks, who have it in for the Saudi government, because they have allowed American troops to garrison on Saudi soil since the first Gulf war. On the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Port of NY and NJ Authority, a US government agency, joined a $7 billion lawsuit started by Cantor Fitzgerald investment group, which sued the Saudi government and many Saudi corporations for funding Al Qaeda. A group of 9/11 families has upped the ante to $116 trillion in its own suit, naming also the Saudi Bin Laden Construction Co. and The Sudan, according to the CNN.com Law Center, an online journalistic library of high profile law cases. The Saudi Solution Effective prosecution of the War on Terror must include taking a hard line against the Saudis, the neo-con doctrine goes, but no U.S. executive branch has felt it could without jeopardizing the US’s lifeline to a stable national oil supply. The neo-cons believe that sponsoring a client state in oil-rich Iraq will guarantee the U.S. stable oil imports enabling it to deal from strength when confronting Saudi Arabia about terror and the need for continuity of Saudi oil flow to the US at a time of increasing world demand. This strategy has been stated and written about many times, including in the Weekly Standard and in Commentary. Thomas E. Ricks summarized this view in his August 6, 2002 Washington Post report on a July 10th briefing of the Defense Policy Board by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corporation analyst. Another Rand Corporation analyst -- a former one -- Daniel Ellsberg, summed up where he thought this would lead: “We are going to be in Iraq far longer than we were in Vietnam, because there was no oil in Vietnam.” Not that this is just about oil, it is about anti-terrorism, too. The essence of the Bush policy is a meld of plentiful oil and anti-terrorism. Right or wrong, the White House Iraq Group believes we cannot confront the bankers of Bin Laden, because they are also our local filling station. We will only be free to stand up to the Saudis when we are less dependent on their gas pumps. This must have put the Bush family’s personal relationship with the royal Saudi family to the test. There is a larger problem, though. The pipeline Iraq can offer the U.S. will be secure only as long as it is secured, and that means US military bases, perhaps “over-the horizon,” as Murtha suggests, but bases for the foreseeable future nonetheless. Ellsberg could be sure of the White House’s intent to stay because these bases are well under construction. Author Chalmers Johnson was once a CIA analyst; Director Richard Helms recruited him for his expertise in peasant nationalism and revolutionary war. Johnson lists five military bases being constructed apparently for the long haul: • a part of Baghdad International Airport • Tallil air base to the south • one on the western frontier with Syria • Bashur air field to the north • the Anaconda operating base currently in use These should be seen, Johnson says, in conjunction with the “1,600 square miles out of Kuwait's 6,900 square miles” the U.S. plans to keep “that we now use to resupply our Iraq legions and as a place for Green Zone bureaucrats to relax.” A Matter of Means The strategy of permanent or enduring bases, for all its tactical advantages, is but a variant of occupation, subject to the various hazards and risks intrinsic to occupation. As time passes and construction on these bases progresses, the intent of the US will be less a matter of words and more a matter of fact verifiable by the Islamic eye. About the same time the U.S. mission in Iraq will emerge from the shadows into the light of day and the American people will have a fundamental choice to make. Americans will finally see that choice as not about the ends or purposes of the Iraq mission, but about the means used to achieve them. Everyone can applaud plentiful oil and effective anti-terrorism, but it is the means that will determine if the US achieves those goals and at what cost. Chalmers Johnson, now retired from his endowed chairs at the University of California, is best known to the reading public for his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), which after 9/11 became an unexpected bestseller reprinted eight times in less than two months. In his new introduction for the post-9/11 world, Johnson explains that “blowback” is a CIA term for the unintended consequences of covert operations, first appearing in print in an after-action report on the CIA’s secret overthrow of the Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Veterans of close-quarter combat may recognize this as a metaphoric extension of the term sometimes used to describe the unexpected dose of blood sprayed in their faces when they had to shoot someone in the head at too close range. And that’s exactly what happened to America on 9/11, according to Johnson. Johnson goes on to detail the sordid tale of America’s role in provoking the Soviet attack on Afghanistan, the CIA’s recruitment, training and arming of Osama Bin Laden and his mujahedeen during the Afghan resistance there, and its ultimate abandonment of Bin Laden after the Soviet Union collapsed. An angry Bin Laden made his way home to Saudi Arabia where he was outraged to find the American infidel ensconced on his doorstep. Thus did Bin Laden decide to use what the US had taught him, this time to counter US foreign policy. All that is in the past now. But what unintended consequences will America’s future actions bring? It is the future about which Daniel Ellsberg worries. “I’m afraid we are looking at a widening of the war right now to Iran and Syria.” Actions have consequences. Sometimes the consequences are unintended. Sometimes even the actions are unintended. Either way Americans at home may live or die by those consequences as they did on 9/11 and as American soldiers now do every day in faraway lands. Brad Kennedy is the author of the forthcoming novel BLOOD AND COUNTRY: A Soldier’s Call, based on his service with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam in 1966-67. He can be reached at: RBradKennedy@Optonline.Net

Ex-Marine leader poses hard questions about war

Ex-Marine leader poses hard questions about war BY ADAM PARKER The Post and Courier Within the first days of the invasion in 2003, the U.S. military dropped leaflets in Iraq: "Surrender and be part of the new Iraq." "It was a brilliant success," said Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine commander who participated in that first campaign. Then, as the operation began to heat up, the military dropped "humanitarian rations," which did not include pork or chemical heater packs, which some in Afghanistan had ingested to their great peril. The rations came in bright yellow boxes so they could be seen easily. This won the hearts of many, Fick said. Then the military began dropping cluster bombs, some of which failed to explode upon impact. They came in bright yellow packages, too. "Wires get crossed, with unintended consequences," Fick said. Those consequences - the erosion and eventual loss of trust in American forces and American policy - were the subject of a recent lecture Fick offered College of Charleston students and faculty when he stopped here as part of a book tour. He is the author of "One Bullet Away," a memoir of his experience as a commander in the Marines' elite 1st Reconnaissance Unit. Fick was one of the first to respond to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as part of the invasion force into Afghanistan, and he helped lead the charge into Iraq about two years later. His book recounts his prewar training and experience in two conflicts as a captain of an infantry platoon. His perspective is said to be unique because he was a Marine who straddled the historical line between pre-9/11 and post-9/11 America. His Dartmouth University education and degree in classics make his an especially articulate first-person account of battle. But Fick is no yes-man. He has harsh words for the Bush administration and its policies in the Mideast as well as for the yellow-ribbon crowd that refuses to question U.S. leadership. "Occupation breeds resentment," he said. "When you have a boot on someone's neck, they don't appreciate it." Fick bemoaned missed opportunities, such as the chance in December 2001 to go after Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora after reliable intelligence showed the al-Qaida leader likely was holed up there. But senior brass called off the operation to seal the valleys - the only way out - instead leaving matters in the hands of the Afghan Northern Alliance. Fick said he suspects some improvised negotiating resulted in bin Laden's escape. "Kick the anthill and everyone would scatter," he said. "And they'll never be in one place again." While Fick disparages some of the politics that determine the United States' Iraq policy, he is quick to point out that the Marines fundamentally are apolitical. The military is merely a tool politicians use to get what they want. And in the case of Iraq, it can only set the stage for the Iraqis themselves to rebuild their nation. "Marines set preconditions for political change," Fick said. "The military, however, cannot affect that change." Just because the Armed Forces are apolitical - they follow the orders of the commander in chief regardless of his party affiliation - that doesn't mean they have no politics, Fick said. The military is made up of individuals who are overwhelmingly conservative and predominantly Republican, he notes. "And that's a problem." When most people in an organization share the same view, the world is seen in terms that are too absolute, he said. Fick, who worked with Canadian, British, Australian and German forces, said he had the sense that they were more diverse politically and economically than the U.S. military. This diversity encourages a nuanced interpretation of world events, he said. Still, in the throes of battle, Marines have no time to ruminate on the finer points of political strategies, Fick said. They are focused on the mission and cannot afford distractions. That mission, which was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and set the stage for democracy, is terribly imperiled for several reasons, Fick said. Perhaps the biggest risk is represented by a largely apathetic public. "People don't care about it because it doesn't touch them," he said. The vast majority of Americans have made no sacrifice or investment in the Afghan and Iraqi wars. Instead of asking them to turn in metal objects to the government or reduce their consumption of gasoline, President Bush merely encouraged more consumerism, Fick said in an interview. "Americans were told to keep shopping!" If you really support the troops, then fight to have the tax cuts repealed or encourage Congress to pass a gas tax, he said. Don't make Americans bleed, he said, make them pay. "What's important to me is that we're not apathetic about it," he said. "I have more sympathy with the anti-war protesters, at least they're involved. My gripe is with the apathetic middle." Fick, whose book and other writings have captured the attention of policymakers, military careerists and citizens alike, said he cannot agree with either of the options now on the table concerning Iraq. To "stay the course" would be a huge mistake. "We're focused almost exclusively on offense, on killing insurgents," he said. Instead, "We must provide concrete, tangible benefits to people in Iraq. In my view, we've done a poor job showing why our system is better than (terror leader) Zarqawi's system." Likewise, Fick blasts those who advocate bringing the troops home now. Iraq could spiral into chaos, he said. The important thing is to empower Iraqis to govern themselves, and that can't be done overnight. What's needed is a radical shift in strategy, one that brings the war home to Americans, encourages the development of alternative energy sources and changes the focus of the conflict away from fighting terrorism (which Fick defines as a tactic, not an enemy) to fighting the causes of terrorism. His book tour has provided him with opportunities to exercise his rhetorical skills and confront some difficult questions posed by readers of "One Bullet Away." Fick said he expected more sympathy from pro-war Republicans and more tough questions from antiwar Democrats, but it's been the exact opposite. Blue-state people seem to be relieved that an ex-Marine, of all people, would speak out against current policy, while red-state folks seem to be less willing to think through the issues, he said. The exception is the military. There, people have been much more willing to listen critically, Fick said, because they are directly affected by the decisions that come from Washington. The future of Iraq is still up in the air, he said. At the lecture, he showed a photograph of a young Iraqi, perhaps 12, kneeling over a box of rations. We are still within that window of time when actions on the ground have not yet established a destiny for this boy, Fick said. Whether he becomes a suicide bomber or a future elected president depends on what the United States and the Iraqis do today. "What will this kid think in 20 or 30 years?" Fick asked his rapt audience. "I think it's still very much in doubt." Contact Adam Parker at aparker@postandcourier.com or 745-5860.

This article was printed via the web on 12/13/2005 12:37:17 AM . This article appeared in The Post and Courier and updated online at Charleston.net on Sunday, December 11, 2005.

290,000 Israelis Eligible to Vote in Iraqi Elections

Arutz Sheva - IsraelNationalNews.com

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290,000 Israelis Eligible to Vote in Iraqi Elections

Monday, December 12, 2005 / 11 Kislev 5766

Jews around the world who were born in Iraq are eligible to vote in the Iraqi elections taking place this week.

According to Hamida Al-Husseini, who is in charge of absentee ballots in the coming elections, even Iraqi Jews holding Israeli citizenship can vote. "How can we know what additional citizenships a voter holds?" Al-Husseini told the Maariv Daily. "We only check the documents confirming that the voter in question holds Iraqi citizenship."

Anybody holding Iraqi citizenship, whether he/she was born in Iraq, or was born to an Iraqi father, is eligible to vote, according to Iraqi law. An estimated 290,000 Israelis are therefore eligible to vote. In order to exercise that right, however, one must report to the nearest polling station – which in the case of Israelis is in Jordan.

Following the ratification of the constitution of Iraq on October 15, 2005, a general election was set for December 15th in order to elect a permanent 275-member Iraqi National Assembly.

During the January election of the transitional Assembly, about 20 Israelis actually voted. Those elections were facilitated by the United Nations, however. It is likely that the coming elections, being organized by the Iraqi interim government, will have in place measures to prevent the participation of Israeli Jews.

Syrians fearful of becoming next Iraq

Syrians fearful of becoming next Iraq

Believe toppling of Bashar Assad's regime would unleash nation's divisions

Dec. 12, 2005. 04:37 AM

MITCH POTTER

MIDDLE EAST BUREAU

DAMASCUS—Ask everyday Syrians where their country is headed and you immediately sense the bleakness of the moment. The most hopeful answer is "nowhere." The alternatives, they say, are worse. Catastrophically worse.Such is the grim public mood on the eve of another dossier of United Nations investigative findings into the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which is widely expected to deepen the international glare on the corridors of power in Damascus.However much Syrians despise the bare-knuckle corruption that passes for national leadership, it is clear that fear of becoming the next Iraq trumps all. They will suffer onward in lockstep, offering Pavlovian support for their defiant young President Bashar Assad, even if it means enduring UN sanctions. Because really, what choice do they have?"It sounds sick to say it aloud, but Syrians would rather die of hunger than from civil war or conflict. They want reform, but if reform means Iraq, count them out," said Marwan Kabalan, a political scientist with the Centre for Strategic Studies at Damascus University."It is a sad situation, but the fact is they feel like spectators with absolutely no say in the matter. Syrians today are so passive, so submissive, so completely depoliticized, all they can bring themselves to hope for is stability. So they will back a regime they don't like no matter what happens."Diplomats in Damascus describe an emotional rollercoaster ride in the nine months since Hariri was killed, with both the Assad regime and its citizens driven from one nervous peak to the next. Each political climax, from Syria's withdrawal of troops from Lebanon to the preliminary UN findings on Hariri, which brought suspicions dangerously close to Assad's ruling junta, raised wild speculation that the regime could collapse upon itself.But in the two months since lead UN investigator Detlev Mehlis delivered findings that brought suspicion upon a range of Syrian intelligence leaders, up to and including Assad's brother Maher and brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, Damascus has effectively "circled the wagons to preserve itself," in the words of one political insider."Damascus sees the Bush administration driving everything. And the regime has been very effective in working to drag things out," said a Western diplomatic source in Damascus."The game they are playing is to see who can last longer, them or (George W.) Bush? They're betting they've got the longer life span, and once a new American president comes along they'll be okay." But the missing ingredient, analysts say, was Syrian popular support. Assad tackled the issue head-on last month in what many describe as the most important speech of his life, pressing enough emotional buttons to rally his reluctant people onside for possible UN sanctions."Assad's speech was a very personal claim of leadership hitting all the old emotional buttons that resonate with the Arab world — honour, national pride and resistance," said one diplomat."He framed the pressure from Mehlis together with the struggles of Palestine, Hezbollah and the resistance in Iraq. He drove home the overriding Arab principle that you don't let a stranger come into your house and beat up the family. He even invoked the name of Allah five times in a single statement, which was a shock to all of us. No Syrian leader has ever appealed on religious grounds before."The impact was visceral. Even the regime's most critical opponents found themselves struggling not to stand up and shout "Yes!"But when Syrians awoke the next day, they found their currency in free fall, as a rush to convert the Syrian pound to U.S. dollars triggered an 18 per cent devaluation."I started to wonder, `What is he doing to us?'" a Syrian lawyer who asked for anonymity told the Toronto Star. "Some people here are pretty certain Syria's guilty in the death of Hariri. So now we must prepare for sanctions to protect six people who are criminals anyway?"Today on the streets of Damascus a government-sponsored disinformation campaign backs up Assad's bluster. Lawyers and students parade into protest tents in support of the regime, and the government continues to work energetically to discredit the initial Mehlis findings by casting doubt on several witnesses responsible for the most damning testimony.

`It sounds sick to say it aloud, but Syrians would rather die of hunger than from civil war or conflict.' Marwan Kabalan, political scientist

Conspicuous in its absence in the campaign to rally support for Assad is the flag of the ruling Baath Party. The once endemic emblem has all but vanished from public occasions, replaced instead with the flag of Syria. With Mehlis expected to abandon the UN probe this week, political analysts say the Syrian regime is gaining confidence their strategy is working."The government is on solid ground now. They feel that the storm is passing — but not over," said Sami Moubayed, a Syrian political analyst and author."Mehlis has been exposed, but more is yet to come in Syria's clash with the international community. The basic reason, Syrians believe, is Iraq."Also emboldening Syria's leadership is the likelihood that any potential UN censure will be limited to so-called smart sanctions designed to target individuals rather than the country as a whole. The UN appears unwilling to revisit the kind of sweeping sanctions that impoverished Iraq during the 1990s without so much as denting the regime of Saddam Hussein.Still, many mid-ranking regime officials appear to be preparing for all contingencies. Sources at several Western embassies confirm they have received unusual requests for visas from some Syrian political figures, although the president and his family are not among the figures mentioned.Other regime officials are believed to have sold off holdings in Syria and transferred assets abroad, with Dubai as the favoured destination.Yet the overall picture is of a regime that has confidently hunkered down, having unified around Assad's leadership on the promise that no senior leaders will be sacrificed on the basis of the UN's allegations. Diplomats also observe subtle signs of a drift toward sectarian separation in Syria in the face of continuing uncertainty. Most Syrians scoff at such notions, pointing to the national myth of peaceful co-existence. But some analysts admit that the fissures that separate Syria's complex mix of Shiite, Sunni, Christian, Assyrian, Kurdish and Armenian populations lie tangibly close to the surface.Few are able to confidently predict how the sectarian divisions might rearrange under eventual regime change. But almost every scenario would see the political ascension of Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, estimated at 60 per cent, which languishes today under the Alawite-dominated Assad regime.Syrians need only look next door to Iraq to realize they have no interest in finding out the answer to their own sectarian riddle, said Kabalan. "The Assad regime has a lot of cards left to play but that is the biggest one. Nobody wants Syria to be the next Iraq. Everyone fears the result would be total anarchy."If the Syrian leadership's defiance ultimately leads to sanctions, government officials are already preparing the nation for the fact, reminding its citizens that Syria stands almost alone as a developing country with virtually no foreign debt.But critics fear that deepening international isolation will also hamper the already glacial pace of economic and social reforms that Assad introduced shortly after he assumed the presidency after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, five years ago.Of paramount concern is the rapidly approaching end of Syria's dwindling oil and gas resources, which provide the Syrian government with up to 89 per cent of its foreign currency. "Syria needs a 4 per cent growth rate in the coming years just to keep up with its population, most of which is under 35," a Western diplomat said. "That makes the longer term scenario of keeping the country economically viable the regime's biggest challenge."Moubayed agreed, saying that however much the international community might be interested in political change, the real crisis is economic. "Political pluralism and general amnesties are low priorities for people struggling just to survive."

A bold new voice for silent soldiers

Ellis Henican

December 11, 2005

They are the last voices to be heard in the debate over Iraq - the American men and women who've actually been fighting there.

Tell me, is there any reason our soldiers shouldn't get to speak? None that I can think of. So today - and from this day forward - that wrong will be righted here.

"When I came home," Paul Rieckhoff was saying at week's end, "the guys who were dominating the national conversation on Iraq were policy wonks, four-star generals and some high-profile hosts on television and radio. Not one of them had been on the ground over there. Very few had any understanding of what it was like. That created a real vacuum.

"Who was representing this new generation of troops and veterans? Who was helping to get our point of view across?"

Well, no one was.

So Rieckhoff began the grunt work of changing that.

He is 30 years old, a stocky guy with a soldier's posture, a shaved head and a disarmingly direct way of saying what he thinks. He grew up outside Peekskill, George Pataki's hometown. After Amherst College, he tended bar and worked on Wall Street. He lives in the city now.

He served in Iraq as a first lieutenant with the 3rd Infantry Division of the Army National Guard. He spent most of 2003 and part of 2004 leading a platoon of 38 Army Reserve infantrymen, kicking in doors in Baghdad, searching for weapons and insurgents and interrogating Iraqi prisoners.

It was gritty, dangerous duty. He was happy to be home, but frustrated that so few people seemed to understand what this war was like.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan group Rieckhoff set up with a few other fresh vets, Operation Truth (www.optruth.org), now has a full-time national headquarters at 770 Broadway in Manhattan and members in all 50 states, increasingly un-shy about being heard.

"These guys, regardless of party affiliation," Rieckhoff said, "have been six months ahead of everyone else on the war. We were talking about the problems of body armor before anybody was. We knew the insurgency was getting worse before you heard anything about that. We knew what a problem post-traumatic stress disorder was becoming.

"There was a lag on all these stories. The Pentagon had a stranglehold on information. The media have been pulling back. If we aren't being heard, the story isn't being told."

This coming week, the debate in Washington will turn to torture - whether we torture, whether we should and whether we should promise not to. Congress may vote on Sen. John McCain's call to put the United States clearly on record against prisoner abuse, a declaration the Bush administration has been resisting.

The policy wonks have all weighed in by now. So why not hear from someone who knows a thing or two?

"Torturing our enemies puts guys like me at risk," Paul Rieckhoff said. "However you feel about the morality of war, if our president does not say torture is wrong, it makes my job harder as a soldier. Period.

"We talk a lot about who lied and who didn't in this debate on Iraq," he said. "We have to get to the conversation about what works and what doesn't. President Bush is a business guy. Let's talk about net loss and net gain.

"We know torture produces unreliable information. A detainee will tell you anything to make the hurt stop. And if they think we torture their guys, they're going to think it's OK to torture ours. Why not put that to rest?"

It isn't always easy, emboldening these new veterans to speak. For one thing, many of those who've fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are still in the military as reservists and national guardsmen. Many could be heading back for second or third tours.

That's true of Rieckhoff.

"I like the Army," he said. "I plan to stay in. I had drill last weekend. I have drill again in January. I'm not some crazy anti-war activist jumping on a fence throwing medals. That's not where this generation of soldiers is."

And neither political party seems to have the answers for them.

"Republicans got us into this mess," Rieckhoff said. "Democrats don't have much of a plan for getting us out. We're just guys without a party who don't think we should be stage props or window dressing anymore."

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.

Judicial execution: the way to a better world?

COUNTERPOINT

Judicial execution: the way to a better world?

By ROGER PULVERS
Special to The Japan Times

The most gruesome photograph of people that I have ever seen in a newspaper is that of convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg just before their execution in the electric chair on June 19, 1953.

My father held up a copy of the now long-defunct tabloid, the Los Angeles Mirror. Virtually the entire front page was devoted to a shot of the Rosenbergs. The camera angle from below exaggerated the size of their facial features. Their heads had been shaved to facilitate the flow of electricity through their bodies. Dad shook the paper in front of my face, saying, "See what happens to people who betray their country?"

To an 8-year-old, the photo was terrifying enough. Then dad added, "And they are leaving two little boys behind."

Those words stuck with me: "leaving behind." It only increased the horror of the experience; and I remember thinking how cruel it was to kill the parents of two little boys, whatever their crime.

The next time I became conscious of capital punishment was in the late 1950s. A man named Carol Chessman had been sentenced to death for robbery and kidnapping in 1948. While on death row he wrote four books, one of which became a best seller, and trained himself in law. Kidnapping carried a mandatory death sentence at the time, and after a 12-year-long battle for his life, Chessman, age 38, was executed in the gas chamber in California on May 2, 1960. His sentence had been opposed by a host of distinguished people, including Albert Schweitzer, Aldous Huxley and Pablo Casals. Chessman maintained his innocence until the very end.

Ritualized revenge

Whether the crime be treason, kidnapping, drug trafficking or murder, what justification does the state have in killing a person? Is ritualized revenge -- and that is essentially what the death penalty is, whatever its proponents say -- a proper motive for the dispensing of justice?

On Dec. 2, Nguyen Tuong Van, a 25-year-old Australian, was hanged in Singapore for the possession of heroin. There was an outcry over his fate in Australia, where the death penalty was abolished in 1973. Yet in Singapore, this execution created barely a ripple of dissent. Warren Fernandez, writing in The Straits Times after the event, said that critics of Singapore "would be better off directing their anger at the real villains in this saga -- the drug traffickers and barons who seek profit from this heinous trade at the expense of thousands of innocent lives."

One more case.

Stanley Tookie Williams is scheduled to be executed in California two days from now. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger alone has the power to commute this sentence. Williams, a confessed murderer, has transformed himself into an articulate advocate of nonviolence, urging young people to turn away from their gangs and abide by the law. If his life can be useful in preventing murders in the future, isn't that better than taking it in the name of retribution? What good would his death do the world? Have the executions of the Rosenbergs or Chessman stopped people from betraying their country or kidnapping people? Do spies or kidnappers think of them today when they are planning their crimes? Will taking Nguyen's life hinder the drug traffickers? Of course it will not. Taking away the lure of drug use will save countless more lives than shooting the messengers, who are often so desperate that they are barely rational.

The case for capital punishment as a deterrent to crime has been refuted by countless studies. If it were a genuine deterrent, crimes of extreme violence would be committed less frequently in the United States -- where the 1,000th person was recently executed since the Supreme Court reconfirmed the legality of the penalty in 1976 -- than, say, in the countries of the European Union, where capital punishment is illegal. In fact, the opposite is true.

Faithful Christians

The majority of Americans consider themselves faithful Christians, and many of those oppose abortion under the banner of "pro-life." Yet those very Christians, whose faith tells them to forgive rather than seek revenge (with the current president their most powerful and ardent defender), overwhelmingly support the practice of state execution. President Bush's home state of Texas has put more than 240 people to death in the past 30 years, three times more than the next most frequently executing state, Virginia.

Humanity's sense of justice has progressed over the centuries. There was a time in Europe when no confession was considered valid unless the alleged criminal was tortured. The logic was that anybody would confess if they weren't tortured, so how could you believe them? The zigzag scrawl of confessors' signatures attests to the physical abuse that they endured in what was then the legal practice of justice.

The execution of criminals in our day is no more than an extension of that logic. I am sure that the torturing of confessors gave some upstanding practitioners in the legal profession of the time a deep sense of satisfaction that true justice was being done for all.

We who execute criminals -- and bear in mind that some of those who are killed by the state are innocent -- will surely be judged by people in the future as torturers every bit as revengeful and inhumane as the upright citizens who once turned the knobs and wheels on the rack and the screw.

When Ethel Rosenberg was being killed, the first jolt of electricity, lasting 57 seconds, was insufficient. Still alive and smoking all over, she was restrapped to the chair for a further two jolts.

A world without Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Carol Chessman, Nguyen Tuong Van and Stanley Tookie Williams is not a better world. We are far worse off for killing them in the name of what will someday be seen as a sophisticated version of medieval vengeance. That is the fate -- of being self-righteous torturers -- we are condemning ourselves to when we support the death penalty.

The Japan Times: Dec. 11, 2005

Bernie Sanders Interview

Published on The Progressive

Bernie Sanders Interview

Bernie Sanders Interview

By Ruth Conniff

December 2005 Issue

Bernie Sanders, the independent, socialist Representative from Vermont, is poised to win the Senate seat vacated by Jim Jeffords in 2006. According to the Associated Press, Sanders has received donations from 100 times as many Vermont supporters as his likely opponent, the self-financed, Bentley-driving corporate executive Rich Tarrant.

An outspoken critic of the Patriot Act, the first lawmaker to take a busload of constituents to Canada to buy prescription drugs, the leader of a successful effort to block the Bush Administration’s plan to slash worker pensions, and an economic populist with crossover appeal to Vermont’s rural dairy farmers as well as liberals in Burlington, Sanders is the kind of down-to-earth grassroots candidate willing to oppose the Republicans in no uncertain terms. Without taking corporate PAC money, he has managed to win against better-financed Republican opponents again and again. In 1996, when Newt Gingrich put up a well-financed candidate to unseat him, Sanders won reelection with 55 percent of the vote.

In September, Sanders came to Madison, Wisconsin, for “Fighting Bob Fest”—a progressive rally held annually in memory of Robert M. La Follette, the great Senator who helped usher in the Progressive Era. I caught up with Sanders at a hotel in downtown Madison, where he was preparing to speak to a group of lawyers at a fundraiser for his campaign and that of a fellow opponent of the Iraq War, Representative John Conyers.

Unlike many of his colleagues in Washington, Sanders has an utterly unassuming manner. Any other candidate for national office might arrive with an entourage, or at least an aide in tow, and think nothing of coming an hour late. Sanders tramped into the hotel lobby looking slightly windblown, having made the three-hour drive by himself from the airport in Chicago. He had called my cell phone to apologize, saying he was running behind by ten minutes.

He spoke earnestly, in his native Brooklyn accent, about the state of national politics and his own race for the Senate, refusing to put a rosy spin on things, cautioning that the troubles facing the Republicans don’t mean an automatic win for their opponents. There’s a lot of work to be done, he said, but progressives are right on the issues, and represent the true interests of a majority of Americans. The only thing to do, he said, is to get out and talk to our fellow citizens—especially those who don’t already agree with us.

Question: What does Hurricane Katrina tell us?

Bernie Sanders: I think Katrina is one more indication of how inefficient and corrupt this Administration is, and indicates the absolute lack of seriousness that Bush has in making the government respond to the needs of the people. He is there primarily to give tax breaks to billionaires, to do the service of large corporations. This is just one more powerful, dramatic, painful example of the incompetence and lack of concern of this Administration. They are so separated from the lives of normal, low-income people that it never occurred to them that if you’re poor and have no money, no car, that you can’t leave. You don’t just get in your SUV and go to a nice hotel a few miles away.

Q: People finally saw indifference and incompetence?

Sanders: What they were seeing on television was people dying because they’re poor. And they’re dying because they don’t have a car they can get into and go to a hotel. But what you don’t see on television is people dying today because they can’t get to a doctor and they can’t afford prescription drugs. That’s why they are also dying. They are dying in Iraq because they are poor and they have gone into the military because they can’t afford to go to college. They’re dying because they’re living in communities where asthma rates are extremely high because the air is filthy. The suffering of the poor and working class people is a virtual nonissue for the media. But that is the reality.

Obviously, you were seeing it incredibly starkly in New Orleans. You’re poor, you can’t get out of town, you die.

Q: Is this a particularly ripe moment for change?

Sanders: I think it is. Given the fact that poverty is growing, more and more Americans are losing health insurance, health care costs are going up, the middle class is shrinking, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider, we have lost 2,000 soldiers in Iraq, we’re spending some $300 billion there, and Bush has no idea of an exit strategy. Add all of those things together and the real question should be asked, how is it conceivable that he is even at 40 percent?

That speaks to the weakness of the opposition. People do not like George Bush. But I think it’s fair to say that they are not flocking to the Democratic Party, or see the Democrats as a real alternative.

Q: So what’s your message to progressives?

Sanders: We have got to change the political culture in America. We need a political revolution. That means we are working on politics not just three weeks before an election but 365 days a year. We have to develop a strong economic message which says every American is entitled to health care through a national health care program. And we’re not going to allow these large corporations to push through trade agreements which allow them to throw Americans out on the street and run to China. We’re not going to give tax breaks to billionaires and then cut back on the needs of our elderly or poor or kids or education. We’re not going to privatize Social Security—in fact, we’re going to strengthen it. We’re going to provide quality education for every kid in America, from preschool through college. We have to take on these corporate leaders who are selling out the American people, whose allegiance is now much more to China than it is to the United States. If we have the courage to take these people on, I think we can overwhelm Bush and his friends.

Why is it that two-thirds of white, rural men voted Republican? Why? That’s what we have to address. That’s crazy. These people are working longer and longer hours. They can’t afford to pay $3.50 for a gallon of gas. They’re losing their jobs. So why do they vote for President Bush? And the Republican Party? We’ve got to address this.

It’s very easy to make fun of George Bush, but that ain’t going to do it. What we have to do is knock on doors and go into communities where there are people who disagree with us on certain issues.

And we have to talk to them. They’re our friends. They’re our allies. They’re our co-workers. We can’t see them as enemies.

That’s easier said than done.

All over this country you have progressive communities like Madison and Burlington, but we’ve got to go well, well, well outside of those communities. We’ve got to go to the rural areas. We’ve got to go where a lot of working people are voting Republican.

We just can’t talk to each other. That’s too easy.

Q: How is your own campaign going? Are you seeing a national Republican effort to defeat you? Is money coming in?

Sanders: Vermont is such a small state, and the most money that’s ever been spent in the history of political campaigns there is $2 million. That number is going to be surpassed many times. Vermont remains a “cheap state” for the Republican National Committee. So putting $5 or $10 million into Vermont—compared to New York or California or Illinois—that’s small potatoes.

The truth is that Bush and Karl Rove do not like Vermont for a lot of reasons. They don’t like the fact that Jim Jeffords gave the Senate over to the Democrats. They don’t like Howard Dean. They don’t like Leahy. They don’t like me. And they would very much like to win this seat. So we expect huge amounts of money to come into the state. I believe that I’ll be running against the richest guy in the state of Vermont, worth a few hundred million dollars. So clearly we know they will do everything they can to win, including spending more money than has ever been spent.

Q: Do you think they’re going to use the socialist label against you, and do you think that’s going to matter?

Sanders: No, I doubt it will make a dent. I’ve run for statewide office plenty of times, and people know me. If you look at what they did to Max Cleland and what they did to John Kerry, we have a pretty good idea of what they can do. It’s the politics of personal destruction. They are incapable of debating issues, because their positions on all of the issues are horrendous. Their style has always been to try to personally destroy whom they run against. So we expect a great deal of negativity.

I won my last election by forty points. The Republican I ran against, at the end of the campaign, had decided that I was “a friend of terrorists” and “a friend of pedophiles.” That’s the kind of crap they came out with. I expect that’s the kind of crap they’ll come out with again.

Their weakness is they have nothing to say. What are they going to say about the economy? What are they going to say about tax policy when they give tax breaks to billionaires and inadequately fund veterans’ benefits? What do they say about the environment when they are among the few remaining people on Earth who do not believe in global warming and have just passed a disastrous energy bill that has almost no energy conservation or sustainable energy?
What can they say about Social Security when the vast majority of the people don’t want to privatize it?

On issue after issue they are bankrupt. The only thing they can do is try to destroy the character and the integrity of their opponent. That’s all that they have left.

Q: What kinds of things do you want to do as Senator?

Sanders: If people envisage me in the Senate they might think of me as someone who would emulate Paul Wellstone, fighting for the issues he fought for. He was a good friend of mine.

We’ll be trying to do a couple of things. One is fighting for national health care. Another is fighting to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and changing our trade policies.

But also we’ll be trying to use the office to connect the grassroots to the United States Senate and the Congress. Because of a mass media more interested in gossip and sensationalism than real issues, I would say a vast majority of the American public doesn’t have a clue about how the Congress functions and what goes on.

I think it’s important that members of the United States Senate spend time not just on Capitol Hill but making contact with ordinary people and engaging them in the political process. We’re not going to bring about change unless that happens.

In many respects, this country is becoming an oligarchy, with a tiny percentage of America owning the media, owning the country.

We have the technology to turn it around. Everyone can have health care. Everyone can earn a living wage. We can educate all our kids—well.

But none of that happens unless there’s a political revolution. And it’s not going to happen unless we deal with corporate control of the media.

Q: Where should progressives put their energy, in the Democrats or in third party efforts?

Sanders: I’ll give you an example. In Vermont we probably have the most successful third party in the country, electorally. When I was mayor of Burlington I defeated a Democrat. And out of that victory came what for all intents and purposes was a party. Legally it wasn’t—it was called the Progressive Coalition. It evolved into the Progressive Party, which now has six members of the state legislature. So it’s not just in Burlington. They’re doing a good job.

Without trying to oversimplify the issue, I think people are going to use common sense. The common sense is that there is nothing wrong with a third party. Third parties can play a very important role. And in Vermont, for example, I think the Progressive Party is playing a very important role. They are raising a lot of good issues in the legislature. Having said that, I think clearly somebody like a Ralph Nader taking away votes from a Kerry at this critical, critical moment in American history is something that a majority of the progressive community correctly reacted strongly against.

You have to look at the moment, at reality. At this particular moment progressives have got to unite.
In my view this happens to be one of the most dangerous moments in American history. These guys are not just reactionaries. They are changing the rules of the game so they will stay in power for the indefinite future. We see this abuse of power on the floor of the House. They kept the voting rolls open for three hours to pass the Medicare prescription drug bill. I had an amendment, which won, on the Patriot Act. They kept the voting open twenty minutes longer to defeat it. They break the rules. It’s like having a football game go into the fifth quarter because you don’t like the results at the end of the fourth quarter. We know what DeLay did in Texas. They have taken chairmen—yanked them out—because they defy the leadership of the House. They are now attempting to destroy the judiciary system, which will have profound implications for the future of this country.

This is very, very serious. They are very radical people. Far more radical than someone like a Bill Clinton ever dreamed of being.

Q: What about Hillary? What do you think about her as the likely Presidential nominee?

Sanders: I think it’s too early. Everybody in the world is running. Kerry is running. Edwards is running. Russ Feingold, I gather, is running. Here, I’ll make you a campaign pledge: If elected to the U.S. Senate, I’ll be the only person not running for President.

Ruth Conniff is the political editor of The Progressive.

---

Source URL:
http://progressive.org/mag_intv1205

A New Low for Lieberman

Published on The Progressive

A New Low for Lieberman

A New Low for Lieberman

By Matthew Rothschild

December 7, 2005

There are fewer and fewer people around for Bush to call on to make his case on Iraq.

So he has put himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice on a propaganda merry-go-round.

But there is one other person he’s been calling on: the execrable Joe Lieberman, who has discredited what little remained of his Democratic bona fides by parroting the Bush line.

You just can’t get more obsequious than Joe Lieberman, who wrote in The Wall Street Journal on November 29, “The Administration’s recent use of the banner ‘clear, hold, and build’ accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented” in Iraq.

Now when you start praising the propaganda slogans, you know you’re deep in the Bush pocket.

And that’s exactly where Lieberman wants to be, as he tries to worm his way into position as a possible successor to Donald Rumsfeld, if and when Bush finally makes the Donald take a hike.

Lieberman is so much of service to the Bush Administration that the Prince of Darkness himself, Dick Cheney, bestowed praise upon him [1] in a speech on December 6 to another gathering of troops.

“As some of you know, when I first ran for Vice President five years ago, my Democratic opponent was a fine U.S. Senator named Joe Lieberman,” Cheney said. “We disagreed on some issues, but we stand together on this war.” And then Cheney proceeded to quote approvingly from Lieberman’s Wall Street Journal article.

At the same time Cheney was speaking, Lieberman was ingratiating himself [2] even further. “It’s time,” he said, “for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he’ll be commander-in-chief for three more years.”

Unless, Joe, he’s impeached, which by all rights he should be.

But even if Bush is there for a full three more years, no one who sees what a mess Bush is making in Iraq has to start trusting him and backing him.

Lieberman went there, though, saying essentially that harsh criticism of Bush jeopardizes America. “We undermine the President’s credibility at our nation’s peril.”

Leaving aside the fact that Bush has done a fine job of undermining his own credibility, who is Lieberman to take up the muzzle and try to gag Bush’s critics? Who is he to join the Fox News team that turns dissent into treason?

We are supposed to be a democracy, where the citizens hire the President to serve us.

To equate the President’s credibility with the nation’s security is a monarchical notion.

As citizens, we are not obliged to salute the commander in chief.

And when Bush discredits this country with an illegal war and with torture, there is no reason whatsoever to salute him.

---

Source URL:
http://progressive.org/mag_wx120705

UK 'covered up' Israeli nuke deal

UK 'covered up' Israeli nuke deal

The government has been accused of covering up the sale of 20 tonnes of heavy water to Israel for its nuclear programme in the early 1950s.

The BBC's Newsnight says fresh evidence shows the UK knew the ingredient it sold to Norway would be subsequently sold on to Israel for nuclear weapons.

Government officials insist they knew nothing of Israel's nuclear ambitions or Norway's intentions.

The Foreign Office has declined to comment, amid calls for an inquiry.

'Cover-up'

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell is asking Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for clarification.

He said: "The trouble with this cover-up is that this is not a cover-up, it simply flies in the face of the known facts, now that we have access to previously classified documents."

Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn wants the Commons' foreign affairs select committee to investigate.

We had no idea at that stage, nobody suspected ... that the Israelis hoped to manufacture nuclear weapons Donald Cape

He said: "Right back to the late 1950s we were a party to the transfer of nuclear technology to Israel.

"We were party to the development of a nuclear facility in Israel that could and has been used for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Norway was always a smokescreen."

New claims

In August, Newsnight uncovered papers which revealed details of the deal.

But Foreign Office minister Kim Howells insisted Britain had simply negotiated the sale of surplus heavy water to Norway.

He said the UK knew nothing of Norway's intentions or Israel's desire to start a nuclear weapons programme.

But Newsnight says it has new evidence that casts doubt on these claims.

It says the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) had written to Foreign Office official Donald Cape, who approved the sale.

In the letter, the energy authority said too much heavy water had been bought from a Norwegian firm and another company from the country wanted to buy it back and sell it on to Israel.

'Sham' denied

Newsnight also has a copy of the company's contract with Israel, which stated it would provide heavy water from the UKAE.

Mr Cape denied the sale back to Norway was a "sham".

But Newsnight says confidential letters he wrote suggest the Foreign Office knew Israel had been trying to buy uranium from South Africa.

One letter quotes CIA reports from 1957 and 1958 that say Israel will try and establish a nuclear programme when it has the means.

Other secret government documents apparently say: "It has been, and remains our opinion, that Israel wanted an independent supply of plutonium so as to be in a position to make a nuclear weapon if she wished."

Mr Cape told Newsnight: "We had no idea at that stage, nobody suspected - not only in Britain but in the US - that the Israelis hoped to manufacture nuclear weapons."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4515708.stm

Published: 2005/12/10 00:01:25 GMT

Dear President Bush; about that "goddamned piece of paper."

Dear President Bush; about that "goddamned piece of paper."

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” Let us start out with the fact that the Constitution is actually written on parchment, not paper. A trivial point, I grant you, but one that reveals (along with your inability to correctly pronounce the word "nuclear") a shocking lack of education in a head of state. But to get to the point, the Constitution is not the parchment itself, but the ideas written upon it; ideas which form the foundations of our nation, ideas which would carry equal weight if written on stone, glass, metal, or even paper. These ideas are the soul of the nation. They include the recognition that the people of this nation have certain rights, rights which the government does not have the authority to remove. These rights include freedom of speech, to say what we think about the nation at any and all times, to write that opinion down and share it however we choose to. These rights include the freedom to worship as we choose, free from coercion. These rights include the right to privacy, in our homes and businesses, free from government intrusions other than in very specific and well-defined circumstances. Maybe those rights are inconvenient to you, as such rights are always inconvenient to tyrants, but you are not allowed the choice which rights you will abide by or not. That too is spelled out explicitly in the Constitution. The Constitution isn't just a piece of paper or parchment. It's a contract; the original contract with America. It's the contract you yourself swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend against all enemies both foreign and domestic. You attached your name to that promise. You swore that oath before a judge of the United States Supreme Court, with your hand on a bible. That isn't just scenery for the cameras. Swearing an oath before a judge carries legal obligations with that oath, and legal penalties for breaking that oath. The election process by which you claim authority is defined in that Constitution. And as you claim authority by Constitutional process, so too are you limited by Constitutional process. If you act outside the limits of the Constitution, you are no longer acting as the President, but as a private citizen abusing the powers with which you were trusted. A government that acts outside the Constitution ceases to be the legal government of this land. The Constitution exists not only to tell the government what it may do, but more importantly what it may not do. You, as the President, are not allowed to declare wars without the US Congress. You, the President, are not allowed to seize people at random and send them off to be tortured. And most of all, you, the President, and not allowed to lie to the people and to the Congress. Every President before you, including your father, swore that oath to preserve, protect, and defend that Constitution. Millions of Americans died in wars in the firm belief that the form of government describes on that parchment was worth such a sacrifice. To state that the Constitution is just a "dammed piece of paper" is a slap in the face of every American who ever donned the uniform of the military forces of this country. Go over to Arlington National Cemetery. It's not that far from where you live. Look at those tombstones. By your statement, you have written across and every one the words, "Died for a goddamned piece of paper."