Will War Crimes Be Outed? They had damn well better be

As the officials of the Bush administration pack up in Washington and move into their posh suburban homes around the country, will they be able to rest easy, or will they be haunted by the fear that they will be held accountable for war crimes?

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There are many reasons to anticipate that the incoming Obama administration and the new Congress will let sleeping dogs lie. Attention to criminal acts by the former administration would probably anger Republicans, whose support Obama is hoping to win for his first priority, his economic program. Democratic Congressional leaders have known a great deal about Bush administration lawlessness, and in some cases have even given it their approval--making an unfettered review seem unlikely.

Some of Obama's own top appointees would undoubtedly receive scrutiny in an unconstrained investigation--Obama's reappointed defense secretary Robert Gates, for example, has had responsibility not only for Guantánamo but also for the incarceration of tens of thousands of Iraqis in prisons in Iraq like Camp Bucca, which the Washington Post described in a headline as "a Prison Full of Innocent Men," without even a procedure for determining their guilt or innocence--unquestionably a violation of the Geneva Conventions in and of itself.

But the repose of the Cheneys, Bushes, Gonzaleses and Rumsfelds may not turn out to be so undisturbed. In his notorious torture memo, Alberto Gonzales warned about "prosecutors and independent counsels" who may in the future decide to pursue "unwarranted charges" based on the US War Crimes Act's prohibition on violations of the Geneva Conventions. While no such charges are likely to be brought anytime soon, neither are they likely to vanish. In the short run, Obama and his team face inescapable questions about the legal culpability of the Bush administration. And in the long run, such charges are likely to grow only more unavoidable once the former officials of that administration have lost the authority to quash them.

In April Obama said that if elected, he would have his attorney general initiate a prompt review of Bush-era action to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies."

"If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News. He added, however, that "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve."

Obama's nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, speaking to the American Constitution Society in June, described Bush administration actions in terms that sound a whole lot more like "genuine crimes" than like "really bad policies":

Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution.... We owe the American people a reckoning."

A Reckoning?

While attention has focused on whether, once president, Obama will move quickly to close Guantánamo, shut down secret prisons, halt rendition and ban torture, there's a less visible struggle over whether and how to provide a reckoning for war crimes past.

A growing body of legal opinion holds that Obama will have a duty to investigate war crimes allegations and, if they are found to have merit, to prosecute the perpetrators.

In a December 3 Chicago Sun-Times op-ed, law professors Anthony D'Amato (the Leighton Professor at Northwestern University School of Law) and Jordan J. Paust (the Mike & Thersa Baker Professor at the Law Center of the University of Houston) ask whether president-elect Barack Obama will have "the duty to prosecute or extradite persons who are reasonably accused of having committed and abetted war crimes or crimes against humanity during the Bush administration's admitted 'program' of 'coercive interrogation' and secret detention that was part of a 'common, unifying' plan to deny protections under the Geneva Conventions."

They answer, "Yes."

"Under the US Constitution, the president is expressly and unavoidably bound to faithfully execute the laws." The 1949 Geneva Conventions "expressly and unavoidably requires that all parties search for perpetrators of grave breaches of the treaty" and bring them before their own courts for "effective penal sanctions" or, if they prefer, "hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party."

The statement is particularly authoritative--and particularly striking--because Paust is also a former captain in the United States Army JAG Corps and member of the faculty at the Judge Advocate General's School.

Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights says that one of Barack Obama's first acts as president should be to "instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration officials who gave the green light to torture."

Parallel to the legal community, members of Congress and president-elect Obama are trying to chart a strategy that avoids the appearance of seeking to punish Bush administration officials without appearing blatantly oblivious to their apparent war crimes. According to the AP's Lara Jakes Jordan, "Two Obama advisors say there's little--if any--chance that the incoming president's Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage." Instead, "Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture."

Asked if Bush administration officials would face prosecution for war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, "In the United States, no," but he does intend to continue to investigate Bush administration officials and their interrogation policies. "Personally, I would like to know exactly what happened. Torture is going to be a major issue."

Continue the Cover-Up?

President-elect Obama may well seek to delay taking a stand for or against such accountability actions. But he is likely to be confronted early in his administration by choices about whether to continue or terminate legal cover-up operations the Bush administration currently has under way.

For example, the Bush administration has blocked the civil suit against US officials by Canadian Maher Arar for his "rendition" to Syria and his torture there by invoking the "state secrets" privilege. According to Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the ACLU, they have appointed a prosecutor to investigate the destruction of videotapes of CIA interrogations, but the investigation is limited only to whether crimes were committed in relation to the destruction of the tapes--not whether what was being videotaped is a crime. The administration has refused to cooperate with the trial of twenty-six Americans, mostly CIA agents, who kidnapped a terrorism suspect in Milan and flew him to Egypt where, he says, he was tortured. And they have refused to provide secret documents to the British High Court in the case of Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed that may demonstrate that US officials were complicit in his torture in Morocco.

If the Obama administration continues the Bush administration's efforts to prevent investigators from investigating and courts from hearing such cases, it will rapidly become part of the cover-up. If it begins to, at a minimum, stop obstructing such proceedings, the result could be a rapid crumbling of the wall of silence the Bush administration has tried so assiduously to build around its "war on terror."

A bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 11 will make it far more difficult to evade the responsibility of holding Bush administration officials legally accountable for war crimes. Released by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain after two years of investigation, the report concluded:

The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own.... The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.... Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.

In an interview published in the Detroit News, Senator Levin said he was not responsible for deciding whether officials should be prosecuted for authorizing torture, but he admitted that there is enough evidence that victims of abuse could file civil lawsuits against their assailants. Levin also suggested that the Obama administration "needs to look for ways in which people can be held accountable for their actions."

An Accountability Movement

Outside the Beltway, a movement to hold Bush administration officials accountable for torture and other war crimes after they leave office is gradually emerging. It received a boost when over a hundred lawyers and activists met in Andover, Massachusetts on September 20 at a conference entitled "Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals." The conference created an ongoing committee to coordinate accountability efforts. At the close, conference convener Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law noted more than twenty strategies and specific actions that had been proposed, ranging from the state felony prosecutions proposed by former district attroney Vincent Bugliosi to the international prosecutions pioneered by the Center for Constitutional Rights' Rumsfeld cases; and from impeaching Bush appointees like Federal Judge Jay Bybee to public shaming of torture-tainted former officials like ohn Yew, now a professor at the University of California Law School.

One of proposals discussed at the Andover conference was the creation of a citizens' War Crimes Documentation Center, modeled on the special office set up by the Allied governments before the end of World War II to investigate and document Nazi war crimes. Such a center could be the nexus for research, education and coordination of a wide range of civil society forces in the US and abroad that are demanding accountability. It could bring together the extensive but scattered evidence already available, to compile a narrative of what actually happened in the Bush administration. It could help or pressure Congress to conduct investigations to fill in the blanks. It could pull together high-profile coalitions to campaign around the issue of accountability for specific crimes like torture. If Obama does initiate some kind of investigating commission, such a center could provide it with information and help hold it accountable.

A Moral Education

There are a myriad of reasons for urgently holding the Bush regime to account, ranging from preventing unchallenged executive action from setting new legal precedent to providing a compelling rationale for the immediate cessation of bombing civilians in the escalating Afghan war.

But the issue raised by Bush administration war crimes is even larger than any person's individual crimes. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." The long history of aggressive war, illegal occupation, and torture, from the Philippines to Iraq, have given the American people a moral education that encourages us to countenance war crimes. If we allow those who initiated and justified the illegal conquest and occupation of Iraq and the use of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to go unsanctioned, we teach the world--and ourselves--a lesson about what's OK and legal.

As countries like Chile, Turkey and Argentina can attest, restoration of democracy, civic morality and the rule of law is often a slow but necessary process, requiring far more than simply voting a new party into office. It requires a wholesale rejection of impunity for the criminal acts of government officials. As Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) put it, "We owe it to the American people and history to pursue the wrongdoing of this administration whether or not it helps us politically.... Our actions will properly define the Bush Administration in the eyes of history."

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About Jeremy Brecher

Jeremy Brecher is a historian whose books include Strike!, Globalization from Below, and, co-edited with Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan/Holt). He has received five regional Emmy Awards for his documentary film work. He is a co-founder of WarCrimesWatch.org. more...

About Brendan Smith

Brendan Smith is a legal analyst whose books include Globalization From Below and, with Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, of In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan). He is current co-director of Global Labor Strategies and UCLA Law School's Globalization and Labor Standards Project, and has worked previously for Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and a broad range of unions and grassroots groups. His commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, CBS News.com, YahooNews and the Baltimore Sun. Contact him at smithb28@gmail.com. more...

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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Iraq's US Security Charade

The Bush/Cheney administration has no clue what Democracy is, so how can they proclaim Iraq a Democracy of any kind?

By Ramzy Baroud

December 05, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" --- World media rashly celebrated the "historic" security pact that allows for US troops to stay in Iraq for three more years after the Iraqi parliament ratified the agreement on Thursday, 27 November. The approval came one week after the Iraqi cabinet did the same.

Thousands of headlines exuded from media outlets, largely giving the false impression that the Iraqi government and parliament have a real say over the future of US troops in their country, once again playing into the ruse fashioned by Washington that Iraq is a democratic country, operating independently from the dictates of US Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker and the top commander of US troops in Iraq, General Ray Odierno. The men issued a joint, congratulatory statement shortly after the parliamentary vote, describing it as one that would "formalise a strong and equal partnership" between the US and Iraq.

Jonathan Steel of the British Guardian also joined the chorus. "Look at the agreement's text. It is remarkable for the number and scope of the concessions that the Iraqi government has managed to get from the Bush administration. They amount to a series of U-turns that spell the complete defeat of the neo-conservative plan to turn Iraq into a pro-Western ally and a platform from which to project US power across the Middle East."

Even Aljazeera.net English seemed oblivious to the charade. It assuredly wrote that the agreement "will end the 2003 invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. It is effectively a coming-of-age for the Iraqi government, which drove a hard bargain with Washington, securing a number of concessions -- including a hard timeline for withdrawal -- over more than 11 months of tough negotiations."

Most attention was given to dates and numbers as if their mere mention was enough to compel the US government to respect the sovereignty of Iraq: 30 June 2009 is the date on which US forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities and January 2012 is the date for withdrawal from the entire country. Also duly mentioned is a hurried reference to opposition to the agreement represented in the "no" vote of the "followers of Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia leader", which caused, according to the BBC "rowdy scenes of stamping, shouting and the waving of placards during the debate".

The dismissal of the opposition as "followers" of this or that -- portraying those who refuse to be intimidated by US pressure as a cultic, unruly bunch -- also has its rewards. After all, only a real democracy can allow for such stark, fervent disagreements, as long as the will of the majority is honoured in the end.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh knew exactly how to capitalise on the buzzwords that the media was eagerly waiting to hear. The success of the vote would constitute a "victory for democracy because the opposition have done their part and the supporters have done their part".

Of course, there is nothing worth celebrating about all of this, for it's the same charade that the Bush administration and previous administrations have promoted for decades, in Iraq and also elsewhere. "Real democracy" in the Third World is merely a means to a specific end, always ensuring the dominion of US interests and its allies. Those who dare to deviate from the norm find themselves the subject of violent, grand experiments, with Gaza being the latest example.

What is particularly interesting about the Iraq case is that news reports and media analysts scampered to dissect the 18- page agreement as if a piece of paper with fancy wording would in any way prove binding upon the US administration which, in the last eight years, has made a mockery of international law and treaties that have been otherwise used as a global frame of reference. Why would the US government, which largely acted alone in Iraq, violated the Geneva Conventions, international law and even its own war and combat regulations, respect an agreement signed with an occupied, hapless power constituted mostly of men and women handpicked by the US itself to serve the role of "sovereign"?

It's also bewildering how some important details are so conveniently overlooked; for example, the fact that the Iraqi government can sign a separate agreement with the US to extend the deadline for withdrawal should the security situation deem such an agreement necessary. Instead, the focus was made on "concessions" obtained by the Iraqis regarding Iraq's jurisdiction over US citizens and soldiers who commit heinous crimes while "off duty" and outside their military bases. This precisely means that the gruesome crimes committed in prisons such as Abu Ghraib and the willful shooting last year of 17 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater mercenaries in Nisour Square in Central Baghdad is of no concern for Iraqis. And even when crimes that fall under Iraqi jurisdiction are reported, such matters are to be referred to a joint US-Iraqi committee. One can only assume that those with the bigger guns will always prevail in their interpretation of the agreement.

In fact, a major reason behind the delay in publishing the agreement in English (an Arabic version was first publicised) is the apparent US insistence on interpreting the language in a fashion that would allow for loopholes in future disagreements. But even if the language is understood with mutual clarity, and even if the Iraqi government were determined to stand its ground on a particular issue, who is likely to prevail: the US government with 150,000 troops on the ground and a massive imperial project whose failure will prove most costly to US interests in the Middle East, or the government of Nuri Al-Maliki, whose very existence is a US determination?

More than five years have passed since the US occupied Iraq, leaving in its wake a tragedy that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, destroyed civil society, thus allowing for the growth of one of the world's most corrupt political regimes, and introducing the same terrorists to Iraq that the Bush administration vowed to defeat. Nothing has changed since then. The US attacked Iraq for its wealth and the strategic value of controlling such wealth. The Bush administration and their allies have tried many times to distract from this reality, using every political cover and charade imaginable. The facts remain the same, as does the remedy: The US must withdraw from Iraq without delay, allowing Iraqis to pick up the pieces and work out their differences as they have done for millennia.

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bones

I could not agree more. The time has come for a real house cleaning.

I wonder if it has ever been considered that it would be far better for Bush, Cheney, and others to face our justice department in D.C. than the justice of the people?

By John S. Hatch

November 27, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" --- It is generally considered a courtesy for a newly inaugurated President to overlook any sins of the past incumbent in the interests of 'looking ahead' and in the knowledge that the same good manners will be repeated after his/her own end of term.

The most extreme example of this was Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon after the latter's ignominious resignation. Arguably necessary for the health of the nation after its 'long nightmare', it was nevertheless handled badly, and Ford paid a price by becoming a one-term President.

Not to trivialize Nixon's crimes (and part of the flawed pardon process meant there was no elocution, no admission of guilt, no mention of the many crimes besides Watergate), the three articles of impeachment mentioned the actual break-in, cover-up, including the payment 'hush money', misuse of the FBI and IRS, ignoring subpoenas, spying, and such matters (remind you of anyone?).

For these 'crimes and misdemeanors' he undoubtedly would have been impeached, but he resigned to avoid that outcome, and was pardoned for any of his actions which might have crossed the line into illegality. However one might have wished to see Mr. Nixon brought to account, no one argued that the pardon itself was illegal. The matter was handled constitutionally, and people got back to their lives and the nation tried to move on.

But what of Mr. Bush? It could be argued that his domestic crimes far surpass anything done by the Nixon Administration, and while some saw Nixon, Kissinger, McNamara and others as international war criminals, there again Bush has far surpassed Nixon in the number and nature of crimes against humanity, if not the numbers of dead. It's hard to keep track once you surpass a million corpses.

And yet in Bush's case, impeachment has always been 'off the table' due to the peculiar spinelessness of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, and their willingness to sell out justice to gain power that they're too servile to exercise in any meaningful way.

Having stated that he would request that his new Attorney General investigate whether crimes were committed during the previous Administration, Mr. Obama seems to be distancing himself from that view, as if investigating the most serious crimes known to man would somehow constitute a distraction. From what? And isn't that what Mr. Bush said about an investigation into 9/11 even as the public clamored for one? An investigation into America's greatest terrorist attack would distract from the war on terror, said Mr. Bush (or was it Inspector Clousseau?).

Indeed there would be a lot to investigate. Domestic spying on a colossal basis. Domestic illegal detention and torture. Misuse of the FBI, ICE and other federal organizations. Ignored subpoenas. Illegal signing statements. Treason.

The AG would be kept busy on the foreign policy front also. Kidnapping (Italy has warrants out on 22 CIA operatives with regard to one case alone). Illegal detention. Torture (which we know with certainty was planned at the top). Vile torture, possibly the lowest indulgence of which humanity is capable, embraced with zeal by an Administration which uses terror to fight imagined terror. (Given a preponderance of evidence, many of us do not believe that 9/11 was concocted in a cave, but perhaps in boardrooms a lot closer to home.)

Then there is the matter of two illegal invasions. Attacking Afghanistan had nothing to do with capturing Osama bin Laden, who it seems is more valuable as cave/bogeyman on the loose, and everything to do with establishing and protecting an oil pipeline. There has been precious little rebuilding but plenty of indifferent collateral damage. One woman who lost her home and her entire innocent family was called a beggar by American officials and was ordered off American embassy property in Kabul. And there has been plenty of innocent fodder for Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, and the many secret dungeons to justify the unjustifiable and bogus 'war on terror'.

The invasion of Iraq was as absurd as it was brutal and criminal. The MSM didn't report what went on in Fallujah (indeed, America is now in the business of murdering journalists who simply do their jobs), where almost no structure escaped severe damage. Water and power infrastructure were deliberately destroyed. America did what it falsely accused Saddam of doing in Kuwait-it kicked seriously ill patients out of a hospital in order to make room for potential American casualties. It bombed others. American forces prevented 'military-age' males (roughly 12-65 years old) from leaving the city and then declared a 'free-fire zone' on anyone remaining. They used white phosphorus and thermobaric weapons. They used snipers against unarmed civilians. They killed, and killed, and killed. It was like Poppy's 'Highway of Death', but worse. Congratulations, Junior, you finally outdid the old man. Not even animals were spared.

A new day needs to dawn in America, and that is what President elect Obama has promised. But that can't occur if the past is not acknowledged and reconciled. A harmless skeleton or two left behind in a White House closet is one thing. But in this case the rattling of bones could drown out Mr. Obama's eloquent voice and poison his Presidency. If it's indeed time for change, then it's time to stop pretending that America can do no wrong, and to bring criminals to justice, whoever they are.

John S. Hatch is a Vancouver writer and film-maker.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Get Out of Jail Free Card for Bush?

Here's hoping it doesn't work

Is Bush's kindness to Obama really a "get out of jail, free" card?

 

One of the many surprising developments over the last week has been both the speed and extent of the graciousness that President Bush and his team have shown to President-elect Obama, especially considering how long and how hard-fought the 2008 campaign turned out to be, and the Democratic standard bearer's frequent and unusually harsh criticism of the GOP president out on the trail.

On the morning after Obama's victory, Bush could have easily phoned it in and offered up a bland, pro forma congratulation, but instead he went before the cameras in the Rose Garden with highly laudatory praise, saying that American voters had "showed a watching world the vitality of America's democracy and the strides we have made toward a more perfect union."

He didn't stop there. Bush invited Barack and Michelle Obama to the White House ASAP -- the visit that in fact took place yesterday -- for both a humble tour of where the 44th president and his family will live and a substantive discussion of the issues that have boiled over during Bush's watch, especially the ravaged world economy. The images that these meetings produced of a peaceful and cooperative transition have been reassuring to Americans, and to the world.

 It's difficult, however, to get any frame of reference for Bush's handling of the transition: The last real time that the White House changed hands from a president of one party to a president of the other party that hadn't defeated him personally, under normal circumstances, was in 1968; it also happened in 2000 but the Florida recount led to a warped and shortened transition.

Sometimes, according to Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is the best one. With his approval rating at or even worse than any president since modern polling began, it's surely possible that Bush is smart enough to see that a gracious transition could be a baby step to restoring his reputation down the road. In that same vein, an early solution to the economic mess under President Obama would mitigate some of the damage to Bush's reputation there.

I believe those factors are present, but we should also not suspend all cynicism in the euphoria of the moment of Obama's election. We should never forget that same president who was so welcoming to Obama is the very same president whose war cabinet authorized torture practices and rendition of terrorism suspects, massively expanded government spying in a web that caught untold American citizens, launched (as just reported this week) secret military strikes around the globe, and through the abuse of signing statements and other unprecedented tactics treated the Constitution, its separation of powers and international law like pieces of crumpled up waste paper. No hailing of Obama's "awesome" victory erases that stain.

And so one of many, many difficult decisions that Obama and his team will faces during his first 100 days in the Oval Office will be this: Should the new president's Justice Department take a more aggressive pose toward investigating this unprecedented White House power grab and some of the toxic symptoms that flowed from that, from waterboarding to the firing of U.S. attorneys for raw political reasons.

I've been following this back-burner issue much more closely than most. That's because his only comments on the subject came back in April, when I had the opportunity to raise the issue with him when he appeared here in Philadelphia before the editorial board of the Daily News. A summary of his answer is that while he seeks to be a forward-looking president, he would likely want his Attorney General to make at least a preliminary inquiry.

Here's a snip of what Obama said then:

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity.

A follow-up story published in Salon in August took the story a step farther:

Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama's first term. Instead, we may well see a congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred. Though some witnesses might be offered immunity in exchange for testimony, the question of whether anybody would be prosecuted would be deferred to a later date -- meaning Obama's second term, if such is forthcoming.

That being the case, do you honestly think the Bush, Dick Cheney, and Co. are not seriously worried about this possibility? If you don't believe that, you haven't been paying close attention to the full-story of the Bush administration and its steady reach for executive power. In fact, many of the administration's most audacious moves have been accompanied with memos that seem to serve one primary purpose: To shield White House officials and those who carried out their orders in the field from future prosecution.

This is the best-known example, from 2002, pertaining to the use of torture in interrogating suspects:

Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called "Golden Shield" for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.

But other controversial and arguably unlawful policies have been justified with official memos or documents. This week, the New York Times reported on a hitherto secret 2004 order by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that okayed attacks on al-Qaeda sites around the globe:

Bush administration officials have shown a determination to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provides a legal rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent.

When you combine all these memos, secret orders and signing statements with the Bush administration's long record of seeking to foil investigators from Congress and elsewhere asking for documents, emails and testimony from former White House officials, and it all adds up to one thing: A president and vice president who have long dreaded what a Democratic president might learn, and what he might do with that information, come Jan. 20, 2009.

With this as a backdrop, comes now the sudden Bush charm offensive. Now, there's a debate to be had about whether justice requires that past criminal acts be pursued, even after an administration has yielded its power, or whether the greater good of a forward-looking nation means that violations of the law should be forgiven, as President Gerald Ford decided in 1974 when he pardoned Richard Nixon. Whatever the right solution is, Bush is smart enough to know that he's complicating Obama's decision by seeking to connect with him as an Oval Office teammate so quickly out of the gate. Is the 43rd president's graciousness really his "get-out-of-jail free card," if not for him then for some of his White House underlings?

The more that it looks like Obama and Bush had worked together to solve the economic crisis, the more jarring it might sound to many Americans to learn that a criminal inquiry is underway -- even though the sad facts of the last eight years would seem to justify exactly such a probe, at the minimum. Politics, like war, is ruled by the art of deception. Don't be deceived by everything you heard coming from the Oval Office yesterday, and in the name of justice, let's hope that Obama and whoever he named as attorney general are not fooled, either.

Posted by Will Bunch @ 12:57 PM  Permalink

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush and Fed Run End Around Congress

Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed’s emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed’s expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone. Read on…

I’m not an expert on the economy or Wall St., but this sure looks like an end-around by the Bush administration to give away hundreds of billions of dollars without the approval of Congress.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Incompetence or Machiavellian Planning:

The Bush Administration's Culpability in the Financial Crisis

by Meg White

The timing and urgency of the Bush Administration's call for action from Congress on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to save the financial industry from collapse leaves only two possibilities. Either the White House is criminally incompetent when it comes to the economy, or our current financial status is part of a structured crisis planned as an early October surprise.

We believe that this is part of a structured financial crisis that got out of hand and unraveled too quickly. The great economic unraveling was supposed to happen early during the next administration. Our economy has been held together with bubble gum and strands of thread for several years.

Bush told friends from Texas, visiting the Bushes at the White House, that he intends to leave the next administration with little hope or resources with which to boot the status-quo and begin making long over-due changes in the governance of this country. This country and her people cannot not long endure without major transformation as a country....the grass-roots kind of transformation.

(The thing is; there is going to be change, and very soon. The difference between transformation and cataclysm is consciousness or conscious choice.)

He also told his friends, all of whom returned to Houston with concern for Junior's mental health, or lack thereof, that he was planning to leave the next administration no choice but to stay in Iraq. Sounds like a plan to bomb Iran, eh?

One thing seems sure. The financial meltdown, leaving the federal government in bankruptcy court, is not a mistake by the Bushites. Breaking the financial back of the federal treasury, in order to throw all of those "FDR/Communist 'entitlement' programs" out the window, has long been the goal of the Republican party, not just the ultra-conservative or neoconservative manifestations of it.

Both scenarios are frightening. Moreover, they lead us to the conclusion that the Bush Administration should have no hand in trying to solve this problem. (or any other problem, for that matter. I'm beginning to think that there is no bad news, no matter how bad, that the Bushites can't find a way to that event event into a gold mine for them and/or their pals on Wall Street and, often, their political supporters, plus the added joy of seeing their political rank and file opposition crash and burn. (There own rank and file, caught in the killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial meat grinder at home, like most Americans in the poorer end of the spectrum of America's very own caste system, are just collateral damage,. unfortunate and all that, but necessary for the CAUSE.)

There's no doubt that the timing of this forced legislation is fortuitous for the Bush Administration. The passage of this proposal could be the last act of Congress before an election. Lawmakers don't want to look like they're politically stagnated right before their constituents head to the polls, making Congress more likely to go along with the plan.

More political chicken is obviously being played, right when we need bi-partisan sanity, not more D.C. games. Maybe there really is no sanity left in Washington, D.C.. How could there be? They can't even agree on what is real and what is not. Theynot only don't share any of the same opinions, which is expected, but they don't share the same facts, which is not to be expected and can be a sign of a number of things, none of which is good.

While the argument can be made that the meltdown has been approaching for months, it's been clear for weeks that government intervention was needed to stem the tide. Paulson's three-page proposal was presented to Congress a mere five days before their fall recess. The proposal came packaged with wild warnings from the White House about the dire consequences of Congress' inaction.

No bailout for Junior's wealthy pals and there will be Mushroom clouds rising over American cities. That's more or less the message.

An economic collapse is coming. It is only a matter of when, sometime between now and late January. I will be amazed if we make it until Christmas. There is really not a damn thing we can do about it.

Bailouts are not the answer. All this bailout is going to do is just what the others have done; kick the can down the road and make matters worse. As American taxpayers and voters we must be aware of what has been clear to many of us for many years now, that our opinions don't matter to the very people who are now in hysterics and screaming bloody murder that we face hells gates if we don't clean up their mess. It's called extortion. Typical of a protection racket. Forget bailouts, call the RICO squad.

Some have equated this situation to the administration's rush to war. Also, the administration's slowness to fully comprehend or react to impending financial troubles reminds many of the ignored warnings about al-Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001.

Used car salesmen: you have to hurry, make a decision fast or all will be lost. This administration has no credibility; like the little boy who cried wolf. Of course, this time, they are really in trouble and so are the rest of us, but nothing, least of all bailouts, is going to stop this trainwreck. No more cover-ups, fix-ups (legal and otherwise) or non-answers from on high.

This administration has been running a protection racket since 9/11/01, at the very least. American minds were shocked and awed by the events of 9/11 including the anthrax attacks which followed and nothing has has been the same since. We were hammered with one "orange" alert after another, witnessed increased incidents of terrorism worldwide and, of course, Osama's top ten video hits, hitting the airwaves at the most opportune times for this administration.

It's like the cold war on steroids.

We have been continuously lied to, if not deceived, fear-mongered and whipped into sick, patriotic vengeance-seeking against people who had nothing to do with 9/11.

We have lived through the Bush/Cheney nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue, feeling powerless and hopeless to stop the massive train-wreck we saw coming. Now, our deaf government wants us to believe that while our thoughts and opinions may not be worth much, our money certainly is quite powerful. We can save the world! Of course, we are talking about money we don't have yet and may never have. (Does anyone suddenly feel richer as a result of this last week? I know I don't.)

In any case, there were plenty of people talking about the crisis before this fall. Then New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in February that was remarkably prescient about the looming crisis, ending it with the following warning:

"When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits."

Spitzer testified before Congress on the subject the same day the piece was published. He noted that the Bush Administration actively prohibited state's attorney generals from enforcing their own laws curbing predatory lending. The federal government even went as far as to stop an investigation of discriminatory lending in Spitzer's home state.

Spitzer was not the first, and certainly not the last, to bring attention to the crisis. As far back as 2004, the FBI warned of a coming mortgage crisis. But, as the Los Angeles Times reported last month, when the FBI asked for more resources to fight mortgage fraud, the program got cuts instead.

There's no way to give credit to all the people who warned of this crisis before the meltdown. But let's take a quick look at the man that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) accused of reacting too slowly to the crisis.

On March 22, 2007, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) wrote a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and Paulson warning of a "potential coming wave of foreclosures," urging quick action from both the government and the private sector. He concluded the letter with the following:

"There is an opportunity here to bring different interests together in the best interests of American homeowners and the American economy. Please don't let this opportunity pass us by."

Eighteen months later to the day, the government has the gall to prod Congress into acting.

Chaos Capitalism?

And McCain, right before he faulted Obama for not immediately speaking out about the economic crash last week, apparently spoke too soon. He flailed widely for a solution, even irrationally calling for the firing of Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Chris Cox. His actions this week have been denounced as "un-presidential" by conservative stalwarts such as George Will and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.

It could be that the Bush Administration had such skewed priorities that they just didn't see the crisis until it was too big to miss. But it's also possible that they were playing the disaster capitalism game so eloquently outlined by author Naomi Klein, who leveled such a charge last week: Let things deteriorate until there is no choice about the matter, and then let government contractors swoop in and save the day at a massive profit.

Oh, they saw it coming!

They set out to cause it.

They simply misjudged the time it would take for them to be "outed," so to speak, as highly irresponsible, greedy, entitled, lustful maniacs who do not live in the same reality as any of us.

No way, no how, McCain!

One of the recurring themes for lawmakers who are analyzing the proposal on the Hill this week is that the Bush Administration has left many questions unanswered. One of the questions we think they should be asking, whether this crisis came from ignorance or a master plan is, "Why should we put you people in charge of fixing this mess?"

Indeed!


A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Mushroom Cloud over Wall Street

By Mike Whitney

"One bank to rule them all;
One bank to bind them..."

21/090/08 "ICH " -- - These are dark times. While you were sleeping the cockroaches were busy about their work, rummaging through the US Constitution, and putting the finishing touches on a scheme to assert absolute power over the nation's financial markets and the country's economic future. Industry representative Henry Paulson has submitted legislation to congress that will finally end the pretense that Bush controls anything more than reading the lines from a 4' by 6' teleprompter situated just inches from his lifeless pupils. Paulson is in charge now, and the coronation is set for sometime early next week. He rose to power in a stealthily-executed Bankster's Coup in which he, and his coterie of dodgy friends, declared martial law on the US economy while elevating himself to supreme leader.

"All Hail Caesar!" The days of the republic are over.

Section 8 of the proposed legislation says it all:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Right; "non-reviewable" supremacy.

Congress, of course, is more than eager to abdicate whatever little authority they have left. They're infinitely grateful for their purely ceremonial role, the equivalent of Caligula's horse, albeit, with considerably less dignity. Has even one senator spoken out against this madness, which--according to informal internet polls--is resoundingly rejected by the voters? Does it concern the members of congress at all, that the present financial crisis was brought on by the proliferation and sale of trillions of dollars of mortgage-banked garbage which were fraudulently represented as Triple A rated bonds by the very same people who now claim to need unprecedented and dictatorial powers to fix the problem? Or are they more worried that the steady torrent of contributions which flows from Wall Street to congressional campaign coffers will be inconveniently disrupted if they fail to ratify this latest assault on democratic governance? The House of Representatives is one big steaming dungheap that should be leveled and turned into an amusement park instead of a taxpayer-funded knocking shop. What a pathetic collection of cowards and scumbags.

Bloomberg News:

"The Bush administration sought unchecked power from Congress to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets. Through his plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson aims to avert a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and the world's largest economy to a standstill. The bill would prevent courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.

"He's asking for a huge amount of power,'' said Nouriel Roubini an economist at New York University. ``He's saying, `Trust me, I'm going to do it right if you give me absolute control.' This is not a monarchy." (Bloomberg)

The banksters own this country, always have; only now they've decided to strip away the curtain and reveal the ghoulish visage of the puppet-master. It ain't pretty.

Paulson decided that the financial markets needed an emergency trillion dollar face-lift just weeks before his former business partners at G-Sax were dragged off to the chopping block. Was that the reason? Everyone on Wall Street knew that the bulls-eye had already been ripped from Lehman's bloody back and was about to be fastened on Goldman's. Now, it looks like they will escape their day of reckoning due to Paulson's eleventh-hour reprieve. Nice touch, eh?

From the proposed legislation: LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY
TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS

"(3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them."

Market Ticker's Karl Denninger summed this up best:

"This is the de facto nationalization of the entire banking, insurance and related financial system..That's right - every bank and other financial institution in the United States has just become a de-facto organ of the United States Government, if Hank Paulson thinks they should be, and he may order them to do virtually anything that he claims is in furtherance of this act.....The bill gives Paulson the ability to nationalize unlimited amount of private debt and force you and your children to pay for it."

Denninger again:

"The claim is that this is intended to 'promote confidence and stability' in the financial markets.

It will do no such thing. It will instead strike terror into the hearts of investors worldwide who hold any sort of paper, whether it be preferred stock, common stock or debt, in any financial entity that happens to be domiciled in the United States, never mind the potential impact on Treasury yields and the United States sovereign credit rating.

I predict that if this passes it will precipitate the mother and father of all financial panics." (Market Ticker)

Amen. The transformation from a free market to a centralized, Soviet-style economy run by men whose judgment and credibility is already greatly in doubt; does not auger well for the markets or the country. Anyone with a lick of sense would cash in their chips first thing Monday and look for capital's Elysium Fields overseas or as far as possible from the circus sideshow now run by G-Sax ringleader, Colonel Klink.

Paulson's Chicken Little routine might might have soiled a few senatorial undergarments, but let's hope the American people are made of sterner stuff and will reject this charade. The conversation should be shifted from conceding more authority to hucksters in pin-stripes to indictments for securities fraud. Even the most economically-challenged nation ought to be able to afford a few sets of leg-irons and a couple hundred jail cells. That's all it will take. That, and a couple brisk dunks on the waterboard. Glub, glub.

Paulson's plan to revive the banking system by buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of illiquid mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and other equally poisonous debt-instruments; ignores the fact these complex bonds have already been "marked to market" in the recent firesale by Merrill Lynch. Just weeks ago, Merrill sold $31 billion of these CDOs for roughly $.20 on the dollar and provided 75 percent of the financing, which means that the CDOs were really worth approximately $.06 on the dollar. If this is the settlement that Paulson has in mind, than the taxpayer will be well served. But this will not recapitalize the banks balance sheets or mop up the ocean of red ink which is flooding the financial system. No, Paulson intends to hand out lavish treats to his banker buddies, while interest rates soar, pension funds collapse, the housing market crashes, and the dollar does a last, looping swan-dive into a pool of molten lava. Thanks, Hank.

Economist and author Henry Liu summarized the current maneuvering like this: "The Fed is merely trying to inject money to keep prices not supported by fundamentals from falling. It is a prescription for hyperinflation. The only way to keep price of worthless assets high is to lower the value of money. And that appears to be the Fed unspoken strategy."

Indeed. The Fed and Treasury have decided to backstop the entire global financial system (foreign banks can access the Fed's facilities, too!) with paper money which is rapidly losing its value. Watch the greenback tumble tomorrow in currency trading.

Congress is getting steamrolled and the American people are getting snookered. Consumer confidence--already at historic lows--is headed for the wood-chipper feet-first. Something has got to give.

One minute everything is hunky-dory; the subprime meltdown is "contained" and "the fundamentals of our economy are strong".(Paulson) And, less than a week later, congress is forced to surrender their constitutionally-mandated right to oversee spending in order to forestall economic Armageddon. Which is it? Or is the real objective just to keep the country on an emotional teeter-totter long enough for all state-power to be subsumed by the Wall Street Politburo?

No one knows what will happen next. We are in uncharted waters. And no one knows what the political landscape will look like after the dust settles from this outrageous power grab. According to Paulson, things are so dire, the entire nation will be reduced to smoldering rubble and twisted iron. But can we trust him this time after his long litany of lies?

Isn't it about time to send the cockroaches scuttling back to their hideouts and bring in the cleaning crew to hose the whole place down? It sounds like a job for Ralph Nader, a man of vision and unshakable integrity. Give Ralph a badge and let him deploy his Raiders to Wall Street armed with bullwhips and tasers. Let them post a guard in every CEOs and CFOs office and every boardroom on the Street---and if even one decimal is accidentally moved to the right or left on the corporate ledger; clap them in leg-irons and drag them off squealing to Guantanamo. That's how you clean up Wall Street!

Don't let the prospect of a national crisis trick you into giving up your freedom, America. The people behind this scam are the same land sharks and flim-flam men who polluted the global marketplace with their snake oil and toxic sludge. These are the fraudsters who manufactured the crisis to begin with. This is just the latest installment of the Shock Doctrine; engineer a crisis, and then, steal whatever is left behind. Same sh**, different day. Be resolute. Don't budge. Our economic foundations may be crumbling, but or determination is not. This is our country, not Goldman Sach's. The people who destroyed America must be held to account. Their time is coming. Justice first.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Drugs, sex and ....OIL

There just really isn't much hope, is there?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

So, let me get this straight: House Republicans are slamming Dems using advice from drug-addled cheaters who are literally in bed with oil executives? Yes, sadly enough, that is one way to refer to the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service.

The House voted this week to pass an expansion of offshore drilling to allow companies to extract oil from coastal regions as little as 50 miles from the shoreline. Though they've been crying out for an expansion of offshore drilling for what seems like forever, Republicans still found a way to make Democrats weak at the gas pump. They said that "experts" say all the good oil reserves are between three miles and 50 miles from the shore. And who are these experts? Why, it's the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which was just revealed by the department's inspector general to have engaged in drug use and illicit sex with oil company executives.

The Associated Press reported the story, but they did it backwards. Always looking for conflict and a news peg, they started out talking about the new bill and Republicans attacking Democrats, sneaking the sex and drugs in at the very end, after readers had fallen asleep or turned to the crossword puzzle.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Washington Is Risking War with Pakistan

By Robert Baer


17/09/08 "Time" - -- - As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we're on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that's not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan's military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It's a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it's the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.

All of which begs the question, is it worth the ghost hunt we've been on since September 11? There has not been a credible sighting of Osama bin Laden since he escaped from Tora Bora in October 2001. As for al-Qaeda, there are few signs it's even still alive, other than a dispersed leadership taking refuge with the Taliban. Al-Qaeda couldn't even manage to post a statement on the Internet marking September 11, let alone set off a bomb.

U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country's newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration's decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations' chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda's leadership are slim. American intelligence isn't good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan's tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can't enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn't going to stop him.

Finally, there is Pakistan itself, a country that truly is on the edge of civil war. Should we be adding to the force of chaos? By indiscriminately bombing the tribal areas along the Afghan border, we in effect are going to war with Pakistan's ethnic Pashtuns. They make up 15% of Pakistan's 167 million people. They are well armed and among the most fierce and xenophobic people in the world. It is not beyond their military capabilities to cross the Indus and take Islamabad.

Before it is too late, someone needs to sit the President down and give him the bad news that Pakistan is a bridge too far in the "war on terror."

Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Has the U.S. Invasion of Pakistan Begun?

Tomgram: Tariq Ali,

As Andrew Bacevich tells us in the latest issue of the Atlantic, there's now a vigorous debate going on in the military about the nature of the "next" American wars and how to prepare for them. However, while military officers argue, that "next war" may already be creeping up on us.

Having, with much hoopla, launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, each disastrous in its own way, the Bush administration in its waning months seems intent on a slo-mo launching of a third war in the border regions of Pakistan. Almost every day now news trickles out of intensified American strikes -- by Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones, or even commando raids from helicopters -- in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border; and there is a drumbeat of threats of more to come. All of this, in turn, is reportedly only "phase one" of a three-phase Bush administration plan in which the American military "gloves" would "come off." Think of this as the green-lighting of a new version of that old Vietnam-era tactic of "hot pursuit" across national borders, or think of it simply as the latest war.

Already Pakistan's sovereignty has functionally been declared of no significance by our President, and so, without a word from Congress, the American war that already stretches from Iraq to Afghanistan is threatening to widen in ways that are potentially incendiary in the extreme. While Pakistani sources report that no significant Taliban or al-Qaeda figures have been killed in the recent series of attacks, anger in Pakistan over the abrogation of national sovereignty and, as in Afghanistan, over civilian casualties is growing.

In Iraq, 146,000 American soldiers seem not to be going anywhere anytime soon, while in Afghanistan another 33,000 embattled American troops (and tens of thousands of NATO troops), suffering their highest casualties since the Taliban fell in 2001, are fighting a spreading insurgency backed by growing anger over foreign occupation. The disintegration seems to be proceeding apace in that country as the Taliban begins to throttle the supply routes leading into the Afghan capital of Kabul, while the governor of a province just died in an IED blast. "President" Hamid Karzai was long ago nicknamed "the mayor of Kabul." Today, that tag seems ever more appropriate as the influence of his corrupt government steadily weakens.

In the meantime, in Pakistan, a new war, no less unpredictable and unpalatable than the last two, develops, as American strikes fan the flames of Pakistani nationalism. Already the Pakistani military may have fired its first warning shots at American troops. Part of the horror here is that much of the present nightmare in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be traced to the sorry U.S. relationship with Pakistan's military and its intelligence services back in the early 1980s. At that time, in its anti-Soviet jihad, the Reagan administration was, in conjunction with the Pakistanis, actively nurturing the forces that the Bush administration is now so intent on fighting. No one knows this story, this record, better than the Pakistani-born journalist and writer Tariq Ali.

As we head into our "next war," most Americans know almost nothing about Pakistan, the sixth most populous country on the planet with 200 million people, and the only Islamic state with nuclear weapons. As the Bush administration commits to playing with fire in that desperately poor land, it's time to learn. Ali, who posts below on the next U.S. war, has just written a new book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power -- published today -- that traces the U.S.-Pakistani relationship from the 1950s to late last night. I can tell you that it's both riveting and needed. Check it out. And while you're at it, check Ali out in a two-part video, released by TomDispatch, in which he discusses the history of the tangled U.S.-Pakistani relationship and Barack Obama's Afghan and Pakistani plans. Tom

The American War Moves to Pakistan

Bush's War Widens Dangerously
By Tariq Ali

The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration. Senator Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Hillary Clinton, tried to outflank her by supporting a policy of U.S. strikes into Pakistan. Senator John McCain and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin have now echoed this view and so it has become, by consensus, official U.S. policy.

Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace.

Why, then, has the U.S. decided to destabilize a crucial ally? Within Pakistan, some analysts argue that this is a carefully coordinated move to weaken the Pakistani state yet further by creating a crisis that extends way beyond the badlands on the frontier with Afghanistan. Its ultimate aim, they claim, would be the extraction of the Pakistani military's nuclear fangs. If this were the case, it would imply that Washington was indeed determined to break up the Pakistani state, since the country would very simply not survive a disaster on that scale.

In my view, however, the expansion of the war relates far more to the Bush administration's disastrous occupation in Afghanistan. It is hardly a secret that the regime of President Hamid Karzai is becoming more isolated with each passing day, as Taliban guerrillas move ever closer to Kabul.

When in doubt, escalate the war is an old imperial motto. The strikes against Pakistan represent -- like the decisions of President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to bomb and then invade Cambodia (acts that, in the end, empowered Pol Pot and his monsters) -- a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong.

It is true that those resisting the NATO occupation cross the Pakistan-Afghan border with ease. However, the U.S. has often engaged in quiet negotiations with them. Several feelers have been put out to the Taliban in Pakistan, while U.S. intelligence experts regularly check into the Serena Hotel in Swat to discuss possibilities with Mullah Fazlullah, a local pro-Taliban leader. The same is true inside Afghanistan.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a whole layer of the Taliban's middle-level leadership crossed the border into Pakistan to regroup and plan for what lay ahead. By 2003, their guerrilla factions were starting to harass the occupying forces in Afghanistan and, during 2004, they began to be joined by a new generation of local recruits, by no means all jihadists, who were being radicalized by the occupation itself.

Though, in the world of the Western media, the Taliban has been entirely conflated with al-Qaeda, most of their supporters are, in fact, driven by quite local concerns. If NATO and the U.S. were to leave Afghanistan, their political evolution would most likely parallel that of Pakistan's domesticated Islamists.

The neo-Taliban now control at least twenty Afghan districts in Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan provinces. It is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla fighters. Though often characterized as a rural jacquerie they have won significant support in southern towns and they even led a Tet-style offensive in Kandahar in 2006. Elsewhere, mullahs who had initially supported President Karzai's allies are now railing against the foreigners and the government in Kabul. For the first time, calls for jihad against the occupation are even being heard in the non-Pashtun northeast border provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.

The neo-Taliban have said that they will not join any government until "the foreigners" have left their country, which raises the question of the strategic aims of the United States. Is it the case, as NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer suggested to an audience at the Brookings Institution earlier this year, that the war in Afghanistan has little to do with spreading good governance in Afghanistan or even destroying the remnants of al-Qaeda? Is it part of a master plan, as outlined by a strategist in NATO Review in the Winter of 2005, to expand the focus of NATO from the Euro-Atlantic zone, because "in the 21st century NATO must become an alliance… designed to project systemic stability beyond its borders"?

As that strategist went on to write:

"The centre of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward. As it does, the nature of power itself is changing. The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way… [S]ecurity effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability."

Such a strategy implies a permanent military presence on the borders of both China and Iran. Given that this is unacceptable to most Pakistanis and Afghans, it will only create a state of permanent mayhem in the region, resulting in ever more violence and terror, as well as heightened support for jihadi extremism, which, in turn, will but further stretch an already over-extended empire.

Globalizers often speak as though U.S. hegemony and the spread of capitalism were the same thing. This was certainly the case during the Cold War, but the twin aims of yesteryear now stand in something closer to an inverse relationship. For, in certain ways, it is the very spread of capitalism that is gradually eroding U.S. hegemony in the world. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's triumph in Georgia was a dramatic signal of this fact. The American push into the Greater Middle East in recent years, designed to demonstrate Washington's primacy over the Eurasian powers, has descended into remarkable chaos, necessitating support from the very powers it was meant to put on notice.

Pakistan's new, indirectly elected President, Asif Zardari, the husband of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto and a Pakistani "godfather" of the first order, indicated his support for U.S. strategy by inviting Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai to attend his inauguration, the only foreign leader to do so. Twinning himself with a discredited satrap in Kabul may have impressed some in Washington, but it only further decreased support for the widower Bhutto in his own country.

The key in Pakistan, as always, is the army. If the already heightened U.S. raids inside the country continue to escalate, the much-vaunted unity of the military High Command might come under real strain. At a meeting of corps commanders in Rawalpindi on September 12th, Pakistani Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani received unanimous support for his relatively mild public denunciation of the recent U.S. strikes inside Pakistan in which he said the country's borders and sovereignty would be defended "at all cost."

Saying, however, that the Army will safeguard the country's sovereignty is different from doing so in practice. This is the heart of the contradiction. Perhaps the attacks will cease on November 4th. Perhaps pigs (with or without lipstick) will fly. What is really required in the region is an American/NATO exit strategy from Afghanistan, which should entail a regional solution involving Pakistan, Iran, India, and Russia. These four states could guarantee a national government and massive social reconstruction in that country. No matter what, NATO and the Americans have failed abysmally.

Tariq Ali, writer, journalist, filmmaker, contributes regularly to a range of publications including the Guardian, the Nation, and the London Review of Books. His most recent book, just published, is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Scribner, 2008). In a two-part video, released by TomDispatch.com, he offers critical commentary on Barack Obama's plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as on the tangled U.S.-Pakistani relationship.

Copyright 2008 Tariq Ali

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