Mike Gravel Would End The War On Drugs If Elected

Here (or here!) is Mike Gravel, from last Thursday's Democratic Presidential debate, explaining his position on the War on Drugs.

Nobody wants to say it out loud, but it seems to me that the so-called "War On Drugs" is not an honest attempt to eradicate "recreational" drugs and those who use them. It looks a lot more like a turf war: an attempt to eradicate those who make a lot of money on the global drug trade without being connected to the CIA.

But nobody wants to say so, lest they be found to have committed suicide by multiple gunshot wounds to the head. So instead the people who oppose the war on drugs, like Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul (to name the three major-party candidates who are campaigning against it), are forced to attack it on other grounds. And there are plenty of those to go around.

It's sort of like some other issues, where telling the whole truth is not seen as politically viable. But in this case, half-truth is more than enough.

At least that's how it seems to me, and of course I could be wrong.

What do you think?

Eleven Reps Now Say 'Impeach Cheney'

Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio now has ten co-sponsors for his bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.

The most recent to line up in support of impeaching his snarling highness include Keith Ellison and Hank Johnson.

Ellison, of Minnesota, is the first Muslim elected to Congress, and at this rate he's never going to convince the wingnuts that he's not a terrorist.

Johnson now holds the seat formerly held by Cynthia McKinney, who was defeated in one of the strangest primaries ever. But then Johnson and McKinney are from Georgia, where the electoral mess is even worse than the national ab-norm.

"I believe it was time to send a message to the Vice President and to the Executive Branch as a whole," said a statement released by Johnson's office.

Yes, sir, it certainly was. And a long time ago, too. Ms. McKinney would be right behind Dennis Kucinich, if not out in front of him. But thanks for not waiting any longer.

Johnson's statement continued: "I have certainly been displeased with the operations of the Executive Branch, particularly with regard to the secrecy, the incompetence, and the lack of cooperation that is coming out of the Vice President’s Office. I think the response to the subpoenas was the last straw."

Ahh, the subpoenas. We discussed them three weeks ago, and the president's reaction to them just yesterday.

I also have been displeased with a great many of their operations -- including fomenting terror, setting up death squads in Iraq, running black ops out of the Pentagon rather than the CIA in order to avoid oversight, and a great number of other offenses against America and mankind -- so it is difficult for me to argue with Rep. Johnson on this point. I can go along with him on the secrecy. I'd say "lack of cooperation" is a very gentle euphemism for "open defiance". And I would suggest that what appears to be incompetence is something else altogether. More on that in a moment if we're lucky.

But in the meantime it's nice to know there are still "last straws", and camels whose backs are still capable of breaking. Is it too little, too late? Is something better than nothing? Is it just another act in the endless meaningless public drama? Another sleight-of-hand that conceals more than it reveals? Or is Hank Johnson simply a pragmatic Democrat who can see what direction the ship is sinking?

Matthew Cunningham has more details on the move to impeach at Atlanta Progressive News.

On a related subject -- the same subject, actually -- your chilled scribbler can't help but wonder whether Hank Johnson has seen this passage from the Washington Post series that started last weekend:

In a bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, Cheney locked his eyes on CNN, chin resting on interlaced fingers. He was about to watch, in real time, as thousands were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Previous accounts have [...] not detailed his reaction [...] when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

"There was a groan in the room that I won't forget, ever," one witness said. "It seemed like one groan from everyone" -- among them Rice; her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley; economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey; counselor Matalin; Cheney's chief of staff, Libby; and the vice president's wife.

Cheney made no sound. "I remember turning my head and looking at the vice president, and his expression never changed," said the witness, reading from a notebook of observations written that day. Cheney closed his eyes against the image for one long, slow blink.

Three people who were present, not all of them admirers, said they saw no sign then or later of the profound psychological transformation that has often been imputed to Cheney. What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power.

I added the emphasis, and resisted the urge to add a roar like a hundred freight trains and the sound of thousands of people screaming. But maybe we need the silence to appreciate (if that's the world) what we're reading here.

Not even a groan -- just "one long, slow blink" ... followed by "a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power".

To catalog the abuses of power which have occurred since that time -- less than six years ago -- is no small task, but Bruce Fein had a go at it, in a piece published by Slate and quoted by Digby:

• The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.
  
• The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.
• The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield. Accordingly, he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida.
• Mr. Cheney has championed a presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.
• He has advocated and authored signing statements that declare the president's intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that he proclaims are unconstitutional,
• The vice president engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
• The vice president has orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.
• Cheney scorns freedom of speech and of the press. He urges application of the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who expose national security abuses, for example, secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. He retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, through Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq.

Digby points out that Bruce Fein is no lightweight -- he was an official in the Department of Justice during the Reagan presidency.

Digby also says

... nobody should be surprised by this when you consider how this lawless cabal took power in the first place. They showed very early on that they would let nothing stand in their way and from their first moments in office they governed as if their institutional power meant they had a mandate to enact their entire agenda by any means necessary. (Bush like to call it "political capital" --- I suspect Cheney just called it raw power.)

And she has me nodding all the way, till this:

I think the most amazing thing about all that is that 9/11 was just frosting on the cake for these guys --

What?

they were prepared to do all this stuff anyway.

Anyway? What do you mean, "anyway"?

Cheney said he'd taken office with the intention of "restoring" presidential power. The GWOT made it easier to do the national security stuff, but he would have done it anyway.

Ahhh! So the argument runs: the hinge made the door easier to open, but Cheney would have come through the door anyway!

This is a man whose naked lust for power has been public knowledge for a long time, whose plan to take over the world beginning with the Middle East has been in clear view for more than a decade.

This is a man who has assured us endlessly that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden belonged in the same sentence because 9/11! Iraq! And when he's pressed to back up his insinuation, he claims he never insinuated anything, but as soon as the pressure's off, he goes back to doing it.

This is a man who couldn't even bother to feign surprise when the South Tower disintegrated. (Some say "collapsed", but that's not the right word, is it?) No sadness, no profound transformation -- not even a groan!

He was coming through that door, whether we like it or not, but the hinge just happened to appear, is that right? I think that's what Digby's saying.

It's almost as if Digby's saying 9/11 didn't matter because Cheney was planning a power-grab in any case. Or maybe that's exactly what she's saying. I can't tell.

But 9/11 did matter, because it enabled the power-grab. It put the American people into a frame of mind in which they could be manipulated with the greatest of ease. And at the same time -- with a little anthrax assist -- the media went as soft as possible.

Speaking of which, Glenn Greenwald interviewed Helen Thomas on Thursday and she had this to say about that:

Reporters, after Watergate, realized that we had let so much go by us. They got much tougher when President Ford took over. It wasn't animosity. It was anger that we hadn't asked the right questions. And the press became tougher.

But they really went soft after 9/11. Reporters, I'm assuming, did not want to be called unpatriotic and un-American when we were in a national crisis.

And I don't think the corporate heads exactly wanted anyone to rock the boat at that time.

But I kept asking questions about the validity of going to war against a country that had done nothing to us.

Certainly nobody wanted to be called "unpatriotic" for trying to prevent the country from suffering its coup d'etat in silence, and of course corporate heads can always be counted on to steady the boat, but I would have been a lot happier if Glenn Greenwald had asked Helen Thomas "Which country?" as in "Which country did we go to war against that had done nothing to us?"

It's a vital question. Is she talking about Afghanistan, or Iraq, or both? Here's a hint: if the meant both, she would have used the plural.

Here's another hint: If she was talking about Iraq, that war didn't even start until a year and a half after 9/11. But it was the most brain-damaged 18 months in American history. The media went soft on 9/11 and it stayed soft. That's even more important, in my view.

Here's another hint: Dick Cheney didn't have to knock down the door, because, just when he needed one, a hinge appeared! Isn't it amazing how often these guys get lucky?

And here's the final hint: Why do we believe him when he sits down -- behind closed doors, not under oath, with no notes allowed, and no transcripts -- and tells us who installed that hinge?

Dear Pervez: Beware The Mangoes Of July!

General-President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan appears to be riding two horses going in different directions; you have to wonder how long he can stay upright.

A few days ago Carlotta Gall reported on one of the dangers he faces:

Speculation has been rife in political circles for three months that Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, may not survive his wrangle with the chief justice and hold on to power. But a great silence emanates from the one place that may count the most: the barracks and the mess halls of the armed forces, the other great part of Pakistan's ruling equation.

What the army thinks about the political logjam and what it decides to do in the event of continuing stalemate, instability or violence will be the defining factor in Musharraf's future, most commentators agree.

If and when the army feels it is being damaged by its association with Musharraf, and his insistence on retaining the dual posts of president and chief of army staff, it will act to safeguard the reputation of the army, they say.

Historians and columnists have been outlining the precedents, recalling how Pakistan's three previous military rulers exited from power. None were under happy circumstances, and none bode well for Musharraf.

The longest-ruling general, Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977, died in 1988 in a plane crash, the cause of which remains a mystery. The strongest possibility is that the plane was sabotaged, possibly by a bomb - or even, according to one theory, by a knockout gas - hidden inside crates of mangoes, a gift that was put on board the presidential plane at the last minute.

This being mango season, the old story has gained a lot of currency lately. "He either goes the mango crate way or he goes gracefully," as one serving military officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The General-President understands the power of the army and he's not usually very subtle about it.

Well aware of the importance of backing within the army, Musharraf called a meeting of his Corps Commanders and principal military staff earlier this month, apparently to ensure their support. The military public relations service issued an unusually long press release in that vein. "The Corps Commanders and Principal Staff Officers of the Pakistan Army affirmed to stand committed for the security of their country under the leadership and guidance of the President and the COAS," it read, referring to the chief of army staff.

Issuing such a statement is unusual and brings to mind the vote of confidence that often presages the end for a cabinet minister, or, in sports, for a manager or coach. In effect, several former members of the army said, such assurances only underscore the general's insecurity.

Of course. He's so insecure he's trying to round up all the friends he can coerce.

Musharraf also understands the power of the media. And he's not too subtle about that, either. According to Dawn:

President Pervez Musharraf said that the media has a vital role to play in protecting and promoting national interests and responsibility towards safeguarding national sovereignty, integrity and security.

Speaking at the conclusion of first National Media Workshop organized by the National Defence University here Friday, the President warned that any effort to damage integrity, security and sovereignty of Pakistan would be countered massively.

Massively.

How well will this approach work?

Dawn also reports on the aftermath of the monsoons that have been pounding large areas of the country:

QUETTA, June 28: As heavy to moderate rains continued to lash different parts of Balochistan on Thursday, nine people died in Harnai and Turbat. The rainfall hindered a massive rescue and relief operation launched by the army and the Frontier Corps in worst-affected areas.

Provincial Home Secretary Tariq Ayub said that over 400,000 people had been displaced by this week’s cyclone and flash floods. Troops were carrying out rescue and relief work in the affected areas and helicopters were moving the marooned people to safe places.

Hill torrents triggered by torrential rain wreaked havoc in Chagai and Naushki districts, disrupting rail and road communications between Quetta and Zahidan and causing breaches in the main railway line.

Local officials confirmed the death of three people in Harnai when the Nari River devastated the downstream area in the Kachhi plains, mainly in Jhal Magsi and Jaffarabad.

The Mula River was also in high flood following intermittent rains in its catchment area of Khuzdar and Kalat districts. Paddy and cotton crops were under more than two feet of water in Jhal Magsi and Jaffarabad. Some breaches have occurred in the Right Bank Outfall Drain, damaging crops in the area.

Local people themselves plugged some of the breaches and the government machinery was nowhere to be seen, a local resident told this correspondent.

The worst-affected area is Turbat and district Nazim Mir Abdul Rauf Rind confirmed six deaths on Thursday. More rain has been forecast for the region.

USA Today is also reporting about the aftermath of the monsoons, with a special emphasis on rioting in southwestern Pakistan.

According to Zarar Khan of the AP,

TURBAT, Pakistan — Hungry victims of monsoon-spawned floods in southwestern Pakistan rioted Friday, protesting slow, meager aid reaching their marooned villages where many feared the receding waters would yield numerous bodies.

Police fired tear gas and shots into the air but failed to disperse a crowd of several thousand villagers who broke into and ransacked the mayor's office in this city in southwestern Pakistan ringed by floodwaters.

The widespread flooding struck after Cyclone Yemyin dumped torrential rains on the area Tuesday.

Protesters said they had waded through chest-deep water from outlying areas to voice their anger about the dearth of relief aid. Only packets of biscuits and bottles of water had been received, they said.

"Every family is looking for one or two members. They are all missing," said Chaker Baloth, who walked more than 25 miles through the night to reach this city of some 150,000. Others feared they would never see their missing family members again.

The government said the official death toll in Baluchistan province was 14, with more than 24 missing, although local media reported much higher numbers.
...

Khubah Bakhsh, the relief commissioner for Baluchistan, estimated that 200,000 houses had been destroyed or damaged.

In one of the hardest-hit areas — Turbat city and surrounding villages — the first relief supplies only began arriving Thursday, about 48 hours after the cyclone hit, driving the mayor to resign and angry residents to protest.

"We have been saved from the flood, but we may die of starvation," said Mohammed Kash, a teacher at a rural school.

From a helicopter, an Associated Press reporter saw only the tops of palm trees protruding from vast sheets of water in some areas.

People, cows and goats were stranded on rooftops without water or food, in sweltering 109-degree heat.

As far as I can tell, Dawn hasn't said anything about the rioting, and I was just wondering whether this has anything to do with the General-President's speech.

Perhaps nobody wants to find out what Musharraf means when he says "massively".

But perhaps this has more to do with mangoes.

Gandhi: Revolt Of The Journos?

Here's an interesting observation from my down-under friend:

(can't see the video? click here)

Mika's not the only pissed journo in Bush's USA today. The LA Times' Managing Editor has abruptly quit the paper, saying he "would like to return to being a reporter."

And Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up for work [June 28], citing threats to their independence and credibility.

He may be right, you know: The Revolution May Be Televised After All ...

... especially if our "suits" get a sniff of this!

Tom Toles: Trinkets!

Apropos of one thing or another, here's Toles with another beauty.

Meanwhile, over at Consortium News dot com, Bob Parry has more on this very point. Not enough for me, because Parry refuses to discuss certain topics, but certainly enough to put Cheney in lemon-chicken-land for the rest of his miserable life.

Great Big Surprise! Bush Stonewalls On Subpoenas

President Bush has refused to comply with the subpoenas issued by two Congressional committees, but that's not a big surprise. We can even expect more of the same soon.

Will the Congress bare its teeth? Now that's a much more interesting question! Here's Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times:

Bush Asserts Executive Privilege on Subpoenas

President Bush moved one step closer to a constitutional showdown with Democrats on Thursday, as the White House asserted executive privilege in refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dismissal of federal prosecutors.

The move prompted Democrats to accuse the White House of stonewalling, and seemed to put the legislative and executive branches on a collision course that could land them in court.

... unless the Democrats decide to cave in before then. They would call it a "compromise", of course. And the Republicans are urging them to compromise, for the good of the country, of course.

On Thursday morning, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, telephoned the Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, which had issued the subpoenas, to inform them of Mr. Bush’s decision. The president also intends to invoke executive privilege to prevent two of his former top aides, Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former political director, from testifying, officials said.

It's lovely when the President gets to decide which laws apply to which individuals. That makes us all so happy, because it is exactly at those moments that we can see most clearly that we are living in one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. And that may be only an intangible benefit, but it certainly makes it easier for us to enjoy our spacious skies and amber waves of grain.

“With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path,” Mr. Fielding wrote in a letter to the committee chairmen, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. He said the committees had issued “unfettered requests.”

The "respect" Mr. Fielding shows for Senator Leahy and Representative Conyers is very small indeed.

Mr. Conyers, in a telephone interview, called the letter “an appalling response to a reasonable question,” adding, “This is reckless; it’s a form of governmental lawlessness that is really astounding.”

Come again? Astounding lawlessness? I'd have thought that he -- John Conyers, of all people -- would be used to it by now. And maybe he is. But I suppose he has to say something!

Omens for the immediate future are ominous but not entirely unexpected:

The letter seemed to lay the groundwork for how the administration will respond to a separate, unrelated, round of subpoenas, issued by the Senate panel Wednesday to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department for information about the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency.

Administration officials said they had not decided how to respond to those demands, but experts said it seemed clear that the White House would refuse to comply there, too.

Well of course they will fail to comply. They will fail to comply with every request that threatens them in the slightest, although they always pretend to offer something:

The White House offered lawmakers access to certain documents as well as private interviews — not under oath, and without transcripts — with top aides to Mr. Bush, including Ms. Miers, Ms. Taylor and Karl Rove, the chief political strategist. The Democrats, demanding formal testimony under oath, rejected the offer.

And of course the Democrats rejected the offer -- who running an investigation would ever accept such conditions on the questioning of witnesses -- let alone suspects?

And although government lawyers try to portray this investigation as a case with very limited ramifications, it actually threatens their bosses in a very serious way.

So ... can you spell "stonewall"? You'll be seeing that word a lot soon.

“Given the way in which both the U.S. attorney matter and the N.S.A. matter are now percolating through committees, I would be very surprised if there were not a major showdown over executive privilege,” said Peter M. Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University and an authority on executive privilege. “It might not get to court, but there will have to be some very high pressure negotiations at a very late stage to avoid that.”

Those favoring a government of laws must be hoping there won't be any late negotiations, since the pressure will undoubtedly be great and the Democrats' track record under pressure has been atrocious.

As always, the result of the dispute is going to depend in no small part on how the issues are framed, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg portrays this case as a small one:

The clash pits the Congressional right to conduct oversight — in this case, an investigation into whether the Justice Department allowed partisan politics to interfere with hiring and firing of federal prosecutors — against the president’s right to unfettered and candid advice from his top aides.

But the Congressional investigation is about much more than whether partisan politics was allowed to interfere with hiring and firing. It's really about whether (that is to say the extent to which) the Justice Department has become an instrument of partisan politics. Or at least one would hope so.

The possibilities are endless.

For instance, one relatively unexplored line of questioning goes like this: Suppose it turns out that -- as it currently appears -- eight of 93 U.S. attorneys were fired for not exerting sufficient pressure on Democratic candidates at election time. What does that say about the other 85, the ones who kept their jobs?

Stolberg sidesteps this hot potato and continues:

The next step is for Democrats to decide whether to try to negotiate with the White House or to vote on a contempt resolution, a process that could take months and would lay the groundwork for sending the matter to court. Democrats did not say Thursday how they intended to proceed, although by the sound of their comments, negotiations did not seem likely any time soon.

Personally I prefer to live in a nation of laws and therefore I hope the Democrats do not decide to negotiate at all. They should just vote the contempt resolution and be done with it. So this is probably a very unlikely outcome.

I had to laugh at a comment by Senator Leahy:

“This is a further shift by the Bush administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence of their disdain for our system of checks and balances,” Mr. Leahy said.

Sorry, Senator, but they've gone way beyond Nixonian. Even Spiro Agnew didn't tell any Senators to go f-ck themselves.

Nonetheless, the scent of Watergate is now in the air, and this sets up a some very interesting possibilities. As Larisa says, "I would like to officially welcome you to Watergate..."

And in some ways her analogy is a good one. But this is different.

First of all it's a very different Congress, one divided against itself in a very different way than the population is divided. In the electorate, most people, including many nominal Republicans, oppose this President, his wars of choice, and his quest for unfettered power. But in the Congress, some (many!) nominal Democrats actually support the president and the war, and would have it last for decades, if it were their call. So they may choose to support the commander-in-chief for the duration, and all of this might be moot. We'll have to wait and see.

Second, Nixon was losing it! He was going to pieces right in his own office, pacing the floors, talking to dead presidents, praying with his accomplice in war crimes, Henry Kissinger (who couldn't wait to get out of there, especially if he had a hot date). But Bush? No problem. The Decider rocks on!

Nixon was terminally frightened of losing another election -- this fear motivated many of his excesses. So he was devastated by the loss of support from the Congressional Republican heavies. But what does Bush care? He doesn't have to stand for election again. And anyway, the electoral system is now taken care of. Bush and his friends have assurances that Richard Nixon never even hoped for.

Does any of this matter? Probably not. If the removal of eight U.S. attorneys at the same time were a routine procedure, and if everything had been done above-board, if there weren't millions of e-mails missing and stories floating around about serious attempts to subvert what remains of our Constitutional republic, there would be no need to put restrictions on Congressional oversight, and there would be no reason why administrative aides could not testify in public, with oaths and transcripts and everything else that people do in civilized countries, because the administration would have nothing to hide.

But -- even more so than the Nixon administration -- this bunch has nothing to show! So they have to resist every attempt at transparency. Of course this doesn't prevent them from howling at other governments for not being sufficiently "democratic". And only Nixon could go to China.

Even if the USA is no longer the world's greatest democracy, even if it is no longer be a democracy at all, surely it doesn't anymore matter as long as we remain the world leader in at least one equally important category. And beyond any doubt, such is the case: the USA is now -- and has been for at least six years -- the world's greatest hypocrisy!

How about that?

We're number one! We're number ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!

Can You Imagine The Horror? -- Or Are You Out Of Touch?

Can you imagine ... how horrible you would feel ... if you found out ... your mother ... was ... your father?

What??

How embarrassing it would be! How unsettling! Can you imagine?

But it's not possible!

If you don't think it would be horrible for you, think how horrible it would be for your kids!!

But that doesn't make any sense! There's no way my --

What's the matter, don't you love your kids? That's it, isn't it? How can I even talk to a man who doesn't love his kids?

But it couldn't happen! It would violate all the laws of biology!!

You don't love your kids at all, do you? You don't even care -- how horrible it would be for your kids, if they found out their grandmother was their grandfather!

But it could never happen! Why should I worry about something that could never happen?

Oh, come on! What have you been smoking?

Have you been under a rock for the past six years?

That's September 10th thinking, buddy. You're as out of touch as the mayor!

Stuff From All Around

Just in case you have nothing to read ...

Isabel Kershner, NYT: Israel Drops Rape Charges as President Agrees to Quit:

The Israeli government has dropped rape charges against President Moshe Katsav in exchange for his agreement to step down and to plead guilty to lesser charges, the attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, announced Thursday.

Mr. Katsav, 61, will receive a suspended sentence and will pay a total of $11,695 in compensation to two of the women who accused him, Mr. Mazuz said. One of them had worked for Mr. Katsav when he was tourism minister in the late 1990s; the other worked in his office in 2003 and 2004. Mr. Katsav will plead guilty to committing indecent acts without consent, sexual harassment of the two women and harassing a witness.

He is expected to resign on Friday. His seven-year term as president, a largely ceremonial post, was to end in July. Shimon Peres is expected to take office as president on July 15.

Here's a letter to the editor of the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin: Kevin Barrett on the "leftist" media's freeze-out of 9/11 truth. Well ... at least they published it.

At ABC's Political Punch blog, Jake Tapper wonders whether the media were unfair to Ann Coulter when they used an out-of-context sound-bite -- in which she was misquoting somebody else!

At Wired dot com, there's a commentary from Bruce Schneier which I like quite a bit; it's called "Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot" and it's definitely worth a read. If you start clicking Bruce's links you could be there for quite a while -- and that wouldn't be bad thing.

Last and definitely not least, how about this story? ABC News: Man With Headache Finds Bullet in Head

A woman was arrested Tuesday after her husband woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible headache and later learned he had a bullet lodged in his head.

Regular service will resume shortly.

Spinning The Deadly Tale: Now Even Anti-Terrorists Are Al-Q'aeda

The beautiful thing about the big lie -- the molded reality -- the political truth -- is that you can bend it and shape it however you please, provided of course that you have the means to catapult the propaganda. And the simpler the story you tell, the easier it is for regular folks to take it all in -- once they absorb enough of your story, they can start telling it all by themselves. So the political truths that emerge from a molded reality tend to be very simple.

Do you believe me? There are dozens -- if not hundreds -- of small disconnected terrorist groups all over the world, but we only ever hear about one of them. Can you guess which one? Yes, I knew you could! It's so much easier to wage war against the terrorists if you can lump them all in together like that. And very messy otherwise.

Here's another example: the internal politics of Iraq have always been a good deal more complicated than the Shia-Sunni-Kurd triangle we've been spoon-fed forever. But even after all these years, most of us still don't get it.

Half the time we don't even remember whether we're fighting "Shi'ite militias and Sunni insurgents" or "Shi'ite insurgents and Sunni militias". And what about the Kurds? Do they not have any militias or insurgents? Maybe they have both and we don't even know it. For that matter, what's the difference between a militia and a group of insurgents? And if you really want to get technical, what's the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite?

Here's the rub: We don't know -- or at least, most of us don't know, and most of us don't really care either. The tale is too complex for most of us to digest, so it just sits there, like a lump in our stomachs, making us cranky and miserable -- and this, quite naturally, interferes with our will to succeed in Iraq.

But success in Iraq is indispensable, and the alternative is unthinkable. So the Pentagon, in its infinite yet five-sided wisdom, has started making things a lot easier now, by describing all of its victims as "al-Q'aeda in Iraq". This change will make future "news" reporting a good deal easier for everyone, since "reporters" will know quite a bit about the victims before they are actually killed. They can simply fill in a few blanks -- date, place, number of aQiI fighters killed, name of the coalition unit credited with the glorious victory -- and their day's work will be finished! Their readers will benefit as well, being spared the embarrassment of not knowing, or caring, anything at all about who's being killed, maimed, tortured, widowed, orphaned ...

But that's not even the best part! Here's a bonus: the phrase "al-Q'aeda in Iraq" provides the slam-dunk link between Iraq and 9/11 which Dick Cheney has always sought, so each time we utter the phrase, we further "legitimize" a war crime of incredible dimensions. And not only that: every time we kill some "al-Q'aeda in Iraq", we lend support to the notions that we're "winning" (whatever that means), and that the "surge" is working (and I'm referring to the troop surge, not the steadily increasing flow of refugees making their way out of their country -- although if the people who are leaving are also "al-Q'aeda in Iraq", maybe the refugee surge is working too...)

It's a lovely story, or at least it would be, if even a little bit of it were true. Instead of course the truth is the exact opposite. In a particularly egregious example, coalition forces in Iraq have recently slaughtered Iraqi civilian anti-terrorists, then reported that the dead were "al-Q'aeda in Iraq".

Let that sink in for a minute.

Americans, of course, can wallow in political truth, but as Chris Floyd points out:

... Iraqis have to deal with the brutal reality of the war. And they know that everyone killed there by the invading forces is not "al Qaeda." They know that many Iraqis being killed by the Anglo-American coalition are innocent civilians. And they are increasingly embittered at the American slander of their dead.

This slander is being applied even to those Iraqis who have taken up arms against the very "al Qaeda" terrorists that the American military is purportedly protecting them from, Iraqis who are cooperating with the American-backed government and its American-trained military and security forces. The BBC reports about an horrific massacre of Iraqi civilians last week – an air attack with missiles and gunships that literally ripped to shreds the bodies of village guards who had just returned from a raid with Iraqi government forces on a suspected terrorist hideout. These men were then accused of being "al Qaeda gunmen" in Pentagon press releases trumpeting this magnificent feat of arms – accusations then duly (not to mention dully) parroted in the press.

Chris quotes the BBC report as saying:

On 22 June the US military announced that its attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen who had been trying to infiltrate the village of al-Khalis, north of Baquba, where operation "Arrowhead Ripper" had been under way for the previous three days. The item was duly carried by international news agencies and received widespread coverage, including on the BBC News website.

But villagers in largely-Shia al-Khalis say that those who died had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They say they were local village guards trying to protect the township from exactly the kind of attack by insurgents the US military says it foiled...

which encapsulates the entire bogus agenda of these bogus clowns who now control our bogus government.

And this is just one massacre, one village, one instance where corporate media did a bit of digging and brought us a vital truth about a shameful escapade.

How many times have similar things happened and gone unreported?

And how much more of this will we allow?

[read!]

Chris Floyd: Slandering the Dead: The American Massacre at al-Khalis

BBC News: Village disputes story of deadly attack

What's The Angle? Is The WaPo Cheney Series Ace Journalism, Or Subtle Psy-op?

The Washington Post has been a bit more interesting than usual lately, with an epic four-part series by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker about Dick Cheney and how he has changed the role of "Vice" President.

I've been reading and reading and my eyes are going wonky and I'm still trying to decide what to make of it. Is it "Pulitzer-quality journalism", as Gandhi suggests? Is it really as "breathtaking" as Larisa Alexandrovna thinks?

Or is it just another dose of the usual Bush-administration bunk, spun through an exceptionally clever filter: yet another limited hangout, slightly damaging but not really all that bad, something the spin-meisters think they can contain with a barrage of falsehoods which in turn will serve as a platform for further lies? At this point the jury's still out, in my estimation. (Your mileage may vary and vive la difference!)

Some passages in the series just beg to be highlighted. This passage grabbed Gandhi by the throat:

In a bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, Cheney locked his eyes on CNN, chin resting on interlaced fingers. He was about to watch, in real time, as thousands were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Previous accounts have described Cheney's adrenaline-charged evacuation to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center that morning, a Secret Service agent on each arm. They have not detailed his reaction, 22 minutes later, when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

"There was a groan in the room that I won't forget, ever," one witness said. "It seemed like one groan from everyone" -- among them Rice; her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley; economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey; counselor Matalin; Cheney's chief of staff, Libby; and the vice president's wife.

Cheney made no sound. "I remember turning my head and looking at the vice president, and his expression never changed," said the witness, reading from a notebook of observations written that day. Cheney closed his eyes against the image for one long, slow blink.

Three people who were present, not all of them admirers, said they saw no sign then or later of the profound psychological transformation that has often been imputed to Cheney. What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power.

Let that sink in for a moment, will you? Why not just hang around and let that gun smoke awhile?

Larisa quotes the same passage as well as the following:

While others assessed casualties and the work of "first responders," Cheney began planning for a conflict that would call upon lawyers as often as soldiers and spies."

I would suggest that the word "began" in the previous sentence is misleading. But whatever the case,

"In expanding presidential power, Cheney's foremost agent was David S. Addington, his formidable general counsel and legal adviser of many years. On the morning of Sept. 11, Addington was evacuated from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and began to make his way toward his Virginia home on foot. As he neared the Arlington Memorial Bridge, someone in the White House reached him with a message: Turn around. The vice president needs you.

Down in the bunker, according to a colleague with firsthand knowledge, Cheney and Addington began contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the president need for his response?

Before the day ended, Cheney's lawyer joined forces with Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel, linked by secure video from the Situation Room. Flanigan patched in John C. Yoo at the Justice Department's fourth-floor command center. White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales joined later.

Thus formed the core legal team that Cheney oversaw, directly and indirectly, after the terrorist attacks."

Larisa highlights it differently but she has this to say about it:

This is still September 11, 2001 remember and seemingly - although I may be reading this wrong - still during daylight hours, that is to say, in the process of the attacks. You will recall that building 7 did not collapse until around 5 PM EST. So we don't know who attacked us (we suspect), we don't know what the security breach was (how they boarded the planes, how many there were, etc.), in fact, at this point - and this I remember very well - there are still rumors that the Empire State building had a bomb in it, that the Holland tunnel had a bomb in it, and that there was still a 20th hijacker somewhere out there. I remember too a flight in Cleveland being suspected and grounded, and all major cities being evacuated. In fact, I remember that day from my vantage point almost play by play, where I was, how the day progressed, what the various threat alerts coming in were. It was chaos and confusion and no one knew if the country was secure, that is, if the attacks were over, for what appeared to be an eternity.

Yet as this is going on, Cheney's concern is not making sure the country was secure, or making sure that he knew - as best as could be known at the time - what the damage was, etc. His concern was a power grab? On 9/11, during the attacks, he calls in lawyers? This is horrifying to me because it shows a man so emotionally vacant that his reaction to horror is to figure out how it best benefits him?

I really don't see what the big surprise is here. Is it such a stretch -- especially given Norman Mineta's testimony -- to understand why Cheney didn't bother trying to find out whether the attacks were over? Or who was behind them?

Larisa finds it horrifying that a power grab was Cheney's immediate reaction.

But what if it wasn't a reaction at all? How horrifying is that?

To speak plainly: on this particular point I do not get Larisa. She's been dogging these guys for years; she knows how they operate; she has excellent sources; she's a fine investigator and a very capable tactician. And there was already plenty of evidence on the table suggesting that Cheney was not the slightest bit surprised -- or appalled -- by anything that happened on 9/11.

Obviously Larisa didn't know who attacked us, or what the security breach was, or the source or veracity of the rumors about the bombs in the Holland Tunnel and the Empire State Building, or anything about the other threat alerts that kept coming in all day long, or whether the country was secure, that is, whether the attacks were over.

Not that there's anything wrong with not knowing! There would in fact be something wrong with knowing!

None of us knew, except whoever planned the attacks. But if somebody did know, it would explain why he might not have been concerned with the answers to any of these questions, and it would also explain why he might show no sign of surprise or sadness -- not even a groan -- nothing but "extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power".

~~~

Let us now turn to one of the results -- some would say the defining result -- of Cheney's rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power. Larisa said this made her skin crawl:

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.
...

No longer was the vice president focused on procedural rights, such as access to lawyers and courts. The subject now was more elemental: How much suffering could U.S. personnel inflict on an enemy to make him talk? Cheney's lawyer feared that future prosecutors, with motives "difficult to predict," might bring criminal charges against interrogators or Bush administration officials.

Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential directive for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.

I agree about the skin crawl but unfortunately I no longer see any of this as a reaction.

Unfortunately? Well, it's unfortunate for me, because it makes my internal organs crawl too.

As far as the series is concerned, I'm still reading, and thinking ... and trying to figure out what has happened here. If this is for real, it's a big step forward -- especially for the Washington Post. And that's why I don't trust it.

But if it's a psy-op then it's a subtle one. I know, I know, psy-ops can be exceptionally subtle, and I can be exceptionally dense. But in my opinion, if it's a psy-op then it would likely be one of two kinds.

There's the all-discrediting psy-op in which somebody spots a flaw (or an alleged flaw) in one paragraph of one article and uses it to allegedly discredit the entire series, as well as the real-life story on which it is based (thus Rather-gate; in this instance it would be used to "legitimize" Cheney's every illegal action). I don't see that happening in this case but it's still early and I wouldn't eliminate the possibility just yet.

Then there's the thin-edge-of-the-wedge, limited-hangout approach which we noted quite recently, where everything turns out to be worse than it was originally portrayed. If this is the case here, there are going to be a lot of spontaneous human cranium implosions, even among the most jaded analysts. On the other hand, this is one of the administration's favorite tactics, so I'll be having my skull reinforced, and as soon as possible.

There are other kinds of psy-ops as well, of course, so it could very well be something else ... if it's a plant.

If it's real, we get a whole 'nother set of questions, like: What does it all mean?

I think Larisa has it right when she says:

I am not a legal scholar, but it appears there has been a coup and no one told the President about it.

That's pretty clear, in my opinion. Or at least the first half of it is. Perhaps they told him but he didn't get it. Or maybe they told him but he doesn't care. Or maybe they told him but there's nothing he can do about it. I don't know. How can anyone really know things like this?

And what can we say about the Washington Post's role in support of real journalism (if that indeed is what this is)?

Would it signify a revival in American journalism? Or just a speed-bump on the road to hell?

And where did all this inside information come from? And why is it all coming out now?

On this question, Larisa has an idea I find quite intriguing:

I get the sense now that Bush's family is hitting back via the WaPo piece, likely bringing in all of their contacts and former officials from the Bush 41 administration to castrate Cheney as all other measures appear to have failed, including the Iraq Study Group, Gates at DOD, and Negroponte at State.

We'll see ...

On a possibly related note, why has the CIA released so much incriminating information all of a sudden?

TIME Magazine's Robert Baer says it's an attempt to send a message to the White House:

Hayden's plan is not only to draw a line under the past but make a point to this and future White Houses: Politicize intelligence and you'll find your name on the front page of the newspaper.

But when is intelligence not politicized? When is the President's name not on the front page of the newspaper?

So why else would could it be? It couldn't possibly be an attempt to draw attention away from the WaPo series on Dick Cheney, could it?

Nah! I didn't think so either.

So I'll leave you with one more good quote from Larisa:

I am starting now to believe that the President of the United States and the Vice President did likely have an agreement, described by Cheney as "an understanding," in part one of the WaPo series. Bush wanted the office and title, Cheney wanted the power. If this is in fact the agreement, then the public is owed an explanation and the Congress needs to take a look at the legality of such an agreement. Would a Cheney-Bush ticket have won do you think? Would anyone have elected Dick Cheney as President of the United States? Never.

We didn't elect George Bush, either. Never. But in a sense Larisa is still right: if the ticket had been Cheney/Bush, neither "election" -- 2000 or 2004 -- would have been close enough to steal.

Nonetheless I think Larisa is right when she says:

Cheney needed Bush to get elected it appears and to mislead the public as to who the actual President would be. That is my sense after reading the first two parts of this series.

Someone needs to ask the President (if we only had a press corps) if he agreed to abdicate his role as President to Dick Cheney before the election... not in title, but in authority. If not, then someone needs to ask the President if he minds that there has been a coup in his administration.

David Horsey has it right, too:

VIDEO: Mike Gravel Explains ROCK And FIRE To Dim-Witted Journalist

In answer to questions asked previously on this very page, here's former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, via YouTube.

It's hilarious! It's beautiful! "Rock" may not be winning Mike Gravel any numbers in the polls, but it is getting him meetings with dim-witted journalists! Who could ever ask for more?

Can't see it? Click here!

For more about Mike Gravel click here, and/or here.

And a tip of the frozen cap to Jeff Hoard at News Bloggers dot AOL dot com!

Wingnut Spinmeisters Sharpening Their Knives For 'Sicko'

In yet another fine piece at Bob Parry's Consortium News, guest essayist Jay Diamond writes:

Do a search on "Hannity Sicko" or "Romney Sicko" on any search engine and you will find an assortment of YouTube excerpts of Sean Hannity recycling talking points off the panicked presses of the Heritage Foundation, CEI, AEI, Manhattan Institute, etc., bearing dire warnings of the health care terror Michael Moore and other evil progressives are preparing to inflict on America.

But in all their truculent and fear-mongering invocations of the purported evils of "socialized medicine," there is curiously something that Romney, Hannity, and all the other American rightists consistently omit; and in that deliberate omission is an important lesson in the way America's hard right works their deceptions.

They never mention that there are more individuals right here in the United States who receive their health coverage on what you call "socialized medicine" than there are people in the entire country of France.

Add up all the people on Medicare and the Veterans Administration.

Hey Sean, Hey Mitt, Did you forget about those interesting little nuggets....Medicare and the VA ?

Or is it that you repeat the brainlessly transparent talking points your handlers stuff in your hands assuming nobody will realize that salient fact?

If right-wingers love the troops so much, why do they pick them specifically to be tormented with this horrible "socialized medicine"?

Why do rightwingers hate our troops....to punish them in such an evil fashion...putting them at risk of the evil "socialized medicine"? Why, Why?

There's more. And it's good. Hint, hint.

Ronald Swerlein Free On Bail; Court Date Set For Pending Explosives Charges

Ronald Swerlein is not due in court again until July 12; until then he's free on bond and can return to his home, but he's going to have to clean up the damage from the tear gas if he wants to enjoy living there.

Swerlein was arrested ten days ago at his home in Longmont, Colorado, where he has said he was testing various chemicals for possible use in rocket fuel.

Police armed with tear gas and a search warrant found and confiscated thousands of dollars worth of laboratory glassware and an estimated 400 different chemicals, including half a pound of nitroglycerin, which they detonated in Swerlein's driveway. The rest they took with them.

Swerlein has since been charged with ten counts of possession of explosives and one count of drug possession, and is now free on bail pending his next court appearance, which is scheduled for July 12 in Boulder County Court, according to the most recent reports from Longmont and Boulder.

Even seen from this distance, it's a case full of contradictions. (We've been following the story since last Wednesday, with articles Friday and Saturday as well).

Early reports from the local newspaper mentioned Swerlein's claim that he was making rocket fuel, not bombs, but seemed to discredit his story.

For instance, on June 20, Pierrette J. Shields and Rachel Carter reported in the Longmont Daily Times-Call:

Warren Musselman, a board member of the Northern Colorado Rocketry Club, said on Tuesday that the explosive chemicals police have identified from the home are not components of fuels used in model rocketry.

“Our stuff burns at a predictable rate and creates a lot of gas,” he said. “Explosives don’t burn. They detonate.”

Musselman said chemicals like PETN and sodium azide are dangerous and are simply not model rocket fuel ingredients.

“Explosives of any kind don’t have anything to do with the rocketry hobby,” he said.

So the case against Ronald Swerlein looked open and shut at that point, but -- guess what?? -- it turned out that things are a lot more complicated than Mr. Musselman would have us believe.

There's a very fine and fuzzy line between explosives and non-explosives (and some common household items are explosive under certain conditions), and there's also a very fuzzy line between garden-variety hobbyists and experimental high-performance rocket fuel researchers (who certainly do use explosives in their fuels).

My previous articles in this series can now be seen in all their naked ignorance; on the other hand these facts surely matter much more to Ronald Swerlein, since his future may hinge on whether or not a jury considers his story plausible.

Ronald Swerlein is a former electrical engineer with a number of patents to his credit. He retired after a car accident in 2004, and he says he's been spending his time and money building (and using) a fairly sophisticated chemistry set.

Unfortunately for Swerlein, he had no better place to experiment than his garage, and every now and then one of his fuel mixtures would explode. After a while the neighbors began to figure out where the sudden noises were coming from, and they complained to the police.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Longmont, a scattering of small bombs appeared in the parking lot of a medical clinic. The miniature bombs were just shells stuffed with gunpowder, but they could have caused some damage if somebody had stepped on or driven over one, and on the first weekend of June, the police sent out a plea for information.

Less than two weeks later -- Tuesday, June 12 -- something went BOOM in the Swerlein garage, and the next day one of the neighbors called the police.

On Friday, June 15, after sifting through enough of the Swerleins' garbage to find some evidence that the man inside was potentially dangerous, police obtained a search warrant. Then they came back, surrounded the house, and asked the Swerleins to step outside. They didn't respond, and police fired seven canisters of tear gas into their home -- including one through the plate glass window in their living room -- before they changed their minds.

Taken to a local park, Ronald Swerlein was stripped and given a medical gown, so police could search his underwear! Eventually, having found no indication of violent intent, police released the Swerleins, who were free to go but not back home, where police were just beginning a series of searches and seizures that would last for five days.

Swerlein waited a while but then attempted to re-enter his home on Sunday, June 17, but the police were still in possession, and Swerlein was arrested. He was released Tueday, June 19, on $50,000 bond, and a short item appeared on the UPI wire, the only "national" coverage this story has ever received.

In fact, the UPI report was carried in a couple of American dailies (the Houston Post-Chronicle and the Washington Times) but it didn't appear anywhere else, other than the Republic of Georgia. Otherwise, there has been no national coverage, and only a few newspaper articles about this case have been published outside Colorado.

Despite the lack of national exposure, Swerlein's attorney has been complaining of what he calls a "media circus", and he has requested a publication ban in this case. The timing of his request may be a shade unfortunate for his client, not because this cold blogger has come to see Swerlein's story as entirely plausible, but -- even more importantly -- because the first detailed and sympathetic coverage of Swerlein's side of the story has finally appeared in print.

As Christine Reid reports, in the (subscription-only) Boulder Daily Camera:

Swerlein has not talked publicly about his case. His attorney, Jeffrey Larson, says people should wait until all the facts are out and not jump to conclusions.
...

Swerlein's statements to police reveal that he sees himself as a "nerd" who is interested in rocket-fuel technology and teaching himself how to make it in small doses in his garage.

Swerlein has graduate degrees in physics and electrical engineering. He was an engineer and scientist at Hewlett-Packard, which later became Agilent Technologies, in Loveland.

He retired in 2004 after a serious car accident that almost took his life and has since been a recluse. Swerlein said he worked long hours and fell asleep at the wheel one night, colliding head-on with another car.

He still takes pain medication for the serious leg injuries he sustained in the crash.

Police reported finding crushed-up pills in his pockets when they arrested him. Swerlein told them he snorted the prescription drugs to make them work more quickly and last longer.

So there's the drug charge.

Meanwhile,

Swerlein told police he was looking for hobbies to take up in his spare time and got interested in thermites, mixtures of aluminum powder and metal oxides used in welding. He said when they were lit, they would make a "whoosh" sound.

Sometimes he would stand 5 feet away and ignite the chemicals using a wire hooked to a battery. Sometimes he would use a lighter.

He told police that when he began experimenting about a year ago, he "lost containment" with a couple of projects.

The neighbors began to notice him about a year ago.

Swerlein told police that he dreamed of improving rocket fuel. He wanted to be able to walk into rocketry groups and contribute his knowledge.

And that explains why

Warren Musselman, a board member of the Northern Colorado Rocketry Club, said ... people in the small rocketry community don’t remember Swerlein attending any meetings or events.

He wasn't ready -- he simply had nothing to show them yet.

As for the tests in his garage,

He knew it could be "violent," so his tests were done with 3 to 5 grams of chemicals at a time. He surrounded chemicals with tires to absorb the blows.

He made the nitroglycerin and P.E.T.N. himself from chemicals he bought over the Internet. He told police he was proud of his accomplishments — including once firing a homemade rocket with homemade fuel over his house.

Swerlein even seems oblivious to what the neighbors were thinking -- and that fits the profile of a scientist to a tee!

Swerlein said his neighbors may have been angry with him because, about eight months ago, he had a laser light that may have disturbed some of them. He said he had been shining it on a tree because it looked "neat," police reported, but he stopped after realizing it was bothering people.

He didn't realize they were a lot more concerned about the loud noises -- most of which occurred between 11PM and 3AM, according to reports the police had on file. OOPS! Sorry about that!!

Swerlein admitted to police that there were explosives in his home, but he said he didn't want to use the word "explosive" because they were looking for a bomb-maker.

Ok, then. Semi-oblivious.

Police going into his home were safe, he said, as long as they didn't open the bottles.

But that didn't stop them, as Christine Reid reported that they took two small samples from each bottle and destroyed the rest.

Most of the chemicals they destroyed are not regulated; Swerlein had every right to own them. He must be very upset. But the police are not concerned about sending him back into the neighborhood. In fact they've held a public meeting to convince the other residents that everything is safe and there's no need to worry.

From the little I happen to know about the case, I tend to agree with the police that the neighbors are not likely in any danger, and not only because the police have all his chemicals (or at least the samples they haven't destroyed) as well as the weapons, ammunition and other items that were confiscated from the Swerlein house.

But also -- and this appears to be a key factor in the story -- Ronald Swerlein has never expressed any animosity toward anyone, and as police phrase it, he has not "chosen a target". In other ways he seems to fit the profile of an amateur scientist much better than the profile of a mad bomber.

In addition, he appears to have bought all his supplies openly, through internet supply stores sending UPS shipments to his house -- not the pattern a furtive bomb-maker would follow.

And clearly, if he wanted to hurt people, he had no need to keep tinkering around in his garage. The homemade nitroglycerin the police detonated in his driveway would have made a fine car-bomb, or could have taken a chunk out of a building. And that wasn't the only explosive compound the police found -- clearly he could have taken several chunks out of several buildings. But Ronald Swerlein doesn't appear to have been thinking in those terms at all.

In the canse of the bombs in the parking lot, police say they do not consider Swerlein a suspect. It's hard to imagine that stuffing gunpowder in brass shells would seem very exciting to a guy who can make his own nitroglycerin. Still, I give the police credit for not trying to hang the parking-lot bombs on Swerlein. Surely Police Sgt. Tim Lewis would love to solve both cases. But clearly he realizes that the only way to do so is to find the other guy, too.

Further details may be forthcoming -- especially if no publication ban is enforced -- and I will endeavor to keep you posted.

But at this point we're left with a seemingly endless series of unanswered questions, among them: What is Sgt. Lewis dealing with? Two bombers in one small city? Or one bomber and an amateur rocket-fuel chemist?

At the moment, my money is on the latter. But we shall see ...

[all the recent links]

Boulder Daily Camera:
Swerlein armory baffles neighbors

Longmont Daily Times-Call:
Longmont Explosives Investigation
Ex-engineer faces 10 counts for possession of explosives
'I am not sure I feel all that safe’

Rocky Mountain News:
Longmont man in court today in explosives raid

Casper (Wyoming) Star Tribune:
Bombmaker free on bail

KKTV News (Colorado Springs / Pueblo):
Longmont Man Charged Over Explosives

CBS4 (Denver):
Longmont Man Charged With Possessing Explosives

FOX-31 (Colorado):
Longmont Man Charged With Possessing Illegal Explosives

KJCT (Grand Junction / Montrose):
Longmont man charged with possessing illegal explosives

9 NEWS (Colorado):
Man charged after explosives pulled out of home

Searching For Richard Reti? See Floyd On Horton On Siegelman/ Simpson/ Alabamagate

Chris Floyd has just posted a fine pointer to a great essay by Scott Horton -- a you-must-read-it-all piece about Karl Rove's most recent shenanigans in Alabama, in a case involving Don Siegelman and Dana Simpson, featuring all the usual "sleaze, graft and criminal conspiracy" (in Floyd's phrase), punctuated by a whistle-blower's house burning down. How quaint.

I was especially struck by this part of Floyd's comment, which makes a lot of sense even if you haven't yet read Horton (emphasis and space added):

As the Bush gang's tenure in office nears its end, the frantic thugs will face the possibility of prosecution for a number of high crimes, and they will resort increasingly to physical intimidation to cow or silence witnesses.

Does that sound far-fetched? Then consider this: at every single point, the Bush Administration's depradations have turned out to be even worse than originally thought.

For example, the "bad apples" of the "incident" at Abu Ghraib turned out to be the products of a deliberate, knowing, thorough-going, worldwide system of torture formally created and officially approved by the White House itself.

The "investigation" of 9/11 -- which had to be forced on the Bush gang in the first place -- turned out to be an ludicrous whitewash, directed by a close colleague of Condi Rice who later went on the State Department payroll.

The "shaky evidence" for launching a war of aggression against Iraq turned out to be a pack of falsehoods that were known to be falsehoods by the war's perpetrators, just as the "unforeseen chaos" that erupted in the wake of the invasion turned out to have been predicted beforehand with remarkable precision by government agencies.

The illegal wiretaps on "foreign terrorists" turned out to be part of a secret nationwide system of domestic espionage that has caught untold millions of innocent Americans in its web.

The "routine firing" of a few federal attorneys turned out to be the tip of a vast iceberg of legal and judicial corruption.

The "all clear" on deadly chemicals at Ground Zero in the days following 9/11 turns out to have been a deliberate deceit that has already killed many selfless rescue and reconstruction workers, and will kill many more in the years to come.

As a long-suffering chess-player I have always admired the writings of the long-ago grandmaster Richard Reti (1889-1929) [photo]. Apart from the charming wit that pervades his writing, there's also a remarkable pattern in the content: again and again Reti saw previously undocumented truths about the game, some of which had been lying in plain sight for years, and he expressed them in such a way that everyone who read him came away thinking "Well, of course! It's obvious, isn't it?" But it wasn't obvious until Reti said so.

What Chris just said is obvious, and has been for a long time. I've grown to expect it. As Ali led with a killer jab, Rove leads with a limited hangout. It's a signature in the M.O. -- plain as day. It's always worse than they lead us to believe in the beginning. It's a tactic that works and Rove is nothing if not pragmatic: we can expect to see the tactics that work again and again and again.

I say all this now in a jumble of words that flow freely: ah yes! It's so obvious, isn't it?

But have I ever had the presence of mind to say so before? No! I haven't even had the clarity of vision to formulate the thought!

As a young man I used to think they broke the mold when they made Richard Reti. But that was before I started reading Chris Floyd.

~~~

Scott Horton: Justice in Alabama

Go ahead. Click.

~~~

A Tragic Lunacy: Avoiding The Obvious Fact Leaves A Hole No Words Can Fill

I sat on my hands when Chris Floyd replied to a post by Paul Curtis regarding an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's soon-to-be-published book, "A Tragic Legacy".

I was thinking "If this were hockey, Chris would be gone!" It is, after all, the third man jumping into a fight who opens up the potential for a brawl.

But this wasn't really a fight at all, and as I continued to sit on my hands while more words flew, it dawned on me that there had never been any danger of a fight. And that's how I knew it wasn't hockey, by the way. Chris came to see it as something akin to rowing; in his view, we're all pulling together, even if we each see the course a bit differently. And I was still content to watch.

But that only lasted so long, and all of a sudden I can't restrain myself; now in addition to demanding a spot in the boat I also insist on standing, as the live-action photo at the top of my sidebar attests. You may salute now and later. But please don't drop your oars in the water while doing so...

The full title of Glenn Greenwald's book is "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency". Much of the discussion which I intend to quote here swirls around the purported physical basis of that mentality -- what Greenwald calls a Manichean world-view.

I'm such a political know-it-all that I actually had to look it up: I learned that Manicheanism was an ancient Persian religion and then of course it was obvious: clearly 'twas an old Middle Eastern religion that "destroyed" the Bush presidency! The Iranians were behind it -- of course. Glenn nails it again!

But unfortunately it's not that simple. Glenn Greenwald is not attempting to pin all the horrors of the past six years on the ancient Persians after all. He's merely using the name of their religion to evoke its dualism, its view of the world as divided into two fundamental (and fundamentally opposed) concepts (such as Good and Evil) as well as, of course, the physical, spiritual and other manifestations of same.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness -- who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil -- is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it. Those who have become convinced that they are waging an epic and all-consuming existential war against Evil cannot, by the very premises of their belief system, accept any limitations -- moral, pragmatic, or otherwise -- on the methods adopted to triumph in this battle.

Efforts to impose limits on waging war against Evil will themselves be seen as impediments to Good, if not as an attempt to aid and abet Evil. In a Manichean worldview, there is no imperative that can compete with the mission of defeating Evil. The primacy of that mandate is unchallengeable. Hence, there are no valid reasons for declaring off-limits any weapons that can be deployed in service of the war against Evil.

He has much more to say about this, including:

Equally operative in the Manichean worldview is the principle that those who are warriors for a universal Good cannot recognize that the particular means they employ in service of their mission may be immoral or even misguided. The very fact that the instruments they embrace are employed in service of their Manichean mission renders any such objections incoherent. How can an act undertaken in order to strengthen the side of Good, and to weaken the forces of Evil, ever be anything other than Good in itself? Thus, any act undertaken by a warrior of Good in service of the war against Evil is inherently moral for that reason alone.

It is from these premises that the most amoral or even most reprehensible outcomes can be -- and often are -- produced by political movements and political leaders grounded in universal moral certainties. Intoxicated by his own righteousness and therefore immune from doubt, the Manichean warrior becomes capable of acts of moral monstrousness that would be unthinkable in the absence of such unquestionable moral conviction. One who believes himself to be leading a supreme war against Evil on behalf of Good will be incapable of understanding any claims that he himself is acting immorally.

Later Greenwald says:

The president has been able to engage in this conduct because the country collectively accepted the dualistic framework with which he views the world, whereby the goal of "protecting" ourselves from the "forces of Evil" outweighs every other consideration and justifies every means employed in service of this battle. When President Bush acts in the name of fighting The Terrorists, with the goal of battling Evil, what he does is by definition justifiable and Good because he is doing it.

This absolutist Manichean mind-set venerates physical safety above all else. When President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law in October 2006, he dismissed objections to its Draconian and tyrannical provisions with one very simple and straightforward argument (emphasis added):

Over the past few months the debate over this bill has been heated, and the questions raised can seem complex. Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat? Every member of Congress who voted for this bill has helped our nation rise to the task that history has given us.

That paragraph summarizes the Bush movement. Because the threat posed by The Evil Terrorists is so grave, maximizing protections against it is the paramount, overriding goal. No other value competes with that objective, nor can any other value limit our efforts to protect ourselves against The Terrorists.

Glenn Greenwald may say "Manichean" in other parts of his book -- and if so he may indeed blame the "destruction" of the Bush presidency on ancient Persians and/or current-day Iranians. I don't know; I certainly hope he doesn't and I assume we'll all find out shortly.

In the interests of showing due diligence if nothing else, I have quoted all the occurrences of "Manichean" in the excerpt published by Salon. I've chosen these excerpts not only because they contained the word I had to look up, but also -- more importantly -- because they embody Greenwald's argument very well -- if (and in my mind that's a big if) the Salon excerpt is representative of the entire tome.

From the ensuing multi-way conversation, I gather that in some way it isn't; and for some reason it strikes me as strange (to say the least) that we're off on this particular tangent. And yet here we are: Glenn Greenwald and Paul Curtis and Chris Floyd and What am I even doing on this list? Yet I insist on standing up in the middle of the boat, which we are supposedly all rowing along together.

Paul Curtis is saying:

Greenwald's critique is tremendously important. Right-wing Manicheanism has taken over the national debate on security matters, operating as a literally totalitarian thought system, in that it subsumes all discourse into its own unanswerable internal logic. We've become familiar with the notion of framing in political discourse: well, this is the meta-frame. It quashes every attempt by liberals and moderates to raise rational points and does tremendous damage to constitutional liberties, the national interest, and global well-being.

It's a sort of cousin to the most disastrous forms of secular utopianism history has seen, echoing the logic that drove the Khmer Rouge and the Cultural Revolution, and if saying this means I've blown completely by Godwin's Law, so be it -- we're talking about the governing philosophy of the world's sole superpower, and the stakes really are that high. Moreover, as Greenwald points out, it's un-American:

But our entire system of government, from its inception, has been based upon a very different calculus -- that is, that many things matter besides merely protecting ourselves against threats, and consequently, we are willing to accept risks, even potentially fatal ones, in order to secure those other values. From its founding, America has rejected the worldview of prioritizing physical safety above all else, as such a mentality leads to an impoverished and empty civic life. The premise of America is and always has been that imposing limitations on government power is necessary to secure liberty and avoid tyranny even if it means accepting an increased risk of death as a result. That is the foundational American value.

Because it is a totalitarian framework of logic, the only way to defeat it is to attack it at its foundations, to root out its very premise, as Greenwald is doing. Conservatives have often gained the advantage in American public discourse because they build and re-enforce these meta-frames with great care; for liberals to bring reason back to the debate we'll need to do a considerable amount of foundational work of our own. This means, in the present case, repeatedly making the argument that Manicheanism is foolish and destructive, that we cannot afford to make policy according to a worldview defined by a simpleminded division of Good v. Evil.

When we make this case, we'll be accused of "moral relativism," which argument is the meta-frame's self-defense mechanism. But the point, of course, is that moral relativism is actually the product of the Manichean worldview, because it permits its adherents to justify any action -- no matter how depraved -- as taken in the service of "Good."

We've already seen that the current crop of Republican presidential contenders are holding tighter than ever to the Manichean frame, desperate as they are to win support from the right on war and terror, since there is nothing else on which the GOP can run. They're betting that liberals will be unable to destroy that meta-frame. Greenwald has the right idea: let's get started on destroying it. Now.

Chris Floyd has added some historical context to the discussion, an excerpt from which follows:

when has a strict Manicheanism not "taken over the national debate on security matters"? The "simpleminded division of Good v. Evil" reigned in all-triumphant glory throughout the decades of the Cold War, as anyone who was there for all or most of it can readily attest. Anything that could remotely be associated with "communism" (however plausibly or implausibly) was irredeemably evil; anyone who opposed communism -- by whatever draconian or murderous methods -- was on the side of the "good." This "meta-frame" also struck a deep chord in vast swathes of the public, which is why it was so effective in militarizing our republic and its economy over the course of half a century -- a process that James Carroll's remarkable Pentagon history, House of War, chronicles so well.

If anything, the Cold War "division of Good v. Evil" was far more "simpleminded" than what we see today. Imagine a Cold War president stating in public that Communism was a worthy doctrine, dedicated to human betterment, but had unfortunately been hijacked by extremists and rogue states, etc. Yet Bush has consistently made such remarks about Islam (for public consumption, at least). And of course, many of his allies in his "Terror War" are Muslims: the Saudis, the Pakistanis, the Egyptians, the Kurds, the militant Shiite factions he has empowered in Iraq, the warlords and drug kings and woman-hating clerics he has empowered in Afghanistan, etc. While in no way defending Bush's policies, his alliances or his murderous Terror War, there is simply no way that this murky, chaotic, shifting miasma can be compared, ideologically, to the rigid fault lines of the Cold War. (I'm speaking here of those who are actually in power, making policy, not the innumerable bootlickers, sycophants, extremists, cranks and idiots on the ideological right, who are cynically used -- and occasionally dropped -- by the power-players as needed.)

The point here is not that Greenwald or Curtis are wrong in asserting that "Right-wing Manicheanism has taken over the national debate on security matters." Of course it has. They are entirely right about this, and Greenwald especially has done great work in delineating the deeply sinister effects and implications of the Bush gang's thuggish rule. But the fact is, such Manicheanism has been long been operative in American history.

Since those words were written, Paul and Chris have had an interesting exchange of ideas full of flickering glimpses of our history through the Cold War and now into the War on Terror, well-documented at Empire Burlesque and worthy of a read.

I don't imagine I'll have more than one chance -- or one urge -- to stand up in the middle of such a distinguished boat, so I'll cut straight to the core of my argument:

I keep reading all these fine writers -- good thinkers, too -- and I can't imagine why nobody has asked the question that's been bouncing around inside my frozen little brain since I first saw the title of Glenn Greenwald's book:

How a What Destroyed the Come-Again???

The obvious implication in Glenn Greenwald's title is that there was originally something of value in Bush and his administration which was capable of being destroyed -- some potential treasure that was lost when this particular president was -- what? suddenly? inevitably? understandably? post-9/11? infected with a dangerously simplistic world view of Good vs Evil, Us vs The Terrorists...

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying it. In my opinion, to subscribe to such a view -- to even consider allowing a phrase such as "How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency" on the front cover of one's book -- displays either an acute case of Head-In-Sand Disease or a degree of moral corruption I do not care to contemplate.

Let us instead contemplate a question that may indeed be pivotal:

What If It's All A Lie?

What if the whole thing -- the entire national swill -- 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, the entire GWOT -- is a deliberate, pre-fabricated, mass-murdering, war-mongering lie?

What if the government -- the Bush administration -- the Cheney-Rove-Bush axis-of-evil-propaganda machine -- the authors of the "Manichean" talking points which dominate our national swill ... What if they know, as surely as you and I do, but in much more detail, that 9/11 was an inside job?

They do know that, you know! How could they not know?

Otherwise, why did they refuse to testify under oath? Why did Bush refuse to testify without Cheney? Who did they think they were fooling, appointing Henry Freaking Kissinger to chair the sham "investigation"?

For that matter, how could they get the PATRIOT Act written and presented to Congress so soon after 9/11, if 9/11 was so unexpected? Why were they so ready to bomb and invade Afghanistan that they could initiate offensive operations in-country less than a month later? Why were the bin Laden family flown out of the country so fast, and who chartered the plane they flew on? And is the FBI's ObL "WANTED" poster really "out-of-date", or does it merely reflect a reality that relatively few Americans -- even among those who position themselves as implacable foes of the current administration -- are willing to examine, lest the truths they discover should become too obvious to ignore any longer, while their implications remain too painful to accept?

What if? Guess what!

What if the Manichean world-view of Good vs Evil upon which rests the entire foreign and domestic policy agenda of the Bush administration -- what if that world-view was in fact chosen for bureaucratic reasons?

What if, like the "weapons of mass destruction" that didn't exist in Iraq, the "terrorist organizations of global reach" against whom we are supposedly fighting have no basis in reality independent of all the usual suspects, and merely represent the most plausible lie that happens to be available?

What if this lie is not only the most plausible lie available, but also the most powerful? What if it was chosen -- and therefore made available -- for the very reason of its power? For who could dare to stand -- even against creeping tyranny, even against a plan to unleash death and destruction on the rest of the world -- knowing he will be accused of aiding the terrorists who "want to kill us all"?

The power of the lie is such that whoever owns it can have anything else he wants.

What if this is why it was chosen?

It's not as if it doesn't matter. It's not as if anyone could even semi-plausibly pretend it doesn't matter. Every single issue under debate on the national scene -- or not! -- now and back in time nearly six years -- has been touched by the War on Terror. We don't have any money for anything else because of the War on Terror. We have to give up some of our civil liberties because of the War on Terror. We have to do anything possible to keep our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan -- against the will of the vast majority of the electorate -- because of the War on Terror. The president is commander-in-chief until he says otherwise because of the War on Terror.

We have devoted all the resources of our society to a war against "terrorist organizations of global reach" even though it is more true than ever before that no terrorist organization of global reach can possibly exist -- much less operate -- without the knowledge and consent -- not to say the active cooperation -- of the CIA and the NSA and all their friends in high places, like MI6 and ISI.

And still we have supposedly meaningful debates on such topics as whether the president should be able to detain indefinitely those whom he designates "enemy combatants", "unlawful" or otherwise.

Knowing what we do know about the illegitimacy of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, how can we possibly sit and debate such a thing? Prior to the Bush administration, such a debate would have been unthinkable.

Reasonable people would have said, "the President cannot possibly make such a designation; besides, there's no such thing as "an unlawful combatant"! And we don't hold people indefinitely without trial or hearing, no matter what they're called! This is America, remember?"

But instead we now live in what appears to be almost like a dictatorship except that the rules are a little bit fuzzy. So now it's a matter of (a) If you don't think the president should be able to detain indefinitely those whom he designates "enemy combatants" then you must be a terrorist, or at the very least a terrorist sympathizer, and assuming that maybe you're not one or the other but merely terminally un-serious if not mentally ill, (b) If not indefinitely, then how long should the president be able to detain those whom he designates "enemy combatants"?

To his credit, Glenn Greenwald usually lands on the right side in such debates; he makes his points very clearly and he documents them very well. But what exactly is he saying? And what impression is he conveying by debating these issues from inside them, rather than stepping back -- out of the meta-frame and into full-bore reality -- and calling them what they are: bogus?

It seems to me that the daily swill which passes for national discourse often boils down to this question:

"Is the GWOT the correct response to 9/11, and if not, what kind of WOT would be the correct response to Islamofascist terrorism?"

And while Glenn Greenwald does a fine job arguing that the GWOT is not the correct response, he never stops and says:

Hey! Wait a minute!!

The correct response would be to investigate 9/11!!

We always act as if 9/11 were a legitimate event and the only possible questions now involve the correct response to that "act of war", that awesome manifestation of unprovoked Evil. But what if there was nothing legitimate about 9/11? What if it was never properly investigated? What if the official story doesn't even make any sense? How can we even speak of waging war in response -- let alone two of them? Let alone actually doing it!

As a matter of strict semantics, Islamofascism is a contradiction in terms. As a matter of political reality, Christofascism appears to be something of a threat. And yet we're devoting all we've got -- all we are -- to a fight against a made-up word that appears to be mostly meaningless! What is wrong with this picture?

Many supposedly dissident authors who wish to be considered "serious" persist in ignoring -- or dismissing -- or banning! -- such questions, declaring that there's no evidence to support the lunatic fringe notion of 9/11 as anything other than whatever the government said it was according to its most recent report, which may very well be obliterated by its next one, in the same way that the previous one was.

But that's all ok with them, and they don't talk about the PNAC, and they don't talk about how the "path of action" taken by the Bush administration prior to 9/11 shows clearly that it was preparing for war -- endless, limitless, unrestrained war against the rest of the world -- as well as unprecedented secrecy and an attempt to concentrate all power in the Oval Office. They may admit that these things are happening, and they may wail bitterly against them, but do they ever suggest that these abuses of power were not simply a reaction to 9/11 -- but the plan all along? They don't talk about the abundant and very clear evidence that our electoral system is an obvious fraud. They don't talk about false-flag terror in any meaningful way. And they certainly don't talk about 9/11.

It's not hard to see why. There are rafts of reasons why one might choose such a course; to be as charitable as possible I'll single out those who believe there's been enough malpractice in the Bush regime that there's no need to speak of deliberate malfeasance -- and that to appeal to a much more narrowly-held view -- to admit in public what everybody seems to recognize in private: that the Bush regime has never even meant well -- would be bad tactics.

In my view, it is not, nor can it ever be, bad tactics to write the truth -- regardless of how obvious it is, regardless of how appalling it is, regardless of the number of people who already believe it. Only dead fish move with the current.

But it is bad tactics to ignore the truth, if for no other reason than this: the most honest among your potential readers -- i.e. the great unwashed, who are not yet cleansed of their "lunatic fringe" ideas and scented with the poison of "political truth" -- will spot your omission instantly and avoid your work like leprosy.

And when you inscribe your massive tome with an enormous lie on the cover so that the great unwashed can see from a distance -- without even reading about the Manicheans -- that you're dismissing, or deliberately hiding, or otherwise lying to yourself about the single most significant geopolitical event of our collective lifetimes, well then I'm sorry, Charlie, but the great unwashed will choose to remain at a distance.

No matter how well-inscribed the rest of your tome may be, every now and then one of the cold and filthy ones will stand up in the middle of the boat and call you a shameless opportunist, for ignoring or hiding the most basic truths of your generation, in order to better insinuate yourself into the mainstream of American swill.

You'll have other critics, of course. The more generous among them may assume that for whatever unfathomable reason you have chosen to be utterly oblivious to the fact that our lives have all been changed -- significantly and for the worst -- by the single most deadly sleight of hand in the history of the world.

But none will dispute that the changes that followed this most appalling magic trick -- malignant and repulsive and everywhere, as so thoroughly and cogently documented by Greenwald himself -- are rapidly becoming permanent, and will certainly be permanent unless people such as Glenn Greenwald start acknowledging what the rest of us -- all us so-called "B bloggers" who are busting our asses every day to tell the truth to a few hundred people at a time, lest it die out entirely -- already know.

And when the lunatic fringe truth-seekers -- those people who cannot bring themselves to hide or ignore or dismiss the shameful truth -- when these miserable souls, tormented by their inability to forget about simple little things like appearance and reality and unable to shake their personal observations about how things are and how they got that way -- when one of those people stands up in your boat and looks you in the eye and says "How could you... ? How could you expect any of us to take you seriously, when you refused to acknowledge the most basic fact of all?"

What will you have to say then? What else could anyone possibly say, but "Oh yeah? Well how fast is your hit counter spinning?"

The sad fact remains that there are quite a number of supposedly dissident websites where 9/11 and false-flag terror in general are never discussed, where impeachment is never on the table and election fraud is never among the topics of the day, where everything that matters comes down to Democrats against Republicans, and where the webmaster sees more visitors before breakfast on a slow day than I have seen ever since I started blogging. Make of that what you will.

For me, it says that the truth -- the obvious, transparent, in-your-face-every-day truth -- a truth which I barely even approach here, even on my best days -- is far too awful for the vast majority to bear. So they go back to discussing just how long the president should be able to hold those whom he labels "enemy combatants". Two years? Three years? Four? What do you think?

As I was saying, not having read Glenn Greenwald's novel, I cannot begin to critique it. Judging the book by its title, and the excerpt provided by Saloon, may be less than fair.

Still it would not be possible to draw such an excerpt -- let alone such a title -- from any book which I personally would consider reading -- much less buying.

It pains me to see that one of the "leading lights" of the blogosphere can be so dim. It pains me even more to say so.

It pains me to see that none of the critics I've been reading and quoting has ventured anywhere near the point that seems to me central, and vital, and utterly bloody obvious -- at least not so far -- not in this conversation. And it pains me even more to say that.

I don't mean to demean the work of any other blogger; if I didn't respect them, I wouldn't even read them, much less write about them. Nor do I mean to insist that every conversation must revolve around 9/11. Certainly Chris Floyd has had plenty to say about it, although not in this conversation.

And I will freely admit that 9/11 is not the be-all and end-all of 21st century American politics. But surely no analysis of the Bush administration can afford to ignore it -- and the possibility that -- like everything else -- they are lying to us about who was behind those attacks.

And I always get uncomfortable standing up in a boat, but I believe that one cannot advance the cause of truth unless one is willing to stand up and speak it -- even in the middle of an unsteady boat, and especially when the light is dim. As Thomas Paine so aptly wrote:

"He who stands [up] now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Gandhi: 'The Collective Failure Of The US People'

The collective failure of the US people to act against the criminal Bush administration has had an extremely negative ripple effect around the world

according to the fine Australian blogger Gandhi, whose most recent post I reproduce in full below.

This -- the first new post at Bush Out in three weeks -- may be the last new post we ever see from Gandhi at Bush Out. But on the other hand, Howard Out may be the best place for him to apply his considerable talents.

Gandhi's newest at Bush Out will be a fine way to leave it, IMVHO, (if he does decide to leave it):

I know, I know. I am neglecting this blog. But I am focussed on getting rid of my own Bush-loving government in Australia.

I mean, what more is there for a non-US blogger like me to say about Bush? Everything you need to know (and much more) is available somewhere on this blog, or via the links (like TPM, Juan Cole, ICH, Alternet, and antiwar.com).

From my point of view, the case against Bush and his cronies has been closed for some time. Bush is polling in the gutter now, largely thanks to years of scrutiny from blogs like this one (and this one!), plus the blatantly obvious failures of his own policies. Bringing such public attention to Bush's criminally immoral administration was my original intention when I started this blog: now it's up to the people of the USA to deliver the coup de grace.

Bush doesn't give a shit about his low poll numbers. He and his Big Money friends are doing just fine, thank you very much. It's now up to the people of the USA to do something! Get off you ass, get active, and make sure the NEXT administration (and the NEXT, and the NEXT...) is not just as bad as this one.

If you are looking for a place to start, I suggest y'all take a good long look at this link. Explains a lot, doesn't it? Now what are you going to DO about it?

Come on! Bush is the symptom of a very sick society: you guys have a lot of work to do!

The USA remains (for now) the world's only superpower. The collective failure of the US people to act against the criminal Bush administration has had an extremely negative ripple effect around the world. Conversely, if the USA can get its own house in order, and show the world what truth, justice and real Democracy is all about, then perhaps - just perhaps - the inspiring dream that once was "America" might yet live again.

Aside from the friendly mention, I must say I agree with the sentiment -- what are we waiting for? Nice weather?

In November of 2004 I was saying "What more proof do you want? Get out in the streets!" and I was hearing things like "Yeah, but the weather! It's too wet, it's too cold, it's too dreary ... "

What's the problem now? Is it too warm? Too dry? The sun is too bright?

Tom Toles: Getting Blurrier

This open thread is long overdue ... sorry ... I was looking for a suitable cartoon but I couldn't find one ... couldn't find anything, really ... I'm getting drowsy now ... not sure how much more I can

Ronald Swerlein Charged: Ten Counts Of Illegal Explosives, One Count Of Drug Possession

The continuing saga of Ronald Swerlein continues to unfold and the media splash remains confined within Colorado state lines. Ronald Swerlein appeared in court on Friday and was charged with ten counts of illegal possession of explosives and one count of illegal drug possession. In this post, excerpts and links to the newest handful of reports, all from news sources in Colorado, as well as a few comments about aspects of this story that make you go "Hmmmm...."

The snazziest graphic of the day comes (with a peacock) from Chris Vanderveen at 9 News dot com in Colorado whose headline reads:

Man charged after explosives pulled out of home

Boulder County prosecutors have charged a man with 10 counts of illegal explosives possession on Friday.

Ronald Swerlein, 50, offered no comment as he, his wife, and his attorney walked into a Boulder County courtroom Friday afternoon.

His attorney, Jeffrey Larson, did say in court that he believes Swerlein "has no intention of harming anybody or frightening anybody."

Over the weekend, Longmont Police say they pulled out from Swerlein's home more than 200 chemicals, numerous guns, and even a few magazines connected with eco-terrorist organizations. In court documents Swerlein has reportedly told police he was interested in model rocketry.

Police have not said if they think Swerlein posed a threat to anyone other than himself.

Police first searched Swerlein's home on June 15 after a neighbor reported hearing three explosions at the house three days earlier.

Swerlein will be back in court next month.

Technically it is true that police searched Swerlein's home after receiving a report three days earlier. It is also technically true that police searched Swerlein's home after 9/11, or that police searched Swerlein's home after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, for that matter. Personally, when I think of this case in its proper historical context, I believe it's important to note that police searched Ronald Swerlein's home after Lincoln was assassinated.

If you get my drift.

This short report gives no hint that police had received 15 reports of explosions in Swerlein's neighborhood dating back to January of 2006. Regular readers of this frozen page know that already, of course, because they've already read "Ronald Swerlein's Out On Bail And Going Home But The Neighborhood Is Safe Because The Cops Have All His Explosives, Weapons, Glassware, Magazines ...".

It also doesn't mention the one drug-related charge. Ahem. Next up in our roundup of the Colorado regional media Swerlein extravaganza is a report from the AP via KJCT-8 (ABC, Grand Junction / Montrose):

Longmont man charged with possessing illegal explosives

A Longmont man accused of keeping explosive chemicals and handguns in his home was charged today with ten counts of possessing illegal explosives and one count of drug possession.

Fifty-year-old Ronald Swerlein, a retired electrical engineer, was arrested last Sunday after local and federal agencies spent the weekend searching his home. Neighbors had reported hearing three explosions at the house three days earlier.

Authorities says they found more than 400 chemicals in Swerlein's house, including homemade nitroglycerin. Officers say they also found model rockets, rocket kits and engines, a launching pad for model rockets and books on homemade explosives.

They also reported finding magazines from the Animal Liberation Front, which the FBI considers to be a terrorist group.

Swerlein told police he was developing fuel for model rockets.

Homemade nitroglycerin?

That's the first indication I've seen that Swerlein's nitroglycerin was homemade.

Why would you make nitroglycerin?

Because it's not too difficult to make and you can't legally buy it.

How much of it would you need? Police reportedly found half a pound of it. Would that be enough for a model rocket hobby?

It would, and it would also be enough to make a good-sized car bomb!

If you want to fuel a rocket, you need a fuel stable enough not to explode on the way to the launch pad, no? Police detonated Swerlein's nitroglycerin -- half a pound of it -- in his driveway last Saturday, because it's so unstable they couldn't risk moving it! How could something this flaky serve as a rocket fuel?

It may not be all that simple!

I asked my science advisor several questions along these lines and here's what I learned:

First of all you have to understand how much difference there is between a rocket and a bomb. Think of fireworks: a rocket with a bomb on it. The rocket has to fly. It has to have a long powerful steady thrust in order to go up in the air. If the fuel burns too fast -- if it explodes -- it ruins the rocket and it doesn't fly anywhere. In effect it becomes a bomb. Heck, it already is a bomb; it becomes more dangerous because it's going to explode on the ground rather than up in the air.

OOOhhh! Science! ... Seriously, though: my chemistry background is not too bad and my science advisor has a PhD so having him around helps a lot.

Meanwhile back in media-land, FOX 31 has the most detailed coverage of the three television reports that came in late last night:

Longmont Man Charged With Possessing Illegal Explosives

A Longmont man accused of keeping explosive chemicals and handguns in his home was charged Friday with 10 counts of possessing illegal explosives and one count of drug possession.

Ronald Swerlein, 50, a retired electrical engineer, was arrested June 17 after local and federal agencies spent the weekend searching his home. Neighbors had reported hearing three explosions at the house three days earlier.

Authorities said they found more than 400 chemicals in Swerlein's house, including homemade nitroglycerin and MEKP, a volatile chemical that had been stabilized and hidden in the basement.

Officers said they also found model rockets, rocket kits and engines, a launching pad for model rockets, books on homemade explosives, expensive chemistry glassware, a handwritten "to-do" list and warning note, flare guns, a Taser weapon and three metal grenade shells.

They also reported finding magazines from the Animal Liberation Front, which the FBI considers to be a terrorist group.

Swerlein told police he was developing fuel for model rockets. He and his lawyer, Jeffrey Larson, declined to comment when they walked into a Boulder County courtroom Friday.

Larson has said he believes Swerlein's neighborhood is safe.

This is the first report I've seen that mentioned

model rockets, rocket kits and engines, a launching pad for model rockets

... and it's not surprising when little bits of evidence dribble out here and there; in fact it's interesting to watch.

Speaking of interesting, most of the detail so far has come from Pierrette J. Shields of The Daily Times-Call who filed this report prior to Swerlein's court appearance:

‘I am not sure I feel all that safe’: Explosives arrest rattles neighbors

Longmont detectives are trying to make sense of evidence seized from the home, Lewis told residents. None of it so far indicates Swerlein had any plans to use the explosives outside of his own yard, he said.

“Truly, we have that he was doing this as one of his hobbies and his projects,” Lewis said.

Police have cleared the house and Swerlein and his wife may move back in and begin cleaning the mess left behind by searches and tear gas if they choose. That left some neighbors uneasy.

“What if he wants to get revenge on the neighbors who turned him in?” neighborhood resident Dennis Bruns asked.

Butler said he empathizes with neighbors, but said the police do not have the authority to keep him out the the neighborhood or his home.

“We do not believe he will be able to do what he has been doing in the past,” Butler said. “We will be doing extra patrols in the area.”

Lewis noted that Swerlein’s bond conditions require that he not possess chemicals or weapons. Swerlein has not been charged or tried and has a right to be presumed innocent, Lewis noted. He will not be under police surveillance and control.

I'm anxious to see what Pierrette Shields will have next. I'm especially hoping for an answer to the question lingering in my mind at the moment:

Nobody so far who has reported anything about Swerlein having been remanded or anything to that effect; presumably he is still out on $50,000 bail and still free to clean up the damage from the tear gas and resume his normal peaceful life as it was ... or as it would have been without any chemicals or weapons or magazines ... is Ronald Swerlein still free on $50,000 bond?

In the Rocky Mountain News, Vanessa Miller reports:

Longmont man in court today in explosives raid

Longmont police Sgt. Tim Lewis said he expects Swerlein will be charged with more than two counts of possession and use of explosives — felony charges carrying a prison sentence of two to 12 years.

Swerlein was in fact charged with ten counts of explosives violations and one count of drug possession.

Swerlein paid the required 10 percent of his $50,000 bond to leave the Boulder County Jail on Tuesday.

Is that right? Did he really pay only 10% of the $50,000 bond the judge set? If I'm reading this right, that's $5000 bail, and remember that even after being charged he may still be free on until his next court appearance, as far as we know ...

Now my poor frozen brain comes screeching to a halt and says:

Now just hang on a minute!! Let's speculate just this once, shall we?

What if -- instead of Ronald Swerlein -- this man's name was Abdul Muhammed?

How long do you suppose it would take before he was living on a tropical island, enjoying some lemon chicken sweetened by a choice of two desserts?

How can I ever recover? Oooh. Perhaps I can't!! ;-( Because Vanessa Miller also says:

Among the chemical brews found in the tri-level house, police reported, were nitroglycerin, the main ingredient in dynamite, and M.E.K.P., the explosive linked to the liquid ban on air travel.

Ahem. If I may...

Not to blow my own nose or anything like that, but I happen to have written a sixteen-part series on the so-called "liquid bombers", whose alleged plot was reportedly foiled in August, 2006 and which led to the current so-called 3-1-1 carry-on restrictions.

The alleged plot was supposedly foiled after the arrest of Rashid Rauf, the so-called "ringleader" or "mastermind" or "messenger" but certainly a "key person" and almost always fingered as "the al-Q'aeda connection" to the alleged plot.

Rashid Rauf is currently in a Pakistani prison charged with possession of 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide for the purposes of terrorism. One of the questions that repeatedly surfaces in my mind with respect to this case runs: How could 29 bottles of hydrogen peroxide in Pakistan blow up 10 or 12 airplanes headed to the USA from Britain?

So it's a great big mystery and a fascinating (though sickening) one, and to make a long story shorter, I have read and squirreled away hundreds of articles about Rashid Rauf and the so-called "Liquid Bombers" and this is the first time I have ever seen MEKP mentioned in connection with this alleged plot ... so just before my chilled and tiny brain went completely hypothermic, I asked The Google:

"Did I miss a connection somewhere? Do you know anything about Rashid Rauf and MEKP?"

And The Google said:

"Yes! those names appear together on two pages!"

I was shocked!! Shocked, I tell you!!

"Two whole pages?"

I exclaimed!

"What on Earth do they say?"

The Google replied:

One says "If it was a peroxide based liquid explosive I would have thought they would have been using MEKP" ...

and the other says "Liquid Bomber exposed as ISI agent / plot was used to renew fledging support for WOT"

Well as you must have guessed I could go on and on, but that's my story for today -- a story of Ronald Swerlein, who would surely be looking at the world through a narrow slot if he were fortunate enough to be born under a different name, or in a different skin ... and a story of a nearly frozen blogger and The Google. working together to catapult the propaganda -- right back over the fence.

And now if you'll excuse me, I need to go get colder...

~~~

[ related posts ]

Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Police Seize Huge Cache Of Explosives From Colorado Home, But Say It's Not Enough For An Act Of Terrorism

Friday, June 22, 2007
Ronald Swerlein's Out On Bail And Going Home But The Neighborhood Is Safe Because The Cops Have All His Explosives, Weapons, Glassware, Magazines ...

Bob Koehler: The Hearts Of All Sane Men

Here's a new piece from Bob Koehler that's just too good to cut, in which Bob piles on many vital truths reflected in a couple of the events we were discussing recently, here and in related comments (or here).

I've taken a few liberties, added a few images and a few links as well as a bit of emphasis, but Bob's been a good friend -- and a very generous one -- and I know he believes in liberty, so I think we'll be ok.

So we bomb a school and then are aghast when seven children die. “If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that air strike would have occurred,” a spokesman for what the media still bother to call “the coalition” said afterward, by way of explanation if not apology.

The public has mostly tuned out of these wars. Of those who still pay attention, many do so from behind Fortress Patriotism, with its ramparts of cliche: “freedom isn’t free,” etc. Thus when children die and it’s our fault and publicity is unavoidable, the media will usually remove the stinger from each tiny death, and keep the American conscience untroubled, by putting the deaths in the larger context of U.S. strategy or mission.

“The coalition goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties,” said William Wood, the United States ambassador to Afghanistan.

We bombed the eastern Afghanistan compound, which contained a mosque and a madrassa (Islamic school), this past Sunday because we were hunting insurgents who may have been involved in the massive suicide bombing of a bus a few hours earlier in Kabul, which had killed as many as 35 people and wounded 52.

Got it? Next question . . .

But I linger in anger and wounded silence because, lacking belief in the pretext, stated goals or covert agenda of any of Bush’s wars, I have no way to numb myself to their tactics, which, no matter how you frame or justify them, amount to hunting individual Taliban or al-Qaida suspects, in populated areas, with bombs and missiles, all but guaranteeing a high collateral kill count. We’ve been doing this from the very start. How did we come to believe we had that right?

“The way chosen by the United States (after World War II) was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs. . . . No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.”

This is Dwight David Eisenhower, near the end of the Korean War — April 1953, addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors — seeming to lay down for all time what mattered about America and what sort of hope it brought to Planet Earth. The speech was called “The Chance for Peace.” In it, Ike let loose about how fed up he was with the Cold War economy, making a famous cost-benefit analysis:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. . . . We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.”

He went on for a while with such comparisons, finally thundering: “This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Can we stand so much unbuffered idealism in a single dose? “This is one of those times in the affairs of nations,” he said, “when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace. It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty. It calls upon them to answer the questions that stirs the hearts of all sane men: Is there no other way the world may live?”

Read it and wince. Whatever turning point we were at 54 years ago has slipped quietly beyond “the hearts of all sane men” and now we hunt evil from the sky, bomb schools and affect surprise at the carnage. This affectation is the last pale remnant of American idealism and morality.

But what’s most disturbing about Ike’s speech is that either he delivered it with his fingers crossed or he had no control over the malevolent forces then operating in America’s name. Even as he spoke, for instance, the CIA was meddling with Mohammad Mossadegh’s democratically elected, populist government in Iran, which fell four months later; and the next year, the CIA engineered a similar coup in Guatemala.

Even as he spoke, fallout from the U.S. military’s above-ground nuclear-testing program in Nevada was poisoning livestock, milk and people — and government spokesmen were assuring millions of irradiated downwinders, privately dismissed by the Atomic Energy Commission as “a low-use segment of the population,” that they were perfectly safe. In fact, they were guinea pigs.

In the Eisenhower years, America’s overt role on the world stage was to be a powerful force for good, but in its shadows, it was fighting a dirty war and preparing for a dirtier one. The toll to be exacted on the future would be cancer, global rancor, terrorism and an eroded value system in which even torture has a good name.

As Ike spoke about peace, the nation’s soul was on loan to the Cold War -- and we never got it back!!

Thank you, thank you, Bob Koehler! He's one of the very best, IMVHO. Visit his site and spend some time in his archives and see if you don't agree with me.

Waxman: Cheney's Office Says It's Not Covered By The Oversight Law It Wants To Abolish

CNN says

Vice President Dick Cheney's office refused to cooperate with an agency that oversees classified documents, then tried to abolish the office when it challenged the actions, House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman said.

The National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office is charged by presidential order with ensuring that classified information and documents are properly handled by executive branch agencies.

According to a letter from William Leonard, director of the oversight office, Cheney's office argued it did not meet the definition of an executive branch agency and therefore was exempt.

Leonard also wrote that Cheney's office suggested his agency be abolished under a revision of the presidential order now under consideration.

And

when the National Archives' office attempted to visit Cheney's team in 2004, it was prevented from doing so by Cheney's staff, Waxman wrote in the letter. The office had complied with the order in 2001 and 2002 but started refusing to do so in 2003.

In 2006, Leonard wrote to Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, to contest the office's refusal to comply and was told that the vice president's office "does not believe it is included in the definition of 'agency' as set forth in the order," nor is it an "entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information," according to letters released Thursday by Waxman's committee.

So Waxman has taken a bold step:

"I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions," Waxman, D-California, wrote in a letter Thursday to Cheney.

I'm sure Big Dick is quakin' in his snakeskins. OMG -- a letter from Waxman! What do we do?

Why does this Vice President -- whose only official duty is to break a tie in the Senate -- get to decide whether or not any particular law applies to his own office?

Oh, right; I forgot. Because that is the way it is.

Ronald Swerlein's Out On Bail And Going Home But The Neighborhood Is Safe Because The Cops Have All His Explosives, Weapons, Glassware, Magazines ...

Police have cleaned out all the explosives, weapons, ammunition, volatile chemicals, and much else from the home of Ronald Swerlein, and now the 50-year-old former electrical engineer, who is currently free on $50,000 bond, will return to his home in Longmont, Colorado. But the police don't want people to be afraid, so they're having a public meeting -- which will almost certainly be finished by the time you read this -- just to assure everyone it's quite safe to let Swerlein stay in his house until he gets his day in court.

Really. There's nothing to worry about. The police detonated his nitroglycerin in his driveway last Saturday evening (and they evacuated the neighborhood first, so you know they care about the people's safety!), and everything else they confiscated was stable enough for them to take with them, so there's no need for concern. Seriously. Would I lie to you? Would they?

Listen, they even itemized what they took out of the house:

Along with about 400 different chemicals and books on homemade explosives, police also took three metal grenade shells, 15 boxes of military fuel shells, a Glock 22 handgun, multiple flare guns, multiple stun guns, a Taser and cartridges, a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol, a five-shot revolver, a 9-mm semiautomatic, a .40-caliber Glock, a .38-caliber revolver, a Colt .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol, several other guns, and boxes of ammunition for the guns.

All this is according to Pierrette J. Shields in the June 21 Daily Times-Call, who can't avoid tantalizing us:

Police also took a handwritten “to-do” list and a “warning note,” although investigators would not discuss the contents of either.

But police don't expect any problem, and they're telling the neighbors there's no danger. Here's Pierrette Shields again, with Rachel Carter this time, in the same June 21 The Daily Times-Call:

Police meeting today with Swerlein neighbors

Police will meet tonight with neighbors of the man suspected of mixing explosives in his house and hoarding a huge cache of chemicals, weapons and bomb-making literature.

Some of Ronald Swerlein’s neighbors are concerned about their children’s safety and have asked about the possibility of booby traps in the neighborhood or nearby park, Longmont Police Sgt. Tim Lewis said.

There is no danger, Lewis said, but he and Police Chief Mike Butler wants to meet with residents to field questions and address concerns.

Should be a grand time. I wish I could be there. I'll keep my eyes open for reports.

Speaking of reports: this story still has not made a single dent in any national media, and the only coverage it is getting outside of Colorado has come from a short UPI item which was carried in the Republic of Georgia but not in the State of Georgia.

Really. There's no danger.

Police spent the weekend searching Swerlein’s home at 2404 Sunset Drive after a neighbor reported hearing explosions at his house June 12. Investigators returned to the house Tuesday night for a second search, which yielded more weapons and chemicals.

Neighbors heard and felt explosions and saw smoke rising from Swerlein’s backyard or billowing from his garage shortly afterward in recent months, police said.

Explosions in recent months? I guess that depends on what you mean by recent.

Just two days ago (June 19), Betsy Lehndorff and Tillie Fong reported in the Rocky Mountain News:

Backyard blasts lead to jail

In Longmont, neighbor Sean Hardy, 25 [...] said that he and other neighbors had lodged noise complaints about the Swerleins since last July.

"We had police stop by and neighbors stop by," he said. "We've even had a cop sit outside all night one night a month ago. The wheels move slow."

The wheels move slow indeed. How recent?

Here's John C. Ensslin in the Rocky Mountain News, three days ago (June 18):

Arrest follows series of blasts in Longmont neighborhood

Several neighbors said they've heard explosions as far back as January 2006. The complaints are what led police to obtain the search warrant.

Last summer, next-door neighbor Gabriel Mohedano thought someone was setting off Fourth of July fireworks. But fellow neighbor Jessica Mendez said it was nothing like firecrackers. "It was a big old boom," she said.

A big old boom indeed! In the middle of the night when all's quiet, or nearly so, and all of a sudden there's a big old boom! How many people would have noticed something like that? ... in a residential neighborhood on the edge of a small city?

Oh, no!!

Police received at least 15 reports of explosions, fireworks or shots fired in the area during the past 18 months, according to Lewis’ search warrant affidavit.

A resident reported “loud explosions at night” near Raber Park in September 2006, according to police. The resident told officers the explosions were much more powerful than fireworks; not only did they wake his family at night, but the explosions spurred residents to “check gas line connections and electrical transformer boxes in the neighborhood,” according to police reports.

Police received another complaint about late-night explosions in November. In early December, police said they were monitoring the area.

And

Hardy said the Swerleins were fairly reclusive, and that he hardly ever saw them, except when Ronald Swerlein would pick up the mail.

So they weren't much of a social couple, were they? But people to keep an eye on, nonetheless, no doubt.

Or an ear!

The explosions usually occurred between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., neighbors said.

What did he do, wait till his wife was asleep and then hope nobody would hear him?

Hardy said he noticed that Ronald Swerlein received a lot of packages.

"It was three to four times a week from a UPS truck," he said. "He had a lot of stuff delivered."

A lot of stuff indeed.

And guess what else? Swerlein had magazines!!

Here's more scary reportage from Pierrette Shields in the June 21 The Daily Times-Call:

Link to animal extremists probed: Magazines from ‘domestic terrorism threat’ found in Sunset Drive Home

LONGMONT — Ronald Swerlein kept magazines in his home from the Animal Liberation Front, a group the FBI calls a “leading domestic terrorism threat,” according to police.

Officers seized the magazines from Swerlein’s home at 2404 Sunset Drive during a second search Tuesday night.

Police first searched the 50-year-old’s home over the weekend and arrested him Sunday on suspicion of possessing and making explosives.

Swerlein has a right to have any publication, but it is a piece of the investigation that officers must check out, said Longmont Police Sgt. Tim Lewis.

“I have found no targets, no specific intent to harm anyone or anything with his activity,” Lewis said.
...

“He wasn’t interacting with anyone else to show them his explosives,” Lewis said. “He was doing them on his own.”

So there you have the probable explanation. He hadn't selected (that is to say, as far as the police know, he hadn't selected) any targets, and he hadn't expressed any animosity toward anyone. Plus, he wasn't showing anyone what he was doing, and he bought his multi-thousand-dollar setup all by himself, with his own money, bit by bit, three or four UPS shipments a week ...

So it's not terrorism, and he's ok, and we're ok, and how about that? Except for those pesky magazines...

I'll have more about this very bizarre case later. A lot more, it looks like ... especially since nobody else is covering it except the folks in Colorado!

~~~

My previous post on this subject, "Police Seize Huge Cache Of Explosives From Colorado Home, But Say It's Not Enough For An Act Of Terrorism", has several interesting links, and it has been updated with new information quite recently.

Wow, what a weird case!

And no MSM coverage at all!!!

... except for that one UPI report ... which is now also online at the website of the Bend (Oregon) Weekly.

AHA! IT'S THE LIBERAL MEDIA AT WORK AGAIN!!

But Carrots Do Grow On Trees, Don't They?

According to a UPI report from earlier this month, many English children think carrots grow on trees:

Keith Siddorn of Meadowbrook Farm in Broxton told the Chester Chronicle children who visit his farm on tours do not know which animal pork comes from. They do know that milk comes from a cow but if asked about beef they get confused because they do not realize the same animal can serve two purposes.

They don't even know whether a carrot is grown in the ground or on a tree, he said. As far as they know, their food comes in a plastic bag from the shop and after that it is very blurred for them.

Unbelievable, right? City kids, no doubt, yes? How typical!!

Oops! Wrong again, o frozen one!

Look! There's more:

Siddorn said he is talking about children in rural areas, not in big cities. Even though they walk through the fields, they do not realize what is going on.

As a former teacher I would like to say something about the education system at this point, but my mother always told me if you can't think of anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

Imagine how much different this cold blog would be if she hadn't told me that -- or if I had disregarded her advice! ;-(

Seriously, though, here's something nice and comforting:

It's very comforting to know that global ignorance is so well-distributed!

Chris Floyd: Slap Doesn't Stick

Here's another piece from Chris Floyd that you must read in its entirety -- and send out to your email lists and so on [please!]

Slap Doesn't Stick: Corrupted Congress Will Help Bush Escape Court Ruling

No excerpts this time. It's not too long and it is very good.

Dissecting The Bush Agenda -- Two Points Of View

Peter Mehlman delivers a curious concoction of perceptive insight and historical ignorance with his item at HuffPo:

At Least They Didn't Mean Well

Some of his shots hit close to the target:

So now we're six and a half years into Bush and everyone from Helen Thomas on down is declaring him the worst president ever. What no one is saying is the one overarching reason he's the worst: the Bush administration is the first that doesn't even mean well.

Others are just a bit outside:

You could argue that even the world's worst fascist dictators at least meant well. They honestly thought were doing good things for their countries by suppressing blacks/eliminating Jews/eradicating free enterprise/repressing individual thought/killing off rivals/invading neighbors, etc.

I suppose you could argue, but what would be the point? You'd lose.

Even though I don't agree with everything Mehlman says, I do find the piece worth reading, and maybe even worth thinking about.

But -- as often happens -- Chris Floyd has nailed this particular hide to the wall, and he did it a long time ago.

Worm Turning: The True Base of the Bush Dynasty

Here's a sample:

The decidedly un-butch Bushes are not really bloodthirsty. They don't sit in dark corners and cackle over the idea of children being chewed to pieces by American bombs. Nor do their nostrils flare with righteous rage at the thought of homosexuality or abortion or nipples on national television. It's just that war profiteering, corporate rapine and cynical pandering to the public's worst instincts are the easiest way to get the unearned riches they crave -- and the perks and power they feel are their birthright as an ancient branch of the American aristocracy.

Perhaps if they could obtain these same privileges as easily by other, less horrific means, they would. As it is, they take the world as they find it, and go about their business without fretting over the consequences -- the dead, the ruined, the spreading hate, the poisoned planet. Why should they care? As the maggot cannot see beyond the meat, so too these men of greed-stunted understanding can see nothing of worth outside their own bottomless appetites.

But as always with Chris, you really should read the whole thing.

Progressives Busy 'Taking Back America' Can't Decide Whether To Give It To Obama Or Edwards

It's official -- unless maybe it isn't. The Progressives -- or maybe they're Liberals -- who are busy Taking Back America want to give it to Barack Obama -- or maybe John Edwards. They like Hillary Clinton third-best, then the undeclared write-in "candidate" Al Gore, who finished ahead of all the other declared check-the-box candidates in a straw poll for The Politico.

They didn't like Hillary as much:

Clinton is no favorite of the Netroots, and hardly registers in the online surveys, but was a clear third in the Politico.com Straw Poll.

Clinton's speech, a litany of disputes with the Bush Administration and policy aims, drew a friendly reception, though perhaps not as rapturous as the reaction to her leading rivals. She was interrupted by loud boos when she blamed the Iraqi government for Iraq's current woes.

But they liked the two seriously pro-impeachment and anti-war candidates even less.

The two candidates farthest to the left, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, were warmly received, but received few votes in the straw poll -- just 5% and 1%, respectively.

And apparently they still think Ralph Nader -- not a crooked electoral system -- put the shrub in the rose garden.

And when Ralph Nader, the giant of the 1970s left who may have cost the Democrats the White House in 2000, rose to introduce Gravel, he was met with boos.

I don't take it as definitive but it surely says something ... and what it says is not very encouraging.

The truth is out there somewhere, but apparently it couldn't afford a ticket to the conference.

Tom Toles: Humiliating And Degrading

Texas Crowd Beats Man To Death

BBC News is reporting the beating death of a man who stepped out of the car in which he was riding to check on the condition of a young girl who had been struck by the car.

The collision happened at low speed in a parking lot, and the girl, said to be three or four years old, was not seriously injured.

But the passenger, David Rivas Morales, was beaten by the crowd and left lying on the ground. He was taken to a hospital where he died soon afterward.

The incident happened near Austin, Texas, where a couple of thousand people had gathered for a ceremony commemorating the freeing of the slaves.

A Google News search a few minutes ago indicated that this story had not appeared in any major American news, although it had drawn a bit of local coverage. A more recent search shows that it has been picked up by the AP and carried by FOX.

Editor & Publisher has more.

Witness Says Bombs Exploded In WTC7 Before Any Buildings Fell

According to Steve Watson at Prison Planet dot Com,

An individual with high level security clearance who was inside the Office of Emergency Management in World Trade Center 7 [...] has descibed and detailed explosions inside the building prior to the collapse of any of the buildings at ground zero on 9/11.

In an interview with Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, the individual (whose name has not yet been released) said:

"We [...] went to the stairwell and were going down the stairs, when we reached the sixth floor, the landing that we were standing on gave way, there was an explosion and the landing gave way. I was left there hanging, I had to climb back up and now had to walk back up to the eighth floor. After getting to the eighth floor everything was dark."

When they got to the lobby,

"It was totally destroyed, it looked like King Kong had been through it and stepped on it and it was so destroyed I didn't know where I was. It was so destroyed that had to take me out through a hole in the wall, a makeshift hole I believe the fire department made to get me out."

He was then told by firefighters to get twenty blocks away from the area because explosions were going off all over the World Trade Center complex.

As Steve Watson points out,

This all happened BEFORE either tower collapsed, thus building 7 was at that point completely undamaged from any falling debris or resulting fires.

You can find more details, including audio clips of the interview, here.

(And here's a tip of the frozen cap to Kira; thanks for sharing this link!)

Police Seize Huge Cache Of Explosives From Colorado Home, But Say It's Not Enough For An Act Of Terrorism

[UPDATED June 22. See note [*] below.]

A Colorado man is free on $50,000 bond after a police search of his house discovered a cache of weapons, explosives and volatile chemicals.

Ronald Swerlein of Longmont, CO, attracted the attention of his neighbors by setting off explosions in his garage. Police had been seeking tips after several small homemade explosives were found in a local parking lot nearly three weeks ago.

A police search of the Swerlein home turned up hundreds of volatile chemicals and other weapons, as well as books about bomb-making and revenge.

Swerlein says he's been experimenting with various chemicals to use as rocket fuel.

According to reports from Colorado, police confiscated nitroglycerin, ammonium nitrate, PETN, thermite, and sodium azide; an early report from Colorado said that none of these are used as rocket fuels. [* But this remark may have been interpreted -- in any case the assertion has been convincingly disputed and there's an important update below.] Police also discovered laboratory-grade glassware worth thousands of dollars.

Ammonium nitrate is the basic ingredient in so-called fertilizer bombs; PETN is an ingredient in plastic explosives; sodium azide produces a toxic gas when it comes into contact with metal; and nitroglycerin is a well-known (and extremely unstable) liquid explosive. Thermite, as most 9/11 researchers know, can be used to cut steel and may have been involved in the demolition of the three World Trade Center buildings which disintegrated on September 11, 2001.

Police detonated the nitroglycerin in Swerlein's driveway.

Longmont Police Sgt. Tim Lewis said the police had seized "cartloads of weapons ... more than I have ever seen in our armory."

Despite the size of the cache and the volatility of the chemicals involved, Sgt. Lewis told reporters that Swerlein had not created enough chemical explosives “for a terrorist action,” although he did have enough to damage his home and others in his neighborhood.

Sgt. Lewis also said, "This investigation is still in its infancy. We're still trying to determine what his intent was."

Considering that the perpetrators of the most extravagant terrorist attack ever committed on American soil were allegedly armed only with box-cutters, it is incomprehensible that a cache of weapons and explosives larger than the Longmont police have in their armory could be described as insufficient for a terrorist action.

How much nitroglycerin does one need to commit an act of terrorism? Or does that depend on one's religion or the color of one's skin?

And why has this case attracted so little national attention? Or does that depend on religion and skin color, too?

~~~ selected links ~~~

7 News (Denver), June 3: Homemade Explosive Devices Put Authorities, Neighbors On Alert

7 News (Denver), June 16: Homeowner Arrested After Explosives Found In Longmont

Longmont Daily Times-Call, June 18: Swerlein has first day in court

7 News (Denver), June 18: Longmont Homeowner Goes To Court In Explosives Probe

UPI, June 19: Homemade explosions land man in jail

Longmont Daily Times-Call, June 19: ‘Cartloads’ of weapons seized

Longmont Daily Times-Call, June 19: Police: Chemicals more than rocket hobby

Longmont Daily Times-Call, June 19: Suspect in explosive case out on bond

Longmont Daily Times-Call, June 19: Longmont neighborhood won't be evacuated

Rocky Mountain News (Denver), June 20: Longmont bomb team redeploys

Longmont Daily Times-Call, June 20: More explosives found

~~~ UPDATE ~~~

Apparently my original sources and I were wrong about which substances confiscated from Ronald Swerlein are actually used as rocket fuels.

I've received a well-documented (and most welcome) email from a model rocket enthusiast, who says:

Ammonium Nitrate is a major component in the making of rocket fuels. This is common knowledge throughout the pyrotechnic community.

Nitroglycerine is commonly used in conjunction with Nitrocellulose to make many different types of propellants for firearms and rockets.

Thermite, a mixture of Iron Oxide and Aluminum powder (other mixtures similar to this do exist), is also used in high performance rocket fuels.

I didn't know any of this but the links appear to be solid. The email continues:

As for the PETN and Sodium Azide, those are definitely not used in rocket fuels and are illegal.

Asked for further details, my source (who seems more credible all the time) replied:

My former job required me to handle explosives on a regular basis. PETN is made from the nitration of pentaerythritol and is used in the military as a breaching explosive and in detonation cord. You can find tons of information on it here.

Sodum Azide is not used in the explosive industry, as it is very sensitive and toxic. It does, however, have explosive properties and is labeled as a high explosive. It is also used to make airbags. More info on that can be found here.

If someone does have these in their possession, chances are they are doing it illegally, unless they have an ATF issued explosives license and have a good reason to have it, which I doubt Swerlein had.

So the article by Victoria A.F. Camron in the Daily Times-Call,

Police: Chemicals more than rocket hobby may not be entirely correct when it says

Swerlein told police he purchased the chemicals to experiment in model rocket fuel technology, but Lewis said PETN and nitroglycerin are not used for model rockets.

I suspect there may be a significant difference between "high-performance rocket fuel" such as that used by the Space Shuttle and fuel used in "model rockets" ... so I'm still looking into this angle ... and you can expect more updates soon!

Here's another relevant quote, from an article by Pierette Shields of June 20:

Warren Musselman, a board member of the Northern Colorado Rocketry Club, said on Tuesday that the explosive chemicals police have identified from the home are not components of fuels used in model rocketry.

“Our stuff burns at a predictable rate and creates a lot of gas,” he said. “Explosives don’t burn. They detonate.”

Was Mr. Mussleman speaking of all the explosives found at the Swerlein home, or maybe he meant to phrase it differently? He went on to explain:

Musselman said chemicals like PETN and sodium azide are dangerous and are simply not model rocket fuel ingredients.

“Explosives of any kind don’t have anything to do with the rocketry hobby,” he said.

I was always under the impression that explosives had no value as fuel and that's why they were shunned -- for destroying the rockets they were supposedly about to launch! But I'm learning more and more about it and we'll probably have more updates soon.

See also:

Ronald Swerlein's Out On Bail And Going Home But The Neighborhood Is Safe Because The Cops Have All His Explosives, Weapons, Glassware, Magazines ...

Giuliani Campaign Chairman Indicted For Cocaine Trafficking

The South Carolina state chairman of Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign has been indicted on charges of cocaine trafficking.

Thomas Ravenel has stepped down from the campaign, according to a statement released by Giuliani's political director, Mark Campbell, who also said the campaign has no information about the accusations pending against Ravenel.

As reported by AP via CNN, Ravenel has been charged with distribution of cocaine, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to the federal prosecutor assigned to the case, "The investigation is just beginning."

Your cold blogger predicts that Ravenel, in return for his support of the party of "family values" and "law and order", will never see the inside of a prison cell.

Giuliani, of course, is a prime suspect in the attacks of 9/11 and the state-sponsored obstruction of justice which followed immediately and which continues to this day.

Tom Toles: Somewhere, Over The Horizon...

The way things are going, pretty soon the decider will be able to say "We seek no wider war."

Iraq: Violence + More Violence - Electricity - Potable Water = No Gratitude

Thunder Bay (Ontario) Chronicle-Journal: 75 killed by bombing at Baghdad mosque; U.S. offensive rolls north of capital

A truck bomb struck a Shiite mosque Tuesday in central Baghdad, killing 75 people and wounding more than 200, even as about 10,000 U.S. soldiers northeast of the capital used heavily armoured vehicles to battle their way into a rebel sanctuary.
...

The thunderous explosion at the Khillani mosque in the capital’s commercial area of Sinak sent smoke billowing over concrete buildings. On Sunday, officials lifted a curfew aimed at preventing retaliatory violence after last week’s bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra.

Gunfire erupted shortly after the blast, which a police officer said went off near the Khillani mosque in the commercial area of Sinak.

A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the vehicle that exploded was parked in a lot near the mosque and it damaged the outer wall of the building.

The mosque’s imam, Sheik Saleh al-Haidari, said it was a truck bomb and the explosion hit worshippers as they were leaving afternoon prayers.

It's a good thing American troops are keeping a lid on things, otherwise Baghdad -- and all of Iraq -- could get violent.

Dawn (Pakistan): Iraq: Over 150 killed, 255 injured in a day of violence

Nearly 150 people were and more than 255 injured in four major acts of violence and clashes in various parts of Iraq, officials confirmed Tuesday.

A car bomb killed at least 75 people and wounded 130 near the Shi'ite Khilani mosque in central Baghdad, police said. The mosque was badly damaged in the blast.

In Baquba, the U.S. military said it had killed 22 suspected militants in the early hours of a major offensive against al Qaeda in Diyala province. The offensive involves 10,000 soldiers and is one of the military's biggest against the Sunni Islamist militant group in Iraq.

On the other hand, two days of fighting between gunmen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi police have killed 35 people and wounded 125 in Nassiriya, a hospital doctor said.

The Iraqi army killed 15 suspected insurgents and arrested 65 others during the past 24 hours in different districts of Baghdad, the Defence Ministry said.

Separately, gunmen attacked a Kurdish army unit and killed five soldiers and wounded 15 near Baquba.

Meanwhile, the bodies of 33 people were found shot in different districts of Baghdad on Monday, police said.

No matter how bad it gets, it could always get worse -- and surely it would be worse if not for the heroic Americans.

Or at least that's what they keep telling us.

TIME: Why Iraq's Shi'ites Aren't Retaliating

If appeals for restraint are working now, it's because they're backed up by the force of American arms.
...
Residents of Baghdad often blame their many problems — everything from electricity shortages and soaring gas prices to unemployment and government corruption — on the Americans. Just this once, they might be inclined to give thanks.

But then again they may have to wait awhile...

TIME again: Surge Architect: More Time Needed

Fred Kagan, the man widely seen as the "architect" of the military surge in Iraq, sees signs of progress but warns that September is too early to make a final decision about how well it has achieved its goals. Instead, in an interview with TIME.com, Kagan recommended waiting until the end of the year before judging the operation's success.

Even then, he added, it might be some months before Iraqis make the political compromises necessary to bring lasting stability to the country.

What sort of political compromises would be necessary to bring lasting stability to the country? How about if they pass a law that says foreigners get all their oil? Would that do it?

Oh, and speaking of electricity shortages ...

Dahr Jamail: A Dream Called Electricity

Simmering in the summer heat, Iraqis now have a dream called electricity.

It is a part of the bigger dream of reconstruction that collapsed. On all measurable levels, the infrastructure is worse than under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, even when it was crippled by the harshest economic sanctions in modern history.

Iraqis lack security, jobs, potable water, and these days when it really pinches, electricity.

"Electricity is life," said 45-year-old Zahra Aziz, a schoolteacher and mother of four, using a hand-fan in an attempt to cool herself. "Modern life depends on power, and we do not have that here. Having no electricity means having no water, no light, no airconditioning, and in other words, no life."

Most people IPS spoke to in Baghdad said they get one hour of electricity in 24 hours.

"June is a very hot month, and this permanent electricity failure is just another way of giving Iraqis slow death," Umayma Salim, a doctor who quit her work at a hospital in Baghdad due to security threats told IPS.

"We are getting all kinds of diseases -- sunstrokes among those work outdoors to provide their children food, and psychological effects on all people. The weak functioning of hospitals and other infrastructure facilities have brought all kinds of complications of health and life."
...

"We cannot supply frozen and cooled food properly because of electricity failures," Jamal Rfai, a supermarket owner in Baghdad told IPS. "We bring very limited quantities and if there is any curfew or trouble in the street, then it is all wasted because of the heat, and of course no one will compensate our loss."

Workers at water service stations speak of incessant electricity cuts. "The main problem we are facing is electricity supply," a worker who gave his name as Ahmed told IPS. "We have our standby generators, but they are meant to be used in emergency, not for so many hours a day as we do nowadays. Besides, the fuel supply is also not sufficient."

Waiting time at petrol stations in Baghdad continues to average more than 24 hours. People sleep in their cars, or hire others to sit in their cars for them. And there is no guarantee there will be petrol at the end of the wait.
...

"It is deliberate damage caused by the occupation," Salim Abdul-Sattar, a local politician from Baghdad told IPS. "To cut electricity is to cut the main vein of life, and that is the main goal of the occupation."

Abdul Sattar believes that the occupation authorities "could have provided electricity in a few months if they wanted to, but this problem is useful for what they call creative chaos."

Most of Iraq faced near total electricity failure last week. Iraqi media outlets like al-Hurra and al-Iraqiyah which are known to be heavily influenced by the U.S. government broadcast messages claiming that terrorists had attacked the main electricity stations, causing power outages.

"We are now used to hearing such lies," a government engineer who works at one of the stations told IPS.

You see? The Iraqis don't believe anything. No wonder they're not making the necessary political compromises. No wonder they're insufficiently grateful.

Dawn: Heavy mortar bomb attack on Baghdad Green Zone

Militants fired a spate of mortar bombs at Baghdad's Green Zone on Tuesday, Reuters reporters said. Plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the heavily fortified compound, which houses the U.S. embassy and Iraqi government ministries. It was unclear if there were any casualties.

Moyers Rips The Neocons Who Are Begging For Libby's Pardon

Bill Moyers is a journalist who calls 'em like he sees 'em, and there's nothing wrong with his eyesight. In an essay posted this evening at Bob Parry's Consortium News, Moyers looks at the neocons who are clamoring for the president to pardon the convicted perjurer, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby:

Begging for Libby's Pardon

We have yet another remarkable revelation of the mindset of Washington's ruling clique of neoconservative elites -- the people who took us to war from the safety of their Beltway bunkers.

Even as Iraq grows bloodier by the day, their passion of the week is to keep one of their own from going to jail.

It is well known that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- once Vice President Cheney's most trusted adviser -- has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie. Scooter Libby deliberately poured poison into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice.

Attempting to trash critics of the war, Libby and his pals in high places -- including his boss Dick Cheney -- outed a covert CIA agent. Libby then lied to cover their tracks. To throw investigators off the trail, he kicked sand in the eyes of truth.

"Libby lied about nearly everything that mattered," wrote the chief prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The jury agreed and found him guilty on four felony counts. Judge Reggie B. Walton -- a no-nonsense, lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key type, appointed to the bench by none other than George W. Bush -- called the evidence "overwhelming" and threw the book at Libby.

You would have thought their man had been ordered to Guantanamo, so intense was the reaction from his cheerleaders. They flooded the judge's chambers with letters of support for their comrade and took to the airwaves in a campaign to "free Scooter."

Vice President Cheney issued a statement praising Libby as "a man...of personal integrity" -- without even a hint of irony about their collusion to browbeat the CIA into mangling intelligence about Iraq in order to justify the invasion.

"A patriot, a dedicated public servant, a strong family man, and a tireless, honorable, selfless human being," said Donald Rumsfeld -- the very same Rumsfeld who had claimed to know the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction and who boasted of "bulletproof" evidence linking Saddam to 9/11.

There's more, and it's good. I'd read it if I were you.

I'd also pay attention to the brilliant remark from Judge Walton which was preserved in this post from Liquified Viscera. (No hints on this one; you have to read it for yourself!)

US Support For Democracy In Pakistan? You Must Be Joking!

As regular readers of this page may remember, Pakistan has seen increasing civil unrest during the past three months, since General-turned-President Pervez Musharraf dismissed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Why would he do that? The General-President must call an election before the end of the year, and the Chief Justice was prepared to enforce the law that requires Musharraf to resign his commission if he wishes to stand for re-election.

As we have mentioned here several times in the last three months, Musharraf's transparent attempt to subvert the law has not gone unnoticed by the people of Pakistan, who have taken to the streets -- in demonstrations led by lawyers!

The demonstrations have been remarkably peaceful, with one notable exception in which Pakistani police were apparently ordered to shoot the protesters.

Otherwise, the demonstrators have obviously been content to march and chant; they have repeatedly urged the General-President to resign by chanting "Go, Musharraf, Go!"

So it would seem reasonable to describe the demonstrators as supporters of the Chief Justice and opponents of the General-President -- except if you write for the New York Times, in which case you might prefer to describe them as "pro-Western moderates".

No, I am not kidding!

According to David Rhode, whose reporting has been mentioned in favorable terms not long ago, on this very page,

TENS of thousands of pro-Western moderates took to the streets of Pakistan recently and demanded an end to military rule.

It's a remarkable inversion of reality, of the type we have seen over and over, from the so-called "liberal media" as well as from the overtly pro-fascist liars who constitute the "mainstream media" in post-democratic America.

In the rest of the article, which ran yesterday, Rhode spins everything that isn't nailed down. It's enough to make me dizzy -- almost enough to make me vomit.

From the title of the piece, "Can Pakistan Mix Well With Democracy?", down to the very last paragraph, Rhode can be seen spinning, outright lying, and condescending -- in equal measure. For instance, he somehow managed to write:

Before the Iraq war, the United States might have welcomed such a vigorous call for democracy.

... despite the fact -- obvious everywhere else in the world -- that the United States has never welcomed vigorous calls for democracy anywhere -- even (especially!) in the United States. But the NYT can hardly admit that, can they?

Instead, Rhode continues:

But with the war faltering, Bush administration officials, and some Democratic presidential candidates as well, are reacting with caution, fearing that democracy could be a recipe for instability.

The war in Iraq is "faltering"? There's a good one! But whether it's "faltering" or not, the war in Iraq has very little to do with the situation in Pakistan. So why is Rhode linking the two stories like this? Because his sources are doing it?

George Perkovich, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described the state of debate in Washington this way: “People on the right and the left will say: ‘You’re just going to repeat the same mistake as Iraq. Don’t you understand that these places can’t change and that you’re much better off having someone with a heavy hand, who can have some kind of order versus disorder?’”

If this is the state of debate in Washington -- "the same mistake as Iraq"! "these places can't change"! -- then there's nothing left to do but to shut down Washington and send all the so-called experts home.

If Rhode is to be believed, Pakistanis don't understand the USA any better than Americans understand Pakistan:

Pakistani moderates find the American attitude bewildering and dangerous. Just as they are beginning to believe democracy might return, they complain, the United States is abandoning them.

“This is a movement of the enlightened, urban upper middle class,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, a Pakistani political analyst, in a telephone interview from Islamabad. “Where in the Muslim world have you seen a movement going on for three months and not a single shot fired by the protesters? It is unique in many respects.”

It is unique, and it's certainly dangerous. But it's hardly bewildering.

It's a very sad story but it's a familiar one, and for good reason: it's been repeated over and over. And the consequences have always been horrific.

In the past few days, three high-ranking American officials -- Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, his assistant Richard Boucher, and chief of the US Central Command William Fallon -- have made visits to Pakistan, in an attempt to shore up the faltering regime of the military dictator.

Here we go again.

Afghanistan: Bomb Attack On Busload Of Police Instructors Kills 35

An enormous bomb ripped through a police academy bus at Kabul's busiest transportation hub yesterday, killing at least 35 people and wounding dozens in the deadliest insurgent attack in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The thunderous explosion in Kabul sheared the metal siding and roof off the bus, leaving only a charred skeleton.

According to an AP report in the Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario) Record:

The death toll of 35 in the Kabul blast included 22 police officers, said Ahmed Zia Aftali, head of the city's military hospital.
...

Unidentifiable body parts littered the blast site up to 30 metres away. Hundreds of police and investigators -- with some pulling bodies from the wreckage -- ordered civilians to leave the area, an outdoor bus station normally teeming with people.

At a nearby hospital, a large plastic garbage bin overflowed with victims' bloodied shoes.

Suicide attacks are becoming a regular occurrence in Afghanistan. And whenever such an attack occurs, we can expect to see politicians trying to spin it to their own advantage. In this case, a report in the International Herald Tribune quotes Afghanistan's puppet president:

Hamid Karzai said the "enemies of Afghanistan" were trying to stop the development of Afghan security forces, a key component of the U.S.-NATO strategy of eventually handing over security responsibilities to the Afghan government, allowing Western forces to leave.

Ha ha ha. Who are Hamid Karzai and the AP kidding? Western forces never leave! So one is left to wonder: Was this attack perpetrated by "enemies of Afghanistan" or "enemies of the foreign occupiers"?

The Record goes on to say:

A purported Taliban spokesperson, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, called an Associated Press reporter by satellite phone from an undisclosed location and claimed responsibility on behalf of the Taliban, saying it had been carried out by a suicide bomber.
...

Despite the Taliban claim, officials were trying to determine if the explosion, which went off in the front of the bus, was caused by a suicide attacker or a bomb that had been planted. If the Taliban claim is true, it would be the fifth suicide attack in Afghanistan in three days.
...

Afghan government officials, police and army soldiers are commonly targeted by insurgents trying to bring down the western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
...

At least 307 Afghan police, army or intelligence personnel have been killed in violence so far this year through June 15, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from the U.S., UN, NATO and Afghan authorities.

In this context, the message appears very clear: Those who collaborate with the foreign occupiers and their puppet government are considered targets and liable to be attacked.

Who will be surprised by the next such attack?

"Not I," said the cold blogger.

Time Out For A Quick Review

In August of 2005, Juan Cole traced the development of the violent Islamic fundamentalists against whom we are supposedly fighting.

Once upon a time, a dangerous radical gained control of the US Republican Party.

Reagan increased the budget for support of the radical Muslim Mujahidin conducting terrorism against the Afghanistan government to half a billion dollars a year.

One fifth of the money, which the CIA mostly turned over to Pakistani military intelligence to distribute, went to Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a violent extremist who as a youth used to throw acid on the faces of unveiled girls in Afghanistan.

Not content with creating a vast terrorist network to harass the Soviets, Reagan then pressured the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions. He had earlier imposed on Fahd to give money to the Contras in Nicaragua, some of which was used to create rightwing death squads. (Reagan liked to sidestep Congress in creating private terrorist organizations for his foreign policy purposes, which he branded "freedom fighters," giving terrorists the idea that it was all right to inflict vast damage on civilians in order to achieve their goals).

I'm going to spend the rest of the day with my kids. You can read the rest of Professor Cole's essay here.

About Me

That's me in the boat! I'm the one standing up! Really!!

Ha ha! Just kidding. I do that a lot. Hang around and you'll see.

Actually, the title of this post is a joke. This post is not about me. As far as possible, nothing on this blog is about me.

I don't want any recognition for what I do here. And I don't want any money. All I want is for you to learn the truth. If the media suddenly started telling you the truth, I would happily go back to my "normal life" -- my wife and our kids and my job -- and forget all this frozen blog stuff. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

I could collect some trivial nonsense about myself and publish it here. But what difference would it make? If you cared about trivial nonsense, why would you waste your time reading my blog?

The way I see it, what I say here will stand or fall on its own merit or lack thereof, respectively. I won't knowingly lie to you about anything important.

But I'm not really the guy standing up in the boat. I've actually got an oar in the water. Do you?

Tom Toles: Roll The Credits

Fade to black. Roll the credits. Get the hell out of there.

Negroponte Visits Pakistan, Exchanges Coded Messages With Kasuri

Yesterday, Dawn covered the first stage of John Negroponte's visit to Pakistan. Text and translation follow:

US committed to further strengthening its vital relationship with Pakistan: Negroponte

ISLAMABAD, Jun 15 (APP) -- US Deputy Secretary of State, John D. Negroponte Friday said the United States viewed Pakistan-US ties as a vital relationship and was committed to its further strengthening and expansion.

Translation: "Woe unto Pakistan if military/intelligence officials dare to spill the beans about the CIA/ISI/al-Q connections and their relevance to the attacks of 9/11."

John Negroponte, who is on a two [-day] visit to Pakistan, met with Foreign Minister Khurshid M. Kasuri here at the Foreign Office this afternoon. During the meeting Pakistan-US relations, counter-terrorism cooperation, and Afghanistan were discussed.

That's a funny way to describe the conversation, since these are all different names for the same subject, but essentially it means the successor to the nearly toppled General turned President, Pervez Musharraf, will find himself (or herself) in exactly the same bind Musharraf is in now.

The US Deputy Secretary of State also underlined the US interest in deepening Pakistan-US strategic dialogue, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here.

Translation: The Americans want to draw Pakistan deeper into the phony GWOT -- as if they're not in deep enough already.

Foreign Minister Kasuri underlined the importance Pakistan attached to the strategic relationship with the United States.

A billion dollars a year, baby. That's some blackmail! Nice work if you can get it. And in Pakistan, they're getting it.

He highlighted expanding cooperation in diverse fields and affirmed Pakistan's commitment to further deepen cooperation in all areas of common interest.

Translation: Pakistan will continue to pretend to do anything the Americans pretend to want (expanding cooperation), as long as those greenbacks (the common interest) keep flowing!

Kasuri reaffirmed Pakistan's resolve to fight extremism and terrorism and highlighted the efforts being made to strengthen security by improving controls along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Translation: "Pakistan's forces will continue to fight extremism and terrorism by ignoring Taliban movement along the border, but they may continue to strengthen their security by shooting at any Americans who dare to approach their border posts. Just keep the money coming!"

He underlined the importance of an effective Pakistan-US counter-terrorism cooperation.

Translation: "We like our billion dollars a year and would never do anything to jeopardize it."

Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte expressed US appreciation for Pakistan's contribution to counter-terrorism and efforts for the promotion of peace and stability in Afghanistan.

And everybody in the room smiled and nodded (and quaked in their boots) and pretended there was peace and stability in Afghanistan. Nobody in the room wanted to argue with the world's leading expert at setting up death squads.

But not everybody was in the room.

‘Pakistan should break ambassadorial ties with US and Britain’

KARACHI: Renowned religious scholar Maulana Syed Razi Haider Zaidi announced a protest day to be observed today (Friday) against the desecration of the shrines of Imam Ali Naqi (RA) and Imam Hasan Askari (RA) in Iraq.

At a joint press conference held Thursday at the press club, Zaidi demanded the Government of Pakistan to take notice of the incident and to announce the breaking of ambassadorial ties with the US and Britain.

Zaidi said that the US had prepared a well thought-out conspiracy plan to desecrate the shrines in Iraq, and added that the US desecrates the shrines of revered personalities, every other day in Iraq, according to the plan. He further said that the plan was to gauge the religious emotions of the Muslims of the world, such that if the Muslims stayed silent, then "the illegitimate child of America, Israel", would succeed in, what he referred to as, her plan to destroy the Dome of Rock.

Zaidi claimed that the US, Britain and Israel, to accomplish their plans, were trying to poison the Muslims with sectarianism, but said that the Muslims of the world were united and would foil the conspiracies of the US and its allies, by their unity.

He appealed to the Muslims of Pakistan to take part in the protest demonstrations to send a message to the "Zionist powers" that the Muslims were united.

Watch out, Maulana Syed Razi Haider Zaidi. Doctor Death Squad is gonna get you!

Preposterous: Tony Snow Says The President Is In The War Every Day

White House spokesman Tony Snow may have told the biggest lie of his career Thursday; not an easy thing do to for a former employee of FOX News.

As reported by Think Progress dot org:

Reporter Helen Thomas asked Tony Snow if there are “any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war.” Stunningly, Snow claimed that President Bush is actually on the “frontlines” of the war in Iraq:

Q: Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?

SNOW: Yeah, the President. The President is in the war every day.

As we all know, the President is not in the war, not every day, not even one day.

He wouldn't last an hour in Iraq. But I'd love to see him try.

You can read more background information and see the video clip at Think Progress dot org.

Larisa: The Wrath Of A Nation Harboring Terrorists Will Be Directed At Us

Larisa Alexandrovna has posted a good foreign policy roundup, which she summarizes as follows:

Failure in Pakistan, that is, to continue to push for a criminally insane military dictator while his own people are trying to overthrow him is going to follow us home - because where is Al Qaeda and its spin-offs operating from? And when Pakistan crumbles while we stand next to Musharraf, the wrath of a nation harboring terrorists will be directed at us, again.

Failure to reach out to Palestine forced the nation toward an extremist government and then punishing the Palestinian people for voting for their own best interests - minus an actual Western alternative - has created a very dangerous situation. Adding to that our role in pushing for the Israel Lebanon war and our attempts to silence any and all criticism of Israel while openly supporting a corrupt government in Israel robbing its own people blind, is likely NOT to make us any friends on either side of this long standing conflict.

Throw in the proxy war against Lebanon using terrorist groups, arms sales to Gulf nations, funding Sunni extremists against the Shia in order to wage an illegal covert war against Iran, and we have quite literally made sure to destabilize the entire region. I will not be surprised if all of these various and angry factions get together and take down once and for all the House of Saud, and with it, our own economy. And finally to make matters worse, we are creating a hostile relationship between Russia, whom at this moment seems to have far more international support than we do. Imagine a monster like Putin seen as a hero on the world stage. We have quite literally created a Russia-China-Iran triangle of massive military and economic might and at the same time managed to create chaos in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, and even the Sudan through yet another proxy war.
...

But this is what happens when our national policy is based on corporate profits and interests and not on actual national advancement, achievement, progress, etc.

One thing I've noticed about Larisa: She doesn't usually mince words.

VIDEO: Cynthia McKinney @ Revolutionary Love

Friends and supporters of Cynthia McKinney will certainly enjoy this presentation, and others may see something in it that they didn't expect.

Here's a sample:

Rarely in politics do we hear folks talk about love. And it really is the one thing that we need now more than anything else. We need love. We need public people who are not afraid to show themselves as the human beings that they are, with all of their frailties, with their imperfections, whatever warts it is that we have. But the one thing that we have more than anything else is that we love people. We love our country. We expect more from our country and we're willing to act on that expectation.

They broke the mold when they made this woman. And in my opinion, that's a shame.

Modern 'Robin Hood' Sentenced

A German banker who had the right idea but took it in the wrong direction has been sentenced to 34 months in prison.

"Robin Hood" banker sent to prison

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German banker who stole money from rich clients to help poor ones has been sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison, a court said Thursday. The 45-year-old, dubbed by German media as a modern day Robin Hood, diverted 2.1 million euros ($2.79 million) to clients he felt were needy while holding a senior position at a savings bank in the southern region of Tauberfranken.

"The accused undertook these actions to grant liquidity to clients who, in his view, were short of money and who no longer got loans under the usual money market conditions," said a statement issued by the court in the southern town of Mosbach.

But the man soon lost track of the funds he had misappropriated, as well as where they had come from, it added.

That was a mistake.

A spokeswoman for the court said the man, a German of Yugoslavian origin, had not enriched himself during the scam.

And that was another mistake.

But his big mistake was getting confused about the proper role of banks (and governments): robbing from the poor to give to the rich!

What Next? Now Do We Have To Invade Colombia?

Gay rights bill passes Colombian Congress

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's Congress approved a bill late on Thursday granting same-sex couples rights similar to their straight counterparts, a move seen as the biggest advance for homosexuals in this Roman Catholic country.

The measure, supported by President Alvaro Uribe but opposed by the church, grants gay couples living together for more than two years the same social security and estate inheritance guarantees as heterosexuals in common law marriages.

"We" don't like foreigners here, and we don't like foreigners in foreign countries either, even if they happen to share "our" "family values".

Colombia just happens to share a border with Venezuela. And guess what else they've got?

Two Unconventional: Mike Gravel's YouTube Videos

A couple of unusual videos from Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Gravel have surfaced on YouTube, to mixed (mostly negative) reactions.

Rock

Fire

Opinions

Several other bloggers (no links, please!) have already posted these videos and expressed their ignorant opinions. (And I'm using the word "ignorant" in the technical sense, meaning "lacking knowledge", because nobody seems to have any idea what these videos are about.)

I'm equally ignorant, so I have no quarrel with any other bloggers on that score. But I'm reluctant to foist my ignorance on others. So instead of passing judgment, I'm simply asking:

What do you think of these videos?

If you can't see the embedded video links, try these: [ Rock | Fire ]

CRUCIAL VIDEO: David Shayler On 9/11 Truth

David Shayler makes as much sense of 9/11 as anyone, unless he's crazy. But I don't think so. I think it's crazy to dismiss him.

Big Dan mentioned this video the other day, which reminded me that I have never posted it. OOPS! My bad. Thanks, Dan!

Sibel Edmonds: Why Were All The Investigations Thwarted?

Why have so many investigations been dropped? Whose interests are being served? Demand hearings. Call Waxman. (202) 225-3976.

There's more at Luke Ryland's blog, Let Sibel Edmonds Speak dot blogspot dot com.

If you can't see the video link, click here.

Speed Bump: TIME Spins While The Constitutional Republic Burns

Get a load of this spin! From Reynolds Holding at TIME Online:

How to Botch Another Terror Case

How many times does the Bush Administration have to bungle a legal challenge to its detention of suspected terrorists — and, thanks to its own deception, leave yet another shady suspect looking sympathetic — before it gets its act in order?

I nominate this opening paragraph for a "Deceptive Frame Of The Month" award, based on the fact that this case is not entirely -- or even mostly -- about the bungling of a legal challenge. But who cares? Not Reynolds Holding -- clearly. I can't even count the rotations!

A week after two judges halted detainee hearings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, over a statutory glitch, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ordered Al Saleh Kahlah al-Marri released from military detention. As a civilian in the United States on a student visa, al-Marri has the right to a full and fair hearing in court and cannot be held indefinitely as an enemy combatant in the war on terror, the court ruled Monday.

Al-Marri won't get out of the military brig in South Carolina immediately,

... if he ever gets out at all ...

but the Administration has to decide soon whether to try him in criminal court, hold him temporarily as a grand jury witness against other suspected terrorists, deport him — or let him go.

And there's the rub. Who defines "soon"? "Soon" to a geologist means "sometime in the next ten or twenty thousand years". To those guys, the Rockies are "young mountains".

And there's your answer: they can hold him forever as long as they keep promising to do something else "soon". But first they can spend years appealing the decision.

As for letting him go, Reynolds Holding presumes to know what everybody thinks; always a bad sign:

Probably no one outside of al-Marri's wife and kids in Peoria, Illinois, prefers the last option.

Why not? Because he's been accused of something?

In a word, yes!

A citizen of Qatar, al-Marri allegedly trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, palled around with Osama Bin Laden and came to the U.S. on Sept. 10, 2001 as a "sleeper agent," a computer hacker bent on disrupting the American financial system. He was arrested at home three months later as a material witness in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks. Al-Marri denies any connection with al-Qaeda or terrorism, but constitutional issues aside, we might all rest easier if the military could just keep him out of circulation for awhile.

Why should we toss constitutional issues aside? That's the heart of this case -- the crux of the problem.

What? Did you think the big issue was keeping al-Marri out of circulation for a while?

They've kept him out of circulation for five years already! Is it awhile yet? And if not, when will it be awhile? Are people entitled to a hearing? A trial? Or should the military be allowed to keep people incarcerated forever just because of an allegation?

After all, that's what it has been allowed to do with people like Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured while fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan (he was eventually deported to Saudi Arabia in exchange for renouncing his citizenship). Al-Marri isn't even a citizen, and he was caught allegedly pursuing terrorism within the U.S. Isn't he exactly the kind of guy that the Administration should be allowed to declare an enemy combatant and hold in a military brig?

Listen: What's in an accusation? And if the accusation is serious enough, does that mean the accused is guilty without a trial?

These are not rhetorical questions: the answers we produce now may guide our hand for generations. And it might matter quite a bit.

For instance, the president has been accused of foreknowledge of 9/11. Isn't that a fairly serious accusation? And isn't he exactly the kind of guy that We The People should be allowed to declare an enemy combatant and hold in a military brig?

I don't think so: I think he should have a fair trial before he's sent away for the rest of his miserable life ... but then again, there's so much more evidence against Bush than there is against Al-Marri that perhaps a trial is not even necessary!

But the real question is this: Should the administration be allowed to declare somebody an enemy combatant -- without hearing, without a trial, without providing any evidence whatsoever -- and then hold that person in a military brig forever without a hearing, without a trial, without presenting any evidence?

Reynolds Holding says:

This is not an easy question.

But that's not true. Not even close. It's as easy a question as there is in law or politics. It boils down to "Are we or are we not innocent until proven guilty?"

If we live under a rule of law, there's due process -- not indefinite detention and torture -- for all defendants, in all cases, no matter what crime the defendant is accused of committing.

But that didn't even come up in this case. They chose to split another hair instead. Or as Reynolds Holder rotates it,

Fortunately, two of the three appeals-court judges were clear-headed enough to see a distinction.

You don't need to see any distinctions on this case unless you want to spin it. And unfortunately for the slight little matter of Constitutional law, this story contains several built-in spin-points.

Hamdi and others captured while actively fighting the U.S. on a foreign battlefield, or shortly after leaving the battlefield, naturally fit under the laws of war and can be held, with minimal rights, by the military so that they do not return to the enemy to fight again.

Naturally? Maybe so. But in more temperate times, one might be excused for asking the following question:

Why is it that somebody "actively fighting the U.S. on a foreign battlefield" is worthy of a lifetime of detention and torture, while somebody actively fighting foreigners in their own countries is considered to be engaged in a noble cause and serving his country (and therefore worthy of a lifetime of neglect at Walter Reed)?

Oh, right! It's because Americans are better than anybody else in the entire world, and can do no wrong! Sorry about that; it just slipped my mind for a moment.

In the actual court case,

The Bush Administration argued that al-Marri was also an enemy combatant, committed to fighting on behalf of al-Qaeda, but the court didn't see it that way. It ruled that al-Marri, no matter how dangerous, is just a civilian. And any civilian in the U.S. legally has the right when arrested to hear the charges against him, to be tried by a jury and to receive all the other benefits of due process under the Constitution. As the three-judge panel said in its majority opinion, to allow the President "to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them 'enemy combatants,' would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country."

Well of course it would, especially when you consider that there is no requirement for the President to substantiate his claim. All he has to do is call you an "enemy combatant"? He can throw you in prison forever on the strength of that unsubstantiated claim? How would you feel about it if it happened to you?

It's a question Reynolds Holding appears to have asked himself; he and his editors are obviously in agreement on it. Thus they feed us relentless spin, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that when it comes to this presidency, and especially the GWOT, all is not what it seems. So we get statements like this one:

Though compelling, the panel's conclusion is not obvious,

Oh yes it is, unless you're ignorant of civilized law ... or unless you've been brainwashed!

and the full court to which the Administration has appealed may disagree (as might the U.S. Supreme Court, if it ever hears the case).

Of course, the full court, or possibly the Supreme Court, may disagree -- and they may do so for motives entirely unrelated to the merits of the case. No? Bah! They do that all the time! What would make this any different?

The Administration, then, can't necessarily be blamed for trying to treat al-Marri as an enemy combatant so that it could detain him indefinitely and prevent him from rejoining the enemy during the war on terror, right?

Wrong! They certainly could be blamed, but not by a "journalist" who is busy polishing their jackboots with his tongue! Even if that was what they were doing.

Except that's apparently not what the Administration was up to.

Oops! Wrong again!!

As Marty Lederman, a visiting professor at Georgetown University Law School, points out, al-Marri was already on ice. He was being held on credit-card fraud and other criminal charges for 16 months before the president abruptly designated him an enemy combatant in June 2003 and had him moved to a military prison. And the move came shortly after a court scheduled a hearing on al-Marri's motion to suppress evidence allegedly obtained through torture.

But how can that be? We don't torture! And we've got all sorts of shifty new legal definitions to prove it.

In a long footnote to its opinion, the appeals court suggests what was really going on. As the court explains, al-Marri claimed that the government suddenly named him an enemy combatant merely because it wanted to interrogate him in a way that would have violated the rules of criminal prosecution. Referring to al-Marri's claim, the court says, "we trust that this is not so, for such a stratagem" would violate a Supreme Court ruling that prohibits indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation.

Sad but true, the justices of this court -- like many other still-deluded citizens -- "trust" their naive view of this clearly criminal administration more than they "trust" the evidence -- even when there's no alternative explanation, as in this case:

"We note, however, that not only has the Government offered no other explanation for abandoning al-Marri's prosecution, it has even propounded an affidavit in support of al-Marri's continued military detention stating that he 'possesses information of high intelligence value.'"

That's pretty clear, isn't it? Or is it? Why should the court "trust" that what they have been told is false?

Especially when the implications of that evidence is clear, even to Reynolds Holder:

So, contrary to Supreme Court precedent as well as its own legal arguments before the appeals court, the Administration threw al-Marri in the brig just because it wanted to squeeze him for more information.

Or maybe not. The problem with this explanation is that our authorities know "enhanced interrogation techniques" don't provide reliable intelligence. So we must look elsewhere for an explanation.

Is this just the latest in a long string of GWOT-related government lies, parroted without question by organs of state propaganda? Unfortunately, given the track records of the administration and its lapdog media, we cannot avoid asking this question, which otherwise might seem quite loony. But there's been too much lying, and now there's no reason not to question everything. You just never know.

This sort of deceptive behavior seems a recurring flaw in the Administration's anti-terrorism efforts.

Recurring flaw? Heck, no, that's not a flaw! It's the artist's signature! It's the modus operandi!

The current prosecution of suspected terrorist and U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, for example, almost collapsed because of Padilla's claim that his guards' abuse made him incompetent to stand trial; as with al-Marri, the government has changed its legal approach against Padilla, initially branding him an enemy combatant and then, when it seemed that it might lose its case before the Supreme Court, deciding to charge him criminally.

These are all examples (and I could provide many more) of the administration lurching from one ludicrous lie to another, in an attempt to legitimize an illegitimate enterprise! The phony "terror war" needs a continuous supply of phony "terrorists" so the government can provide phony "protection" which they use to "justify" becoming more and more repressive!

It's all very clear, and it has been clear (to some of us at least) since about noon on the eleventh of September, 2001. But unfortunately for all of us, journalists who say things like this get published nowhere.

On the other hand, even if you write for a state propaganda organ like TIME, you can still talk about the technicalities:

Lederman says the improper reason for declaring al-Marri an enemy combatant will probably doom the government's appeal in the case.

And rightly so. But that's scary, too. Because the appeal should be doomed even without the improper reason. If opponents of the Bush administration's new approach, "indefinite incarceration without hearing or evidence", want to make their feelings known, now would be as good a time as any.

Thinking of the assertion that the appeal is doomed, Reynolds Holder concludes with the following very confused paragraph:

Whether or not that's true, the President seems once again to have jeopardized his "war on terror" with an inflated notion of his own power.

Oops! Whether or not that's true is highly debatable.

I would phrase it differently: Bush is using the "war on terror" to justify an inflation of his own power. He hit a little speed bump the other day, but the mission is still on target.

I find it interesting to speculate on how Reynolds Holding and his editors at TIME would approach this subject if they were more familiar with the history of totalitarian states -- the USSR, for example.

He might have said something about how the right of habeas corpus has been a basic part of all western justice systems for 900 years, about how we don't have that protection anymore, and about how the Congress hasn't shown any sign of trying to get it back.

He might have mentioned that of the nearly 400 people being detained at Gitmo, only a handful have been charged, and -- even though the "rules of evidence" have been "relaxed" -- the government doesn't have enough evidence against them to charge more than another dozen or so.

He might have mentioned that many of the people there were detained because they were sold into captivity. And how even though they've never been charged with any crime -- much less convicted! -- they may very well stay incarcerated for the rest of their lives! He might even have mentioned some of the people who are still being held there, despite having been told they're free to leave!

In short, Reynolds Holder might have made a bit of a difference.

But then again, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So why should he share it with his readers?

Congressional Democrats Subpoena Harriet Miers And Sara Taylor

David Stout of the New York Times says:

Congress Subpoenas Miers and Former Bush Aide

WASHINGTON, June 13 — Two former White House officials were subpoenaed today as Congressional Democrats intensified pressure on the Bush administration over the dismissals of eight United States attorneys.

From the House Judiciary Committee (PDF):

House and Senate Investigations Revealed Significant White House Involvement In US Attorney Firings:

Key White House political advisors Karl Rove and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were involved from the beginning in plans to remove U.S. Attorneys. According to documents obtained from the Department of Justice and Mr. Sampson’s testimony, Mr. Sampson discussed the plan with then-White House Counsel Gonzales not long after President Bush’s re-election in late 2004. A January 9, 2005 e-mail released by the Department shows that Karl Rove initiated inquires as to “how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.” In his response to queries from David Leitch, a White House official, Mr. Sampson expressly deferred to the political judgment of Mr. Rove as to whether to proceed with plans for the replacement of U.S. Attorneys, writing,“[I]f Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I.”

Mr. Sampson, who has testified that he “aggregated” the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired, was in frequent contact with White House officials about multiple versions of proposed lists of possible U.S. Attorneys for dismissal and potential replacements over the course of nearly two years, sending draft lists for review in March 2005, January 2006, April 2006, and several drafts in September 2006 through the firings on December 7, 2006.

David Stout:

The Senate and House judiciary committees ordered Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara M. Taylor [photo], a former deputy assistant to President Bush and the White House director of political affairs, to appear before their panels.

House Judiciary Committee:

According to documents and testimony, Sara Taylor, the head of the White House political operation and deputy of Karl Rove, and Scott Jennings, another aide to Mr. Rove, were involved in the discussions and planning that led to the removal of Bud Cummins and bypassing the Senate confirmation process to install Tim Griffin, another former aide to Mr. Rove, as U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas. They were part of a group that discussed using the Attorney General’s expanded authority under the Patriot Act Reauthorization to avoid the opposition of the Arkansas Senators by appointing Mr. Griffin as interim indefinitely. In one e-mail, Mr. Sampson described Mr. Griffin’s appointment as “important to Harriet, Karl, etc.” After the firing, writing from her RNC email account, Ms. Taylor writes that “Bud is lazy – which is why we got rid of him in the first place.”

Mr. Sampson testified that Ms. Taylor was upset when the Attorney General finally “rejected” this use of the interim authority -- a month after telling Senator Pryor he was committed to finding a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney.

David Stout:

Ms. Taylor was ordered to appear before the Senate committee on July 11. Ms. Miers, who was briefly a nominee for Supreme Court justice, was told to appear before the House panel the following day.

House Judiciary Committee:

John McKay, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, testified that when he met with Ms. Miers and her deputy William Kelley in August 2006 to interview for a federal judgeship, he was asked to explain “criticism that I mishandled the 2004 governor's election,” in which Republicans were upset with him for not intervening in that closely contested election.

David Stout:

The committees had already voted to authorize such subpoenas, so it was not surprising that they decided today to go ahead and issue them. Still, the action stepped up the political confrontation over the dismissals, and over the general performance of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the state of the Justice Department.

So far, the White House has said it will not make any current or former officials available to testify before the panels on the matter except in private interviews, with no transcripts kept. The lawmakers have disdained that arrangement as unacceptable.

“By refusing to cooperate with Congressional committees, the White House continues its pattern of confrontation over cooperation, and those who suffer most in this case are the public and the hard-working people at the Department of Justice,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate committee, said in a statement today.

Representative John D. Conyers of Michigan, the chairman of the House committee, said the subpoenas were “a demand on behalf of the American people.”

House Judiciary Committee:

Since the firings of these U.S. Attorneys for political reasons became public, there has been an effort to minimize, and in some instances, cover up, the role of White House officials. According to documents and the testimony of Mr. Sampson, the Attorney General was upset after the February 6, 2007, testimony of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty because Mr. McNulty’s testimony put the White House involvement in the firings into the public domain. Former Justice Department White House Liaison Monica Goodling recently told the House Judiciary Committee that she was told not to attend a briefing by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty on the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, 2007, because of the concern that her presence might prompt Senators to ask questions about White House involvement.

The Administration’s February 23, 2007, response to a letter from Senators Reid, Schumer, Durbin and Murray regarding the firings stated, “I am not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the AG’s decision to appoint Griffin.” Earlier e-mails indicate that the appointment of Mr. Griffin, another former deputy to Mr. Rove, was important to Mr. Rove. The White House, Associate White House Counsel Chris Oprison, signed off on this letter. Before Griffin was installed, Mr. Oprison, who signed off on the letter, had written that the Griffin issue was “front/center on [his] radar screen” and that he had “had several conversations with [Rove aide] Scott Jennings” about “the controversy.” Many parts of this letter have since been retracted by the Department.

David Stout:

“The breadcrumbs in this investigation have always led to 1600 Pennsylvania,” Mr. Conyers said, referring to the White House by its street address. “This investigation will not end until the White House complies with the demands of this subpoena in a timely and reasonable manner, so that we may get to the bottom of this.”

House Judiciary Committee:

According to the testimony of Department officials, Mr. Rove and other White House officials attended a meeting at the White House on March 5, 2007 -- the day before Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella testified before the House Judiciary Committee -- to “go over the admin position on all aspects of the US attorney issue.” Rove is reported to have spoken at this meeting and directed the Department to provide reasons to explain the firings in the next day’s testimony.

David Stout:

The White House reacted quickly today to the subpoenas, arguing that the committees could easily obtain all the facts they need through interviews and relevant documents, but that the Democratic chairmen “are more interested in drama than facts,” as Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, put it in an exchange with reporters.

Quite a publicity stunt, no? There's nothing at stake -- unless you count the future of the world's most belligerent former democracy.

Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here ... just another publicity stunt by the Democrats; you know how those Democrats are!!

from: White House. re: Iraq. subject: Just Lower Your Expectations And Everything Will Be Fine.

We've known for a long time that this would be coming. Caren Bohan of Reuters has the story:

U.S. tries to temper expectations on Iraq progress

A September progress report on the U.S. troop increase in Iraq that President George W. Bush called an important moment for his war strategy is unlikely to be a "pivotal" assessment, officials now say.

Amid unrelenting bloodshed in Iraq and scant signs of progress by the Iraqi government in meeting political benchmarks, the White House sought to temper expectations of rapid strides resulting from a security crackdown begun at the start of this year.

Ahh, the tyranny of outrageous expectations! If we just lower our expectations every time they aren't met, we will never again be disappointed!

"I have warned from the very beginning about expecting some sort of magical thing to happen in September," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters on Wednesday.

"What I would suggest is, rather than it's, sort of, a pivotal moment, it is the first opportunity to be able to take a look at what happens when you've got (the troop increase) up and running fully for a period of months," he added. "It is naive to think, suddenly -- boom -- you snap a finger and you've got an instant change in the situation."

I don't know anyone who thinks you can change the situation in Iraq just by snapping a finger, do you? But that wasn't the question. It's not even part of the question. Tony Snow is just running interference here. It's one of the things he does best. How charming.

Bush, in an interview with Reuters last month, said September would be an "important moment" to assess the extent of progress under the troop buildup he ordered in January.

"I see it as an important moment, because (Gen.) David Petraeus (the top U.S. commander in Iraq) says that's when he'll have a pretty good assessment as to what the effects of the surge has been," he said.

But now, as it turns out, maybe that's not the case. Bush misled us again. Tell me another one. Doo dah, doo dah.

September is also an important time period on the U.S. political calendar, as the already intense campaign for presidency moves closer to the November 2008 election.

Democrats, who hold a majority in the U.S. Congress, tried to force Bush to accept a troop withdrawal as a condition of providing funds for the Iraq war.

I suppose in Washington parlance that last bit may very well be true. Everything hinges on what you mean by "tried".

Although they have given Bush war funding through September without such conditions, they have vowed to continue to seek a deadline for the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Sure they will. Absolutely. Can I have an acre of swampland with that, and a suspension bridge?

Some Republicans have told Bush they expect progress in Iraq by autumn and have hinted that if the situation does not improve, they might reconsider their support for his strategy.

But he doesn't care about their support! He's not running for re-election, is he?

While Snow's comments appeared to show a change in the White House tone compared to a few weeks ago, they echoed those of some U.S. military officials recently.

Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, has said September might be a little too soon for a "true assessment" of how well the troop buildup is working.

We may need to keep our troop buildup going for another ten or twenty or fifty years before we get a "true assessment" of how well the occupation is working. But Bush is willing to wait, and Odierno doesn't seem to mind very much.

Who cares whether people are getting killed? It actually costs a lot less to bring the dead home and bury them than to neglect the wounded in VA hospitals for the rest of their lives. So it might not matter much that

May saw a heavy death toll among U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. It was the third-worst month for U.S. military deaths, which totaled 122. Nearly 2,000 civilians were killed in Iraq last month, according to Iraqi estimates.

On Wednesday, fresh violence was feared after suspected al Qaeda militants blew up two minarets at the revered Golden Mosque, one of four major Shi'ite shrines in Iraq.

Reuters has more on the attack:

Minarets blown up at Iraq Shi'ite shrine

Suspected al Qaeda militants on Wednesday blew up the minarets of a revered Shi'ite mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, target of a 2006 bomb attack that unleashed a tidal wave of sectarian violence.

Fearing renewed bloodshed, Iraq's government imposed a three-day curfew in Baghdad as Shi'ite and Sunni political and religious leaders called on their followers to remain calm.

But police said gunmen blew up the Sunni Grand Mosque in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, destroying it. A second was damaged in another blast and attackers set fire to a mosque in Baghdad's Bayaa district. No injuries were reported.

A grim mood descended on the capital as people hurried home before the start of the curfew. The streets were largely empty apart from patrolling Iraqi police and soldiers.

One of the photos above shows the mosque before it was attacked. The other shows how it looks today, without the golden dome (destroyed in the 2006 bombing) and the minarets.

Speaking of the Iraqi police,

13 Iraqi Police Arrested After Golden Dome Destroyed in Shrine Blast

Thirteen Iraqi policemen were arrested Wednesday after two minarets of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra were blown up in a repeat of the 2006 attack that shattered its famous golden dome and unleashed a wave of sectarian violence that still bloodies Iraq.

The commander of an emergency response team and 12 other Iraq policemen were arrested after the explosions ...

Oops! Maybe the police were sitting down when they should have been standing up. Or else maybe they were infiltrated by al-Q'aeda operatives. Unless al-Q'aeda is a figment of our imagination.

Caren Bohan continues:

A bombing of the same shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra last year unleashed a wave of sectarian killing.

U.S. officials said they hoped a similar wave of retaliatory attacks could be avoided this time.

Petraeus told ABC in an interview that the Samarra attack was a "serious blow" to the military effort, but added that he hoped with it would galvanize Iraqi leaders to work together against extremism.

On the other hand, maybe it will galvanize Iraqi leaders to work together against the American occupation.

Oh wait! Aren't they galvanized already?

Snow said, "I think people are acutely aware of what the dangers may be and therefore are moving swiftly to address it as rapidly as possible."

The Iraqis are indeed acutely aware of what the dangers may be and they've been trying to address it as rapidly as possible ... but the Americans just won't pack up and go home!

Seeking to keep up the pressure on the administration, Democratic leaders sent Bush a letter urging him to shift gears immediately, saying the troop increase had "failed to produce the intended results."

First of all they're wrong. The Democratic leaders don't even know what the intended results were supposed to be.

And secondly, they certainly know how to throw their weight around, don't they?

Wow. They sent him a letter.

Way to go, Democrats!! We're so glad we elected you!!

Maxine Waters Supports Kucinich On Cheney Impeachment

More good news from Matthew Cardinale in Atlanta:

Yesterday, US Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chair of the Out of Iraq Caucus, became the eighth total cosponsor of Kucinich’s bill, H Res 333, to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney for deceiving the American people over the need to invade Iraq.

US Rep. Waters is the first Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee to cosponsor the measure. US Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and Albert Wynn (D-MD), are the other cosponsors so far.

US Reps. Wynn and Waters joined Kucinich today in a press conference in Washington, DC, regarding what they are calling "renewed efforts" to impeach Cheney.
...

"More and more Members of Congress are becoming aware of the concerns of the American people to make sure the Constitution is protected," US Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) told Atlanta Progressive News in a phone interview.

"With the addition of Waters, head of the Out of Iraq Caucus, and of Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey, who are Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, we now have leaders of the two largest caucuses. It shows how seriously this effort to impeach is being taken," Kucinich told APN.

"It’s very significant to have her [Waters’s] support... because of her prominence as a long-time Member of Congress. She has tremendous experience in government," Kucinich said.

"We’re still at war. We’re there because he [Cheney] promoted those lies to the American people. I felt that I should step forward," Kucinich said, of his decision to sponsor H Res 333.

"As they [other Members] hear from their constituents, they will know how seriously this is being taken," Kucinich said.

No kidding, Dennis.

It should be taken as seriously as a heart attack, in my opinion. (Where are they when you need 'em?)

It should be taken as seriously as death.

It should be taken as seriously as hundreds of thousands of senseless needless deaths.

It should be taken as seriously as treason.

Wait! It is treason!!

Click here to read more from Dennis Kucinich via Matthew Cardinale of the Atlanta Progressive News.

And use the links on my sidebar (under "congress") to let your Members hear from their constituents.

Tom Toles: Gonzo Passes The Low-Bar Exam

Ain't It Da Truth?

Revisionist History 101: How Ronald Reagan Destroyed The Soviet Union With Only Four Words

The Latin phrase "post hoc, ergo proper hoc" translates literally as "after this, therefore because of this". It's a class of logical fallacy, and it's an easy one to spot. Any half-wit can see that it is not always (or even usually) true that because event B followed event A, therefore A caused B.

Twenty years ago today, Ronald Reagan made a speech in Berlin, in which he uttered the famous line "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Somewhat more than two years later, a large number of people, not including Ronald Reagan, tore down the Berlin Wall.

Since that time, neocons, so-called journalists, and other less-than-half-wits have been saying that Ronald Reagan himself tore down the Berlin Wall, ended the Cold War, defeated the Soviet Union and saved America from Communism.

They're loony, of course. The idea is not worth half a banana in historical terms. But as propaganda, it's irresistable. Here's a recent example, from TIME's Romesh Ratnisar:

The four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency almost were never uttered.

Twenty years ago, on the morning of June 12, 1987, Reagan arrived in Berlin, on the occasion of the city's 750th birthday. He was scheduled to speak on the western side of the Brandenburg Gate, for years the city's symbolic dividing line. His speechwriters had drafted an address intended as much for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom Reagan was forging a close relationship, as for the 20,000 people who gathered to hear him speak. In the speech, Reagan would call on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, but that language was opposed strongly by Reagan's National Security Council and the State Department, who feared it would be used by hardliners in the Kremlin to discredit Gorbachev.

This idea is loony too, of course. As if Fred saying something could discredit Barney! But it's also emblematic of a longstanding problem among the "thinkers" who had been making national security policy for the previous forty years: the "negative veto" power they granted the Soviet Union. In the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department and elsewhere, virtually nothing could be done unless it could be demonstrated that the Russians wouldn't like it. And every policy initiative was viewed through the imaginary prism: What will the Russians think of this? Never mind that the geniuses in the CIA, the NSA, the DIA and State had no idea what the Russians were actually thinking, much less the ability to predict what they might think under some hypothetical circumstance.

After forty years of such twisted "analysis", it's no wonder the "experts" at State and elsewhere thought the Russian hardliners would (or could) use something Ronald Reagan said to discredit Mikhail Gorbachev. The Russian hardliners were nothing if not pragmatic, and clearly they understood Gorbachev could be discredited only by things he actually did or said. Similarly, Ronald Reagan was discredited by his words and actions, not by anything anyone else said about him, or to him.

But the White House wizards didn't understand any of this, and therefore, the article continues,

When the President's entourage arrived in Berlin, Reagan's team was still arguing over the final wording. State and NSC submitted yet another draft of the speech. But in the limousine ride to the Wall, Reagan told his deputy chief of staff, Kenneth Duberstein, that he intended to issue the fateful challenge to Gorbachev. "It's the right thing to do," he said.
...

For all its drama, the speech received relatively little media coverage. Compared to the younger, more vigorous Gorbachev, Reagan seemed to be a diminished figure on the world stage, a lame-duck President hobbled by the Iran-Contra scandal at home. But in hindsight, the "Tear Down this Wall" speech helps explain how the Cold War ended.

Sure it does! Unless it explains nothing of the sort!

Realistically speaking, the Soviet Union was never a threat to the existence of the United States, nor to our so-called "way of life". But the presence of a threat which could be exaggerated at will was very handy for those who would profit from an arms race. So we were told outright lies about the intentions and capabilities of the Soviets -- from the end of World War II, through the dissolution of the USSR and beyond. It was (and still is) good for business.

Much has been made of the fact that the CIA "missed" the collapse of the USSR. How could such a huge event have come as a shock to the world's most sophisticated intelligence-gathering apparatus? The standard analysis seems to imply that they underestimated the power of Ronald Reagan's speech.

The problem with this analysis is simple: there already existed ample evidence that the Soviet Union was ready to crumble. But so much horse manure had been fed into the system over the years that our vaunted intelligence experts had no idea what to think.

It would never have been politically correct to explain their failure in such terms. Therefore a fictional history had to be invented, and one was readily available. Reagan had made a speech asking Gorbachev to tear down the wall, the wall was torn down, therefore, post hoc ergo propter hoc, Reagan's speech tore down the wall.

And this is why the TIME article is headlined: "The Speech That Brought Down a Wall".

O' course, matey! It was the speech that done it!

Two decades later, what can we learn from the epochal events that followed — the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the Soviet Union? "People were afraid of the consequences of what Reagan would say," George Shultz, Reagan's long-serving Secretary of State, told me over lunch in Berlin last week. "But it turns out he was right."

Sure he was! Really!! As long as you don't look at any of the historical facts!

As Bob Parry wrote in Rating Reagan: A Bogus Legacy:

How, why and when was the Cold War “won”? If, for instance, the United States was already on the verge of victory over a foundering Soviet Union in the early-to-mid-1970s, as some analysts believe, then Reagan’s true historic role may not have been “winning” the Cold War, but helping to extend it.

If the Soviet Union was already in rapid decline, rather than in the ascendancy that Reagan believed, then the massive U.S. military build-up in the 1980s was not decisive; it was excessive. The terrible bloodshed in Central America and Africa, including death squad activities by U.S. clients, was not some necessary evil; it was a war crime aided and abetted by the Reagan administration.

That debate, however, has never been engaged, except by Reagan acolytes who chose to glorify Reagan’s role in “winning the Cold War” rather than examining the assumptions that guided his policies in the 1970s and 1980s. Although it’s largely forgotten now, Reagan’s rise within the Republican Party was as a challenge to the “détente” strategies pursued by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger – before the Watergate scandal forced Nixon from office – and later by Gerald Ford. Détente was, in effect, an effort to ease the Cold War to an end, much as finally occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

And nowadays, Reagan is portrayed as a hero of America because he supposedly turned his back on the failed policies of his predecessors and went in another direction. In this context, it wouldn't be appropriate to mention that his "Tear Down This Wall" speech was actually an extension of détente rather than a rejection of it!

Later Ratnisar quotes George Schultz saying:

"It's become famous, first of all, because what he called for happened. If you look back to the day after the speech, or the month after, I don't think it was written about that much. But it got big reverberations once the Wall came down and people looked back at Reagan's speech and remembered that it was controversial at the time to say that."

Listen: In the fall of 2000, a private interest group issued a position paper calling for "a catastrophic and catalyzing event", a "new Pearl Harbor", as they put it, which would enable their radical foreign and domestic policy agendas to be implemented very quickly. Four months later, more than a dozen signatories to that position paper found themselves in very high government positions, thanks to a new administration which hadn't exactly won any legitimate elections. Eight months after that two buildings at the World Trade Center were hit by hijacked airplanes and three WTC buildings disintegrated; in addition the headquarters of the world's most sophisticated military / intelligence organization was hit by a missile. One could make a reasonable claim that this was the New Pearl Harbor -- and therefore that the position paper had knocked down the towers. But even if you don't do that -- even if you merely mention all these facts in the same paragraph -- you're branded a lunatic fringe nut-case with a tin-foil hat, by the very same people who claim that Ronald Reagan's speech on June 12, 1987 was responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, two and a half years later!

Talk about nut-cases!!

Still and all, it is quite correct to say that the PNAC document has become famous, first of all, because what it called for happened. If you look back to the day after it was published, or the month after, I don't think it was written about that much. But it got big reverberations once the towers came down and people looked back at "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and realized that it was a smoking gun pointing to treason.

But Romesh Ratnisar probably never even thought of that. Instead the article continues:

Shultz went on. "I guess the point I'm making here is that ideas matter a lot, the underlying ideas that stand behind policies. When you don't have ideas, your policies are flip-flopping all over the place. When you do have ideas, you have more consistency. And when you have the right ideas — then you can get somewhere." Reagan had the right ideas.

Bob Parry describes some of those "right ideas":

Cold War obsession led him to coddle an unsavory collection of right-wing psychopaths, including death squad operatives who engaged in genocide, neo-fascists who relished bizarre torture techniques, and drug traffickers who seized a rich geopolitical business opportunity.

None of this "coddling" upended the Soviet Union, but it did enrich a few of the guiltiest people on the planet, while killing tens of thousands -- or more! -- of the most innocent.

Predictably, after the Soviet Union fell, the

neocons claim[ed] credit for “winning the Cold War” and thus walk[ed] away from accountability for supporting brutal right-wing regimes and even terrorists in the 1980s.

So it goes.

And now the lie is being resurrected, by the supposedly liberal media, who want to keep you ignorant of everything that matters and obsessed with this bizarre fiction they call our national history.

~~~

Coincidences?

Coincidentally -- or perhaps not? -- sixteen years ago today, Boris Yeltsin was elected president in Russia's first-ever democratic election.

His reform program consisted of the mass privatization of state-run enterprises. Soon after the program was instituted, the country experienced inflation, heavy taxes, and a protracted economic depression.

And in another, utterly appalling, "coincidence", one of the ads appearing today at TIME dot Com features a photo of (and a quote from) O. J. Simpson, whose former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, was brutally murdered thirteen years ago today.

Simpson says the media should admit that it's not doing a good job. (And, ironically, he could use the coverage of his murder trial as Exhibit "A"!)

So we've got revisionist history all over the place today. How fitting.

Helen Thomas Talks To Tim Russert

Helen Thomas spoke with Tim Russert recently. Here's the video.

You'll notice that she doesn't duck any questions, no matter how stupid ...

... and she asks some tough ones herself!

I've been watching some of the wingnut sites where people rant and rave against her, mostly based on her physical appearance. Every now and then they get down to substance, if you can call it that. Mostly they either highlight some of her statements, as if merely casting them in boldface were the same as refuting them:

The former UPI correspondent slammed Reagan declaring, "I think that the poor did not prosper under him at all," and charged the press was too soft on George W. Bush demanding that they should've asked the hard question: "How can you justify killing thousands of people to get one man? Who are we to depose anyone?'" But when it came to the Clinton administration, Thomas thought the press was too hard on the Clintons saying Whitewater amounted to "nothing," and pouted: "the Clintons suffered a lot."

But what else can they do? Those who try to refute her only display their terminal ignorance:

She knew we were heading to war, even though the opportunity was given for Saddam to avert it by complying with the UN mandates. She claims it was "unprovoked" so apparently thinks that failure to abide by terms in a cease fire agreement don't count as provocation.

In short she is a extreme liberal twit and the best argument for mandatory retirement that I've seen in many many years.

Rock on, Helen.

Oops! American Airstrike On Afghan Police Kills Seven, Wounds Five More

According to Abdul Waheed Wafa in the New York Times:

U.S. Forces Kill Afghan Police Officers

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 12 — American-led forces killed seven Afghan policemen and injured five more in an exchange of fire early this morning that Afghan police officials said was a result of mistaken identity.

“The American troops were coming towards the Afghan police post as both sides did not know the identity of each other,” said Nasir Ahmad Safi, an Afghan police official in Nengrahar province. He said the bodies of the policemen were riddled with bullets.

In the photo (by Rafiq Shirzad, courtesy of Reuters),

an Afghan policeman searches through the debris of a police post damaged by a U.S.-led air attack in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

As you can see, there's not much left of the police post either.

Here's a big surprise: various "coalition" accounts of the event differ -- not only from what the Afghans are saying but also from each other!

A spokesman for the coalition forces said that members of a coalition unit were on their way to carry out an operation at a Taliban house in the Shirzad district of Nengrahar province on Monday night when they were ambushed and attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

The coalition forces returned fire and called in air support, said Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman.

Ahh. They were ambushed. Or maybe it was something else?

Another coalition statement said that coalition forces were challenged by an unknown person wearing civilian clothes and carrying a weapon, who shined a flashlight at them and then opened fire.

“There was nothing during the firefight to indicate the opposing force was friendly,” the statement said. “The individuals who fired on coalition forces were not in uniform.”

So what was it? An unknown person wearing civilian clothes? A "friendly" opposing force? An ambush? A mistake?? Or just another case of "Tough shit, ragheads. We're here to win your hearts and minds."

Afghan authorities regularly complain of a lack of coordination between the coalition forces and Afghan forces, saying the result has been many civilian casualties.

Civilian casualties don't matter to the "coalition" forces, of course. (That's why they call them "collateral damage".)

But if the public reaction to massive civilian casualties -- especially in the "coalition" countries -- begins to encroach on the twin sacred illusions (that we're there because they want us there, and that we're winning), hand-wringing may possibly ensue.

Spinning will ensue, regardless:

The coalition statement said that coalition forces coordinated with unspecified officials to make sure that there would be no conflicting operations in the same area. But the Afghan police in Nengrahar said they were not aware of any operation by coalition troops on Monday night.

Once again we see the difference between theory and practice; Theoretically coordinating with the "hosts" is a good thing. But in practice, who needs coordination when you can call in air support?

Kitchen Science 103: We're Off To See The Emmys

The mad scientists who made this epic video have been nominated for an Emmy Award (in the new category "Broadband Variety") and will be heading to LA in a few days for the announcement of the winners.

Compared to the sorts of topics I write about, it's tough to take a television awards ceremony very seriously, but I'll be pulling for them in a big way -- relatively speaking, of course. In my opinion their second epic video is even better.

How did they set that up? Click here to see the layout.

Warning: Don't try this on an airplane!

Court Head-Slaps Chimp, Appeal Is Certain

The Chimp Administration never takes "NO" for an answer, no matter where it comes from, and especially if the source happens to be a court of law. "Rule of Law is for the weak, and we are strong," his chimperial drunkenness maintains, "therefore the rule of law is our enemy and we must fight it wherever possible." Which explains virtually every aspect of the administration's policies about virtually everything.

If I were able to blog full-speed, I would be writing reams about yesterday's court decision, which was reported by Adam Liptak of the New York Times as follows:

In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being held as an enemy combatant.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”

As Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post reported,

Civil libertarians who championed Marri's case had warned that if the administration prevailed in its argument, the military could next round up U.S. citizens and jail them without trial. The court appeared to agree.

"The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention," the panel found.

Back to Adam Liptak of the NYT:

“We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”

The ruling was handed down by a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., in the case of Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar and the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant.

Mr. Marri, whom the government calls a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda, was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001, in Peoria, Ill., where he was living with his family and studying computer science at Bradley University.

He has been held for the last four years at the Navy Brig in Charleston, S.C.

Judge Motz wrote that Mr. Marri may well be guilty of serious crimes. But she said that the government cannot circumvent the civilian criminal justice system through military detention.

Mr. Marri was charged with credit-card fraud and lying to federal agents after his arrest in 2001, and he was on the verge of a trial on those charges when he was moved into military detention in 2003.

The government contended, in a partly declassified declaration from a senior defense intelligence official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, that Mr. Marri was a Qaeda sleeper agent sent to the United States to commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.

Two other men have been held as enemy combatants on the American mainland since the Sept. 11 attacks. One, Yaser Hamdi, was freed and sent to Saudi Arabia after the United States Supreme Court allowed him to challenge his detention in 2004.

The other, Jose Padilla, was transferred to the criminal justice system last year just as the Supreme Court was considering whether to review his case. He is now on trial on terrorism charges in federal court in Miami.

The Jose Padilla saga is a full indictment of the so-called GWOT and our so-called legal system, all by itself. This decision will do nothing for him. And neither will it effect the goings-on at Gitmo, much less the clandestine CIA torture facilities that we still don't know much about.

The decision does not appear to affect the rights of men held at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Judge Motz stressed that the court analysis was limited to those who have substantial connections to the United States and are seized and detained within its borders.

A dissenting judge in today’s decision, Henry E. Hudson, visiting from the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote that President Bush “had the authority to detain al-Marri as an enemy combatant or belligerent” because “he is the type of stealth warrior used by Al Qaeda to perpetrate terrorist acts against the United States.”

Henry E. Hudson needs to wash his brain out with soap. There is no provision anywhere in our Constitution or in any other other civilized legal system that gives the president -- or anyone else -- the authority to detain people indefinitely without charge or hearing, based on anything -- let alone an uncorroborated accusation that the person being held is of a certain "type".

Jonathan Hafetz, the litigation director of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and one of Mr. Marri’s lawyers, said of the court’s decision: “This is landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for unchecked executive power. It affirms the basic constitutional rights of all individuals — citizens and immigrants - in the United States.”

Let's not get carried away, Jonathan. It is a step in the right direction, but it is a very minor step -- one sure to be appealed forever and a day -- and it doesn't really guarantee anything, especially given the Chimp administration's track record when it comes to compliance with legal strictures.

Writing for the majority, Judge Motz ordered the trial judge in the case to issue a writ of habeas corpus directing the Pentagon “within a reasonable period of time” to do one of several things with Mr. Marri. He may be charged in the civilian court system; he may be deported; or he may be held as a material witness; or he may be released.

“But military detention of al-Marri,” Judge Motz wrote, “must cease.”

We'll see how long it takes for them to get around to complying. Who decides what constitutes "a reasonable period of time"? The Pentagon itself?

And what happens if the Pentagon fails to issue such a writ "within a reasonable period of time"? I'm certainly not planning to hold my breath.

For a much more thorough treatment of this case and the issues it raises, please visit Chris Floyd's excellent site, Empire Burlesque, and read what he has to say about this. I'll get you started:

Now we've got something going on. Now there's a little something to play for. This ruling draws a clear line in the sand on one of George W. Bush's most egregious abuses of the illegitimate power he was given (by the courts) in 2000: his self-proclaimed, arbitrary, unchecked right to designate anyone he pleases an "enemy combatant" and keep them locked up indefinitely in military detention.

Now it seems certain that the case will reach the Supreme Court, and we will have a clear-cut answer at last: Are we still a semblance of a Republic, where our liberties are inalienable – or is our freedom simply the "gift" of an autocrat (elected or otherwise), who can bestow it or take it away at his own will?

Please go read the rest. Click a few links, too.

No problem; you can thank me later.

A Fine Orwellian Balance In Pakistan: Musharraf Rescinds New Media Regulations, But New Media-Control Policy Remains In Force!

As Carlotta Gall of the New York Times reports, Pakistani General-turned-President Pervez Musharraf's attempt to stifle live media coverage of current political events has run into a major snag, so he's rescinded the order -- but the policy established by that order appears to remain in effect!

Musharraf Rescinds Media Regulations After Public Outcry

Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has formally withdrawn his decree that imposed new regulations on the news media, government officials said over the weekend. The president made his decision after he met with industry leaders, and after journalists and opposition parties strongly protested the decree, officials said.

The independent media channels agreed to prepare a code of conduct to be incorporated into government media regulations, the state news organization reported.

So they're going to impose media censorship using regulations drafted by the media themselves? How crafty!!

The formal withdrawal came after Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, and his information minister, Muhammad Ali Durrani, said last week that the ordinance had been suspended pending discussions.

Commercial television channels, whose numbers have grown during General Musharraf’s rule, have been pressured in recent weeks to stop live coverage of events and live political talk shows, and have had their cable transmissions blocked.

It's clear what's been happening. The government has been trying to keep the people ignorant of what's going on in their country! That doesn't sound just a little bit familiar, does it?

Independent television channels have closely followed the progression of the former chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, as he has toured the country in the weeks after he was dismissed by General Musharraf.

Since his dismissal in March, Justice Chaudhry has drawn huge crowds on his stops to visit provincial courts and lawyers’ associations, and opposition parties have organized protest rallies to support him. At the rallies, criticism of General Musharraf and the military has been aired along with demands for change and a return to civilian rule.

We also have been following those events as best we can, here on the nearly frozen blog.

The presidential decree, which went into immediate effect when it was issued on June 3, amended media regulations to give the government regulating body broad powers to seize broadcasting equipment, seal premises and suspend licenses on impromptu orders. The regulating body was instructed to draft regulations at its own discretion, and a media committee that was to consider complaints and other contended issues was replaced with a board of government officials.

There you go: replace every committee with a board of government officials and you've got it made in the shade! But otherwise not!!

The decree was met with enormous disapproval by parliamentary allies, as well as by opposition parties and lawyers supporting the countrywide movement to reinstate Justice Chaudhry. Legislators were incensed that the decree was signed into law during a three-week recess of Parliament, thus avoiding any debate.

Slick, no? Doing the dirty work while Parliament is on recess! That doesn't ring any bells with my American readers, does it?

Lawmakers had just spent five months working on amending the media law, and they finally passed it earlier this spring.

... only to have it amended by royal edict! It's no wonder that so many Pakistanis have been in the streets, clamoring for the return of democratic rule after nearly a decade under the boot of the general who became president.

And once again you have to read all the way to the end of the article to find the kicker:

It remains unclear whether the government intends to retain the new restrictions when it resubmits the ordinance. The orders banning live coverage and live talk shows appear to still be in force.

As George Orwell spins ever more rapidly, let us rejoice in the thought that irony is definitely not dead.

Tom Toles: The Underlying Crime

He's got a good pun in there too ... "underlying" ... ha ha ha! Good for you, Tom Toles!! Telling the vital truths of the age, 10 or 20 words at a time.

A Nation Of Vicious Idiots: Waging Endless War Against The Third World, And Proud Of It

All sorts of people make all sorts of noise about all sorts of things including "unity" and "tolerance" and "all men are created equal".

At the risk of offending believers of conventional wisdom, at the risk of challenging fundamentalist interpretations of our supposedly perfect founding documents: BS!

All men are not created equal. You can tell just by looking at them. Some are tall, some are short. Some are thin, some are fat. Some are smarter than others. Some are left-handed. And so on.

But when it comes down to what really matters, there are essentially three types of Americans: those who enjoy living in a country that wages continuous war against the third world, those who abhor it, and those who know nothing about it whatsoever.

Watch this video and you will never again fall into the third category.

The War Against the Third World: What I've Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy

CIA covert operations and US military interventions since World War II. A video compilation of footage and speeches recorded in the 1980s and 1990s. What you didn't learn in school and don't hear on the mainstream media.

(If you can't see the video, click here.)

Now...

If you enjoy living in a nation that wages continuous war against the third world, if you can kill, maim and torture for fun and profit and call it serving your country, if you are proud of what your country has done and want to see more of it, you should be reading bob cassiday, who wrote:

What a motley crew the party of Carter and Clinton has produced for this election season. Once the party of Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, you have a whole different mindset among this collection of union thugs, abortion advocates, flag burners, and hippies. It is no wonder that their front runner is the loudmouthed wife of the former President, Hillary.
...

Mike Gravel, I have no respect for any candidate who wants to legalize narcotics. Not to worry, this guy won't get anywhere. Oh, and thanks for helping end the draft, Mike, so we can raise generation after generation of men who are not asked to serve their country.
...

If the apathy is fading, the American people are starting to pay attention, and the "great silent majority" is starting to make some noise and fight back against all of the Leftist baloney they have been fed for the last forty years, that is bad news for the Democratic Party.

Speaking of Harry Truman, speaking of forty years ago, let me make one thing perfectly clear:

It didn't have to be like this. It didn't have to be anything like this.

I can barely type at the moment, but I can copy and paste pretty well. The following comment is still germane, IMO, even though I typed it a couple of years ago, on another blog, in response to a commenter who espoused the ideas that war is the answer and Vietnam is the proof:

In case you weren't paying attention, let me remind you: the Vietnamese people had never done anything to the United States -- but we waged war on them anyway. In that war we killed about 2 million Vietnamese civilians. We also made about 4 million Vietnamese people homeless. Our reckless use of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange caused widespread cancer and birth defects. Nixon's secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia destabilized a friendly government and left a power vacuum that was filled by the genocidal regime of Pol Pot -- leading directly to the deaths of another 2 million innocent people.

And what good has come of it? In 1975 when American troops finally left, Vietnam adopted a communist nationalist government, the very thing we were supposedly trying to prevent. So in that sense, we did not achieve a single thing. And more than 4 million people died for nothing.

Nothing, Jose. They died for no reason at all unless you count the fact that people who should have known better thought war was the answer.

Ho Chi Minh was a friend and ally of the USA during World War II, Jose. Did you know that? An American intelligence agent (Archimedes Patti) gave him his first weapons. Did you know that? Ho Chi Minh helped America throw the Japanese out of Indochina and he wanted to help us throw France out as well. But FDR was dead and so was his notion of "self-determination for all peoples". And harry truman was now the president and he was not only totally uninformed on world affairs but he was also a vicious little prick. And when harry truman told Ho Chi Minh to go buck a water fuffalo, that was the end of any chance for peace and stability in the region.

If the USA had stood with its wartime ally, Ho Chi Minh; if the USA had embraced the idea of Vietnamese national self-determination rather betraying it; if the USA had stood by its announced principles after the war, rather than rejecting them in favor of French colonialism; modern Vietnam's government would certainly be nationalist -- as it is today -- but it might very well be anti-communist, and it might even be pro-American. Ho Chi Minh would never have gone to Russia and China for help if he could have obtained help from the USA.

But no! truman told Ho to go screw and what was the result? Millions and millions of innocent people dead -- millions and millions more innocents homeless -- untold grief and anguish in America as well as Southeast Asia -- and all because some vicious little prick thought more war was the answer. In fact the answer was simple -- but harry truman was not about to tell the French to get their armies the hell out of Vietnam and let the Vietnamese people live their lives in peace -- even though it would have made perfect sense, even though the American government had trumpeted the principle of self-determination all through the war, and even though America, having rescued the French from the Nazis, did not owe France one thin dime...

Yeah, I know: That was then, this is now. Now the answer is not for American troops to be planting explosives in Iraqi cars and trucks in a transparent attempt to trigger a civil war. Now the answer is not for Americans to contaminate Iraq any further with our radioactive ammunition. Now the answer is not more indiscriminate bombing of residential neighborhoods. Further violence by Americans in Iraq can only make this horrible situation even worse.

And as for you, Jose, I've had enough of your bullshit. Why don't you take your five bucks [it has been reported that disinfo bloggers are paid $5 per post] and hit the road? In fact, why don't you go spend some time with the people who share your views? Why don't you just click here and start being all you can be?

That's right, Jose! Put your soft tissue where your mouth is! Enjoy the war, always remember that war is the answer, and don't worry. We'll still be your friends, even though we're staying here -- and that's a good thing, too, because you're gonna need friends like us to bury your sorry ass when it comes home in a box.

I spelled harry truman's name in lower case back then as a sign of respect. None.

Speaking of bob cassiday, his rant against Mike Gravel drew a comment from Brad Spangler, to wit:

Re: "Oh, and thanks for helping end the draft, Mike, so we can raise generation after generation of men who are not asked to serve their country."

Good news! You're still young enough to enlist. :)

To which the vicious ignorant prick replied:

I'm too old, have a career, a wife, and a daughter. Were I 21, unmarried, without a daughter, I'd bee in uniform right now.

If that's not good enough of an answer for you, bring back the draft.

It goes without saying that this is chickenhawk bullshit of the most pungent variety. Sacrifice other people's lives and limbs in the wars I want our country to fight. But not me. I have a family. I have a career. I'm better than other people: let them die while I enjoy my life.

This guy's serious. And he's far from alone.

Watch some of his buddies throw a stun grenade at a shepherd for a joke -- and record it on video (WMV: Right-click here and "Save As..."). bob cassiday would be laughing along with them if he were 21, single, childless and jobless. And he's not even smart enough -- or decent enough -- not to say so in a very public place.

On the other hand, some Americans are actual human beings, with brains and hearts, who feel pain and emotions such as empathy, and who believe mass murder and grand theft -- and throwing a stun grenades as a "joke" -- are sins against Almighty God and crimes against humanity, even if the victims live elsewhere; even if the victims live differently.

There will be no unity. There will be no tolerance. There will be no third category.

Are you with us or against us?

Let Them Drink Solvent

At Jadriyah Dry Cleaners in Baghdad, there is a storeroom for clothes left behind by Iraqis who fled the country because of the war.

Faisal Waleed, 32, who runs the store, says that if the owners don't return, he will donate the clothing to the poor.

Marie Antoinette couldn't have found a more appalling "human interest" story.

The number of dry cleaners operating in Baghdad has dwindled since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 because many owners also left Iraq, Waleed says.

For those brave enough to stay, business has been good, in part because of the city's lack of reliable electricity and water service.

But USA TODAY has its quota to fill.

"People cannot wash their clothes at home anymore," Waleed says.

And the weekly does of "good news from Iraq" goes on ...

"Also, people's salaries are better now, so rich people don't want to make themselves tired washing their own clothes."

Confident of his business prospects, Waleed last month left his old job — where he had worked since he was 12 -- to open his own shop on a busy Baghdad street.

He and his business partner invested $50,000 in the new shop, which has seven industrial-size washing machines and dryers, a steam presser and other equipment.
...

"My old boss came here and threatened to kill me for leaving him and taking away his business," Waleed says. "But he was mainly angry because he loves me very much and raised me like a son."

And besides, after 20 years a guy should open up his own shop. Especially if he's only 32.

And if the electricity and water supply aren't so reliable, well then...

Leaving An Entrapment Trail: Evidence Of FBI Agent Provocateur In JFK 'Bomb Plot'

Newsday says: Controversy over informants' roles in JFK probe

WASHINGTON -- He is a twice-convicted drug dealer trying to avoid jail time, according to court papers. At the behest of his police handlers, who tantalized him with the prospect of a commuted sentence, the dealer befriended Russell Defreitas to investigate a tip that Defreitas might be involved in a terror plot against the United States.

The dealer, identified in court papers only as the Source, was so convincing that Defreitas exclaimed that he must have been "sent by Allah" to help blow up the fuel lines at Kennedy Airport, according to the criminal complaint.

By all accounts, the informant gave a masterful performance that appeared to shape the plot's development: After winning the confidence of the 63-year-old Guyanese-born U.S. citizen, the Source repeatedly drove Defreitas, who had no car or money, to conduct airport "surveillance," bought plane tickets for the two of them, as well as a third man, to fly to Trinidad last month, and trumpeted his jihadist sympathies, declaring that the greatest way for a Muslim to die was as a martyr, say court papers.

All the time, he was wearing a wire and was being paid by the government.

It seems to me I've heard that song before; it's from an old familiar score...

Some Guyanese Muslims became concerned, for instance, when the informant demanded to be taken to al-Qaida operative Adnan El Shukrijumah, who holds a Guyanese passport and is on the FBI's most-wanted list. "I don't know how to take you to him, I don't even know the man, and why would I want to get involved with a terrorist?" one man told the informant, according to a source.

So there you have it! They're all guilty!! Lock 'em up and throw away the key.

Waddaya mean, "due process"? They're Muslims, aren't they?

And in any case, due process is dead. Chris Floyd:

This is a pattern that we've seen over and over with Bush's Terror War captives. Innocent people are seized -- or bought -- by American security forces, who then attempt to force the captive to become an informant. Those who refuse are then plunged into the bowels of Bush's torture-and-terror apparatus. It is a crude, brutal, indeed Stalinist way of trying to create an intelligence network on the fly, and on the cheap.

It creates a network but it doesn't provide any intelligence. But then again, who needs intelligence when the policy is already decided?

Dear Alaska: Meet Mike Gravel

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:

Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska opened his campaign for president more than a year ago at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. It was the real deal, complete with supporters, reporters and television cameras.

His odds of success, he knew at the time, were long.

“Who knows, the American people are so fed up with dysfunctional government that anything is possible today,” he said then.

Not much has changed, but Mike Gravel plods along at the back of the pack, ever the determined Alaskan. He gets a few drops of ink here and there in the press and a few moments of air time. He continues on, however, using the platform of a presidential campaign to get attention — albeit quite limited — for the things he believes in.

It’s been a long time since Mr. Gravel served in the Senate — nearly a generation. He served from 1969 to 1980, when he lost in the Democratic primary. Republican Frank Murkowski went on to claim the seat in that year’s general election.

The passage of so much time makes it fairly likely that Alaskans probably know as little about their former senator as the rest of the nation does. So here are few clues, taken from some of the recent accounts of Sunday’s Democratic presidential candidates debate in New Hampshire:

* “Two long shot hopefuls — former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich — denounced what they called the lack of leadership by congressional Democrats after voters returned them to power last November.”

* “At the conclusion of the two-hour debate, the candidates were asked what their top priority would be for their first 100 days in office: … Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel: Remind congressional leaders they can end the war in Iraq now.”

* “To a question on whether English should be the official language in the United States, only former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel raised his hand in the affirmative.”

* “Asked what role former President Clinton would play in a new Democratic White House: … Gravel said he would use him as a traveling goodwill ambassador. ‘He can take his wife with him, she’ll still be in the Senate.’”

He may not have the votes, but at least he has a sense of humor.

And it's not only his sense of humor that sets him apart; it's also his deep reverence for human life -- even if the humans look a bit different!

What a remarkable departure from contemporary American politics.

Have a good look, Alaska. This may be your last chance.

Impeach Dick Cheney Yesterday!

Dennis Kucinich now has support from six other Representatives for his impeachment effort against Dick Cheney, so the momentum is growing. And you can help.

Click here to vote in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll.

The one click form on this page will send your personal message to all your members of Congress, with your vote on the the question "Should Vice President Cheney be impeached?" At the same time it will send your personal comments only as a letter to the editor of your nearest local daily newspaper, if that option is selected below.

You might not get rich doing this, but it sure looks like fun!

Tom Toles: More Like The US

Oversight Or Pretense? Democrats Threaten To Subpoena NSA Wiretap Documents From DoJ

What do you make of this? If I tell you what I make of it, will you promise to be surprised?

Democrats May Subpoena N.S.A. Documents

According to James Risen in the June 8, 2007 New York Times:

WASHINGTON, June 7 — Senior House Democrats threatened Thursday to issue subpoenas to obtain secret legal opinions and other documents from the Justice Department related to the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program.

If the Democrats take that step, it would mark the most aggressive action yet by Congress in its oversight of the wiretapping program and could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers.

Well that appears to settle it, then. Democrats shy away from Constitutional showdowns. They prefer to cooperate with anti-constitutional legislation.

The subpoena threat came after a senior Justice Department official told a House judiciary subcommittee on Thursday that the department would not turn over the documents because of their confidential nature. But the official, Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, did not assert executive privilege during the hearing.

The confidential nature of the documents is the very reason they were requested; is it ironic that this is the reason being given for not releasing them? Not in Bushzarro world, where irony -- like truth and justice -- is dead!

The potential confrontation over the documents comes in the wake of gripping Senate testimony last month by a former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey, who described a confrontation in March 2004 between Justice Department and White House officials over the wiretapping program that took place in the hospital room of John Ashcroft, then attorney general. Mr. Comey’s testimony, disclosing the sharp disagreements in the Bush administration over the legality of some N.S.A. activities, has increased Congressional interest in scrutinizing the program.

At the same time, the Bush administration is seeking new legislation to expand its wiretapping powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have argued that they do not want to vote on the issue without first seeing the administration’s legal opinions on the wiretapping program.

For more on this aspect of the story, see Chris Floyd's excellent post, "The Powerful Odor of Mendacity: From Wiretaps to War", from whence I have pinched the photo by James Bovard which you see above.

James Risen continues:

“How can we begin to consider FISA legislation when we don’t know what they are doing?” asked Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, who heads the subcommittee.

Well, you can't, and that's the way [uh huh, uh huh] Bush likes it [uh huh, uh huh]. What else is new?

On May 17, after Mr. Comey’s testimony, Mr. Nadler and Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, who is the chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales requesting copies of Justice Department legal opinions used to support the N.S.A. wiretapping program, as well as later documents written by top Justice Department officials that raised questions about the program’s legality in 2004. The letter also asked Mr. Gonzales to provide his own description of the 2004 confrontation.

Mr. Conyers said he had not received a response from the Justice Department. “We’re going to give him two more weeks, and then, as somebody said, it’s about time process kicks in somewhere around here,” Mr. Conyers said.

The time for "process" to "kick in" is long since past, is it not?

In an interview after the subcommittee hearing on Thursday, Mr. Bradbury said his refusal to provide the documents was not the final word from the Justice Department on the matter.

But Mr. Nadler made it clear that he did not expect the administration to comply and said he thought he would soon have to push for subpoenas.

I don't expect them to comply either, even if the documents are subpoenaed, but then again I don't expect the Democrats to support a push for subpoenas. Too dangerous! Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!

In January, the Bush administration announced that it was placing the program under FISA, meaning that it would no longer conduct domestic wiretapping operations without seeking court approval, and officials said they were ending eavesdropping without warrants.

But nobody believed them then.

Since then, the White House has said that the debate over the program is moot because it has been brought under court supervision, and the Democrats, focused on Iraq war policy, had done little to challenge such assertions. Mr. Bradbury even said Thursday that the N.S.A. program was “no longer operational.”

And nobody believes them now either, except for a few wingnuts.

Meanwhile, are the Democrats simply perfecting their faux-oversight routines, or are they actually going to pretend to do something this time?

You can call me jaded if you like, but if any good comes of any of this, I'll give you a nickel!

Thousands Of Pakistanis Protest Media Restrictions

Despite the pre-emptive arrests of hundreds of Pakistani political activists, the protests planned for Thursday drew thousands of people, nearly half of them lawyers, as Pakistan's Dawn reports:

Thousands protest Pakistan media curbs

LAHORE, Pakistan, June 7 (AFP) - More than 6,000 Pakistani lawyers and opposition activists protested Thursday against tough media curbs imposed by President Pervez Musharraf amid a tense judicial crisis.

Demonstrators chanted “Go, Musharraf, go” in Lahore and other key cities.

Lawyers burned copies of the new rules in Lahore, while political workers carried pictures of former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif as well as cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. Officials said around 2,000 lawyers and 3,000 other people turned out in the city.

Police laid barbed wire coils across a main road to keep them away from a provincial governor's residence.

“We express solidarity with media men and condemn the new rules,” Liaquat Baloch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami party, told the rally.

In the southwestern city of Quetta around 100 journalists wearing black armbands walked out of the provincial assembly and joined another 1,000 lawyers, labour unions and opposition members of parliament.

Another 500 media workers and opposition supporters marched in the northwestern city of Peshawar, witnesses said.

European Union and European Commission ambassadors to Islamabad said in a statement Thursday they were concerned about recent developments in Pakistan.

They said they were “concerned by recent setbacks with regard to media freedom, in particular reports about blocked transmissions of licenced cable TV stations and about cases of intimidation of journalists.

“Those developments are of particular concern in view of the upcoming election process.”

New York-based group Human Rights Watch urged military ruler Musharraf to lift the restrictions in a statement Wednesday, denouncing the move as a disgraceful assault on press freedom.

As is my cold custom, I have added a bit of space and a bit of emphasis to this and other quoted passages.

The unrest in Pakistan has multiple causes and has been brewing for a long time, but it was triggered by the sacking three months ago of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the country's Chief Justice, whose status is now described as "suspended".

For those not familiar with the case (and at the risk of quoting my frozen self), here's the gist of a piece I wrote about it in March:

On March 9, the General-President dismissed the nation's Chief Justice, on charges of "misconduct" and "misuse of office."

Why? [...] the General-President needs a pliant [judiciary] since he is planning to stage-manage his reelection for another five-year term, and he also wants to retain the top military rank indefinitely, both in flagrant violation of the country’s constitution.

How flagrant? The country's lawyers staged a virtually unanimous protest, but they were shut down by the police. Now, as unrest spreads throughout the country, the suddenly former Chief Justice says he's innocent and wants an open trial, whereas the General-President is asking him not to turn it into "a political issue".

Does this matter halfway around the world? Think nuclear weapons, a rogue intelligence agency, extensive terrorist connections (even within the government), intense animosity toward other countries (including USA) and anger over the GWOT ... Throw in a suddenly unstable government, and what have you got? Better not to think about that one, eh what?

Have no fear; the wheels of stability are turning quickly. The General-President has met with his legal experts [...] as for the main point at issue, whether he will be allowed to rig the upcoming election as a General as well as incumbent President, the General-President says he'll settle this himself.

Sure, he will. I'm sure he will settle everything!

Carlotta Gall is apparently thinking the same thing, for her most recent report, in the International Herald Tribune, starts this way:

Thousands of lawyers and supporters of political parties demonstrated peacefully against government curbs on the news media on Thursday, as senior military and intelligence officials presented affidavits to the Supreme Court in the case against the country's suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The political crisis stirred up by the suspension of Chaudhry in March is showing no signs of abating. Diplomats and journalists reported that General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, and his immediate circle are showing signs of despondency, even dismay.

... and ends like this:

General Musharraf showed exasperation at a meeting Wednesday with senior members of the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, according to the Pakistani daily newspaper The News. It described the president as looking shaken and telling an audience of 150 members of parliament, ministers and senators: "I feel disturbed for the first time."

The president berated members of his party for not offering him more public support, the paper reported. "I see the party nowhere," he was quoted as saying. "You are not mobilized. You are not delivering. You have lost the war of nerves. You are all silent upon what the media is doing. If I myself have to do everything, then you are for what purpose?" He urged his party to go on a public opinion offensive and to take on the opposition on every issue.

Many members of the ruling party have been trying to distance themselves from the most controversial of General Musharraf's recent actions, in particular those against the chief justice and the news media, which they regard as politically damaging.

For many more details see the rest of Carlotta Gall's report, possibly followed by this from The News, and either or both of these two reports from Dawn.

NH Dem Insider: 'Networks Should Dis-Invite Gravel'

Former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan says that for future debates, "the networks should politely dis-invite Mr. Gravel."

"He just detracts from the time from the other candidates," Sullivan said. "He's not a serious candidate."

Which debate was Kathy Sullivan watching? And who the MF is she to tell us that Mike Gravel isn't serious?

He's the most serious of the bunch, Kathy. Not nearly serious enough for me, but a damn sight more serious than any of the others.

Mike Gravel speaks for the majority of Democrats -- and the majority of Americans -- on the most important issue anyone ever gets to talk about on television.

His position on Iraq -- "Get out now, or go to prison" -- makes perfect sense. Likewise his contention that anyone who voted for the war is unfit for the presidency. If there's any reason to dis-invite Mike Gravel, it's because he has an affinity for human life.

But of course Kathy Sullivan can't say that. And neither can any of the other party hacks -- from either party.

They would rather be complicit in ongoing mass murder than part of the solution.

Guillotines are far too good for these people.

When You Can't Win With Loaded Dice ...

The New York Times editorializes ...

Gitmo: A National Disgrace

Ever since President Bush rammed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 through Congress to lend a pretense of legality to his detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, we have urged Congress to amend the law to restore basic human rights and judicial process. Rulings by military judges this week suggest that the special detention system is so fundamentally corrupt that the only solution is to tear it down and start again.

The target of the judges’ rulings were Combatant Status Review Tribunals, panels that determine whether a prisoner is an “unlawful enemy combatant” who can be tried by one of the commissions created by the 2006 law. The tribunals are, in fact, kangaroo courts that give the inmates no chance to defend themselves, allow evidence that was obtained through torture and can be repeated until one produces the answer the Pentagon wants.

On Monday, two military judges dismissed separate war crimes charges against two Guantánamo inmates because of the status review system. They said the Pentagon managed to get them declared “enemy combatants,” but not “unlawful enemy combatants,” and moved to try them anyway under the 2006 law. That law says only unlawful combatants may be tried by military commissions. Lawful combatants (those who wear uniforms and carry weapons openly) fall under the Geneva Conventions.

If the administration loses an appeal, which it certainly should, it will no doubt try to tinker with the review tribunals so they produce the desired verdict. Congress cannot allow that. When you can’t win a bet with loaded dice, something is wrong with the game.

And so on.

Forgive me, but isn't the NYT also a part of the problem?

Working For The (Pakistani) Clampdown: More Than 300 Activists Arrested, New Media Rules In Effect

Pakistan Arrests 300 Workers From Opposition

According to Carlotta Gall in the New York Times (with emphasis added):

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 6 — The police have arrested more than 300 political party workers over the past few days in a crackdown before a protest planned this week against new government curbs on the news media, a government official acknowledged Wednesday.
...

Opposition legislators protested the arrests at the opening of a new session of the national Parliament, which had been on a three-week recess, but they were refused time by the speaker. Journalists covering Parliament staged a rowdy protest in the press gallery on Wednesday evening, interrupting the debate on the floor.

The president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, signed a decree on Monday giving a government regulating agency stronger powers over the news media and the ability to rewrite regulations without recourse to Parliament.

The decree added to the pressure on the three main private television channels, which have been told to stop live coverage and live political talk shows. Their transmissions were blocked for several days across much of the country.

Journalists and editors said the government was cracking down to prevent critical coverage of General Musharraf’s suspension of the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and of the violence in Karachi related to his ouster. Forty-eight people were killed there on May 12 as police officers and rangers stood by.

Opposition parties allege that much of the shooting was conducted by the Muttahida Quami Movement, a partner in the governing coalition, and television images backed up their claims. Thousands flocked to rallies on Saturday in the north of Punjab to greet the chief justice.
...

Mr. Fazal Khan, the home secretary, said those seized were detained under a new measure, in force since Friday, that bans gatherings of more than five people. He said the government had to act after journalists had protested Monday and burned copies of the presidential decree.

“The government cannot sit idle after burning of the copies of the reference and other official documents, and holding rallies and public meetings by the opposition parties,” he told the television station.

Oh no! The government should never sit idle, especially in the face of rallies and public meetings. Who do those people think they are?

You can click here to read more from Carlotta Gall on the very volatile Pakistan.

As for me, the more I read and write about Pakistan, the more I see it as both an IED waiting to detonate, and also -- even more ominously -- as the shape of things to come ... here ... soon.

Of course there are differences. For instance, we don't have anybody like Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Tom Toles: Hoping For A Good Outcome

How CNN Sk(r)ewed The NH Debates

Over at Chris Dodd dot Com they've been tracking the amount of time allocated to each of the speakers during the most recent debates and the results are almost exactly what you'd expect if you figured the production was sk(r)ewed in favor of certain (read: pro-war) candidates.

Lookee here:


The top four in the Donkey debate were Obama (16 minutes), Clinton (14:26), Blitzer (13:24) and Edwards (11:42), followed by Richardson (10:48), Kucinich (9:02), Dodd (8:28), Biden (7:58) and Gravel (5:37).


In the Elephant debate, the lion's share of the clock went to Blitzer (19:34), McCain (12:44), Giuliani (12:35) and Romney (11:04), followed by Brownback (7:12), Hunter (7:14), Huckabee (6:48), Glimore (5:59), Paul (5:51), Tancredo (5:43) and Thompson (4:21).

The first surprise: Dennis Kucinich ahead of both Chris Dodd and Joe Biden. Is Joltin' Joe sinking that fast? Hard to believe ...

The second surprise: Ron Paul ahead of two -- count 'em -- two other Elephants!

The third surprise: Fred Thompson got even less time than Mike Gravel. But then again he doesn't need any, since middle America plans to watch Law & Order reruns forever anyway.

And now ... drum roll ... the obvious conclusion: Wolf Blitzer for President!!

Don't you think?

VIDEO: The Military Industrial Media Complex Vs The American People

Why weren't they making videos like this when I was a kid?

In a world of complete corruption ... there is a machine.

It is known as the Military Industrial Complex.

Is the combination of the U.S. Armed Forces, the arms industry and associated political and commercial interests.

It refers to the iron triangle which exists between weapons makers/military contractors, the Pentagon and Congress.

It was first exposed by President Eisenhower, in his last address to the American people.

If you think Iraq was the result of our government trying to prevent another 9/11 ...

THINK AGAIN!

I wish we all knew back then what we wish we didn't know now.

It could have saved us all a lot of grief.

Context Is Everything -- And Here's A Bit More

Imagine growing up in a family where every day, father raped daughter, mother tortured son, brother abused brother, sister stole from sister, and the whole family murdered neighbors, friends and passing strangers. Imagine the underlying assumptions about life that you would adopt without question in such an atmosphere, how normal the most hideous depravity would seem. If some outsider chanced to ask you about your family's latest activities, you would spew out perversions as calmly and unthinkingly as a man giving directions to the post office.

This state of unwitting confession to monstrous crime has been the default mode of the American Establishment for many years now. Government officials routinely detail policies that in a healthy atmosphere would shake the nation to its core, stand out like a gaping wound, a rank betrayal of every hope, ideal and sacrifice of generations past. Yet in the degraded sensibility of these times, such confessions go unnoticed, their evil unrecognized – or even lauded as savvy ploys or noble endeavors. Inured to moral horror by half a century of outrages committed by the "National Security" complex, the Establishment – along with the media and vast swathes of the population – can no longer discern the poison in the air they breathe. It just seems normal.

Thus wrote Chris Floyd, in April of 2006.

And so it was again this week when the Washington Post outlined the Pentagon's plan to put dirty war -- by death squad, by snatch squad, by secret armies, subversion, torture and terrorism -- at the very heart of America's military philosophy. Not defense against declared enemies, not deterrence of potential foes, but conducting "continuous" covert military operations in countries "where the United States is not at war" is now the Pentagon's "highest priority," according to the new "campaign plan for the global war on terror" issued by Donald Rumsfeld.

What’s more, the plan makes it clear that Rumsfeld, far from being politically vulnerable – as portrayed in the ludicrous kabuki of the Establishment media – has in fact been exalted above every other institution and official of the U.S. government, with the exception of the twin tyrants in the White House, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The Pentagon warlord has been given carte blanche to send the 53,000 secret soldiers of the Special Operations Command into any nation he pleases, to undertake any mission he pleases, without Congressional approval, legal restraint, or the authority of the target nation's U.S. ambassador. Thus America's diplomats, the ostensible representatives of the nation abroad, have been reduced to mere frontmen, pathetic beards for black ops savaging the laws, sovereignty and citizens of their hosts.

In light of the recent revelations about the war in Iran, and considering how we got here, I can't help but wonder:

If the Pentagon's "highest priority" is conducting "continuous" covert military operations in countries "where the United States is not at war", then what's to prevent them from doing the same thing here?

Or what's to say they haven't been doing the same thing here for a long time?

In other words, how is it possible to believe (as some people apparently still do believe) that the architects of this policy could not possibly have had a hand in 9/11?

Tom Toles: Bark Bark Bark

Escalation: Secret War Against Iran Now Raging On Three Fronts

[Updated below]

Larisa Alexandrovna's most recent piece for Raw Story contains three connected stories, all on the same general theme, and it's a bit difficult to say which is the most important -- not only for me but apparently for the Raw Story editorial crew as well. This last bit is pure speculation on my part, but it would explain why the headline says "CIA running black propaganda operation against Iran, Syria and Lebanon, officials say" while the sub-head reads "Some intelligence sources more wary of covert Pentagon operations".

On the "covert terror ops being run from the Pentagon" angle, Larisa writes:

The Pentagon is continuing to conduct more aggressive “black” operations, approved by the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President.

Current and former intelligence officials would not identify new specific covert programs running out of the Pentagon, though sources stressed these are far riskier and more truly covert operational activities against Iran than the activities of the CIA.

These operations started almost immediately after the Iraq war and have continued for several years. Because they can be considered part of a military operation, they are not subjects to the same requirements for Congressional authorization as the activities of the CIA.

The majority of these efforts to destabilize Iran through a covert war of aggression have been carried out by the Department of Defense, largely steered by the Office of the Vice President and by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Formerly known as the "crazies in the basement", these career prevaricators are still crazy ... but they have much nicer offices than they once did.

These activities have often been guided by the same individuals whose actions during Iran-Contra were the reason for a 1991 law on covert activities which for the first time clearly defined covert activities and how their oversight should be handled.

During Iran-Contra, the Reagan White House -– via the National Security Council -– sold weapons to Iran, an avowed enemy of the United States, and used the money to fund various terrorist and dissident groups, collectively called the Contras, to fight a proxy war against the government of Nicaragua.

Sources say that MEK has been used for intelligence collection, an activity which has traditionally fallen under the CIA. The administration also appears to be looking the other way as groups such as MEK commit acts of violence.

Intelligence sources interviewed for this article all expressed concern over the lack of attention to the Pentagon’s covert activities. Some believe illegal activities like those of the Iran-Contra days are now being hidden under the loophole of “traditional military activities” to avoid Congressional oversight.

Ain't that a good one? Congress has oversight privileges over the CIA but not over the Pentagon, so now they're running the most violent black ops out of the Pentagon in order to hide them from Congress -- and from us! And the Vice President, whose job technically consists of casting the deciding vote in the event of a tie in the Senate, is running covert terror ops in foreign countries! Wonderful stuff! It makes a fellow proud to be a Merkin!

On the black propaganda front, there's not much detail to be had, but here's some of it:

Iran is being targeted by the CIA's activities with a “pro-democracy” message, sources say, and the agency is supporting overt “pro-democracy” groups.

The program’s particulars are highly classified. Intelligence sources stress, however, that the groups being used are rather mainstream and the operations are almost entirely restricted to information warfare.

Sources would not identify what mechanism was being employed to distribute the propaganda, if it included news media, individuals or organizations, or whether that information was seeping back into domestic news reports.

One former intelligence case officer did explain that the CIA's program is operating largely outside of the Middle East and is aimed at identifying potential allies, as well as using already existing well known groups through whom information can be delivered. The type of “information” and the “groups” and “organizations” involved were not identified.

The third story involves clandestine and overt economic warfare being waged against Iran. Briefly:

The CIA “has been empowered to put economic pressure on Iran,” [a] former intelligence officer stated, but would not elaborate on what the meaning of “pressure” is.
...

Foreign intelligence sources say that economic pressure is aimed at Iran's oil-rich economy, with US efforts serving to “persuade” financial institutions, oil companies, and international investment interests to pull out of Iran and even drop already existing energy projects.

These sources cite the example of an unnamed company that is being denied financing for energy projects inside Iran by international banks, indicating that many more such examples exist.

Other possible forms of pressure would include less subtle activities, such as intercepting supply convoys and confiscating equipment.

And the crux of the matter is this: the USA is now waging a three-pronged mostly-covert war against Iran, none of which we are supposed to know about.

So move along, please ... quietly, now ... straight over to Raw Story for all the details!

UPDATE: Larisa spoke with Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio earlier today, and you can listen here.

Dem NH Debate: Kucinich 'Draws Blood', 'Horrifies Liberals Everywhere'

A short and very pointed excerpt from David Vest's "The Democrats' War", via Counterpunch:

John Edwards poked from third place in the polls at Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama early on, without getting much of a rise. Sen. Joe Biden rarely deviated from an everybody-else-is-an-idiot tone of near-psychopathic rage, but Mike Gravel kept his anger -- if not his scathing wit -- pretty much in check.

Sen. Christopher Dodd and Gov. Bill Richardson both presented themselves as serious people who have been in government forever, and intend to stay there, with Dodd winning the boilerplate trophy by a narrow margin.

The only candidate to draw real blood in the debate was Kucinich, who horrified liberals everywhere by saying that Iraq is now "the Democrats' war."

A blog called Digby's Hullabaloo quickly accused Kucinich of "undermining the single most important rationale for a Democratic president, which is that the Republicans are responsible for the mess in Iraq," adding that "it takes almost nothing to gain currency in the MSM and that particular notion is a very dangerous one."

You bet it is.

The very real danger is that the top Democrats will be caught in a withering crossfire, with Republicans accusing them of wanting to "cut and run" from Iraq, and the rest of America saying, "if only they would!"

Mike Gravel underscored the risk by pointing out that most of the people onstage with him were "part of the leadership right now in the Congress, and could end the war if they want to."

If Kucinich and Gravel aren't included in future debates, look no further for the reason.

Pakistan: Politics Growing Ever More Volatile As Former Prime Minister Looks For An Opening

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is considering a return to Pakistani politics, according to the intrepid Carlotta Gall, who reports from Pakistan and Afghanistan for the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Exiled leader considers political return to Pakistan

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is roiling Pakistani politics by talking of a power-sharing deal with President Pervez Musharraf and by saying in an interview that she might return to Pakistan before the end of the year.

Threatened with arrest, dogged by corruption charges, Bhutto has sat out the last eight years in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai, while still leading what is arguably the country's largest party with nationwide support, the Pakistan People's Party.

If you think American politics is difficult, you should see what goes on in Pakistan, where the overall situation is in many ways much more volatile.

In that time, she has seen Musharraf, her former chief of military operations, seize power in a coup. She has watched the political turmoil build here as Pakistanis grow restless under military rule, galvanized most recently by Musharraf's ouster of the Supreme Court's chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Members of her party were heavily represented in the outpouring of support for Chaudhry at a rally Saturday, a peaceful rally just weeks after more than 40 people were killed in Karachi in clashes related to his ouster.

As we have been discussing (here for instance), President General Musharraf is obligated by Pakistani law to call an election before the end of the year, and he is forbidden to stand for re-election as a military officer. It is widely believed that the President General sacked the chief justice because he was determined to uphold this particular law. To my nearly frozen way of thinking, this explanation makes more sense as "the last straw" rather than "the single reason", but I digress. In any case, popular support for Mr. Chaudhry has been strong, and visible, and growing. And Carlotta Gall has been very busy: here's her report on Saturday's rally: