Bush Re-writes History, Again!

Here's the thing about this:

There is a definite pattern of behavior on the part of the Bush administration from, at least, the first days of the "Iraq war roll-out." It is a pattern of out-right lies, exaggerations, constant re-writes of history, refusal to answer questions by members of Congress and/or refusal to submit to over-sight, and therefore, to be accountable to the American people. (We are not forgetting GOP congressional complicity, either.)

Actually, come to think of it, the pattern of lying and stone-walling began with 9/11.

Now, they are doing it again. They are re-writing history; creating a false flow of events, trying to make their "surge" seem more reasonable to unsuspecting Americans, who haven't been paying close attention to time frames.

How many more times will Congress allow this behavior?

I wouldn't put up with it from a 5 year old!

WASHIGNTON : President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.

President Bush unveiled the new version on Wednesday during his nationally televised speech announcing his new Iraq policy.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had
cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation," he said. "We thought
that these elections would bring Iraqis together - and that as we trained Iraqi
security forces, we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

"But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq -
particularly in Baghdad - overwhelmed the political gains Iraqis had made.
Al-Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that
Iraq's election posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts
of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. "They blew up one of the holiest shrines in
Shia Islam - the Golden Mosque of Samarra - in a calculated effort to provoke
Iraq's Shia population to retaliate.

"Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran,
formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence
that continues today."

That version of events helps to justify Bush's "new way forward" in Iraq, in which U.S. forces will largely target Sunni insurgents and leave it to Iraq's U.S.-backed Shiite government to - perhaps - disarm its allies in Shiite militias and death squads. But the president's account understates by at least 15 months when Shiite death squads began targeting Sunni politicians and clerics. It also ignores the role that Iranian-backed Shiite groups had in death squad activities prior to the Samarra bombing.

Blaming the start of sectarian violence in Iraq on the Golden Dome bombing risks policy errors because it underestimates the depth of sectarian hatred in Iraq and overlooks the conflict's root causes.

The Bush account also fails to acknowledge that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups stoked the conflict. Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley used the same version of events in an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Much like the administration's pre-war claims about Saddam's alleged ties to al-Qaida and purported nuclear weapons program, the claims about the bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra ignore inconvenient facts and highlight questionable but politically useful assumptions.

No one disagrees that the February bombing of the Golden Dome shrine was a pivotal moment. In the days following the attack, armed Shiites stormed Sunni mosques and neighborhoods, killing hundreds. Baghdad's Sunni residents responded by arming themselves, and Sunni insurgents set off car bombs in Shiite neighborhoods. By October, the monthly death toll was reaching into the thousands. U.S. diplomats, reporters and military and intelligence officers began reporting that Shiite death squads were targeting Sunni clerics and former officials of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime at least 15 months before the Samarra bombing.

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell urged a U.S. offensive against radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in 2004. But he was overruled by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. They argued against fighting a two-front war against Sunni insurgents and Shiite militants.

The concerns about Shiite militias grew after the Jan. 30, 2005, elections that brought the Shiite-led government of then-Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to power. Journalists in Iraq, the CIA station, the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. military all reported throughout 2005 that evidence was mounting that Jaafari's government was incorporating Shiite militias and death squads into the Iraqi army and police. A year before the Samarra bombing, Hannah Allam, writing for what was then Knight Ridder Newspapers, reported that Iraq could be headed toward civil war. Knight Ridder was purchased by The McClatchy Co. last June.

"Shiite Muslim assassins are killing former members of Saddam Hussein's mostly Sunni Muslim regime with impunity in a wave of violence that, combined with the ongoing Sunni insurgency, threatens to escalate into civil war," Allam, then the news organization's Baghdad bureau chief, wrote on Feb. 27, 2005. "The war between Shiite vigilantes and former Baath Party members is seldom investigated and largely overshadowed by the insurgency." She added, "Iraq's new Shiite leaders have little interest in prosecuting those who kill their former oppressors or their enemies in the insurgency."

The story quoted the then-spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Sabah Kadhim: "It's the beginning, and we could go down the slippery slope very quickly. ... Both sides are sharpening their knives."

By the summer, the tortured bodies of kidnapped Sunni clerics had begun turning up regularly on Baghdad's streets, and on Aug. 10, 2005, Knight Ridder correspondent Tom Lasseter wrote: "A militant Shiite Muslim group with close ties to Iran has gained enormous power since Iraq's January elections and now is accused of conducting a terror campaign against Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority that includes kidnappings, threats and murders." Lasseter identified the group as the Badr Organization and reported that Iraq's interior minister was associated with it.

On Nov. 15, 2005, U.S. troops raided an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad and found 169 malnourished prisoners, many of whom had been tortured. The vast majority of the victims, if not all of them, were Sunnis.

By December, Badr's involvement in death squads was widely known. "The Iranian-backed militia the Badr Organization has taken over many of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's intelligence activities and infiltrated its elite commando units," Lasseter wrote, on Dec. 12, 2005, citing U.S. and Iraqi officials. "That's enabled the Shiite Muslim militia to use Interior Ministry vehicles and equipment - much of it bought with American money - to carry out revenge attacks against the minority Sunni Muslims, who persecuted the Shiites under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein," he added.

Beginning in 2002, the administration's case for a pre-emptive war in Iraq was plagued by similar oversights, oversimplifications, misjudgments and misinformation. Unlike the administration's claims about the Samarra bombing, however, much of that information was peddled by Iraqi exiles and defectors and accepted by some eager officials and journalists.

The best known of those pre-war claims was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program - Bush's primary stated reason for invading Iraq. Administration officials and their allies also claimed that Saddam had trained terrorists to hijack airplanes; that a Saddam emissary had met with lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta in Prague; that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes that could be used only to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons; that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from the African country of Niger; that Iraqis would greet American troops as liberators; and that Iraqi oil revenues would cover most of the cost of the war.

The administration has continued to offer inaccurate information to Congress, the American people and sometimes to itself.

The Iraq Study Group, in its December report, concluded, for example, that the U.S. military was systematically under-reporting the violence in Iraq in an effort to disguise policy failings. The group recommended that the military change its reporting system.

Whether many of the administration's statements about Iraq for nearly five years have been deliberately misleading or honest but gullible mistakes hasn't been determined. The Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to complete an investigation into the issue that was begun but stalled when Republicans controlled the committee.

On Thursday, frustration over the accuracy of administration statements on Iraq boiled over during Rice's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Madam Secretary," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., "I have supported you and the administration on the war, and I cannot continue to support the administration's position. I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth."

Frank Rich: He's In The Bunker Now

Who is in and who is out?

I doubt the best disaster-movie, screen writer could have come up with anything this horrendous than this mess.

Here is what I still don't get. Why did Republicans wait until Democrats had control before they had a fit, over what they had to have known last year?

How can any of them be trusted, now. They have let this idiot run amok for years. Suddenly it has dawned on them just how serious this is?

WTF?

President Bush always had one asset he could fall back on: the self-confidence of a born salesman. Like Harold Hill in “The Music Man,” he knew how to roll out a new product, however deceptive or useless, with conviction and stagecraft.

What the world saw on Wednesday night was a defeated Willy Loman who looked as broken as his war. His flop sweat was palpable even if you turned down the sound to deflect despair-inducing phrases like “Prime Minister Maliki has pledged ...” and “Secretary Rice will leave for the region. ...”Mr. Bush seemed to know his product was snake oil, and his White House handlers did too. In the past, they made a fetish of situating their star in telegenic settings, from aircraft carriers to Ellis Island. Or they placed him against Orwellian backdrops shrieking “Plan for Victory." But this time even the audio stuttered, as if in solidarity with Baghdad’s continuing electricity blackout, and the Oval Office was ditched, lest it summon up memories of all those past presidential sightings of light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel.

Mr. Bush was banished to the White House library, where the backdrop was acres of books, to signify the studiousness of his rethinking of the “way forward.”"I’m not going to be rushed," the president said a month ago when talking about his many policy consultations. He wasn’t kidding.

His ostentatious deep thinking started after Election Day, once he realized that firing Donald Rumsfeld wouldn’t be enough to co-opt the Iraq Study Group. He was thinking so hard that he abandoned his initial plan to announce a strategy before Christmas .

The war, however, refused to take a timeout for the holiday festivities in Crawford. The American death toll in Iraq, which hovered around 2,840 on Election Day, was nearing 3,020 by Wednesday night.

And these additional lives were sacrificed to what end?

All the reviews and thinking and postponing produced a policy that, as a former top Bush aide summed it up for The Daily News, is nothing more than "repackaged stay-the-course dressed up to make it look more palatable."

The repackaging was half-hearted as well. Not for nothing did the “way forward,” a rubric the president used at least 27 times in December, end up on the cutting-room floor. The tossing of new American troops into Baghdad, a ploy that backfired in Operation Together Forward last year, is too transparently the way backward.“Victory” also received short shrift, downsized by the president to the paltry goal of getting “closer to success.” The “benchmarks” he cited were so vague that they’d be a disgrace to No Child Left Behind. And no wonder: in November, Mr. Bush couldn’t even get our devoted ally, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, to show up for dinner at their summit in Amman, let alone induce him to root out Shiite militias. The most muscle the former Mr. Bring-’Em-On could muster in Wednesday’s speech was this: “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people.”

Since that support vanished long ago, it’s hard to imagine an emptier threat or a more naked confession of American impotence, all the more pathetic in a speech rattling sabers against Syria and Iran.Mr. Bush’s own support from the American people is not coming back. His “new” Iraq policy is also in defiance of Iraqi public opinion , the Joint Chiefs, the Baker-Hamilton grandees, and Mr. Maliki, who six weeks ago asked for a lower American profile in Iraq.

Which leaves you wondering exactly who is still in the bunker with the president besides the first lady and Barney.

It’s a very short list led by John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and neo-conservative dead-enders like William Kristol and Frederick Kagan, who congregate at The Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington think tank. The one notable new recruit is Rudy Giuliani, who likened taming Baghdad to “reducing crime in New York” without noticing that even after the escalation there will be fewer American troops patrolling Baghdad than uniformed police officers in insurgency-free New York City.

Mr. Kagan, a military historian, was sent by the White House to sell its policy to Senate Republicans. It was he, Mr. Kristol and the retired Gen. Jack Keane who have most prominently pushed for this escalation and who published studies and editorials credited with defining it. Given that these unelected hawks are some of the same great thinkers who promoted the Iraq fiasco in the first place, it is hard to imagine why this White House continues to listen to them. Or maybe not that hard.

In a typical op-ed article, headlined “Stay the Course, Mr. President!,” Mr. Kagan wrote in The Los Angeles Times in 2005: "Despite what you may have read, the military situation in Iraq today is positive."

Yet Mr. Bush doesn’t even have the courage of his own disastrous convictions: he’s not properly executing the policy these guys sold him.

In The Washington Post on Dec. 27, Mr. Kagan and General Keane wrote that escalation could only succeed “with a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops” — a figure that has also been cited by Mr. McCain. (Mr. Kagan put the figure at 50,000 to 80,000 in a Weekly Standard article three weeks earlier. Whatever.) By any of these neocons’ standards, the Bush escalation of some 20,000 is too little, not to mention way too late.The discrepancy between the policy that Mr. Bush nominally endorses and the one he actually ordered up crystallizes the cynicism of this entire war. If you really believe, as the president continues to put it, that Iraq is the central front in “the decisive ideological struggle of our time,” then you should be in favor of having many more troops than we’ve ever had in Iraq.

As T. X. Hammes, an insurgency expert and a former marine, told USA Today, that doesn’t now mean a “dribble” (as he ridicules the “surge”) but a total of 300,000 armed coalition forces over a minimum of four years.

But that would mean asking Americans for sacrifice, not giving us tax cuts. Mr. Bush has never asked for sacrifice and still doesn’t. If his words sound like bargain-basement Churchill, his actions have been cheaper still. The president’s resolutely undermanned war plan indicated from Day 1 that he knew in his heart of hearts that Iraq was not the central front in the war against 9/11 jihadism he had claimed it to be, only the reckless detour that it actually was. Yet the war’s cheerleaders, neocon and otherwise, disingenuously blamed our low troop strength almost exclusively on Mr. Rumsfeld.

Now that the defense secretary is gone, what are they to do? For whatever reason, you did not hear Mr. Kagan, General Keane or Mr. McCain speak out against Mr. Bush’s plan even though it’s insufficient by their own reckoning — just a repackaged continuance of the same “Whac-A-Mole” half-measures that Mr. McCain has long deplored. Surely the senator knows that, as his loosey-goosey endorsement attests. (On Friday, he called the Bush plan “the best chance of success” while simultaneously going on record that “a small, short surge would be the worst of all worlds.”)

The question now is how to minimize the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered to serve the president’s endgame of passing his defeat on to the next president. The Democrats can have all the hearings they want, but they are unlikely to take draconian action (cutting off funding) that would make them, rather than Mr. Bush, politically vulnerable to blame for losing Iraq.

I have long felt that it will be up to Mr. Bush’s own party to ring down the curtain on his failed policy, and after the 2006 midterms, that is more true than ever. The lame-duck president, having lost both houses of Congress and at least one war (Afghanistan awaits), has nothing left to lose. That is far from true of his party.

Even conservatives like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota started backing away from Iraq last week. Mr. Brownback is running for president in 2008, and Mr. Coleman faces a tough re-election fight. But Republicans not in direct electoral jeopardy (George Voinovich of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) are also starting to waver. It’s another Vietnam-Watergate era flashback. It wasn’t Democrats or the press that forced Richard Nixon’s abdication in 1974; it was dwindling Republican support.

Though he had vowed to fight his way through a Senate trial, Nixon folded once he lost the patriarchal leader of his party’s right wing.

Here comes the police state!

Guess we don't have much left to lose.........

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 — The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.

The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

The military and the C.I.A. have long been restricted in their domestic intelligence operations, and both are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work. The C.I.A.’s role within the United States has been largely limited to recruiting people to spy on foreign countries.

Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said intelligence agencies like the C.I.A. used the letters on only a “limited basis.”

Pentagon officials defended the letters as valuable tools and said they were part of a broader strategy since the Sept. 11 attacks to use more aggressive intelligence-gathering tactics — a priority of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The letters “provide tremendous leads to follow and often with which to corroborate other evidence in the context of counterespionage and counterterrorism,” said Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.
Government lawyers say the legal authority for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. to use national security letters in gathering domestic records dates back nearly three decades and, by their reading, was strengthened by the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

Pentagon officials said they used the letters to follow up on a variety of intelligence tips or leads. While they would not provide details about specific cases, military intelligence officials with knowledge of them said the military had issued the letters to collect financial records regarding a government contractor with unexplained wealth, for example, and a chaplain at Guantánamo Bay erroneously suspected of aiding prisoners at the facility.

Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and have seldom led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.

“We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we’re out of it,” said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.

But even when the initial suspicions are unproven, the documents have intelligence value, military officials say. In the next year, they plan to incorporate the records into a database at the Counterintelligence Field Activity office at the Pentagon to track possible threats against the military, Pentagon officials said. Like others interviewed, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

Military intelligence officers have sent letters in up to 500 investigations over the last five years, two officials estimated. The number of letters is likely to be well into the thousands, the officials said, because a single case often generates letters to multiple financial institutions. For its part, the C.I.A. issues a handful of national security letters each year, agency officials said. Congressional officials said members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been briefed on the use of the letters by the military and the C.I.A.

Some national security experts and civil liberties advocates are troubled by the C.I.A. and military taking on domestic intelligence activities, particularly in light of recent disclosures that the Counterintelligence Field Activity office had maintained files on Iraq war protesters in the United States in violation of the military’s own guidelines. Some experts say the Pentagon has adopted an overly expansive view of its domestic role under the guise of “force protection,” or efforts to guard military installations.

“There’s a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. who is the dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific.
“They’re moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating.”

Similarly, John Radsan, an assistant general counsel at the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2004 and now a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said, “The C.I.A. is not supposed to have any law enforcement powers, or internal security functions, so if they’ve been issuing their own national security letters, they better be able to explain how they don’t cross the line.”

The Pentagon’s expanded intelligence-gathering role, in particular, has created occasional conflicts with other federal agencies. Pentagon efforts to post American military officers at embassies overseas to gather intelligence for counterterrorism operations or future war plans has rankled some State Department and C.I.A. officials, who see the military teams as duplicating and potentially interfering with the intelligence agency.

In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has complained about military officials dealing directly with local police — rather than through the bureau — for assistance in responding to possible terrorist threats against a military base. F.B.I. officials say the threats have often turned out to be uncorroborated and, at times, have stirred needless anxiety.

The military’s frequent use of national security letters has sometimes caused concerns from the businesses receiving them, a counterterrorism official said. Lawyers at financial institutions, which routinely provide records to the F.B.I. in law enforcement investigations, have contacted bureau officials to say they were confused by the scope of the military’s requests and whether they were obligated to turn the records over, the official said.
Companies are not eager to turn over sensitive financial data about customers to the government, the official said, “so the more this is done, and the more poorly it’s done, the more pushback there is for the F.B.I.”

The bureau has frequently relied on the letters in recent years to gather telephone and Internet logs, financial information and other records in terrorism investigations, serving more than 9,000 letters in 2005, according to a Justice Department tally. As an investigative tool, the letters present relatively few hurdles; they can be authorized by supervisors rather than a court. Passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001 lowered the standard for issuing the letters, requiring only that the documents sought be “relevant” to an investigation and allowing records requests for more peripheral figures, not just targets of an inquiry.

Some Democrats have accused the F.B.I. of using the letters for fishing expeditions, and the American Civil Liberties Union won court challenges in two cases, one for library records in Connecticut and the other for Internet records in Manhattan. Concerned about possible abuses, Congress imposed new safeguards in extending the Patriot Act last year, in part by making clear that recipients of national security letters could contact a lawyer and seek court review. Congress also directed the Justice Department inspector general to study the F.B.I.’s use of the letters, a review that is continuing.

Unlike the F.B.I., the military and the C.I.A. do not have wide-ranging authority to seek records on Americans in intelligence investigations. But the expanded use of national security letters has allowed the Pentagon and the intelligence agency to collect records on their own. Sometimes, military or C.I.A. officials work with the F.B.I. to seek records, as occurred with an American translator who had worked for the military in Iraq and was suspected of having ties to insurgents.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Rumsfeld directed military lawyers and intelligence officials to examine their legal authorities to collect intelligence both inside the United States and abroad. They concluded that the Pentagon had “way more” legal tools than it had been using, a senior Defense Department official said.

Military officials say the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, which establishes procedures for government access to sensitive banking data, first authorized them to issue national security letters. The military had used the letters sporadically for years, officials say, but the pace accelerated in late 2001, when lawyers and intelligence officials concluded that the Patriot Act strengthened their ability to use the letters to seek financial records on a voluntary basis and to issue mandatory letters to obtain credit ratings, the officials said.

The Patriot Act does not specifically mention military intelligence or C.I.A. officials in connection with the national security letters.

Some F.B.I. officials said they were surprised by the Pentagon’s interpretation of the law when military officials first informed them of it. “It was a very broad reading of the law,” a former counterterrorism official said.

While the letters typically have been used to trace the financial transactions of military personnel, they also have been used to investigate civilian contractors and people with no military ties who may pose a threat to the military, officials said. Military officials say they regard the letters as one of the least intrusive means to gather evidence. When a full investigation is opened, one official said, it has now become “standard practice” to issue such letters.

One prominent case in which letters were used to obtain financial records, according to two military officials, was that of a Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was suspected in 2003 of aiding terror suspects imprisoned at the facility. The espionage case against the chaplain, James J. Yee, soon collapsed.

Eugene Fidell, a defense lawyer for the former chaplain and a military law expert, said he was unaware that military investigators may have used national security letters to obtain financial information about Mr. Yee, nor was he aware that the military had ever claimed the authority to issue the letters.

Mr. Fidell said he found the practice “disturbing,” in part because the military does not have the same checks and balances when it comes to Americans’ civil rights as does the F.B.I. “Where is the accountability?” he asked. “That’s the evil of it — it doesn’t leave fingerprints.”

Even when a case is closed, military officials said they generally maintain the records for years because they may be relevant to future intelligence inquiries. Officials at the Pentagon’s counterintelligence unit say they plan to incorporate those records into a database, called Portico, on intelligence leads. The financial documents will not be widely disseminated, but limited to investigators, an intelligence official said.

“You don’t want to destroy something only to find out that the same guy comes up in another report and you don’t know that he was investigated before,” the official said.
The Counterintelligence Field Activity office, created in 2002 to better coordinate the military’s efforts to combat foreign intelligence services, has drawn criticism for some domestic intelligence activities.

The agency houses an antiterrorist database of intelligence tips and threat reports, known as Talon, which had been collecting information on antiwar planning meetings at churches, libraries and other locations. The Defense Department has since tightened its procedures for what kind of information is allowed into the Talon database, and the counterintelligence office also purged more than 250 incident reports from the database that officials determined should never have been included because they centered on lawful political protests by people opposed to the war in Iraq.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

The Democratic Arsenal

The Arsenal of Tools Congressional Democrats Can Use To Force the Bush Administration To Cooperate with Their Efforts To Undertake Oversight:
Part Three in a Three-Part Series By JOHN W. DEAN ----

Friday, Jan. 12, 2007

In my last column, I argued that Congress has ample tools to conduct aggressive oversight of the Bush Administration, if it is only courageous enough to use them.

In this column, I will set forth each of those tools - as described in The Congressional Reference Service's (CRS) complete manual on oversight, which was updated recently, and in an excellent essay on these methods by Lou Fisher (one of the authors of the CRS manual), which is entitled "Congressional Access To Information: Using Legislative Will And Leverage."

The Appropriations Power: The "Power of the Purse

Presidents are often willing "to surrender documents they consider sensitive or confidential to obtain funds from Congress to implement programs important to the executive branch," Fisher explains. Congress has used this leverage ever since the presidency of George Washington, when the House wanted documents relating to a treaty, which is, of course, a matter for the Senate, not the House. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson counseled Washington to provide information to both the House and the Senate, given that a House appropriations bill was needed to fund the treaty. Later, as President, Jefferson had no qualms about providing treaty information to the House when he needed its members to fund the Louisiana Purchase.
Fisher offers a few unique examples of early presidents providing information to the House. When the House wanted information about the Jay Treaty in 1796, Alexander Hamilton told President Washington that it need not be provided. Nevertheless, the House got almost everything it wanted.

Congress's funding of the government takes its oversight into every nook and cranny that receives federal funding. Fisher provides several nice contemporary examples of the leverage Congress can exert, based on its appropriations power:
It has long been the practice for presidents to refuse to produce White House staff members as witnesses before Congress. Yet Presidents Ford and Carter permitted their aides running the Office of Policy Development to appear before the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over their office.

Later, during the Reagan Administration, when Martin Anderson took charge of that office, he refused to testify. The House then refused to give him any money. Anderson met "informally" with the subcommittee, and his budget was restored.

The Impeachment Power: Congress' Strongest Weapon

Needless to say, this is heavy ammunition - though ammunition perhaps unlikely to be used by current Democrats, in light of the Clinton impeachment debacle.

Fisher says, "Congress has especially strong leverage when it decides to initiate the impeachment process." President Washington, Fisher notes, was the first to concede this fact, but other presidents, from James Polk to Andrew Jackson have acknowledged the broad reach of an impeachment inquiry.

Fisher also cites a more recent example. Ronald Reagan gave Congress everything it wanted, regarding the Iran-Contra affair. Fisher reports, "Through this cooperation he hoped to derail any movement toward impeachment. Attorney General Edwin Meese, III, thought the Iran-Contra affair had the potential for 'toppling' the president and triggering impeachment proceedings in the House." Cooperation, indeed, did help Reagan survive, but the understanding around Washington has long been that when Reagan agreed to make Senator Howard Baker (R TN) his White House chief of staff, the Congress backed off -- believing Howard Baker would bring experienced supervision to the Reagan White House.

There can be no question that the threat of impeachment has convinced many presidents to provide Congress with information. What happens when a president refuses to cooperate, particularly when an actual impeachment inquiry is underway? The historical example, of course, is Richard Nixon. He stiffed the impeachment investigation, refusing to provide the inquiry with information requested in four subpoenas. The House prepared a bill of impeachment for Nixon's failure to produce the requested information, and Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. Not only was Nixon's gambit of not responding to the subpoenas ineffective, it actually inspired Congress to play hardball and enact a law that simply took Nixon's tapes and papers.

The Confirmation Power

Presidential appointments requiring Senate confirmation have frequently provided Congress with leverage to obtain information from the Executive Branch. Fisher cites, as an example, the nomination of Richard Kleindienst to be attorney general in 1972. At the time of this nomination, muckraking columnist Jack Anderson (correctly) charged that Kleindienst had lied about his role in the settlement of an antitrust case against International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. This prompted the Senate Judiciary Committee to call Peter Flanigan, a Nixon White House aide who had also been involved, as a witness.

Nixon directed his counsel (yours truly) to advise the committee that under "long-established historical precedents," members of the president's immediate staff did not appear to testify before Congress. However, when the Senate Judiciary Committee made clear that without Flanigan's testimony, there would be no confirmation of Kleindienst, Nixon relented.
(As it happened, and as we all learned later, Kleindienst was protecting Nixon, who had ordered him to settle the ITT case, not Flanigan, who was unaware that Nixon had called Kleindienst. While Kleindienst committed perjury before the Senate, he was only charged with making a false statement to Congress, and given a slap on the wrist.)

Fisher notes how other high-profile nominations have resulted in the White House's acceding to requests for information about the nominee. When President Reagan nominated Associate Justice William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice, the Senate Judiciary Committee wanted to look at documents Nixon had denied them when Rehnquist was confirmed as an Associate Justice. Unfortunately, as I have written in The Rehnquist Choice, the Senate did not know what documents to ask for, so when they requested some thirty harmless documents (the titles of which appeared enticing), President Reagan was happy to allow the Senate can send someone from the committee to the Justice Department to read them. Meanwhile, the documents that might have doomed Rehnquist's move to the middle chair remained buried in the Justice Department archives.

However, the demand for documents does not always work. Rehnquist's nomination to become an Associate Justice was not blocked when Nixon refused to provided documents. In some instances, the Bush White House has let nominations such as that of Miguel Estrada, a former Justice Department assistant attorney general, grow stale, rather than producing documents. Estrada eventually requested that his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia be withdrawn.

One of the best leverage tools regarding presidential appointees, as Fisher mentions, is the Senate "hold." There is an informal Senate rule allowing any Senator to request that an action on the floor of the Senate be deferred -- for any reason, and often the Senator placing the "hold" remains secret. The "hold" has been successfully used to force presidents to produce information.

Fisher cites a number of examples -- to which I would add Senator Hillary Clinton's effective use of a "hold" to force the Environmental Protection Agency to give New Yorkers accurate information about the condition of the air in lower Manhattan following 9/11.

Congressional Subpoenas and Contempt Powers

There is nothing subtle about the use of subpoenas, which can be used against Executive Branch officials or private individuals. If the witness claims the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent because of self-incrimination, the Congress can grant the witness either "use" immunity, precluding the use of the witness's testimony or its fruits in a criminal prosecution, or full immunity, which precludes criminal prosecution for stated charges on any evidence, no matter how it is discovered.

The difference between use immunity and full immunity, however, is often immaterial. In high profile cases - such as that of Oliver North, who provided immunized testimony during Iran Contra - it is virtually impossible to prosecute the witness, for the testimony may have influenced potential jurors. Prosecutors, and the Congress, generally understand that the Congress's right to information can preclude the government prosecuting in many situations - though sometimes they do try to indict anyway.

A witness's failure to honor a subpoena can result in a contempt citation by the Congress, and of course, contempt can bring jail time. The mere threat of contempt has been used, on countless occasions, to force a wide array of high-level Executive Branch officials to produce the requested information. No president has yet instructed an officer to defy Congress and go to jail. However, there have been a number of close calls.

Secretary of Commerce Rogers Morton turned over information regarding an Arab boycott of Israel in 1975, rather than be held in contempt. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger avoided contempt when President Ford had a member of his National Security Council provide information Congress wanted. Secretary of Interior James Watt, and Attorney General William Smith, yielded to Congress rather than face contempt. President Reagan's EPA head, Anne Gorsuch Burford, was dangerously close when the House voted, 259-to-105, to hold her in contempt, but Reagan yielded.

Attorney General Dick Thornburgh turned over documents in 1991, rather than risk contempt. White House associate counsel William Kennedy turned over notes regarding President Clinton and the Whitewater Development Corporation, rather than be held in contempt.
The list is long, and I have cited only a few examples, but no tool is more effective than a subpoena, if the House or Senate has the will to enforce it.

Unique House Tools: Resolutions of Inquiry and the "Seven Member Rule"

There are a few tools only the House can use. For example, a House resolution of inquiry makes a direct "request" of a president, or a "demand" of other Executive Branch officials, to produce information. It is a tool that allows any member of the House to seek information.
The resolution is privileged, and if it is not reported back from the committee with jurisdiction within fourteen days (with the report stating their approval or disapproval), the member introducing it can file a motion to discharge the committee, and this is a privilege motion -- which means it is always in order to file it. Typically, the House debates a resolution of inquiry for one hour, and then votes it up or down.

When such a resolution is approved by the House, the Executive Branch officials have fourteen days to respond. Depending upon the wording of the particular resolution - such resolutions often include, along with the demand, a provision that the request not be incompatible with the public interest - the Executive Branch has little choice but to respond, or else invoke "executive privilege," which I will address shortly.

Another tool available exclusively to the House is the "Seven Member Rule." The rule, though a rarity, has recently been employed against the Bush Administration.

This device is found in a 1928 statute which discontinued a prior requirement that Executive Departments had to file certain reports, but required "every executive department and independent establishment of the government" to provide information upon the request of "any seven members" of the House Government Reform committee, or "any five members" of the Senate Government Reform committee. (Actually, it referred to a predecessor committee to the Reform committees, which now stands in place of the earlier committees.)

In 2001, California Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, then the ranking member of the House Government Reform committee and now its chairman, was joined by sixteen other Democrats and an Independent, in requesting census data from the Secretary of Commerce, Donald Evans, using the "Seven Member Rule." Evans balked, and the Bush Administration filed a lawsuit to declare the Seven Member Rule unconstitutional.

Waxman, wisely, filed his own action in the very liberal Central District of California, rather than the District of Columbia, where judges still retain some objectivity about the Federal Government. In 2002, District Court Judge Lourdes Baird upheld Waxman's claim, denying the government's motion to dismiss, and then denying a motion from the Executive asking her to reconsider.

The government then appealed her decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit ducked the issue on the Seven Member Rule, after holding in another case - Carter vs. U.S. Department of Commerce - that the requested census data separately had to be produced under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The bottom line is that the Seven Member Rule remains very much in effect.

The Executive Privilege Shield

Since Richard Nixon abused the so-called "executive privilege" claim during Watergate, presidents have been reluctant to rely on this assertion to protect information, due to the cost in terms of political capital.

Nixon himself, of course, failed keep his secret tapes from the Watergate grand jury. In a unanimous ruling, eight of the Supreme Court's Justices rejected Nixon's arguments. (Then-Associate Justice Rehnquist recused himself, for he had previously advised Nixon on matters of executive privilege matters as an assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel). The Supreme Court's reasoning was as follows:

[N]either the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances. The President's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts. However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad, undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises. Absent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets, we find it difficult to accept the argument that even the very important interest in confidentiality of Presidential communications is significantly diminished by production of such material for in camera inspection with all the protection that a district court will be obliged to provide.

U.S. v. Nixon was the first time the High Court recognized "executive privilege," and clearly, it said there were areas where it might apply, such as, the "need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets." Thus, there are plainly areas where a president may be able to claim the privilege, if its exercise is truly merited due to genuine national security or foreign policy concerns.

Members of Congress thus face a serious problem when a president exerts executive privilege, demonstrating that he (or she) is willing to spend the necessary political capital, and suffer the inevitable parallels to Nixon. In this situation, there is really nothing the Congress can do - short of impeaching the president on the theory that his improperly withholding information amounts to a high crime or misdemeanor, which itself could, of course, be a reach.

Suppose the 110th Congress does find itself being stonewalled by Bush and Cheney's claims of executive privilege. Does it then have no recourse?

Absolutely not: There is still a powerful option. Congress can take the issue to the public, and make a public case that Bush and Cheney are obstructing the legitimate operations of Congress by withholding vital information - thus ratcheting up the political pressure on the Administration. If Congress' evidence is strong enough, the Administration, though it may keep on withholding information, will incur a high cost for its unreasonable secrecy - and the Republicans may well pay that cost at the ballot box in 2008.

John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the president.

Think our long nuclear nightmare is over? Think again.

I sometimes wonder why I care anymore.

Being one of the children who grew up in the immediate shadow of the mushroom clouds which rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as those rising over the American desert, in test after insane test, it was common for us to think in terms of if I grow up, not when.

I remember telling a friend of mine, back in the early 80s, "If the Russains launch nukes, I hope to God that one of them is aimed right at my apartement building." I had no desire to survive it. I never could understand survivalists of those days. What the hell would be the point? There came a time, during the Reagan administration, when I and several of my friends kept lethal doses of opiates in our homes, just in case.

What's more, by that time, I was wishing they would get it the hell over with. I was sick and tired of being threatend by it. Just get it over with. Bomb us, rape us, steal from us, kill us...do whatever the hell you are going to do, just get it over with!

My generation has always lived with the nuclear threat. Could that be one of the reasons why we rebelled in the era known as the 60s? (Or was that a full-blown nervous breakdown in the streets of America, instead of rebellion?)

Certainly, I am not suggesting that nuclear nightmares were the only reason for what happened in the 60s, but I do believe that the constant threat was one of the reasons.

Americans have a condition that I have come to refer to as fear of nuclear karma. We are the only nation on earth that has ever used a nuclear device in war-time. In our very souls, we know that, sooner or later, we will reap what we sowed, so to speak.

There is nothing quite like the vision of a mushroom cloud rising over an American city, to slap our collective panic button. The Bush administration was well aware of this American phobia. That is why they were so intent on making a majority of us believe that Saddam was planning to nuke us.

People shouldn't mess with other people's nightmares. Fear-mongering is a very dangerous game.

When people realize what is being done to them, there will be hell to pay. Count on it!


Exposing the U.S. Nuclear War Plan:

NRDC's nuclear war simulation provides an open, independent assessment of the U.S. nuclear war plan, and shows it is a Cold War relic in need of major reform.

From movies like Dr. Strangelove and War Games to folk anthems like Dylan's "Masters of War," Cold War pop culture is full of chilling depictions of nuclear war planners at their secret arithmetic. The disturbing truth is that the real American war plan for attacking Russia -- the SIOP, or Single Integrated Operational Plan -- has always been shrouded in impenetrable secrecy. The plan exerts enormous influence over weapons programs and arms control debates, yet is beyond the reach of all but a handful of military planners. Even presidents have been largely unable to influence it.

The NRDC nuclear war plans project uses a computer simulation to reveal what nuclear conflict would look like if it occurred today. The project shows that while the Cold War is long over, American nuclear war plans have hardly changed at all. The war plan still requires some 2,600 warheads to be on alert and trained on Russian targets at all times.

NRDC's simulation will allow those outside of the "nuclear priesthood" to examine the nuclear war planning process. The result of that open analysis, we believe, should be the elimination of SIOP in its current form -- a giant step that permits deeper nuclear arms reductions and a less risky global future.

The SIOP NRDC's Simulation What Nuclear War Looks Like Looking Ahead


The SIOP War Plan

More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, both the United States and Russia maintain vast nuclear arsenals. The United States still has 550 ICBMs -- long-range missiles that can reach Moscow in a half an hour -- stored in silos throughout the West. A single U.S. nuclear submarine carries up to 192 warheads and could kill or maim about a third of Russia's population, some 50 million people. The United States has 18 of these submarines. All told, the explosive power of America's nuclear warheads is 100,000 times greater than the single Hiroshima bomb. And our nuclear war plan keeps many of these weapons on hair-trigger alert.
Since the Eisenhower administration, the SIOP war plan has dictated how U.S. nuclear forces would be used in a war. With broad guidance from the president, the secretary of defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the staff of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) works out the inscrutably complex details of the plan. It is STRATCOM that designs and maintains the list of targets for nuclear attacks.

The targets war planners identify include Russian nuclear bases and other military targets, urban industrial targets, and leadership headquarters. Using sophisticated computer programs, planners calculate how hard each target will be to destroy and how many nuclear weapons should be assigned to it. They take a large number of variables into account -- the explosive power of different weapons, how resistant the target is to attack, the impact point, the proximity of civilians to the target, the choreography of many different types of weapons arriving at different times, and fallout patterns, among others. In Eisenhower's day the plan described simple one-blow massive attacks -- with projected fatalities approaching half a billion -- but over the years the plan has evolved into a more complex array of "attack options," including many smaller plans based on the controversial notion that it may be possible to fight a limited nuclear war.

The war plan looms large in the thinking of military and Pentagon planners. Dr. Bruce Blair, a nuclear-warfare expert and former Minuteman ICBM launch control officer, has said that the targeting process at the heart of SIOP "defines our procurement needs. It defines our policy toward deterrence and the way we frame the problem of deterrence generally." In other words, targeting choices determine how many weapons are "needed" and therefore drive weapons production and policy.

Because of the extreme secrecy that surrounds the war plan and its extraordinary complexity, the only people who really know what the SIOP is are the war planners themselves. In the past, when this tiny group has said it needs this bomb or that, or so many B-2 bombers, it has been difficult for anyone to question them. Even presidents -- who have final say over the use of nuclear weapons and keep the nuclear "football" containing SIOP launch codes and attack options with them at all times -- have only a superficial understanding of the consequences of an attack, according to a former head of STRATCOM, General George Butler.

And so the surreal business of planning for the apocalypse -- which involves the projected deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people and the prospect of turning vast areas into radioactive wastelands -- continues to be conducted beyond the reach of public scrutiny, and is resistant to civilian efforts to gain oversight. It's hard not to think of Dr. Strangelove's crazed General Ripper saying, "Today, war is too important to be left to politicians."
NRDC's Nuclear War Simulation

NRDC's nuclear war plans project addresses the disparity between what war planners know and what they're willing to tell civilians. For the first time, a group outside the "nuclear priesthood" has fashioned an analytic tool that allows them to simulate nuclear war, assess the effects of the use of nuclear weapons, and arrive at their own well-supported conclusions regarding nuclear weaponry and war planning.

NRDC's nuclear war simulation uses high-speed computers, customized software, and declassified data to get close to duplicating the tools that SIOP planners use. NRDC has compiled its own databases of information on weapons, population, effects, and targets to recreate the most important calculations of nuclear war planning, and combined these databases with a vast quantity of data from open sources. This data includes commercial data on the Russian infrastructure, official arms control data on the structure of Russian nuclear forces, declassified U.S. documents, census and meteorological data, digital maps, satellite imagery, and information on the effects of nuclear weapons.

Using the simulation tool, NRDC analysts can select targets, choose warhead types and delivery systems, and design an attack. When the program is run, it produces a footprint of the attack in appalling detail: zones of destruction radiating out from ground zero, radiation doses to human tissue, crater dimensions, fallout dose rate, and the number of projected deaths.

What Nuclear War Looks Like

With the arms-reduction process at a standstill and the Bush administration pursuing a potentially destabilizing missile defense program, the insight NRDC's nuclear war plans project allows into the SIOP's grim blueprints is timely. The project's report, which presents analyses performed using the nuclear-war simulation tool, details two simulations of nuclear attacks on Russia -- a major "counterforce" attack against Russia's nuclear forces and a "countervalue" attack that uses a minimal arsenal to inflict severe damage on Russian cities.

The results are clear. A "precision" attack against Russia's nuclear forces -- with an arsenal of about 1,300 warheads -- would kill 8 to 12 million people and injure millions more, while destroying most of Russia's nuclear weapons. In a "countervalue" attack, the U.S. could kill or injure up to 50 million Russians with a mere 3 percent of its current arsenal of more than 7,000 strategic warheads. There is no such thing as a surgical nuclear strike; nuclear weapons are simply weapons of mass destruction, and their effects are complex, unpredictable, and ultimately uncontrollable.

Looking Ahead

Russia is a country on the brink of crisis, enduring widespread poverty, deteriorating healthcare and shortfalls in electricity, services and raw materials -- hardly the looming superpower of yesteryear.

In fact, a spate of recent disasters, including the sinking of the Kursk attack submarine, indicates that Russia may not even be capable of maintaining the nuclear technology and infrastructure it inherited from the Soviet Union. At a Russian nuclear submarine port in east Asia, sailors and civilians have been observed digging up the cables that connect sub communications to nuclear command headquarters and selling them to pay the bills.

Yet despite the disintegration of the Soviet empire, U.S. strategies for waging all-out nuclear war against Russia remain intact. "Russia's defense budget is currently about 3 percent of ours. When you come to appreciate that fact, you realize the U.S. is in possession of a vastly redundant arsenal," says NRDC nuclear researcher Robert S. Norris. "Sure, it's been reduced. But what we have now is basically Cold War Lite."

President Bush's decision to forge ahead with building a missile defense system -- in violation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty -- could destabilize the world's nuclear balance of power. In keeping with Cold War logic, a bolstered U.S. defense may well cause Russia to respond. And even if the United States radically reduces its nuclear arsenal, which is unlikely under the Bush administration, pouring billions of dollars into a missile defense system will give the U.S. what nuclear activists call an "aggressive nuclear posture" in the eyes of the world.

The United States has an overwhelming economic and military advantage over Russia. The two countries are no longer at ideological odds, and have no territorial ambitions on each other. But American nuclear war plans do not reflect this sea change. We continue to target Russia with nuclear weapons and devise options and plans for their use, a process that by its nature reduces Russia from flesh and blood to models and scenarios. President Bush has said that "today's Russia is not our enemy" -- but if words and actions are to correspond, major reforms of American nuclear war planning must be undertaken.

U.S. leaders should take the first step and scale down the arsenal to reduce the nuclear danger. It is NRDC's hope that this demonstration of the unimaginable destructive power still with us will create pressure to rethink the country's nuclear war planning policies.
Based on The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time for Change, a June 2001 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Criticism of U.S. swells in Israel

Can those of us, who have not yet gone insane, hook up with this group, in Israel?

They make more sense than Lieberman and his ilk, with whom we have to deal over here.

Can't help but wonder what the Apostolic Congress will have to say about this.

newsobserver.com Criticism of U.S. swells in Israel:

JERUSALEM - After years of supporting the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East, a growing number of Israelis are openly criticizing the United States for creating more, not less, danger for Israel.
Israeli experts contend that American policies have destabilized Iraq, emboldened anti-Western forces from Iran to Lebanon and paved the way for militant Islamists to gain control of the Palestinian Authority.

'The threats to Middle East security and stability worsened in 2006,' experts at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies recently warned. 'The American failure in Iraq has hurt the standing of the U.S. in the Middle East.'

Perhaps most strikingly, in their annual evaluation of the situation, the Israeli analysts concluded that it was better for the United States to get out of Iraq than to add troops, as President Bush is proposing.

'There's no Israeli interest being served by continued American presence in Iraq,' said Mark A. Heller, a Jaffee Center researcher who helped produce the group's annual 'Middle East Strategic Balance' report.

'There's a basic overall interest in not having the United States perceived as a weak or failing power,' Heller said. 'But any initial goals that might have been served by getting rid of Saddam Hussein have long since been banked.'

The Bush administration is 'simply discredited in the region as a player,' Yossi Alpher said. Alpher, a former head of the Jaffee Center, now serves as co-director of www.bitterlemons.org, a joint Palestinian-Israeli Web site financed by private donations and a grant from the European Union.

Does anyuone else ever wonder if the discrediting of the U.S. is a good or bad thing, for Americans and/or Israelis?

White House: Can't rule out attack on Iran

Damn!!!

This is like a nightmarish flashback to early 2003.

White House: Can't rule out attack on Iran - CNN.com:

Story Highlights

• White House says no attack planned against Iran, but won't rule out possibility
• National security adviser Stephen Hadley says diplomacy should resolve issues
• Hadley won't say whether he believes move on Iran would need congressional OK
• Iran says U.S. detention of Iranians in Iraq is 'illegal'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House said Sunday it is not planning military action against Iran, but refused to rule out the possibility, bucking pressure from several senators who said the administration is not authorized to do so.

Asked whether the United States is preparing for a potential military conflict with Iran, President Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley told NBC's 'Meet the Press,' 'No, the president has said very clearly that the issues we have with Iran should be solved diplomatically.'

But, on ABC's 'This Week,' Hadley would not rule out the possibility of such an attack and would not say whether he agrees with those senators who say that the Bush administration would need congressional backing for such a move.

The sharp questioning about U.S. plans for Iran followed Bush's address to the nation Wednesday night announcing his strategy for Iraq, in which he vowed the United States 'will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.'

The Bush administration accuses Iran of sending fighters into Iraq and attacking U.S. troops. Tehran denies the charges.

White House: We will send more troops in Iraq, nevermind congress.

Well....I guess that's it....The people and their new congress can all go Cheney themselves. Elections only have consequences when the Bushites win them, apparently

Bush and Cheney are prepared to risk the lives of another 5,000 or so troops (Divide the number of troops sent by 4 to get actual number of combat troops.) to raise the number of troops to a level significantly lower than there were for the "purple-finger elections."

Why?

Sorry, I just can't make any sense of this.

Everyone knows that Iraq is a lost cause, even by the measure of the administration's own stated evolving or devolving goals. 5, 000 more individuals to use as cannon fodder will make no difference in the outcome in Iraq.

How can anyone believe that this latest troop increase can help, anymore than the other 2 or 3 increases did, in stopping the violence and providing the population with, at least, the standard of living they were used to under Saddam? How can anyone who believes that 5,000 more troops won't make a difference in anything other than the casualty count, both military and civilian, and the amount of time it takes for the whole house of cards to collapse, stand for this?

Bush and Cheney are not gambling with little plastic chips in Vegas!

Hell they aren't even gambling with their own money or blood.

They are gambling with the lives of our young people, and they are throwing good money after bad, as the old saying goes, into a country and a government, the people of which, largely, no longer trust anything our government does, if they ever did, and who can blame them.

Our military and our corporations, and not much else, have been in Iraq for close to 4 years and life in Iraq is worse than it has been in modern history. No way in hell, can we be considered liberators or bringers of freedom and Democracy. The very idea would be laughable, if so many had not paid such a high price for a lie.

I hate to think what would happen if Americans had to live in conditions half as bad as what we know is daily life for Iraqis. (Of course, much more of Bush and Cheney, and we will find out what will happen, because we are headed for a serious collapse or partial collapse, in our economy as well as our social and governmental institutions.)

What's worse? Just as I suspected many moons ago, the administration and their NeoCon puppeteers are headed for confrontation with Iran as sure as we breathe.

Cheney is throwing down a mighty gauntlet and all of us, especially our elected representatives, who do not choose to pick it up and cram it down his throat, because of political strategy and caution or cowardice, deserve whatever we get.

It won't be pretty or fun. No, not in the least.

White House: We will send more troops in Iraq - CNN.com:

Story Highlights:

• President Bush: 'I've made my decision. And we're going forward'
• Vice President Cheney says congressional critics won't influence troop plans
• Cheney says Democratic critics don't have coherent alternative to Bush strategy
• Cheney says giving up fight in Iraq would send wrong message to enemies

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, facing opposition from both parties over his plan to send more troops to Iraq, said he has the authority to act no matter what Congress wants.


'I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward,' Bush told CBS' '60 Minutes' in an interview to air Sunday night.

Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that lawmakers' criticism will not influence Bush's plans and he dismissed any effort to 'run a war by committee.'

'
The president is the commander in chief. He's the one who has to make these tough decisions,' Cheney said.

This Planet Is About To Flip

Hang on to your drawers! It's coming.

The Big Flip!

Our planetary home is a bit of a Wibble-wobble, don't you know. As it moves around the sun, in wibble-wobbles on its journey. That is what causes our seasons.

What if we have finally done enough, not only to destroy the Ozone and create these hideous gases, but with underground explosions, not to mention those above ground, to mess with the magnetic fields, so that our planet sort of flips?

Maybe Hawaii will be our north pole before long. Who knows?

Maybe it is already flipping slowly, with every wibble-wobble.

Something is sure as hell going on. Animals are acting nuts, all over the world, especially birds. NASA scientists are being muzzled.

It is winter where I am, and I am turning on the fan in my study almost every day.

My Sis, in New Zealand, reports that they are having a cold summer and their winter was highly unusual, in that the South Island got major snow, unlike any other time she can remember.

Published on Saturday, January 13, 2007 by the Eugene Register-Guard (Oregon)
Temperatures Rising


Hot enough for you, Mr. President?

Your administration's own National Climatic Data Center reported Tuesday that last year was the warmest in the continental United States of the past 112 years - and that 2006 capped a nine-year warming streak "unprecedented in the historical record."

You might have noticed the cherry trees and azaleas in bloom along the Potomac River on New Year's Day. Government scientists say that's at least partly the result of the long-term effects of accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

By the way, some of those scientists over at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration must have chewed off their muzzles. They're not only acknowledging the reality of global warming - they're warning that the rate at which temperatures are rising is speeding up and that they could lead to widespread melting of the polar ice caps, producing higher sea levels and more extreme droughts and storms.

In case you drifted off during your morning briefing, you might be interested to know that NOAA scientists have found that the northern hemisphere temperatures have not been this high for more than a thousand years. The rate of temperature increase has been far greater in the past three decades than at any time since the government began charting national temperature data.

You don't seem to get it, Mr. President. Or if you do get it, you're stubbornly refusing to seriously address the most urgent environmental issue of our time - an extraordinary failure of leadership.

NASA scientists say the Arctic Ocean has lost a fifth of its sea ice since the 1970s, an area twice the size of your beloved Texas. Last month, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorn designated polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They're starving and drowning as their habitat literally melts beneath them. But like his boss, Kempthorn refuses to acknowledge that industrial emissions are causing temperatures to rise in polar regions.

While you may not admit the climate is changing, you have to admit that politics are changing. The "thumpin' " your party took last fall has put the Democrats in charge of Congress. Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who has insisted for years that climate change is a "hoax," is out as chairman of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He's been replaced by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., whose goal is to impose the nation's first mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions. In the House, Democrats are preparing to redirect federal funding and tax breaks that now go to oil companies toward the production of renewable and alternative energies.

Even Republicans are getting in on the act. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., has joined with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to propose dramatic increases in efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is pushing a bill to establish a mandatory cap-and-trade system to restrict emissions. Guess they took you seriously when you promised last year to break the nation's "addiction" to foreign oil.

Out West, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is busy putting global warming burrs under your saddle. This week he proposed requiring oil companies to reduce fuel carbon content in his state. Last year he signed legislation to reduce emissions from refineries, power plants and factories to 1990 levels by 2020.

Temperatures are rising - and so is the pressure on you to pull your head out of the sand and lead the fight against global warming.

Hot enough for you, Mr. President?

opyright © 2007 — The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

George W. Bush is a moron of the first degree

What the hell is it going to take, before these Bushite Bastards and Bitches are held accountable for their crimes.

We are dead serious. These people need to be in the World Court Dock, for war crimes and crimes against humanity!

Published on Saturday, January 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Breaking! Our Armed Forces
by Evan Frisch

For decades, conservatives have railed against liberals as "weak on defense," content to let U.S. military readiness decline to dangerous levels. Such accusations over the nation's military readiness, in personnel as well as equipment, have proven pivotal in numerous elections. Many progressives still have to learn how to express their views on security in more compelling ways, but we can no longer let conservatives remain unchallenged on their security credentials.

In light of this week's announced escalation, conservatives must now be challenged to prove where their loyalties lie, with Bush or with our armed forces, breaking under the strain of his failed policies.

As George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute explored in our recent book Thinking Points (Chapter 6), conservatives regard security as the use of force, while progressives view security as protection. To make sure that our ports, our infrastructure, and our troops are protected is part of the progressive understanding of security as protection. Bush's policies take the conservative conception of security to its absurd conclusion. It emphasizes the use of force to challenge threats and potential threats to the exclusion of other tools, such as diplomacy. Secretary of State Rice or other officials are dispatched to shore up support for military action, not to broker political compromises that would make military action unnecessary. Even providing adequate body armor, part of the progressive concept of protection as security, is not a priority to this administration.

We have seen the consequences of the conservative reliance on the projection of force to provide security. As Bush sends over 20,000 more soldiers to face an impossible mission, we have every reason to fear worse consequences to come. Given these stakes, no conservative should be permitted to make the claim to being "strong on defense" unchallenged unless he or she promptly repudiates the Bush administration policies that threaten our armed forces.

More than any foreign enemy could, Bush is breaking our armed forces, and we must not shy away from this accurate framing. Consider a few of the many ways that Bush and his conservative supporters are actively breaking our armed forces:

Even before Bush's latest plans for escalation of U.S. troop levels amid Iraq's civil war and provocative moves toward Iran, the increasing strain on America's armed forces was apparent. In July 2006, it was revealed that two-thirds of the active U.S. Army was classified officially as "not ready for combat."

In October 2006, retired General Barry McCaffrey warned, "The United States Army is stumbling toward the edge of a cliff. It's starting to unravel." A new international crisis, he suggested, could lead it past the breaking point.

To provide the troop numbers Bush demands, the Pentagon has been forced to abandon its limit on the time that those in the National Guard or Reserves can be required to serve on active duty. A citizen-soldier may now be deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan for up to two years at a time, as many times as needed.

After the many failures of Donald Rumsfeld, the replacement that Bush offers our armed forces, is Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, whose recent admissions include, "I would confess I'm no expert on Iraq" and the statement that he is "no expert on military matters." In Congressional testimony, Gates also said it would be a "mistake" to offer an exit strategy, something that Bush called a necessity when he first ran for president.

In contrast to the advice of the Iraq Study Group to engage in diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors, Bush instead issued a warning to Syria and Iran, which was soon followed by a raid on an Iranian consulate in Irbil. As Juan Cole has observed, such provocative moves could easily lead to aggressive military actions against Iran. That would clearly constitute an additional international crisis of the scale that McCaffrey warned could break our armed forces.

Bush has pushed our armed forces, our nation, and the Middle East to the brink of a precipice.

To date, he has enjoyed the full support of conservatives who proclaim themselves patriotic defenders of our military and our country. With Bush's latest plans for escalation in Iraq and confrontation of Iran, we have both the responsibility and the opportunity to confront those who have enabled Bush to pursue this destructive path. Reject Bush or stand complicit with him in breaking our armed forces? We have seen some conservative politicians distance themselves from Bush's latest plan already, but mild criticism is not enough. Bush's policies damage our armed forces far more than any terrorist attack has; he should be regarded accordingly. For conservatives to continue to abet Bush's disastrous schemes without facing the consequences is, in Bush's words, "unacceptable." If progressives hit this point hard and conservatives fail to rethink their definition of security as the projection of force, then progressives could have the opportunity to capture the mantle of strength for a generation.

British reaction to Bush Heave; get out of the way

We cannot figure out for the lives of us why Blair ever got suckered into this god-awful scheme, but it has cost him and his nation greatly.

The only thing we can come up with is BP (British Petroleum).

Still, Bush has screwed him over, time and time again. Why does he put up with this treatment, from a fake cowboy, running a fake administration in a fake Democracy?

Maybe our British friends can enlighten us.

Published on Friday, January 12, 2007 by the Guardian / UK
Isolated Bush Faces Rebellion over Iraq
Congress to reject plan
Public against extra troops
by Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Julian Borger

President George Bush faced increasing isolation last night after his much-vaunted new strategy for Iraq met with overwhelming public and political opposition.
Mr Bush and his most senior staff embarked on a huge public relations exercise to sell the plan to send an extra 20,000 troops to Iraq, aware of formidable opposition in Congress which already promises an embarrassing vote next week rejecting the new strategy.
In contrast to the deference the president enjoyed in his first six years in office, he is confronting for the first time a combination of reinvigorated Democrats and rebellious Republicans. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, said: "In choosing to escalate the civil war, the president virtually stands alone."


Mr Reid said he had the votes of about 10 dissident Republican senators, and predicted that the passage of a resolution, with bipartisan support, would mark "the beginning of the end of the war".


The wave of scepticism and outright hostility that greeted the president's new strategy to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq with a beefed-up US force marks a significant change in America's attitude to Iraq. A Washington Post-ABC poll carried out after Mr Bush's televised address on Wednesday showed that 61% opposed the plan, while just 36% backed it. In another poll by Associated Press and Ipsos, 70% of Americans said they were against sending more troops.


Tony Blair yesterday welcomed the decision to send more troops to Iraq, saying it "makes sense", but reaction otherwise was overwhelmingly negative.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is to fly to the Middle East today to try to win support for the plan from allied Arab governments, though the immediate reaction in the region reflected the widespread scepticism in America.


There was concern in many Middle East capitals at the apparent threat of escalating the conflict to include Iran and Syria. Mr Bush, in his speech, warned that the US would "seek out and destroy networks" of insurgents moving into Iraq or based in these neighbouring countries. While US commanders insisted yesterday that this did not signal an intention to go into Iran or Syria, Ms Rice confirmed that all options were open.

The Bush administration was at pains to stress the initiative had come from the Iraqi government, led by Nouri al-Maliki. But Ms Rice, in an unguarded moment, picked up on an open television microphone yesterday morning, expressed concern that her forthcoming visit to Iraq might be perceived as dictation of policy from Washington. "I don't want to descend on the Maliki government and look like we, you know, just sort of beat their brains out," she said.


In a taste of the new confrontational approach on Capitol Hill, Ms Rice received a grilling when she appeared before the Senate foreign affairs committee to explain the plan. The Democratic senator and 2008 presidential hopeful Joe Biden told her Mr Bush's plan was "a tragic mistake". Meanwhile, Democratic and Republican congressmen were lining up in TV studios to denounce the deployment of an extra 21,500 US troops to Iraq.

Mr Bush flew to army headquarters at Fort Benning, Georgia, after an emotional White House ceremony at which he handed over a posthumous medal to the parents of a marine who threw his body on a grenade. In a speech the president, who ignored recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group for a phased withdrawal, insisted that the plan would work. In a shift of strategy, the US is planning to go into previous no-go zones in Baghdad, in particular the Shia militia stronghold of Sadr City.

Mr Bush said the influx of more American troops, together with Iraqi forces, would be enough to "clear, build and hold" militant areas. He warned that the new strategy "is not going to yield immediate results. It's going to take a while."


The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, stressed that the new deployment may not, as had been widely believed, be short term. "It's viewed as a temporary surge, but I think no one has a really clear idea of how long that might be," Mr Gates said.

He also announced that to help with the strain imposed by Iraq on the US in meeting its worldwide commitments, the overall strength of the army would be increased by 92,000. He added that, whatever the differences over the decision to go to war in 2003, "there seems to be broad agreement that failure in Iraq would be a calamity for our nation of lasting historical consequence".


The vote on the new strategy will be the first collision between the White House and Congress since the Democrats secured control of both houses in November. Although the congressional vote is purely symbolic, the increasingly confident Democrats may move beyond that to try to block funding for extra troops. Such a tactic would have been virtually unthinkable even a week ago. Republicans loyal to Mr Bush may try to block the vote by embarking on a filibuster.

Among the Republicans who may join the Democrats in support of the resolution is Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran, who called the plan "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam". He said: "This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at great cost. It is wrong to place American troops in the middle of Iraq's civil war."

Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois who is among the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination and a long-term opponent of the war, caught the mood of the Democrats when he said: "We are not going to babysit a civil war."

Hillary Clinton, the other Democrat frontrunner, who has been careful so far not to be too critical of the war, said Mr Bush "will continue to take us down the wrong road - only faster".
Democrats, who control the Senate with 51 of 100 seats, would need 60 votes to clear a possible Republican procedural roadblock.


Qualified support for Mr Bush came from Senator John McCain, the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, who has long lobbied for extra troops. "I do not guarantee victory or success with this new strategy," Mr McCain said. "If we do fail there's going to be chaos in the region and I believe that we would pay an even heavier price in American blood and treasure."

The British government said President Bush's announcement would not affect its own plans to hand over authority in southern Iraq to Iraqi forces and pull out British troops this year, but Mr Blair claimed the divergent plans did not represent a US-UK rift over policy. "It is really important that we don't either give that impression or have that misunderstanding," the prime minister told West Country TV in Plymouth.


The defence secretary, Des Browne, acknowledged that a crackdown by American troops on Shia militias in Baghdad could have a knock-on effect in the south, triggering Shia reprisals, but he said there were plans to deal with such an upsurge.
He expected Basra to be transferred to full Iraqi control this year, enabling British troops to start pulling out.

"It is my expectation that we will be able to see that process through and that over the course of the coming months and this year that we are now expecting to see a reduction of troops by a matter of thousands," he said.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

The world is going to hell in a hand-basket, and my country seems to be leading the way.

This should make every American furious, if not nauseous or both!

There is no damned excuse for this.

The end of American Empire is being talked around the media and the NET. Perhaps that will be the redeeming blesssing in all of this, but not without a fight, I am afraid.

The NeoCons are hell bent.

We should see that they find their way to hell, and fast. As a matter of fact, we should make it the goal for the rest of our lives to send them to hell and grind their miserable faces in the brimstone.

Published on Friday, January 12, 2007 by OneWorld.net

EU Urged to Lead on Human Rights as U.S. Loses Moral Authority

by Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK - The Bush administration's failure to address international human rights concerns has prompted an unusual call from one of the world's leading human rights organizations.

With U.S. credibility undermined by the use of torture and detention without trial, the European Union must fill the global leadership void on human rights, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Thursday in releasing its World Report 2007.

"Since the U.S. can't provide credible leadership on human rights, European countries must pick up the slack," said the organization's executive director Kenneth Roth, who observed that instead, "the European Union is punching well below its weight."

The organization urged European countries to overcome bureaucratic obstacles that leave its leaders "mired in procedures," effectively tying the hands of those seeking a tougher approach to serious rights abuses.

The call came on the day that marked five years since the United States started sending terrorism suspects to Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military base located in Cuba.

The authors of the 556-page report, which documents worldwide violations of human rights, said the U.S. abuses against detainees in Washington's so-called "war on terror" remained a major concern, as the Bush administration continued to defend torture by referring to it as "an alternative set of [interrogation] procedures."

Though a few prisoners have been released, more than 600 people are still locked up in the Guantanamo camp, where many have complained of severe torture and inhumane and degrading treatment at the hands of their captors.

Human Rights Watch and many other rights advocacy groups made fresh calls for the closure of the camp Thursday, noting that it was "long past time" to either bring to trial or set free the detainees who remain there.

Last October, when the international community and human rights organizations demanded fair trials for the prisoners, the Republican-led U.S. Congress flatly refused to entertain such requests.

But with the change of leadership in the Congress, it seems organizations like Human Rights Watch may find some reason to be hopeful about their demands.

"The U.S. Congress must act now to remedy the worst abuses of the Bush administration," said Roth. "Without firm and principled congressional action, the loss of U.S. leadership will likely persist."

Responding to a question Wednesday, new UN chief Ban Ki-moon, like his predecessor Kofi Annan, refused to accept the Bush administration's line of reasoning on indefinite detentions.
"(The) prison at Guantanamo should be closed," he told reporters at his first-ever formal news conference. Ban is due to meet Bush at the White House next week.

In addition to its criticism of U.S. behavior, authors of the Human Rights Watch report said worldwide many human rights challenges were in need of urgent action.

That includes the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq as a result of sectarian violence and frequent abuses of human rights by repressive regimes in Burma and Turkmenistan.

While deploring the persistence of dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Syria, the authors note that China is "moving backwards" and there has been no end to crack downs against non-governmental organizations in Russia and Egypt.

The report is also highly critical of human rights violations of various descriptions in Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Colombia, Israel, and Lebanon.

Noting that no situation is "more pressing" than the bloody crisis in Darfur, where estimates of the dead range from 200,000 to nearly half a million, the report chastised the UN Security Council for its inaction.

"Civilians in Darfur are under constant attack, and the conflict is spilling across Sudan's borders," said Roth, "yet the five permanent members of the Security Council managed little more than to produce stacks of unimplemented resolutions."

The report's authors said they noted "some positive developments" coming out of the global South, including African leaders' support for the trials of former Liberian president Charles Taylor and Chad's Hissene Habre. They also praised Latin American support for the International Criminal Court.

However, they also urged southern democracies to "do more" to protect human rights, such as breaking with abusive regional leaders to play a "more constructive role" at the UN Human Rights Council.

"Because many new democracies of the South have emerged from periods of extreme repression, whether colonialism, apartheid, or dictatorship, they could have special moral authority on human rights," Roth said. "But few have shown the consistency and commitment to emerge as real human rights leaders."

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