Remember 9/11

On May 23, 2003, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta testified before the 9/11 Commission. Here is part of his opening statement:

By this time [shortly after the second WTC tower was hit], my office had contacted the White House. A brief moment later, the White House called my chief of staff and asked if I could come to the White House and operate from that location. I decided that, given the nature of the attack and the request, that I should be at the White House directly providing the president and the vice president with information.

When I got to the White House, it was being evacuated. I met briefly with Richard Clark, a National Security Council staff member, who had no new information. Then the Secret Service escorted me down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, otherwise known as the PEOC. I established contact on two lines, one with my chief of staff at the Department of Transportation, and the second with Monty Belger, the acting deputy administrator of the FAA, and Jane Garvey, both of whom were in the FAA operations center.

And as the minutes passed, the developing picture from air traffic control towers and radar screens became increasingly more alarming. Some aircraft could not be contacted. While on a normal day that may be just a communications snafu, we were faced with trying to quickly sort out minor problems from significant threats. We did not know how many more attacks might be in progress.

The FAA began to restrict air travel in the Northeast United States by a combination of actions which included sterilizing air space in certain regions and at various airports, and ultimately a nationwide ground stop of all aircraft for all locations, regardless of destination.

Within a few minutes, American Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

A few minutes later in the testimony, Mineta is asked by commission member Lee Hamilton about his time in the PEOC:

MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And --

MR. HAMILTON: The flight you're referring to is the --

MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Cheney "entered the underground tunnel leading to the shelter at 9:37." According to the report, AA Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37:36. The report goes on to say:

Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected.
...
at 9:55 the Vice President was still on the phone with the President advising that three planes were missing and one had hit the Pentagon. We believe this is the same call in which the Vice President urged the President not to return to Washington. After the call ended, Mrs. Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room.
...
There is conflicting evidence about when the Vice President arrived in the shelter conference room. We have concluded, from the available evidence, that the Vice President arrived in the room shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.

The report goes on to describe a similar scenario to the one described by Mineta, of a military aide coming in to tell Cheney that "the aircraft is 80 miles out...the aircraft is 60 miles out." The report says that these updates occurred "probably between 10:12 and 10:18." The report also states that the last of the four hijacked airliners, United Flight 93, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:15. My mapping software tells me that Shanksville is 120 miles from Washington, and the map in the report shows that the plane had been heading east for some time and hadn't been any closer than 120 miles from DC since shortly after takeoff. The report doesn't mention Mineta at all in its summary of this time period. It mentions Mrs. Cheney as having been in the bunker, but not the transportation secretary.

And while the commissioners in general did an atrocious job in following up on interesting points raised, Hamilton did ask Mineta about United 93:

MR. HAMILTON: With respect to Flight 93, what type of information were you and the vice president receiving about that flight?

MR. MINETA: The only information we had at that point was when it crashed.

MR. HAMILTON: I see. You didn't know beforehand about that airplane.

MR. MINETA: I did not.

Okay, here's the gist. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta gave testimony that was coherent, consistent, and public. Vice President Cheney gave, in private not-under-oath chatting, an account that was apparently at best confused (perhaps because he was concerned that W might spill the beans while they met with the commissioners together). Mineta reports that Cheney was with him at around 9:30 that morning, receiving reports about a plane approaching shortly before the Pentagon was struck. Mineta's testimony strongly suggests that Cheney clearly knew that a plane was approaching Washington before the Pentagon was hit, contrary to the official story. (And for those of us who justifiably believe the worst of our government, his testimony about "Do the orders still stand?" can easily be read to refer to stand-down orders, not the shoot-down orders Mineta later interprets them as.) Mineta denies any similar reports about flight 93. Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission report denies Cheney's presence in the room with Mineta around 9:30, and moves Mineta's story about the plane approaching the Pentagon to 45 minutes later, and makes it about flight 93 instead.

The Bushies did everything possible to impede, delay and hinder all investigations into the events of 9/11. They benefitted immensely politically and financially from the tragic events of that day. The most ridiculous 9/11 conspiracy theory of all is the official one.

There's lots more about the Mineta testimony and the whole 9/11 coverup in general.

Maybe they'll uncover the truth about 9/11, too

If you haven't seen many Ted Rall cartoons, that's supposed to be Bush and Cheney in the last frame.

In case you were wondering...

I wonder if people were laughing with Scalia or at him.

A time not to reflect

As the new year approaches, it's a good time not to sit back and examine our lives. At least that's the advice that University of Virginia Timothy Wilson gives in a NY Times Op-ed:

Self-reflection is especially problematic when we are feeling down. Research by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a clinical psychologist at Yale University, shows that when people are depressed, ruminating on their problems makes things worse.

In one study, mildly depressed college students were asked to spend eight minutes thinking about themselves or to spend the same amount of time thinking about mundane topics like "clouds forming in the sky."

People in the first group focused on the negative things in their lives and sunk into a worse mood. People in the other group actually felt better afterward, possibly because their negative self-focus was "turned off" by the distraction task.
...
Social psychologist Daniel Batson and colleagues at the University of Kansas found that participants who were given an opportunity to do a favor for another person ended up viewing themselves as kind, considerate people - unless, that is, they were asked to reflect on why they had done the favor. People in that group tended in the end to not view themselves as being especially kind.

So, as another new year approaches, take a few minutes to think about anything but that.

Iraqis should be doing that

From Tony at Workers World.

He said it. (Bottom of page 3 to top of page 4.)

It isn't called "Skull and Bones" for nothing. With Dumbocrats like Kerry, Clinton and Lieberman, who needs Republicans? Then again, who needs Republicans, period?

What a friggin' moron.

Surf's up!

Fifteen- to twenty-foot are pounding Southern California beaches.

A tradition of supporting both sides in war

Between 1829 and 1846, the US Military Academy at West Point graduated such luminaries as Robert E. Lee, George McLellan, Stonewall Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, P.G.T. Beauregard, and William Tecumseh Sherman. Then, between 1861 and 1865, these esteemed gentlemen and dozens of their fellow alumni proceeded to beat the crap out of each other's soldiers in America's bloodiest war. In the 1980's, the U.S. supplied weapons and other support to both sides of the very bloody Iran-Iraq war. And right now our government is spending billions to build up an Iraqi army which seems destined to break into two or three parts, ready to fight to the death in Iraq's upcoming civil war. Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder describes how both Kurdish soldiers in the north and Shiite soldiers in the south are ready and waiting for that war to start. All of the training and arming that is a part of W's "Iraqis standing up" will likely just make that war longer and bloodier.

Uzbekistan: Our ally in the war of terror

Greg Saunders at This Modern World writes about the enormous amount of US aid going to the brutal Karimo regime in Uzbekistan, and some new torture memos. Saunders concludes:

[I]t should be repeated again and again that this would all stop if the President wanted it to. With a phonecall to the Uzbek government, he could threaten to eliminate foreign aid until human rights abuses ceased. With a stroke of his pen, he could fire Donald Rumsfeld and replace him with a Defense Secretary serious about curbing detainee abuse. Working with Congressional leaders, he could cooperate with stymied investigations into torture. For the most powerful man in the world, the torture of innocent people could be eliminated tomorrow if he cared enough.

Why he hasn’t done any of these things leads us back to the eternal debate about the presidency of George W. Bush. Is he so isolated from bad news that he has no idea about the abuses that are happening on his watch? Is he a callous monster who thinks the torture of innocents is justified by the “greater good” of whatever the hell he’s trying to accomplish? Or is it a combination of the two? Either way, I don’t know how much longer we can afford to have the reputation of the United States tarnished while we ponder the endless “idiot or asshole?” debate.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

If MacBeth's weird sisters bought their house on an interest-only mortgage, hoping the value of the house would increase, they may be in for a bad spell, so to speak. Selling their brooms and pointy hats may be insufficient to avoid foreclosure, since the housing bubble has apparently burst. From Mike Whitney:

In 2004 "one-fourth of all home-buyers -- including 42% of first-time buyers -- made no down payment." (New York Times, July 7, 2005)

Equally troubling is the fact that "nearly one third of all new mortgages this year call for interest-only payments (NY Times) This tells us that a large number of new buyers can barely make their payments, but are gambling that their property value will go up enough to justify their investment. This is "equity roulette," a shell game that anticipates that salaries will go up while interest rates stay low.

We can anticipate that many overstretched homeowners will begin to fall from the economic precipice in short order. In fact, many markets are already showing a 40% increase in foreclosures even though the air has just begun hissssssing out of the bubble.

The ridiculously low interest rates coupled with the irresponsible lending practices has precipitated a feeding frenzy for cheap money. Greenspan is expected to raise rates another one-half percent before he leaves in January which should be just enough to collapse the market and put the economy in a permanent coma.
...
Adding insult to injury, the Federal Reserve announced 2 weeks ago that new steps will be taken to regulate low-interest, high-risk loans. In the third quarter a full 33% of first-time home buyers took advantage of "non-traditional" mortgages. ("No interest" or "ARMS" adjustable rate mortgages) Try to imagine the chilling effect on the housing market when 33% of first-time homeowners are removed from the pool of potential buyers?

Still think you'll be able to sell your house at a profit?

Paul Craig Roberts has been reading

My former Reaganite gives brief reviews on three books and how they relate the aWol's Pretzel Putsch: Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values, historian Nikolaus Wachsmann's Hitler's Prisons, and Robert Higgs' Resurgence of the Warfare State.

A couple of selections from Roberts' article:

With ruthless logic Higgs shreds every claim of the Bush administration and its apologists. Reading Higgs leaves no doubt that the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq was an illegal act based in deception. Under the Nuremberg standard established by the US itself, Bush's invasion is a war crime. Widespread slaughter of the civilian Iraqi population and torture of detainees are also war crimes.
...
American forces in Iraq have killed far more Iraqi civilians than they have insurgents. It is safe to say that Iraqis never experienced such terror from Saddam Hussein as they have experienced from the American invasion and occupation.

Bush claims that his war crimes are justified because they are committed in the name of "freedom and democracy." The entire world rejects this excuse. Sooner or later even Bush's remaining Republican supporters will turn away in shame from the dishonor Bush has brought to America.

From Tim Menees.

From Steve Kelley.

From Rex Babin.

The Devil went down to Fallujah

Two days before Christmas, King Donald came from the west bearing gifts of depleted uranium, white phosporous, and lies, lies, lies.

Rummy in Fallujah, bragging about bringing "democracy." Maybe the tsunami will come back to Aceh and brag about its modernization program. Next, Katrina revisits the Gulf Coast, noting how many billions of dollars in demolition costs it saved the casino developers. The God of Israel explaining his tough love to the Egyptians. From locusts to willy pete--destroying villages to save them for over three millenia.

From Dan Wasserman.

From Kirk Walters.

From John Sherffius.

Upstream and downstream giving

There are two kinds of giving, but I like to think of it as downstream giving and upstream giving. It's not enough to pull the drowning victims out of the river, you need to walk back upstream and find out who's throwing them in. So there's both downstream-giving that actually takes care of victims of oppression. And then there's upstream-giving -- walking back upstream to do justice and to promote systemic change to find the underlying causes that are causing all this.

-- Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.

Feliz Navidad

Quagmire continues:

On Saturday, twelve people -- including Iraqi police and soldiers, ministry employees, civilians and a U.S. soldier -- were killed in insurgent attacks in Iraq, police and military officials said.

And from Juan Cole:

[There were] huge demonstrations in Iraq by Sunni Arabs on Friday against what they called election fraud on Dec. 15, and after about 100 prominent Sunni candidates were excluded on the grounds that they had been high officials in the Baath Party-- reinforcing the Sunni Arab conviction that they were targeted for marginalization by the new regime.

What he said

I'm heading off to holiday festivities in a few minutes, so I don't have time to dig deeper into something I think I blogged about a couple of years ago. Greg Saunders writes at This Modern World about how the main intelligence problems blamed by the Congressional Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission for the failure to detect the 9/11 plot had to do with connecting existing dots--not that there weren't enough dots to connect. Legally intercepted communications remained untranslated, FBI memos went unread or ignored, known al Qaeda types were shacking up with government informants, and so on. Adding more dots, say by listening in on thousands or millions of additional calls, wouldn't have simplified the task.

I know I wrote something about that before--any reader who has more time than I do today and finds it gets a gold star! Because I do get a kick out of being right once in a while.

From Pat Oliphant.

Shorter Charles Krauthammer

Bush didn't break the law, he circumvented it; therefore he is unimpeachable.

Daschle stands up, four years too late

Former Senate majority/minority leader Tom Daschle (his dynamic leadership as majority leader played a major role in his becoming minority leader) writes in a WaPo op-ed today that the Senate never intended to give aWol the dictatorial powers (domestic warrantless wiretaps in particular) he now claims, nor would they have if they had known he would use the "use of force" resolution to make that power grab. He also notes that the Bushies tried to include the words "in the United States and" in the key sentence of the bill, as follows:

[Congress authorizes] "all necessary and appropriate force in the United States and against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" [the attacks of Sept. 11].

Daschle refused to add the wording to the bill. In his op-ed today, he points out that if the Bushies really believed that the power they now claim were included in the wording of the bill, they would never have attempted to add the "in the United States" clause at all.

The meaning of American "justice"

Paul Craig Roberts explains the guilty when charged nature of American "justice":

American prisons are full of wrongfully convicted persons. Many were coerced into admitting to crimes they did not commit by prosecutors' threats to pile on more charges. Others were convicted by false testimony from criminals bribed by prosecutors, who exchanged dropped charges or reduced sentences in exchange for false testimony against defendants.
...
Until it happens to them or to a member of their family, Americans are clueless to the corruption in the criminal justice (sic) system. Most prosecutors are focused on their conviction rates, and judges are focused on clearing their court dockets. Defendants are processed accordingly, not in terms of guilt or innocence.
...
Almost all (95-97%) felony indictments are settled by a coerced plea. By withholding exculpatory evidence, suborning perjury, fabricating evidence, and lying to jurors, prosecutors have made the risks of a trial too great even for the innocent. Consequently, the prosecutors' cases and police evidence are almost never tested in court. Defendants are simply intimidated into self-incrimination rather than risk the terrors of trial.
...
[T]he US has the highest percentage of its population in prison than any country on earth, including dictatorships, tyrannies, and China. The US incarceration rate is up to 12 times higher than that of European countries.

Unless you believe Americans are 12 times more criminally inclined than Europeans, why is one of every 80 Americans (not counting children and the elderly) locked away from family, friends, career, and life? Part of the answer is the private prison industry, which requires inmates to fuel the profits of investors. Another part of the answer is career-driven prosecutors who want convictions at all costs. Yet another is the failure of judges to rein-in prosecutorial abuses. Another part of the answer is the hostility of Americans to defendants and indifference to their innocence or guilt.
...
In America, defendants are no longer innocent until they are proven guilty. They are guilty the minute they are charged, and the system works to process the guilty, not to determine innocence or guilt.

Americans in their ignorance and gullibility think that only the guilty would enter a guilty plea. This is the uninformed opinion of the naive who have never experienced the terror and psychological torture of the US criminal justice (sic) system.

Roberts doesn't say so here, but to me this is one of the most compelling arguments against the death penalty. Putting that brutal and final punishment on the table coerces many pleas to lesser crimes, whether they were committed or not. Bush's "enemy combatants" BS falls into the same category--cop a plea to 15 years or you may never be seen nor heard from again.

War: The road to empire

"If there is no war, my son will never be emperor." -- I can certainly imagine Barbara Bush saying that, but the quote is attributed to Empress Eugenie, wife of French Emperor Napoleon III. The background for that quote is frighteningly similar to what is happening today. From Wikipedia:

France's position in Europe was now in danger of being overshadowed by the emergence of a powerful Prussia, and France looked increasingly flat-footed following Bismarck's successes. In addition, France's ruler Napoleon III was on increasingly shaky ground in domestic politics. Having successfully overthrown the Second Republic and established the Bonapartist Second Empire, Napoleon III was confronted with increasingly virulent demands for democratic reform from leading republicans such as Jules Favre along with constant rumours of impending revolution. In addition, French aspirations in Mexico had suffered a final defeat with the execution of the Austrian born French puppet Emperor of Mexico Maximilian in 1867.

The French imperial government now looked to a diplomatic success to stifle demands for a return to either a republic or a Bourbon monarchy - the Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, was quoted as saying, "If there is no war, my son will never be emperor." A war with Prussia and resulting territorial gains in the Rhineland and later Luxembourg and Belgium seemed the best hope to unite the French nation behind the Bonapartist dynasty. With the resulting prestige from a successful war, Napoleon III could then safely suppress any lingering republican or revolutionary sentiment behind reactionary nationalism and return France to the center of European politics.

Maybe he'll get that written into the next version

Fascist quote du jour: "No one should be allowed to block the Patriot Act." -- Mad King George. Other babblings from Mad King George from that article:

• "There is an enemy that lurks."
• "The senators obstructing the Patriot Act need to understand that the expiration of this vital law will endanger America and will leave us in a weaker position in the fight against brutal killers."

Like those vegans in Indianapolis, I guess.

Mad King George
was a scary old fool
a scary old fool was he

A petulant twit
Who cared not a whit
for "liberty and justice for all."

They broke the law because, well, they wanted to

WaPo, emphasis added:

Bush administration officials believe it is not possible, in a large-scale eavesdropping effort, to provide the kind of evidence the court requires to approve a warrant. Sources knowledgeable about the program said there is no way to secure a FISA warrant when the goal is to listen in on a vast array of communications in the hopes of finding something that sounds suspicious. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the White House had tried but failed to find a way.

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up."
...
"There is a difference between detecting, so we can prevent, and monitoring. And it's important to note the distinction between the two," Bush said Monday. But he added: "If there is a need based upon evidence, we will take that evidence to a court in order to be able to monitor calls within the United States."

In other words, we'll obey the law when it's convenient. Smart bank robbers don't speed in the getaway car, either.

The administration has claimed the right to listen in on anyone at any time, with no court approval and in violation of the law. It has also claimed and vigorously insisted on the "right" to lock up anyone, at any time, without charges, forever. Combined, I think these are the very definition of a police state.

From the article, most of the FISA judges appear miffed, at least, with being bypassed. One has already resigned, and another suggests they might as well disband the FISA court, since its main purpose is to protect Americans from domestic spying, and Bush's power grab means that they aren't and can't do that.

One thing we've got to do is to get politicians to stop parroting Bush's nonsense that stopping terrorism is the "top priority," as Barbara Boxer did in her petition calling for Senate hearings. Living in fear of the very occasional bombing or hijacking is bad, but having to fear every cop, neighbor, or knock on the door, and wondering if everything you are saying is being recorded and scrutinized--that is far worse. The founding fathers knew this, which is why they wrote the Bill of Rights. The Bushies probably know it too, but they're accruing money and power from the "war on terror," so they don't care. They hate us for our freedoms, and are a far bigger threat to them than Osama ever could be.

"Justice" Department screws up again; Padilla suffers again

From the NY Times:

A federal appeals court delivered a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration Wednesday, refusing to allow the transfer of Jose Padilla from military custody to civilian law enforcement authorities to face terrorism charges.

In denying the administration's request, the three-judge panel unanimously issued a strongly worded opinion that said the Justice Department's effort to transfer Mr. Padilla gave the appearance that the government was trying to manipulate the court system to prevent the Supreme Court from reviewing the case. The judges warned that the administration's behavior in the Padilla case could jeopardize its credibility before the courts in other terrorism cases.

What made the action by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., so startling, lawyers and others said, was that it came from a panel of judges who in September had provided the administration with a sweeping court victory, saying President Bush had the authority to detain Mr. Padilla, an American citizen, indefinitely without trial as an enemy combatant.

Unfortunately, this doesn't sound like it's of any help to Padilla, or anyone else caught in the "enemy combatant" web. So, he goes back to solitary in military prison, no longer has a court date, and has to wait for the Supremes to do something--something which could very well be even worse, especially if Scalito gets confirmed.

Why is it that in all of these cases where courts rebuff the "Justice" department's Orwellian tactics, the poor supposedly innocent-until-proven-guilty hostage has to continue to rot in jail? Given the charges they finally did come up with for Padilla, it seems as though time served might be about the sentence to be expected if he were convicted.

The "sharp rebuke" goes to the criminal "Justice" department; Padilla goes back to the brig. Some lefty bloggers seem to be gloating over this decision; I don't see any victory here at all. The Fourth Circuit Court is basically insisting on having its earlier totalitarian decision confirmed by the Supremes, and there is no real reason to believe they won't do it.

There seems to be some sentiment

Wow. A whopping 12% of respondents to this MSNBC poll believe that W shouldn't be impeached. A mere 87% think he should.

Even Holy Joe and Hillary were on the right side this time

Voting, that is, to block ANWR drilling. Forty-one Democrats, two Republicans and one independent supported the filibuster, blocking including ANWR drilling in the "defense" spending bill.

AP cites Bush lie about wiretaps

The selection from a Bush speech from last year which was making the blogosphere rounds yesterday, in which he claims that he is getting court orders for wiretaps, has now made the mainstream. From AP:

Democrats called attention to a Bush statement in April 2004 that they said conflicts with what the president is saying now.

"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires _ a wiretap requires a court order," Bush said during a speech on the Patriot Act in Buffalo, N.Y. "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

More on Lasswell

A followup on my earlier post. Robin Andersen wrote a couple of years ago about Lasswell's contribution to wartime propaganda:

Harold Lasswell’s 1927 study of WWI delineates key elements of war propaganda. Demonization of the enemy is essential in overcoming the strong “psychological resistances” to war in modern nations, “every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor (206).” When President Bush called Osama Bin Laden the Evil One, he seemed to have read Lasswell’s account of war rhetoric as a “how to” book. Lasswell states, “All the specific means of conquering the Evil One are, and should be, glorified.”

The category of evil eliminates ambiguity, history and international politics. Lasswell understood propaganda’s needs: “The war must not be due to a world system of conducting international affairs…but to the rapacity of the enemy. Guilt and guilelessness must be assessed geographically, and all the guilt must be on the other side of the frontier.” Political logics and failed diplomacy that lead to war, including competition for economic resources are denied: simple inherent evil must always be the cause. Propaganda always pits our “civilized way of life” against the enemy’s “barbarism.”

Mobilizing a collective sensibility of animosity toward an enemy requires that a variety of social inhibitions that exist in peacetime be dismantled. Society normally discourages crime motivated by visceral hatreds. In promoting state sanctioned violence, actions and qualities ascribed to the enemy must be so outside the bounds of acceptability, that reform and negotiation are not alternatives. The demonized enemy then stands conceptually outside the human family and can be killed with impunity.

Compare this to what aWol said Sunday night:

I see a global terrorist movement that exploits Islam in the service of radical political aims -- a vision in which books are burned, and women are oppressed, and all dissent is crushed. Terrorist operatives conduct their campaign of murder with a set of declared and specific goals -- to de-moralize free nations, to drive us out of the Middle East, to spread an empire of fear across that region, and to wage a perpetual war against America and our friends. These terrorists view the world as a giant battlefield -- and they seek to attack us wherever they can. This has attracted al Qaeda to Iraq, where they are attempting to frighten and intimidate America into a policy of retreat.

The terrorists do not merely object to American actions in Iraq and elsewhere, they object to our deepest values and our way of life. And if we were not fighting them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia, and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens, they would be on the offense, and headed our way.

September the 11th, 2001 required us to take every emerging threat to our country seriously, and it shattered the illusion that terrorists attack us only after we provoke them. On that day, we were not in Iraq, we were not in Afghanistan, but the terrorists attacked us anyway -- and killed nearly 3,000 men, women, and children in our own country. My conviction comes down to this: We do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them. And we will defeat the terrorists by capturing and killing them abroad, removing their safe havens, and strengthening new allies like Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight we share.

The same propaganda that worked for Wilson, Hitler, Johnson and Bush Sr. has worked, so far, for W. In war, many suffer and few prosper. But the few call the shots, and they use propaganda to con the many into supporting them. Again and again and again. People are SO ignorant.

You can order that as a bumper sticker, T-shirt, or other stuff at Tom Tomorrow's gift shop.

Despotism

Cyndy links to a ten-minute 1946 film called Despotism. You should watch it, maybe before reading the rest of this post. I'll wait...

It's something, isn't it? For one thing, it defines a continuum between democracy and despotism, not the simplistic sort of "with us or against us" nonsense that Bush babbles about. It also spells out four instrumental variables which locate a society on the democracy-despotism continuum: respect, power, economic distribution, and information. According to the film, a democracy is a society in which respect is mutual and widespread, power is shared by all, wealth is widely distributed and not concentrated, and information channels are broadly controlled and can be freely challenged. Despotism is the opposite: respect is restricted to fewer people, power and wealth are concentrated, and information channels are controlled by a few and demand agreement. In other words, the film takes a liberal, even socialist look at democracy and despotism, one with which I largely agree.

But it got me to wondering: Who made the film in 1946, and for what purpose? The opening credits say that the film was produced by Encyclopedia Britannica Films, in collaboration with Harold D. Lasswell, Ph.D. of Yale University. So, I wonder, who was Harold Lasswell? Well, he wrote the book on propaganda, literally. In 1927, he wrote "Propaganda Technique in the World War." During World War II, Laswell was part of FDR's propaganda team. From my limited research, it seems that most of his propaganda was aimed at the home front--getting Americans to support the war and to make sacrifices to further the war effort. So one question leads to another: Was Lasswell a liberal/socialist, making the film to show what he believed, or was he still making propaganda for the government? These are perhaps not entirely inconsistent for 1946, when at least some Americans probably still saw the Soviet Union as an ally rather than a menace and when the memories of the depression were still strong. Nevertheless, I don't think that the broad sharing of power and wealth that this film supports were ever really US government policy. And some of the other things I read about Lasswell suggest that he was much more the realpolitik type than he was a utopian socialist. Some of his propaganda methods are still in use, as you can see from this selection:

A particularly effective strategy for demonizing Germans was the use of atrocity stories. "A handy rule for arousing hate," said Lasswell "is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict known to man." Unlike the pacifist, who argues that all wars are brutal, the atrocity story implies that war is only brutal when practiced by the enemy. Certain members of the CPI [Committee on Public Information] were relatively cautious about repeating unsubstantiated allegations, but the committee's publications often relied on dubious material. After the war, Edward Bernays, who directed CPI propaganda efforts in Latin America, openly admitted that his colleagues used alleged atrocities to provoke a public outcry against Germany. Some of the atrocity stories which were circulated during the war, such as the one about a tub full of eyeballs or the story of the seven-year old boy who confronted German soldiers with a wooden gun, were actually recycled from previous conflicts. In his seminal work on wartime propaganda, Lasswell speculated that atrocity stories will always be popular because the audience is able to feel self-righteous indignation toward the enemy, and, at some level, identify with the perpetrators of the crimes. "A young woman, ravished by the enemy," he wrote "yields secret satisfaction to a host of vicarious ravishers on the other side of the border."

Nevertheless, whatever the motives behind the film, I think that it is a fascinating presentation of the actual elements of democracy and despotism, things which far too often go undefined in our miserable political debates.

BTW, you might enjoy the older version of the Pledge of Allegiance that is recited in the film.

From Matt Bors.

From Dwayne Booth.

From Steve Greenberg.

From Drew Sheneman.

From Bruce Beattie.

From David Horsey.

From Pat Bagley.

From Jimmy Margulies.

From Monte Wolverton.

They hate us for our freedoms

That notorious terrorist organization Al Republicans, that is. A couple of quotes from two neanderthal senators:

I don't agree with the libertarians. I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that.

-- Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead.

-- Senator John Cornyn (R-TX).

Senator Feingold (D-WI) replied to Cornyn quoting Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death." The founding fathers seem to agree with Feingold in general. There is that Bill of Rights thing, for example, and Benjamin Franklin's famous quote: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

I know that the Repugs could turn the argument around, but it strikes me as bizarre that they have supported a war in Iraq that has destroyed pretty much all security, claiming that it will lead to liberty in the end. But one hour of shock and awe four years ago and they're ready to let Bush become Saddam to "protect" us. And while he hasn't done so yet, he is certainly claiming the same unfettered authority that Saddam had.

Nothing has changed, by the way

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

-- George W. Bush, April 20, 2004, at least after two years after approving wiretaps without court orders.

(via Past Peak via Atrios)

People are so stupid

Quick quiz: Which one of these photos looks like the Virgin Mary?





Correct answer: Neither. The first one, on a tree in Dallas, is Abu Ghraib Man. The second one, from a freeway underpass in Chicago, is Cousin It. The people who think the Virgin Mary appears in water stains and tree bark are known as "morons."

Torture Nation

Mark Morford on torture:

Oh my God, yes, yes we do torture, America that is, and we do it a lot, and we do it in ways that would make you sick to hear about, and we're doing it right now, all over the world, the CIA and the U.S. military, perhaps more often and more brutally than at any time in recent history and we use the exact same kind of techniques and excuses for it our numb-minded president cited as reasons we should declare war and oust the dictator of a defenseless pip-squeak nation that happened to be sitting on our oil.

This is something we must know, acknowledge, take to heart and not simply file away as some sort of murky, disquieting unknowable that's best left to scummy lords of the government underworld. We must not don the blinders and think America is always, without fail, the land of the perky and the free and the benevolent. Horrific torture is very much a part of who we are, right now. Deny it at your peril. Accept it at your deep discontent.
...
It is for us to know, to try and comprehend. The United States has the most WMD of anyone in the world. We imprison and kill more of our own citizens than any other civilized nation on the planet. We still employ horrific, napalm-like chemical weapons.

And yes, under the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime, we abuse and torture prisoners at least as horrifically as any Islamic fundamentalist, as any terrorist cell, to serve our agenda and meet our goals -- and whether you think those goals are justifiable because they contain the words "freedom" or "democracy" is, in many ways, beside the point.

One member of Congress was right

The Bushies were given a blank check by Congress, or at least think they were, right after September 11. Previously, they have used it as a justification for holding people, including US citizens, indefinitely without charges, lawyers, or rights of any kind. This week they are using it to justify spying on us. Only one member of Congress saw the danger (Emphasis added):

I know that this use-of-force resolution will pass although we all know that the President can wage a war even without this resolution. However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. There must be some of us who say, let's step back for a moment and think through the implications of our actions today -- let us more fully understand its consequences.

We are not dealing with a conventional war. We cannot respond in a conventional manner. I do not want to see this spiral out of control. This crisis involves issues of national security, foreign policy, public safety, intelligence gathering, economics, and murder. Our response must be equally multifaceted.

We must not rush to judgment. Far too many innocent people have already died. Our country is in mourning. If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children, and other noncombatants will be caught in the crossfire.

Nor can we let our justified anger over these outrageous acts by vicious murderers inflame prejudice against all Arab Americans, Muslims, Southeast Asians, or any other people because of their race, religion, or ethnicity.

Finally, we must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes.

In 1964, Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to "take all necessary measures" to repel attacks and prevent further aggression. In so doing, this House abandoned its own constitutional responsibilities and launched our country into years of undeclared war in Vietnam.

At that time, Sen. Wayne Morse, one of two lonely votes against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, declared, "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States ... I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake."

Sen. Morse was correct, and I fear we make the same mistake today. And I fear the consequences.

I have agonized over this vote. But I came to grips with it in the very painful yet beautiful memorial service today at the National Cathedral. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."

-- Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), September 15, 2001

Go Johnny!

From OpEdNews:

Congressman John Conyers has introduced three new pieces of legislation aimed at censuring President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and at creating a fact-finding committee that could be a first step toward impeachment.

Ask your Congress Member to support these efforts!
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=8329176&type=co

For more information on these bills, visit http://www.censurebush.org

That link will take you to a newly revised After Downing Street site, where you'll find at the top an extensive new report produced by the House Judiciary Committee and titled "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War."



You'll also find a link to a new letter from Congressman Conyers to President Bush, which you are invited to sign.

The Censure Bush campaign will provide a new focus for town hall meetings about Iraq, approximately 60 of which are scheduled all over the country on January 7th. See:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event

GET MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.censurebush.org

CONTACT YOUR CONGRESS MEMBER:
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=8329176&type=co

Please post this link on your website:

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Support Conyers' Efforts

Big Bother

Probably a typo, but I like it. From a comment by cubist at A Tiny Revolution:

We will need move the very machinery of the law to prevent Bush from reaching his goal: a “christian” corporate despotism while casting himself as Big Bother.

Big Bother is Watching You.
I Love Big Bother.

You can't fire me! I quit!

Governor Gropengrabber's hometown in Austria, Graz, was threatening to remove Ahnuld's name from the local soccer stadium because he approved the execution of Tookie Williams. Reacting like the calm, rational adult we all know him to be, Ahnuld insisted that they take his name off the stadium by the end of the year. Also, he revoked permission to use his name to promote the town. And he sent back a "ring of honor" they gave him in 1999.

So I guess starting in January, the Graz Krips of the Austrian Football League will be playing in Tookie Williams Stadium. It will be an improvement.

A third possible reason

I've already mentioned two possible reasons why the Bushies would avoid the already lenient FISA rules for wiretaps: They were bugging people they shouldn't be, and they just want to establish the point that they can do whatever they want. Jonathan at Past Peak offers a third possibility:

So why didn't they use FISA? One possibility is that they were monitoring people they shouldn't have been and they didn't want anyone to know, not even a special national security judge operating in secret.

Another possibility, though, one that strikes me as more plausible, is that they were monitoring so many people, so many calls, that they didn't want the numbers to show up in FISA statistics. I.e., what they've done is put in place a broad-based, illegal, automatic call-scanning mechanism. FISA stats would have made that clear, so they couldn't go there.

In the context of a broad-based call-scanning operation, their complaint about FISA being "outdated" starts to make sense. FISA protects civil liberties by requiring that monitoring be targeted and specific. Under FISA, the NSA can't legally go fishing by scanning bazillions of calls. With good reason.

Tortured logic, or Gonzo democracy

AG Torture Gonzales makes the exceedingly tortured argument that the Congressional authorization to "use all necessary and appropriate force" in response to the 9/11 attacks justifies holding American citizens as "enemy combatants" and eavesdropping on our phone calls. I'm guessing that both Hitler and Stalin had their Gonzaleses to explain why crime is legal. Here is just a taste of Gonzo's tortured logic:

Now, in terms of legal authorities, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides -- requires a court order before engaging in this kind of surveillance that I've just discussed and the President announced on Saturday, unless there is somehow -- there is -- unless otherwise authorized by statute or by Congress. That's what the law requires. Our position is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this kind of signals intelligence.

Now, that -- one might argue, now, wait a minute, there's nothing in the authorization to use force that specifically mentions electronic surveillance. Let me take you back to a case that the Supreme Court reviewed this past -- in 2004, the Hamdi decision. As you remember, in that case, Mr. Hamdi was a U.S. citizen who was contesting his detention by the United States government. What he said was that there is a statute, he said, that specifically prohibits the detention of American citizens without permission, an act by Congress -- and he's right, 18 USC 4001a requires that the United States government cannot detain an American citizen except by an act of Congress.

We took the position -- the United States government took the position that Congress had authorized that detention in the authorization to use force, even though the authorization to use force never mentions the word "detention." And the Supreme Court, a plurality written by Justice O'Connor agreed. She said, it was clear and unmistakable that the Congress had authorized the detention of an American citizen captured on the battlefield as an enemy combatant for the remainder -- the duration of the hostilities. So even though the authorization to use force did not mention the word, "detention," she felt that detention of enemy soldiers captured on the battlefield was a fundamental incident of waging war, and therefore, had been authorized by Congress when they used the words, "authorize the President to use all necessary and appropriate force."

For the same reason, we believe signals intelligence is even more a fundamental incident of war, and we believe has been authorized by the Congress. And even though signals intelligence is not mentioned in the authorization to use force, we believe that the Court would apply the same reasoning to recognize the authorization by Congress to engage in this kind of electronic surveillance.

At this point, I think we should take careful note of some of the other things that the authorization to use force did not mention:

• Arresting all bloggers who question the attorney general;
• Nuking Massachusetts and San Francisco;
• Letting people starve and freeze to death while continuing to cut taxes;
• Blocking out the sun.

And many, many more things were not mentioned in that authorization, all of which Torture Gonzales could just as easily "justify" with his warped logic. And still, this one affront to logic and the Constitution is not enough. Gonzo goes on to claim that even his absurdly broad interpretation of the use of force resolution isn't really necessary, because the pResident has the right to do whatever the hell he wants anyway:

I might also add that we also believe the President has the inherent authority under the Constitution, as Commander-in-Chief, to engage in this kind of activity. Signals intelligence has been a fundamental aspect of waging war since the Civil War, where we intercepted telegraphs, obviously, during the world wars, as we intercepted telegrams in and out of the United States. Signals intelligence is very important for the United States government to know what the enemy is doing, to know what the enemy is about to do. It is a fundamental incident of war, as Justice O'Connor talked about in the Hamdi decision. We believe that -- and those two authorities exist to allow, permit the United States government to engage in this kind of surveillance.

A few members of the media tried to give Gonzo a hard time:

Q I wanted to ask you a question. Do you think the government has the right to break the law?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Absolutely not. I don't believe anyone is above the law.

Q You have stretched this resolution for war into giving you carte blanche to do anything you want to do.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, one might make that same argument in connection with detention of American citizens, which is far more intrusive than listening into a conversation. There may be some members of Congress who might say, we never --

Q That's your interpretation. That isn't Congress' interpretation.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, I'm just giving you the analysis --

Q You're never supposed to spy on Americans.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: I'm just giving the analysis used by Justice O'Connor -- and she said clearly and unmistakenly the Congress authorized the President of the United States to detain an American citizen, even though the authorization to use force never mentions the word "detention" --

Q -- into wiretapping everybody and listening in on --

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: This is not about wiretapping everyone. This is a very concentrated, very limited program focused at gaining information about our enemy.

And, after claiming several times that the surveillance program should have remained secret and that the leak has hurt the country, he still has the balls to come up with this argument:

Q Now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, do you expect your legal analysis to be tested in the courts?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: I'm not going to, you know, try to guess as to what's going to happen about that. We're going to continue to try to educate the American people and the American Congress about what we're doing and the basis -- why we believe that the President has the authority to engage in this kind of conduct.

Q Because there are some very smart legal minds who clearly think a law has been broken here.

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, I think that they may be making or offering up those opinions or assumptions based on very limited information. They don't have all the information about the program. I think they probably don't have the information about our legal analysis.

Of course, if he had his way, they wouldn't have any information AT ALL.

And why not just ask Congress for more authority? They rubber-stamp everything anyway. Here's Gonzo's explanation:

Q If FISA didn't work, why didn't you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: That question was asked earlier. We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be -- that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that -- and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.

I NEVER thought I'd say it, but I'm beginning to miss John Ashcroft. Ashcroft was just really, really creepy. Gonzales is super-duper, incredibly, outrageously really really really creepy.

Bury my heart at ANWR

Rep. Dennis Kucinich writes about the despicable way in which the House of Reprehensibles snuck ANWR drilling into the defense authorization bill (talk about piggybacking crime on crime!). He also points out something that I hadn't heard from the Sierra Club or other environmental organizations--the crime is not just against nature, it is against real people who were living in northern Alaska many centuries before oil was discovered at Titusville or Spindletop. Dennis points out that this crime against the Gwich'in people is just a continuation of a long and brutal history:

The history of the United States’ relationship with our native peoples has been one shame-ridden chapter after another of expropriation, humiliation and deception, theft of lands, theft of natural resources, destruction of sacred sites and massacres. The U.S.’ relationship with our native peoples has been an endless cycle of exploitation and contrition. Massacres and apologies.

Who in the future United States will apologize to the descendants of today’s Gwich’in tribe, whose humble, natural way of life, religion and culture is threatened with extinction by the plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? The Gwich’in tribe has lived on its ancestral lands for 20,000 years in harmony with the natural world.

Drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge, called by the Gwich’in “the Sacred Place Where All Life Begins,” will disrupt caribou calving grounds, leading to the long-term decline not only of the herd but of the tribe that depends upon it for survival. This will violate Gwich’in internationally recognized human rights and make a mockery of our founding principle of the inalienable right of each person to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Exxon Chavez

From the BBC:

Venezuela has given the world's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, until the end of this year to enter a joint venture with the state. Failure to do so will almost certainly result in Exxon losing its oil field concessions in the country.

Venezuela's socialist government has now signed new agreements with almost all foreign petroleum companies.After months of pressure from left- wing leader Hugo Chavez most foreign oil firms working there have caved in. They have agreed to hand over a controlling stake of their oil interests to the Venezuelan state. This means that Venezuela, which has the world's largest petroleum reserves, now calls the shots in what the foreign guests can and cannot do. In addition, the companies which have signed the new contracts - such as Chevron, BP, Shell and Total - will in future be presented with much higher tax bills by the government.

But Venezuela says it is only fair that the foreigners are made to pay up as they have got away lightly in the past. Much of the oil revenue in Venezuela goes into social projects in shanty towns and poor rural areas. But the US oil giant, ExxonMobil, is digging in its heels and is so far refusing to agree to the terms of the new deal. Exxon risks losing Venezuelan operations if it fails to comply.

There is growing unease among foreign energy companies based Latin America that they may be forced to become junior partners by a string of left wing governments. In the case of Bolivia and the apparent shift to the left there following elections on Sunday, it is possible that the new government will decide to follow Venezuela's example and renegotiate oil and gas contracts with foreign investors.

From Tom Toles.

Will the US get fooled again?

Probably.

The WSWS points out the many lies and idiocies of Bush and Cheney's latest babblings, highlighting the increasingly desperate tone.

Desperate regimes take desperate measures. Facing mass opposition and besieged on all sides by revelations of criminal activities ranging from torture to secret prisons to illegal spying, the Bush administration is responding with a drumbeat of warnings that September 11 could happen again. The question is whether this administration is preparing to either engineer or allow such an attack as a means of suppressing domestic dissent and furthering its policies of militarism abroad and reaction at home.

The so-called "war on terror" is in fact a war of terror. Torture, secret prisons and wiretaps are just as much weapons of terror as are suicide bombers. Of course, F-16's and Abrams tanks and cruise missiles are weapons of terror as well.

Quote du jour

"The only thing more annoying than Bush not doing his job is Bush doing his job." -- WIIIAI

WIIIAI also points out that aWol said this in the press conference: "There’s a lot of work to get rid of the past." Most presidents want to make history; W wants to destroy it.

Fast on our feet, part deux

When his lips are moving. A couple of followups to my