Let's All Go Crazy!

This touches close to home. I am extremely familiar with the many cases of PTSD which followed Vietnam. As a matter of fact, the Iraq war has triggered a lot of left over nigtmares for Vietnam Vets.

It never really goes away, PTSD; though with the proper treatment, and education of the patient and his/her family, it can be greatly ameliorated. It takes time. It takes money. The VA is being slashed to the bone, again, and they never were all that good at treating the disorder anyway

American citizens, in general, are being affected. Certainly those Americans who are the most vulnerable to relapse into a chronic condition, began showing up at hospitals first. As time wore on, Psychiatrists began being swamped, psyhotropic drug sales grew steadily upward. Rehab centers have certainly had a good-size uptick in admissions in the last couple of years.

This shouldn't suprise anyone.

Decent, compassionate, caring people must do one of two things at times like these: Tune it all out or endure the pain of it; see the stark reality of it all, for just what it is, no less no more.

When the truth starts to seep in through the cracks in a person's psychic wall, there is indescribale pain; psychic pain. There is fear, rage, seething anger, Depression, anxiety, phobias, panic attacks and Bipolor patients who are suddenly no longer maintainable on their medication.

These folks are not the ones who keep me up at night.

It's the ones who are cheering on the violence in Iraq and want more in Iran.

It is the ones who couldn't care less.

It's the soldier who comes home unchanged, by killing people; by death in general.

February 11, 2007 at 08:06:16

Let's Go Crazy: The Decline in US Mental Health under Bush

by Heather Wokusch

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Factors linked with mental illness (including poverty, homelessness, violence and social uncertainty) have run rampant during the Bush years while psychiatric treatment options have disappeared. Nowhere has this trend been more prevalent – and more heartbreaking - than with Katrina survivors and veterans of Bush's wars.

Suicide levels in the Big Easy soared 300% in the four months following Katrina, and hurricane-related mental disorders remain widespread today. Yet with hospitals still shuttered and psychiatric clinics closed, those suffering from chronic mental illnesses or post-Katrina depression and post-traumatic stress disorder have few options.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found that while 26% of respondents reported at least one family member needing mental health support following Katrina, less than 2% was receiving any.

New Orleans' mental health crisis exacerbates its already debilitating crime rate, with police reporting a 15% higher incidence of psychiatric-related emergency calls than before Katrina. But instead of receiving treatment, many of the mentally ill end up in local prisons – a trend repeated across the country.

In Florida, for example, over 250 prisoners who should have been transferred to state mental hospitals languish in prisons unequipped to handle their special needs. As The St. Petersburg Times reported last month, mentally-ill inmates "play poker with ghosts, climb the bars like bats or dump their lunch trays into the toilet and eat the food like soup. They will slam their heads against the wall, slice themselves with razors or plunge head-first off their bunks onto the concrete floor."

With no psychiatric beds available due to funding cutbacks, inmates charged with only misdemeanors end up deteriorating in jails one Floridian official called "a dumping ground for the mentally ill."

Veterans face a similar lack of support. An estimated one out of every five service members returning from Iraq suffers from psychiatric problems and, with a backlog of 400,000 cases, the Department of Veterans Affairs has proven incapable of handling the deluge. Veterans subsequently have to wait an average of five and a half months for an initial decision on disability benefits and an appeal can take years.

That's not supporting our troops.The number of veterans trying to get mental health support doubled to 9,103 between October 2005 and June 2006. The Government Accountability Office recently found, however, that most who show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are not referred for treatment, no doubt due to the VA's lack of capacity to meet demand. Considering that combat PTSD can take years to surface and that over a million troops have been deployed, it's safe to say the US will soon be facing a mental health crisis of ominous proportions.

After the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of veterans either committed suicide, became drug addicts or ended up on the streets. Today, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans reports that almost 200,000 veterans are homeless each night, roughly one in three adult homeless males. Half of today's homeless vets suffer from substance abuse problems and 45% from mental illness. Yet the administration continues to fund military escalation instead of providing them with shelter and treatment.The psychiatric needs of active-duty service members have also been ignored. A tragic example is Steven Green, the former Army private charged in the March 2006 murder of an Iraqi family and the rape/murder of their 14-year-old daughter. In December 2005, Green had tried to get help from an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq, claiming that he was enraged and wanted to kill Iraqi citizens. Doctors diagnosed Green with "homicidal ideations," gave him a psychoactive drug, told him to rest – and sent him back to fight.

It took Army mental health officials a full three months to contact Green again (over a week after the family had been murdered) due to reports he had thrown a puppy off a roof and set its body on fire.

It's safe to say that many other US service members are like Green, walking time bombs in desperate need of psychiatric care they may never receive.Bush has, unfortunately, been pro-active in one mental health area: the push for mandatory screening of US citizens. In April 2002, Bush set up the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, ostensibly to "eliminate inequality for Americans with disabilities" but whose recommendations include broad-based mental health screening for US adults/children and the prescription of psychoactive medication.

Civil rights advocates fear the disturbing implications of comprehensive mandatory psychological testing and therapists question the Commission's emphasis on psychiatric drugs over other forms of therapy.

Put bluntly, big-donor pharmaceutical companies are slated to profit at the expense of US citizens' rights.

David Oaks, Director of the advocacy group Mind Freedom International, had this to say about the administration's screening plans: "President Bush wants to test all Americans for 'mental illness.' We demand that President Bush start with himself first. We will provide the mental health professional to do the screening."

Virginia-based physician Patch Adams even volunteered to screen Bush, adding, "He needs a lot of help. I'll see him for free."

The National Alliance on Mental Illness recently conducted an analysis of mental health care systems across the US, incorporating factors such as infrastructure and information access. The national average grade was D, a shameful record for such a wealthy nation.

Factoring in the long-term psychiatric implications of Bush's ongoing military adventurism, the future looks even worse. That is for everyone but pharmaceutical companies.

Action ideas:

1. Visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness site (www.nami.org) for information on everything from "Public Education and Information Activities" to "Advocacy on Behalf of People Living with Mental Illness." Find out how your state ranks on mental health care and consider signing up for their fundraising walks. Also check out the terrific MindFreedom International site (www.mindfreedom.org) dedicated to "defending human rights and promoting humane alternatives in mental health."

2. Urge your congressmembers to provide more mental-health support to those hit by Katrina.3. Learn about the plight of homeless veterans at the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans site (www.nchv.org), which offers legislation information, support for homeless veterans and service providers and opportunities to get involved.

http://www.heatherwokusch.com

Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives' Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now (Volumes 1 and 2).

Heather can be reached at http://www.heatherwokusch.com/, where each recent article is accompanied by a 3-minute podcast summary.


(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.

Petition the Pope to Name Bush as the New Anti-Christ

February 12, 2007 at 05:34:55

A PETITION TO THE POPE TO CENSURE G W BUSH AS THE 21ST CENTURY ANTI-CHRIST:

by Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo


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By Pete the Prof : The ultimate destruction of our cherished American way of life by greedy fascists and something immediate we can do about it.

I have joined a petition, now sent to the Pope, leader of my church, to censure President GW BUSH, as the reigning Anti-Christ, especially since this pope anointed BUSH in letters to American bishops, when he was cardinal and again when he was pope, which, in essense, using the abortion issue as his only criteria, prompted many Catholics to vote only for those who stood against that issue.

That indictment of good men, with a difference of opinion on which issues to support and which not, is a senseless invasion of their free-will, and does not mean as individuals they practice such things or do not stand against them, nor does it mean that politicians, who say they are against abortion are being truthful. I have petitioned all those running to drop or come out against abortion. Some have not, that does not mean they are worse people than those who say they are against abortion, nor is it the only life or death issue, or thje most far reaching.

This election of 2004, happily, Catholics chose to ignore the pope on for whom they should vote and why.

As a father and as a Catholic, I too stand against abortion, there are other alternatives, but I also stand against, avarice, covetousness, Preemptive war, torture, capital punishment, attacking a nation 1/12th the size of our own which has neither air force nor navy, and which attack was based on "cooked evidence, lies and avarice, with murderous intent, and which was designed to appease and delight rabid Fascist "Christians", who are hooked on idiotically linking fictional publications to their twisted, sadistic version of both Testaments of the Bible into a carte' Blanche' to murder, rape and pillage whomever they please.

I also stand against the systematic destruction of the strong standard of living of Americans, by outsourcing, lay-offs, downsizing, union 'give-backs', and weak and cowardly union leadership, led by GW Bush to send tens of millions of American workers into poverty, for generations to come.I also demand that BUSH and his no-bid contractors pay reparation to the families of maimed or killed Iraqi civilians and American service people, and that the oil companies do like wise to those of us here who had to pay between $1.75-$3.90 a gallon for gasoline which costs the oil companies $1.00-$1.50 a BARREL from processing and delivery to the pump!

Who are those, which the Bushites are pleased to murder, rape and pillage? Why, of course, any nation which is selling gasoline at the pump at anywhere from $00.05 cents a gallon (Iraq before the war), $00.12 cents a gallon, (Venezuela right now), and less than the price of a Chocolate bar (Iran and Syria, right now).

Isn't it disgusting to see elected officials pandering to happily broadcast their demonic behavior as justifiable and even as "Christian" for the benefit of their bloodthirsty Fascist "Christian" supporters and the more bloodthirsty arms dealers and other profiteering industrialists and administrators of the mercenary "security" companies profiting like none ever had before in Iraq, at the expense of Iraqi civilians or as they are better known here, "Collaterally-Damaged goods."

I think under the various nefarious anti-terrorism laws we have now, we can ironically turn them upon the real terrorists, the people who created these unjust laws. We could arrest many congress people, many "Law-people", clergy people, and those who are not clergy people who make huge profits from pretending at being "Christians" supporting this evil presidency, the president, the vice president, their cabinet, the attorney general, and most of the administration staff working at the White House, a good many of those in the pretense of being journalists, but who work for corporations and in lieu of journalism are practicing a type of prostitution which reflects poorly on the far more honorable ladies of the evening.

These people have given SUBSTANTIAL AID to our real enemies, the domestic terrorists, G W Bush and his fascist friends, come to take revenge for losing WWII to REAL AMERICANS, and our other real enemies overseas, those Bushites and their band of incompetent boobs. Between the two, the Al Qaeda and the Bushite fascists, there has been done more damage, injury, death, scandal, corruption and exposure of Americans and their allies to danger than any two entities in our history.

Apparently, Unlike this pope as well as the so-called "Christian-Right" (of which they are neither) I and others wrote about what was to happen, having been given the privilege of foreseeing, long before the war, that there were no WMD's in Iraq, and how badly this war, with no plan for the battle or exit, even asked for by a Congress which consists mainly of lawyers, would go. (I think now I see why so many lawyers come to congress, if they cannot write a contract with specifications, as we in the advertising and architectural business must do or perish, they need to seek a tried and true way to gain fame and wealth, despite their incompetence, and inability to practice due-diligence.)

Never in our history were so many bamboozled by so few, who stole so much. Never in our history have we seen such an incompetent congress, misusing our nation, its treasury, our precious service men and women, in such cavalier, arbitrary and capricious manner. I would like to see some brilliant class-action firm of real attorney's sue the bejeepers out of the perpetrators of both parties for that one.

Who, among our ancestors, now twisting and turning in their graves, would ever have believed that our voters would put into place, a group of avaricious, fascists, who would ever stoop to hiding behind the flag and the cross, as did Hitler, to justify destroying our Bill of Rights and our Constitution?

Who could have envisioned such a parade of human garbage ever attaining high office, much less, without a murmur from many of our "watchdogs" too busy enjoying the good life at the expense of lobbyists / bribers, running into a toilet, the most noble experiment for a nation ever conceived?

Who would have imagined such a corrupt, murderous, cruel, and barbarous brood of politicians, industrialists and clergy, could be born of the blood of American families?

Moreover, who would ever have thought that a minister of one sovereign nation, the Vatican (they now call themselves a sovereign nation to protect their assets) trying, and succeeding, in convincing American voters to vote for the man of the Vatican's choice, the man who promised the clergy "Faith Based Initiatives" (cash, to blow as they wished)?

Who would have thought that no one either in congress or the media would call him on that, and worse now that his lack of foresight has ruined the lives of tens of millions, still no one has called this pope on it. It is almost like only the prophets saw this disaster coming and no one listened, and now the new congress is making noises like, "We came to get ours, don't bother us about wars and corruption."

See NYT: Congress Finds Ways to Avoid Lobbyist Limits

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Lawmakers continue to invite corporate lobbyists to help pay for fund-raisers that look a lot like the ones that Congress just barred lobbyists from sponsoring.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/us/politics/11trips.html?th&emc=th

Well, it appears that there will be no impeachment, though Congressman, Henry Waxman is pursuing Blackwater and others, and Fitzgerald is pursuing Libby, Abramoff, and ultimately Rove and Cheney we hope, how can we get more immediate satisfaction?

Well maybe there is a way, and here, which I've hinted at before is the idea:

While Michelangelo was creating the LAST JUDGMENT on the Reredos of the Sistine Chapel, the Master of Ceremonies under Pope Paul III, Monsignor Biagio de Cesena, protested to the pope about the "shameless nudes " and "pornography" painted by Michelangelo.

Livid over the envy, pettiness and ignorance of Biagio, Michelangelo painted a portrait of him, with the ears of a jackass in Hell, ensnarled in the coils of Satan in the form of a snake, devouring Biagio' s Genitalia. When Biagio complained to the pope about his placement in the Hellish situation and place, Paul III maintained that had Michelangelo placed Biagio in purgatory, he could intervene and redeem him, but since Michelangelo had placed him in Hell, from which there is no redemption, the pope had no jurisdiction. Therefore, there he has stood for nearly 500 years, in constant embarrassment, shame and Hellishly, pigmented, pain.

When hysterical people in droves complained about a naked breast at the Super Bowl, last year, (which breast I missed when I sneezed and I saw no instant replay of the event that night during the game, DAMN!) I was overwhelmed with the hypocrisy. Much like fascists, now complain about sex and nudity on screen, while they ignore slaughter of 655,000 Iraqi's and Americans, and 1,000,000 casualties, in a vigilante atmosphere, where the greatest military force on the planet, is commanded by sadistic leaders to burn, strafe, and bomb the bejeepers out of innocent bystanders, mostly Muslim's, much to the delight of some so-called "Christians", and politicians on both sides of the aisle.

The pope, however, partially to blame for the event, (the slaughter, not the Super Bowl or Janet Jackson's lovely bared breast, which I am sorry to have missed) has said little to nothing of his vast blunder in backing the man most enlightened people, Christian or otherwise, have dubbed as the 21st Century's first Anti-Christ.

I am mortified first of all, that the church, has not apologized for his blunder and lack of prophetic vision.

In a dream an angel came and said, "If you, Peter, paint into Michelangelo's Last Judgment, some of those now, who much more deserve the same treatment as Biagio, perhaps you and others will rejoice at what follows."

Therefore, I did as Michelangelo had done; and, I hope, if I snatched the image of my artwork correctly is the result. Unfortunately, the image would not come on screen. I shall attempt to put it up in the Diaries portion for your viewing pleasure.

If you find it, see, if you can pick out the Neo-Con villains, corruptors, Religious Right, hypocrites, and the War Criminals, which are attempting to destroy our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and encroach upon the edict against the establishment of a Theocratic State, from which form of Government all of our ancestors escaped Europe, Asia and the Middle East to come to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Here, in this sanctuary, enlightened men and women are free to worship as their conscience, dictates, in their own way, or not, as God asks of them, as free individuals, not under the influence of fools, whose view of God is narrow, driven by their hatred, bigotry and darkened and limited, intellect's. Biagio' s crime was that he was unenlightened and perhaps envious of Michelangelo's giftedness and failed to recognize, perhaps in hypocritical prudishness, or perhaps in ignorance of the edict of God to respect those upon which he chooses to bestow extraordinary gifts.

Those crimes were bad enough, perhaps not quite enough to merit the punishment Michelangelo dealt-out to him, but they pale in light of the horrors of nearly 1,000,000 casualties, close to 675,000 dead, tens of millions economically destroyed here and abroad, the blasphemous, sacraligious and disrespectful manner in which the Name of the Lord is taken in vain, the slanders, lies, and treasonous actions, all with hubris and contempt for God's poor in spirit and in material possessions and necessities. Indeed, if Biagio' s crimes against an enlightened one merited the serpent in Hell, these deserve no less, according to my dream.

Professor Emeritus Pete Bagnolo

http://www.BagnoloArt.com

Professor Bagnolo is a Renaissance man: Architectural designer, painter, sculptor, writer, novelist, toy/game designer and inventor. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, with an off the charts IQ, reading at the graduate level by 5th grade, offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8, his parents allowed only a one grade skip, however. Later He was a recipient of an Art Institute scholarship at age 11, a Ford Foundation Fellowship and merit scholarship in art, and was appointed a Graduate Research Assistant position in college. He holds a triple bachelor's degree in Painting and Drawing, Anthropology, Architectural Design Advertising. He taught; architecture, anthropology, Theology, advertising, painting and drawing, entrepreneuring and seminars on Creative Profit Making. He produced a star-studded Music festival, had a radio talk show in Chicago, and cable TV show. Now, retired from Teaching, he paints, writes, and pursues other ventures. The above bio harvested from the comments of Deans, colleagues, students, clients and collector's.


(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.

Douglas Feith and his Stove-piping operation for war in Iraq

Inspired by the editor of Information Clearing House -- who has seen fit to repost my article about Douglas Feith's "Gestapo Office" -- and having seen the superficial treatment that the mainstream news media gave to yesterday's "news," about a "'very damning' report by the Defense Department's inspector general" which "depicts a Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence in an effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq," I would like to contribute to the discussion by bringing my very detailed examination of Douglas Feith's nefarious activities to your attention.

It can be found at: http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/Gestapo.html

Walter C. Uhler.com

Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).


(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.

Putin Gives Warning!

Putin warns against "cornering Iran" over nuclear crisis


Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that the international community should address the concerns of Iran as it seeks a solution to Tehran's nuclear crisis.

"We should not corner Iran into a hostile environment," Putin said at a high-profile security conference held in the southern German city of Munich.

There is no evidence, after all, that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, he said.
The Russian president said the international community should "be more patient and work together" to solve the crisis.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has arrived on Saturday to attend the three-day conference, where the Iranians nuclear crisis is one of the most burning issues to be discussed.
Earlier reports said Larijani had decided at the last minute that he is not coming due to an illness.

Larijani had said that he expected some negotiations with the West on the sidelines of the Munich meeting, which also attracted German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and EU chief diplomat Javier Solana.

Some 250 top officials from over 40 countries participated in the 43th Munich security conference which will run from Feb. 9 to 11.

The meeting, titled "global crisis, global responsibilities", will also highlight NATO's role, the Middle East peace process, transatlantic relations, the West's relations with Russia and the fight against international terrorism, according to the organizers.

Source: Xinhua


(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.

Will They Nuke Iran?

Intelligence Briefings to NYT Notch Up Tension

By Alexander Cockburn 02/11/07 "Counterpunch" -- -- President Nixon, a very good poker player, once defined the art of brinkmanship as persuading your opponent that you are insane and, unless appeased by pledges of surrender, quite capable of blowing up the planet.

By these robust standards George Bush is doing a moderately competent job in suggesting that if balked by Iran on the matter of arming the Shi'a in Iraq or pursuing its nuclear program he'll dump high explosive, maybe even a couple of nukes, on that country's relevant research sites, or tell Israel to do the job for him.

In Washington there are plenty of rational people in Congress, think tanks and the Pentagon who think he's capable of ordering an attack,-- albeit not a nuclear one -- with bombers carrying conventional explosive and with missiles from US ships in the Persian Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardner, who's taught at the National War College recently sketched out on this site the plan as it could unfold: already the second naval carrier group has been deployed to the Gulf area, joined by naval mine clearing ships. "As one of the last steps before a strike, we'll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we'll only be days away from a strike."Gardiner cautioned that "It is possible the White House strategy is just implementing a strategy to put pressure on Iran on a number of fronts, and this will never amount to anything.

On the other hand, if the White House is on a path to strike Iran, we'll see a few more steps unfold."First, we know there is a National Security Council staff-led_group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran.

Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran.

Watch for the outrage stuff.

As regards "the outrage stuff", here on cue comes the New York Times' Michael Gordon with a front page story today, February 10, headlined "Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, US Says", and beginning "The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran."

It's no doubt true that Iran has been arming the Shi'a. What Gordon fails to mention is that over 90 per sent of the IEDs used against US troops in Iraq have been detonated by the Sunni insurgents , who of course are not supplied by Iran. More generally, the prime point of interest of the intelligence briefings given to Gordon and other journalists is the timing. At any point in the past couple of years the US could have gone public with roughly the same accusations.

Shades of the Ho Chi Minh trail! Year after year first Johnson then Nixon would claim that the resistance in south Vietnam was not indigenous but created and armed by North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China--which these days has flourishing economic ties with Iran, particularly in the field of energy.

Another tripwire for escalation would be the UN Security Council Feb 21 deadline for Iran to suspend "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA," the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There's certainly disquiet in Congress, particularly after Bush's State of the Union address January 17 where he reprised his notorious "Axis of Evil" address of January 2002, identifying Iran as the number one troublemaker and fomenter of terror in the region."Is it the position of this administration that it possesses the authority to take unilateral action against Iran, in the absence of a direct threat, without Congressional approval?" the Virginia Democrat, Senator James Webb recently asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice said she'd get back to him.

The Bush administration is capable of almost any folly, but is it likely that it would bomb Iran's nuclear research labs? Would it really prod Israel into taking on the job?

Israel of course has been making plenty of quite predictable hay out of President Ahmadinejad's crack about how "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." Of course the let's-stay- calm types say it was just a stale old one-liner from the Ayatollah Khomeini and please to note he used the word "regime", not "Israel". Plant that one in the graveyard of wimpy rationalizations. Along with the recent"holocaust conference", it's probably the biggest leg-up for Israeli bond drives since the Yom Kippur war.

Prime minister Olmert quotes it on an almost daily basis, echoed by his rival, Netanyahu.Aside from the rhetorical haymaking, the notion of Israel nuking Iran's N-plants is very far-fetched. Indeed, the military wisdom here is that as a practical enterprise, it can't, since among many technical limitations Israel's bombers would require refueling over hostile territory.Aside from this, Israel still won't officially admit to having a nuclear arsenal. It would a stupefying jump, from that disingenuous posture to being the first power in the region to explode a nuclear device. The point of having a nuclear deterrent is to deter, not to use. Iran is well aware that in 1999 and 2004 Israelis bought Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

As President Chirac asked in his recent press conference, what good it would do Iran to have a nuclear bomb, or even two. "Where would it fire that bomb? At Israel? It wouldn't have traveled 200 meters through the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."(Reservations among Israel's elites about attacks on Iran are the topic of an excellent piece by Gabriel Kolko on this site today.)

So the job of attacking would fall to the US Air force and US Navy and there are certainly generals, particularly in the Air Force, telling Bush it would be a snap, just as Curt LeMay, at that time head of the Strategic Air Command, told President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis that SAC could "reduce the Soviet Union to a smouldering irradiated ruin in three hours".

But Air Force credibility is low at the moment. LeMay's heirs told Bush that "shock and awe" bombing in 2003 would prompt Saddam to run up the white flag. It didn't. US ground forces carried the day--at least at the outset. But there aren't any US ground forces available to invade a country many times bigger than Iraq, filled with a large population mostly loyal to the regime. After sorties against Iran with bombs and missiles what would the US do?

The problem is that brinkmanship suits everyone's book. Ahmadinejad, facing serious political problems, can posture about standing up to the Great Satan. Olmert can say Ahmadinejad wants to finish off Israel and kill all the Jews. Bush sees Iran as a terrific way of changing the subject from the mess in Iraq and putting the Democrats on the spot.

The Democrats take the lead of their presidential hopefuls, who have no intention of being corralled by the Republicans as symps of holocaust deniers who want to destroy Israel. These days, to be a player, any candidate for the US presidency has to raise about $100 million, of which a large tranche will come from American Jews.

Barack Obama and John Edwards call for swift withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. When it comes to Iran they roar in unison with Hillary Clinton that no option can be left off the table. In other words, if it comes to it, nuke 'em .Is there room for sanity here? The best hope will be for Iran to finish its testing cycle, declare mission accomplished and figure out some sort of face-saving halt in its program by February 21.

Can we hope for prudence from the White House? Who knows? Bush is a nutty guy. It was his insistence on democratic elections in Iraq that put the Shi'a in control. Now he's blaming Iran for trying to capitalize on the consequences. This is not a regime that thinks things through very sensibly.


(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.

An Explosion of Disbelief - Fresh Doubts about 9/11

Not so fresh to us.

By SUE REID - More by this author »

A new film alleges the U.S. staged the 9/11 disaster to justify the Iraq war

The official story of what happened on 9/11 never fails to shock. Four American airliners are hijacked by Osama Bin Laden's terrorists in an attack on the heart of the Western world on September 11, 2001.

Two are deliberately flown into New York's famous Twin Towers, which collapse. A third rams into the United States defence headquarters at the Pentagon, in Washington D.C.
The last goes down in rural Pennsylvania, 150 miles north of the capital, after a tussle between the hijackers and some of the passengers onboard, whose bravery was recently portrayed in a Hollywood film, United 93.

Nearly 3,000 ordinary, decent Americans die in the attacks, provoking the U.S. President George W. Bush to mount a global war on terror, which leads to the invasion of Iraq, with Britain in tow.

Or that's how the official story goes.

Yet today, more than five years on, this accepted version of what happened on 9/11 is being challenged by a 90-minute internet movie made for £1,500 on a cheap laptop by three young American men. The film is so popular that up to 100 million viewers have watched what is being dubbed the first internet blockbuster.

The movie was shown on television to 50 million people in 12 countries on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 last autumn. More than 100,000 DVDs have been sold and another 50,000 have been given away. In Britain, 491,000 people have clicked on to Google Video to watch it on their computers.

Called Loose Change, the film is a blitz of statistics, photographs pinched from the web, eyewitness accounts and expert testimony, all set to hip-hop music. And it is dramatically changing the way people think about 9/11.

A recent poll by the respected New York Times revealed that three out of four Americans now suspect the U.S. government of not telling the truth about 9/11. This proportion has shot up from a year ago, when half the population said they did not believe the official story of an Al Qaeda attack.

The video claims the Bush administration was, at the very least, criminally negligent in allowing the terrorist attacks to take place. It also makes the startling claim that the U.S. government might have been directly responsible for 9/11 and is now orchestrating a cover-up.
Unsurprisingly, the film's allegations have been denied, even roundly condemned, by White House sources and U.S. intelligence services.

Only this week, the letters page of the Guardian newspaper was full of discourse about Loose Change, which was made by a trio of twentysomethings, including a failed film school student and a disillusioned ex-soldier.

Indeed, the movie's assertions are being explored by a number of commentators in America and Britain - including the former Labour Cabinet Minister Michael Meacher - who are questioning the official account of 9/11.

Mr Meacher, who last year proposed holding a screening of Loose Change at the House of Commons (he later changed his mind), has said of 9/11: "Never in modern history has an event of such cataclysmic significance been shrouded in such mystery. Some of the key facts remain unexplained on any plausible basis."

These words were written in a foreword for Professor David Ray Griffin's bestselling book, The New Pearl Harbour (a pointed reference to the conspiracy theory that President Roosevelt allowed the Japanese to assault the U.S. fleet in 1941, in order to force America into World War II).

Griffin, now nearing retirement, is emeritus professor at the Claremont School of Theology in California and a respected philosopher. While Loose Change is capturing the interest of internet devotees, Professor Griffin's equally contentious theories are receiving standing ovations in book clubs across the U.S.

Together, the book and the movie have raised the question: could the attack be a carbon copy of Operation Northwoods, an aborted plan by President Kennedy to stage terror attacks in America and blame them on Communist Cuba as a pretext for a U.S. invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro?

In other words, on a fateful September morning in 2001, did America fabricate an outrage against civilians to fool the world and provide a pretext for war on Al Qaeda and Iraq?
This, and other deeply disturbing questions, are now being furiously debated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Why were no military aircraft scrambled in time to head off the attacks? Was the collapse of the Twin Towers caused by a careful use of explosives? How could a rookie pilot - as one of the terrorists was - fly a Boeing 757 aircraft so precisely into the Pentagon? And who made millions of dollars by accurately betting that shares in United and American Airlines, owners of the four doomed aircraft, were going to fall on 9/11 as they duly did?

An extremely high volume of bets on the price of shares dropping were placed on these two airline companies, and only these two. In the three days prior to the catastrophe, trade in their shares went up 1,200 per cent.

Initially, like most people in America, Professor Griffin dismissed claims the attacks could have been an inside job.

It was only a year later, when he was writing a special chapter on American imperialism and 9/11 for his latest academic tome, that the professor was sent a 'timeline' on the day's events based entirely on newspaper and television accounts. It was then that he changed his mind.
And one of the most puzzling anomalies that he studied was that none of the hijacked planes was intercepted by fighter jets, even though there was plenty of time to do so and it would have been standard emergency procedure in response to a suspected terrorist attack.

Indeed, it is mandatory procedure in the U.S. if there is any suspicion of an air hijack. In the nine months before 9/11, the procedure had been implemented 67 times in America.

Readers of The New Pearl Harbour and viewers of Loose Change are reminded that it was 7.59am when American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston. Fifteen minutes later, at 8.14am, radio contact between the pilot and air traffic control stopped suddenly, providing the first indication that the plane might have been hijacked.

Flight 11 should have been immediately intercepted by fighter pilots sent up from the nearby McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. They could have made the journey to the World Trade Centre in three minutes.

But, surprisingly, F-15 fighter jets were instead ordered out of an airbase 180 miles away at Cape Cod. They appear to have flown so slowly - at 700mph, instead of their top speed of 1,850mph - that they did not arrive in time to stop the second attack, on the South Tower of the World Trade Centre. They were 11 minutes too late.

And this is not the only worrying question. Incredibly, the attack on the Pentagon was not prevented either. The defence headquarters was hit by the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 at 9.38am. But fighter jets from Andrews Air Force Base, just ten miles from Washington, weren't scrambled to intercept it.

Instead, jets were ordered from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, 100 miles away. By the time they arrived, Flight 77 had already hit the Pentagon.

So what of the fall of the Twin Towers?

The official version is that the buildings collapsed because their steel columns were melted by the heat from the fuel fires of the two crashed planes.

It is a mantra that has been repeated in White House briefings, official inquiries into 9/11, leaks by the American intelligence services and almost every TV documentary on the attack in the U.S. and Britain.

But, according to the allegations of Loose Change (which are endorsed by Professor Griffin), the science does not stand up. Steel does not begin to melt until it reaches around 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, but open fires of jet fuel - such as those in the Twin Towers inferno - cannot rise above 1,700 degrees.

Professor Griffin and the makers of Loose Change are convinced the Twin Towers were deliberately blown up.

The film shows clip after clip of the towers coming down in one fell swoop to loud and distinct booms. Were they the sound of detonators being set off?

And the Pentagon attack?

The hotly disputed theory of the film and Professor Griffin is that a passenger plane never hit the building at all.

The terrorist pilot, Hani Hanjour, was so slow to learn the fundamentals at flight school that his tutors reported him to the authorities for his incompetence five times.

How could he have guided the huge aircraft in such a complex manoeuvre into the building? And if he did, what happened to the aircraft?

The Loose Change narrator says: "The official explanation is that the intense heat from the jet fuel vapourised the entire plane. Indeed, from the pictures, it seems there was no discernible trace of a fully loaded Boeing 757 at the crash scene.

"But if the fire was hot enough to incinerate a jumbo jet, then how could investigators identify 184 out of 189 dead people found at the defence headquarters?"

Intriguingly, the narrator adds: "The only visible damage to the outer wall of the Pentagon is a single hole no more than 16ft in diameter. But a Boeing 757 is 155ft long, 44ft high, has a 124ft wingspan and weighs almost 100 tons.

"Are we supposed to believe that it disappeared into this hole without leaving any wreckage on the outside? Why is there no damage from the wings or the vertical stabiliser or the engines which would have slammed into the building?

"Remember how big the engines were," the film adds persuasively.

"If six tons of steel and titanium banged into the Pentagon at 530mph, they would bury themselves inside the building, leaving two very distinct imprints. And yet the only damage to the outer wall is this single hole."

And what of the Boeing's 40ft high tail? "Did it obligingly duck before entering the building?" asks Professor Griffin.

So if a commercial aircraft did not hit the building, what did? The wildest of all the theories in Professor Griffin's writings - echoed in Loose Change - is that the Pentagon was attacked by a military missile of some kind. Certainly, several onlookers quoted in the film claim that they saw a tiny aircraft piercing the defence HQ.

Another witness says it made a shrill noise, quite unlike a giant passenger plane.

So if it wasn't hijacked and flown by a terrorist into the Pentagon, what happened to Flight 77, last heard of on its way to Ohio?

No one knows. But one thing is sure, asserts Professor Griffin. Dick Cheney, the U.S. vice- President, and Condoleezza Rice, at the time President Bush's national security adviser, were in the White House bunker as the drama unfolded.

They, and their advisers, knew a hijacked aircraft was heading towards Washington. The obvious target was the White House, not the Pentagon. Yet Cheney and Rice were never evacuated from the White House. Did someone in high places already know that they were safe and that it was the Pentagon that was going to be the target?

Of course, no account of 9/11 by the conspiracy lobby is complete without a minute-by-minute observation of President Bush's behaviour.

He was hundreds of miles away in Florida, about to read a book to primary school children when the worst terrorist attack of the modern age happened.

The President reportedly showed little reaction when an aide told him that the first plane had crashed into the Twin Towers. Why not?

He, apparently, told the school's principal: "A commercial plane has hit the World Trade Centre, but we're going ahead with the reading thing anyway."

Then President Bush, who is also the commander-in-chief of the American military, settled down to recite My Pet Goat to a group of seven-year-olds.

He was interrupted a few minutes later by a whispered message in his ear from an aide that a second aircraft had hit the Twin Towers.

The President's face, captured by photographers at the school, remained completely passive. He showed no sign of emotion.

Now it must have been obvious a terrorist maelstrom was being unleashed on his country. But three days later, back in the American capital, he was a different man. By now he was certain that Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda henchmen were to blame.

Surrounded by the Christian evangelist preacher Billy Graham, a cardinal, a rabbi and an imam, the President delivered a sermon in America's national cathedral in Washington.

The words he uttered are recounted by both Professor Griffin and the makers of Loose Change.
President Bush announced: "Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks waged against us by stealth, deceit and murder and rid the world of evil."

The scene had been swiftly set for the West's war on terror.


(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.

Kerry Rips Bush, GOP

By ANDREW MIGA,
Associated Press Writer
Sat Feb 10, 3:32 PM ET

Sen. John Kerry on Saturday blamed Republicans for squelching Senate debate on the Iraq war and warned that President Bush's plan for more troops in Iraq is a mistake.

"Another 21,000 troops sent into Iraq, with no visible end or strategy, ignores the best advice from our own generals and isn't the best way to keep faith with the courage and commitment of our soldiers," the Massachusetts Democrat said in his party's weekly radio address.

Kerry branded Bush's proposal for additional forces as "nothing more than the escalation of a misguided war."

The Pentagon is in the midst of implementing Bush's order to raise troop levels by 21,500, part of a plan to help quell sectarian violence in Baghdad.

The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, who has said he will not run for the White House in 2008, criticized Republicans for blocking Senate debate on Iraq.

The GOP stalled a Senate resolution backed by Democrats and several Republicans that expresses dissatisfaction with Bush's call for additional troops and sets benchmarks for the Iraq government.

The measure fell 11 votes short of the 60 required to move the debate forward.

"If there was a straight up-or-down, yes-or-no vote this week on whether the United States should keep up an indefinite presence in Iraq, it would be voted down," Kerry said.

The senator called on Congress to take stronger action to end the war.

"The Congress should tell President Bush to end this open-ended commitment of American troops," Kerry said. "The United States must get tough with Iraqi politicians — pressure them to meet tough benchmarks. ... Congress must push this administration to find not just a new way forward in Iraq, but the right way forward."


(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.

Maybe Washington Experience is Not What We Need

As the official Barack Obama rollout reaches its planned climax on “60 Minutes” tonight, we’ll learn if he has the star power to upstage Anna Nicole Smith. But at least one rap against him can promptly be laid to rest: his lack of experience.

If time in the United States Senate is what counts for presidential seasoning, maybe his two years’ worth is already too much. Better he get out now, before there’s another embarrassing nonvote on a nonbinding measure about what will soon be a four-year-old war.

History is going to look back and laugh at last week’s farce, with the Virginia Republican John Warner voting to kill a debate on his own anti-surge resolution and the West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd seizing the occasion for an hourlong soliloquy on coal mining. As the Senate pleasured itself with parliamentary one-upmanship, the rate of American casualties in Iraq reached a new high.

The day after the resolution debacle, I spoke with Senator Obama about the war and about his candidacy. Since we talked by phone, I can’t swear he was clean, but he was definitely articulate. He doesn’t yet sound as completely scripted as his opponents — though some talking-point-itis is creeping in — and he isn’t remotely defensive as he shrugs off the race contretemps du jour prompted by his White House run.

Not that he’s all sweetness and light.

“If the criterion is how long you’ve been in Washington, then we should just go ahead and assign Joe Biden or Chris Dodd the nomination,” he said. “What people are looking for is judgment.

”What Mr. Obama did not have to say is that he had the judgment about Iraq that his rivals lacked. As an Illinois state senator with no access to intelligence reports, he recognized in October 2002 that administration claims of Saddam’s “imminent and direct threat to the United States” were hype and foresaw that an American occupation of Iraq would be of “undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Nor can he be pilloried as soft on terrorism by the Cheney-Lieberman axis of neo-McCarthyism. “I don’t oppose all wars,” he said in the same Chicago speech. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war.”

Now that Mr. Obama has passed through Men’s Vogue, among other stations of a best-selling author’s cross of hype, he wants to move past the dumb phase of Obamamania. He has begun to realize “how difficult it is to break through the interest in me on the beach or that my wife’s made me stop sneaking cigarettes.” He doesn’t expect to be elected the leader of the free world because he “can tell a good joke on Jay Leno.” It is “an open question and a legitimate question,” he says, whether he can channel his early boomlet into an electoral victory.

No one can answer that question at this absurdly early stage of an absurdly long presidential race. But Mr. Obama is well aware of the serious criticisms he engenders, including the charge that he is conciliatory to a fault. He argues that he is “not interested in just splitting the difference” when he habitually seeks a consensus on tough issues. “There are some times where we need to be less bipartisan,” he says. “I’m not interested in cheap bipartisanship. We should have been less bipartisan in asking tough questions about entering into this Iraq war.”

He has introduced his own end-the-war plan that goes beyond a split-the-difference condemnation of the current escalation. His bill sets a beginning (May) and an end (March 31, 2008) for the phased withdrawal of combat troops, along with certain caveats to allow American military flexibility as “a big, difficult, messy situation” plays out during the endgame. Unlike the more timid Senate war critics, including Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama has no qualms about embracing a plan with what he unabashedly labels “a timeline.”

But he has no messianic pretensions and is enough of a realist to own up to the fact that his proposal has no present chance of becoming law. Nor do any of the other end-the-war plans offered by Congressional Democrats — some overlapping his, some calling for a faster exit than his. If a nonbinding resolution expressing mild criticism of President Bush’s policy can’t even come to a vote in the Senate, legislation demanding actual action is a nonstarter.

All the Democrats’ parrying about troop caps, timelines, benchmarks, the cutting off of war funding, whatever, is academic except as an index to the postures being struck by the various presidential hopefuls as they compete for their party’s base. There simply aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to force the hand of a president who, in Mr. Obama’s words, “is hellbent on doing what he’s been doing for the last four years.”Unless, of course, Republicans join in.

The real point of every Iraq proposal, Mr. Obama observes, is to crank up the political heat until “enough pressure builds within the Republican Party that they essentially revolt.” He argues that last week’s refusal to act on a nonbinding resolution revealed just how quickly that pressure is building.

If the resolution didn’t matter, he asks, “why were they going through so many hoops to avoid the vote?”

He seconds Chuck Hagel’s celebrated explosion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when “he pointed at folks” and demanded that all 100 senators be held accountable for their votes on what Senator Hagel called “the most divisive issue in this country since Vietnam.”

That’s why Mr. Obama is right when he says that the individual 2008 contests for the Senate and the House are at least as important as the presidential race when it comes to winding down the war: “

Ultimately what’s going to make the biggest difference is the American people, particularly in swing districts and in Republican districts, sending a message to their representatives: This is intolerable to us.”

That message was already sent by many American voters on Election Day in 2006. Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman who, with his Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, oversaw that Democratic takeover, smells the blood of more Republicans in “marginal districts” in 2008.

His party is now in the hunt for fresh candidates, including veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Such is the sense of impending doom among House Republicans that their leader, John Boehner, told CNN on Jan. 23 that he could render a verdict on whether the latest Bush Iraq strategy is “working” in a mere “60 to 90 days.”

In the Senate, even the rumor of a tough opponent is proving enough to make some incumbents flip overnight from rubber-stamp support of the White House’s war policy to criticism of the surge.

Norm Coleman of Minnesota started running away from his own record the moment he saw the whites of Al Franken’s eyes. Another endangered Republican up for re-election in 2008, John Sununu of New Hampshire, literally sprinted away from the press, The Washington Post reported, rather than field questions about his vote on the nonbinding resolution last week.

My own guess is that the Republican revolt will be hastened more by the harsh reality in Iraq than any pressure applied by Democratic maneuvers in Congress. Events are just moving too fast. While senators played their partisan games on Capitol Hill, they did so against the backdrop of chopper after chopper going down on the evening news. The juxtaposition made Washington’s aura of unreality look obscene.

Senator Warner looked like such a fool voting against his own principles (“No matter how strongly I feel about my resolution,” he said, “I shall vote with my leader”) that by week’s end he abruptly released a letter asserting that he and six Republican colleagues did want a debate on an anti-surge resolution after all. (Of the seven signatories, five are up for re-election in 2008, Mr. Warner among them.)

What anyone in Congress with half a brain knows is that the surge was sabotaged before it began. The latest National Intelligence Estimate said as much when it posited that “even if violence is diminished,” Iraq’s “absence of unifying leaders” makes political reconciliation doubtful. Not enough capable Iraqi troops are showing up and, as Gen. Peter Pace told the Senate last week, not enough armored vehicles are available to protect the new American deployments.

The State Department can’t recruit enough civilian officials to manage the latest push to turn on Baghdad’s electricity and is engaged in its own sectarian hostilities with the Pentagon.

Revealingly enough, the surge’s cheerleaders are already searching for post-Rumsfeld scapegoats. William Kristol attacked the new defense secretary, Robert Gates, for “letting the Joint Chiefs slow-walk the brigades in.”

Washington’s conventional wisdom has it that the worse things go in the war, the more voters will want to stick with the tried and true: Clinton, McCain, Giuliani. But as Mr. Obama reminds us, “Nobody had better Washington résumés than Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld.” In the wake of the catastrophe they and their enablers in both parties have made, the inexperienced should have a crack at inheriting the earth, especially if they’re clean.


(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.

Can Congress Stop WWIII? Yes, They Can!

They have the power.

But do they have the will to use it?

Published on Friday, February 9, 2007 by FindLaw

Leading Experts Say Congress Must Stop An Attack on Iran: Is That Constitutionally Possible?

Absolutely - According to Experts on Both Sides of the Aisle
by John W. Dean

In a February 5 OpEd in the Los Angeles Times, Leon Weiss and Larry Diamond explained that they were uncertain whether President Bush's recent tough talk toward Iran was bully pulpit bluster, meant solely to control Iran's dangerous actions, or if the President was again on the road to war. (Weiss is a senior science fellow at the Center for International Security at Cooperation at Stanford University; Diamond is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.)
Accordingly, Weiss and Diamond called on Congress to find out which is the case, and, if the President's intention is indeed warlike, to take preventive action so that the President does not launch a war in Iran - given his performance in Iraq. They suggest sending the President what is, in effect, a veto-proof measure -- by placing the measure in an appropriations bill - advising the President that "Congress will not support a U.S. military strike on that country" unless authorized by Congress. If Bush were to violate such a law, they urged, Congress should file a lawsuit against him, and begin impeachment proceedings.

James Fallows expressed a similar concern about the Administration's actions in Iran in his recent Atlantic Monthly column. "If we could trust the Administration's ability to judge America's rational self-interest, there would be no need to constrain its threatening gestures toward Iran," Fallows suggested. Such trust, however, has not proven to be merited. Nevertheless, Fallows concluded, even if the Bush Administration has warlike intentions with respect to Iran, Congress can do nothing other than "draw the line. It can say that war with Iran is anathema to the interests of the United States and contrary to the will of its elected representative."

These commentators have raised the question of whether Congress can, in fact, prevent a president from taking the nation to war. This was the subject of a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing chaired by Senator Russ Feingold, where he sought to explore "not what Congress should do, but what can Congress do."

While the hearing was focused on Iraq, and Congressional power in general, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) specifically asked the panel of constitutional experts, during the questioning, about what legal restrictions might be placed on the president's going to war in Iran.
Because the constitutional experts submitted formal statements to the Committee, which are available online, and several of them are terrific briefs on the law and relevant history, I have linked those statements to their names. Rather than rely solely upon their own summaries of their positions, given during the hearing, I have instead cited from, and commented on, their prepared statements seeking to set forth the essence of their positions.

What is especially significant, in my eyes, is that the conclusion that Congress does indeed have power to significantly restrict the Administration in its plans for war, transcends politics: Even experts who have worked for Republican administrations have come to this conclusion.
Statements of Constitutional Experts

Professor David Barron from the Harvard Law School opened the testimony. Barron is a graduate of Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Reinhardt on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, as well as for Associate Justice Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. He served as an attorney advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, before joining the faculty at Harvard Law School in 1999. Column continues below ↓

"Congress possesses substantial constitutional authority to regulate ongoing military operations, and even to bring them to an end," Barron stated, explaining that while the power of the purse is the strongest authority to control executive military actions, it is not the only power. Barron's statement reviews relevant rulings of the Supreme Court, and finds in them, and in the Constitution, no real limits on Congress's powers to manage a war. In fact, his review of the sources related to this question shows that to find otherwise would be contrary to the clear intention of the nation's Founders to control the chief executive.

Professor Robert Turner graduated from the law school at the University of Virginia and is now a professor there. He co-founded the school's Center for National Security Law. He served as the National Security Advisor to Senator Robert Griffin (R-MI) in the mid 1970's and worked at the Pentagon, the White House, and the State Department during the Reagan Administration, and from 2001 to 2003 worked in the Bush White House Counsel's office.

Professor Turner's statement was based as much on "a practical appreciation of the imperatives of presidential military decision making in a time of crisis as from a deep study of the case law." While the committee was not seeking policy advice, Turner was offering it. He concluded that "Congress does indeed possess the power to limit the broad outlines of hostilities through legislation," but he explained, in effect, why in his view, Congress should not use that power, as a policy matter.

Dr. Louis Fisher is a Constitutional Law Specialist at the Library of Congress. Before joining the Library of Congress, he spent thirty-six years at the Congressional Research Service. Dr. Fisher has published a number of authoritative books relating to legislative versus executive branch conflicts. (And I have most of them on my book shelf.) Dr. Fisher's statement explained that not only does Congress have the power to influence the direction of the nation's military when at war, but its members have the responsibility to do so. Drawing on history, he sets forth what the Framers of the Constitution did, and why they did it. His statement is rich in historical quotations that are not the now-hackneyed comments commonly found in discussion of these issues.

For example, in 1793, Fisher reported, Madison called war "the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. . . . In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace."

And in 1861, Fisher advised the committee, Attorney General Edward Bates explained that the President is Commander in Chief not because he is "skilled in the art of war and qualified to marshal a host in the field of battle." Rather he is Commander in Chief so whoever leads U.S. armies to battle "is subject to the orders of the civil magistrate, and he and his army are always 'subordinate to the civil power.'"

Bradford Berenson, now a partner at Sidley & Austin, graduated from the Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Silberman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Associate Justice Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court. He also served as Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003, a position in which he focused on the relationship between the Congress and the Executive.

Berenson took an approach similar to Professor Turner's. Accepting that the Constitution and rulings make it very clear that Congress has ample power and authority relating to this nation's military activities, he instead made a policy case as to why Congress should not exercise their power. He acknowledged the nature of his statement when summarizing it for the committee, and quickly conceded, "I think the constitutional scheme does give Congress broad authority to terminate a war."

Finally, Professor Walter Dellinger of the Duke University School of Law testified. Dellinger, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department under President Clinton, and also acting Solicitor General from 1996 to 1997 (during which time he argued nine cases before the High Court) is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former law clerk for Associate Justice Hugo Black

"In the absence of any congressional legislation on point," Dellinger said in his prepared statement, "I would be ready to conclude that a president can act on his own authority and pursuant to his own judgment in matters of national security. Once Congress has acted, however, the issue is fundamentally different. The question then becomes whether the Act of Congress is itself unconstitutional."

In short, all the experts on this politically diverse but balanced panel agreed - in the abstract - that the Congress has the power to control a warrior president. But, as Walter Dellinger noted, the action itself must be constitutional.

Senator Kennedy thus, during the questioning, properly moved the discussion from the abstract to the specific.

Can Congress Prevent the President from Going to War In Iran?

In condensed form, with a few annotations, here is the text of the exchanges that occurred. They require no commentary:

SEN. KENNEDY: "Question just quickly through the panel. Is the President required to seek authorization from Congress before using the military force against Iran?"

DR. FISHER: "I think if there's some action that's a threat to U.S. soldiers I think a president has the power to repel sudden attacks, protect U.S. troops. Otherwise, if it goes beyond isolated incidents like that I think you're running into the preface of the Iraq Resolution, which …Congress amended … to make sure it applied only to Iraq. So I think by statute, by legislative policy, you can confine the President to Iraq." (Emphasis added.)

SEN. KENNEDY: "I'm interested in … what actions can Congress take now to ensure the President doesn't take us into war in Iran without congressional authorization."

PROF. BARRON: "The question of whether the President could right now initiate any actions against the Iran -- I think the proper way to think about it is what authority does he have under the current Iraq Authorization Statute, which would require some close consideration. . . .

William Rehnquist [as an assistant attorney general] … thought that a statutory limitation on the exercise of such authority would be constitutionally valid. So I think the legal question then comes to . . . no doubt Congress could restrict him from going and widening the war, not just in terms of the amount of troops used, but in the geographic area covered, and the only issue is whether Congress has in effect already done so by virtue of the limitations and bounds of the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq that's already enacted." (Emphasis added.)

SEN. KENNEDY: "Yes, Professor Turner."

PROF. TURNER: "Senator, let me just make nuanced point on this. John Hart Ely in his War
and Responsibility made the point that after Congress declared war against Germany, FDR did not need a new declaration of war to go into North Africa after the German forces. Going into Cambodia I think was perfectly legal because the North Vietnamese had taken over the whole side of Cambodia. . . . I could see a situation in which Iran became involved in the Iraq War where the President would be able to use force. . . . I think in terms of launching a major war against Iran he should get and would need an official [Congressional approval] for Iran. But there's some area in there where I think he could act." (Emphasis added.)

SEN. KENNEDY: "If Congress passed legislation requiring the President to seek authorization from Congress before using military force against Iran would the President be obliged to seek such authorization before launching military action?"

MR. BERENSON: "Senator Kennedy, I think the questions that you're posing falls into the sphere . . . of shared powers, and it's important to recognize that for very important institutional reasons the President is the first mover and the prime mover in this area of shared powers. That has to do with the fact that unlike Congress which needs to go through an often time consuming and difficult legislative process, a process that can sometimes be stymied, the President has the ability to receive information in real time to act to protect the national security. So the President through the [clause vesting him with executive power], through his executive authority in the absence of legislation to the contrary by the Congress, I think unquestionably would have authority to engage Iran in hostilities, whether in defense of our forces inside the borders of Iraq or if he decided that we needed to do something to address Iran's nuclear facilities. I do not think he would be acting outside the scope of his constitutional authority. That said, for major military actions most presidents have recognized the importance of coming to Congress as a political and practical matter. It is certainly unwise, if not unconstitutional, to try to engage in large scale hostilities or engage a new enemy in warfare without public support. And the best way to ensure that at the outset is, of course, to come to Congress." (Emphasis added.)

SEN. KENNEDY: "My time, Mr. Chairman, is up. Mr. Dellinger -"

PROF. DELLINGER: "Briefly, I agree with Mr. Berenson's statement. I believe that the President does have the authority to introduce U.S. troops into situations of hostilities, including in Iran, in the absence of congressional limitation as long as the anticipated scope and duration does not amount to a war. I don't believe he has the authority to send 500,000 troops into Iran, but he does have the authority to deploy U.S. forces in hostilities…. That said, it is also clear that Congress can impose limits either before or after the fact on the size, scope, and duration of that. But I do believe there's a consensus in the Executive Branch position that the President has the authority to deploy U.S. forces into hostilities when Congress has not spoken to the question." (Emphasis added.)
* * *
In sum, as I read both the general statements of these experts, and their specific answers to Senator Kennedy's question about Iran, everyone agrees that Congress has the power to prevent a president from going to war.

The only question that is doubtful, then, is whether the members of Congress actually have the will to do so. This, I suspect, is what James Fallows concluded, when he said that, at best, they might draw a line.

Of course, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney know this too, so they will do whatever they wish to do - and Congress may or may not catch up. But there is no real question as to whether Congress could legally stop Bush and Cheney from going to war in Iran without coming to Congress to fully explain what they are doing and why. Congress has that power; the only question is whether it will dare to use it.

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


(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.

Impeach Vice First

TELL CONGRESS TO IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

1. Cheney Led the Campaign to Attack Joe Wilson, which led to the Outingof Covert CIA Operative Valerie Plame

The trial of Scooter Libby has produced overwhelming evidence that Vice President Cheney personally led the campaign to attack Joe Wilson through the media. This "get Wilson" campaign included telling numerous reporters that Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Cheney was told by the CIA that Valerie Plame worked as a covert agent in the CIA's Nonproliferation Division, which is the critical division of the CIA responsible for stopping the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Cheney's efforts to expose Plame actually exposed her entire covert network, at tremendous cost to the CIA's secret war against terrorism. If Plame's work had been exposed by a double-agent in our government like Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen, that person would face prosecution for espionage and treason. The evidence of Cheney's role is more than enough to start an impeachment investigation.

Read more:* Dick Cheney and the Dog that Didn't Bark* Libby Told Grand Jury He Was Ordered to Leak Intelligence* Court Hears Libby Describe Cheney as 'Upset' at Critic* Mr. Cheney, Tear Down This Wall* ISOO Asks Attorney General to Rule on Cheney's Role* Libby Trial: Russert Ruins the Cover Story* Addington Points to Cheney* Cheney's Notes http://democrats.com

2. There are many other reasons to impeach Dick Cheney.The Scooter Libby trial also exposed the lead role of Vice President Cheney's office in manipulating pre-war intelligence to defraud Congress into authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Sworn testimony revealed that Cheney's office managed the evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, all of which proved to be lies. Cheney personally visited the CIA several times before the invasion to pressure the CIA to distort pre-war intelligence. And Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, according to the new chairman, Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Dick Cheney also created the secret Energy Task Force which operated in defiance of open-government laws. Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, advocated the "Unitary Executive Theory" which is used by the White House to defy laws duly enacted by Congress and thereby justify dictatorialaction.

3. Democrats are on politically safe ground impeaching Dick Cheney.
Even though George Bush's approval ratings are among the lowest ever recorded by a President, Democrats are terrified of impeaching him. But Democrats should have absolutely no fear of impeaching Dick Cheney, because his approval ratings are much lower than George Bush's.

4. If we impeach Cheney first, no one need fear a President Cheney.
A lot of people are understandably, if misguidedly, afraid that impeaching George W. Bush would somehow make Cheney president. Because Cheney is already running the White House, this change would not be as serious as people fear. But we can impeach Cheney FIRST and make all the fears go away.

5. This is about far more than selecting the next president.
It would benefit political opponents of the Bush-Cheney agenda for Cheney to be President, as he would shatter Truman's record for unpopularity and help boost a Democratic landslide in 2008. The Republicans know this and will never allow Cheney to be president. He'll resign before Bush is removed from office, and we'll have a new Gerald Ford (a President Pelosi is no more likely than a President Cheney). We'll have the same result if we impeach Cheney first and remove him from office. And we may get there faster this way.

Removal from office follows impeachment, which follows an investigation. A serious investigation of either Cheney or Bush will inevitably incriminate the other. In fact, the Libby trial has already shown this. Such an investigation would benefit our democracy whether or not it finally arrived at impeachment, and impeachment of both Bush and Cheney is richly merited, as is removal from office. But removal from office is an additional and difficult step. Merely impeaching Bush leaves us with President... Bush. Whichever of these two we impeach first, it is possible we will impeach them both before removing either from office.

We must impeach Cheney and Bush to establish standards for all future presidents, not to pick one. And ultimately we must stop fearing possible results of this in order to see it through. A President Cheney afraid of being held accountable by us is far preferable to a President Bush taking orders from a Vice President Cheney who believes he's above the law.

Impeachment is not a way to pick a president, and if all you're worried about is picking a president, you have no business monkeying around with something as profoundly significant as impeachment. Impeachment is a tool for removing a criminal president from office, thus establishing limitations on power for subsequent presidents. If we do not impeach Cheney and Bush, we will have established that it is acceptable for presidents to lie us into wars, to spy without warrants, to detain without charge, to torture, to reverse laws with signing statements, etc. These reasons go to the survival of our democracy, a matter of far greater significance than the person who next sits in the office of the presidency – or the office of the king if that is what it is to become.

It is not politically dangerous to impeach. It is politically dangerous not to impeach when the case is clear. The Democrats calculated that by letting the Iran-Contra gang off the hook, they could win the next elections. They then lost those elections. The Republicans tried to impeach Truman, won what they wanted from the Supreme Court, and then won the next elections. A dozen examples through history tell the same story. The only near-exception is Clinton. But that was an impeachment the public opposed. So, it ought to have had a reverse result from the other cases. Even so, the Republicans lost fewer seats than is the norm at that point in a majority tenure, and they lost seats mostly in the Senate which acquitted, not the House which impeached. The handful of fanatical Congress Members who imposed the Clinton impeachment on the rest of the Congress and the country won big in their next elections. Would that we had a few fanatics for serious justice in the House today.

TELL CONGRESS TO IMPEACH CHENEY 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.

We must re-vsit 9/11, in a very aggresssive manner.

More Ground Zero Heroes On The Record:
Building 7 Was Deliberately Brought Down

Testimony of multiple rescue personnel that they were told Building 7 was going to be imploded means FEMA, NIST, Silverstein Properties and federal government all lied, revelations demand immediate grand jury inquiry into insurance fraud, vindicates call for new independent 9/11 investigation

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Prison Planet
Friday, February 9, 2007

Two more ground zero emergency rescue personnel are on the record as stating they were told Building 7 was going to be brought down on 9/11 hours before its symmetrical implosion, completely contradicting the official explanation of accidental collapse.

The new revelations provoke urgent questions about how a building was rigged with explosives within hours when such a process normally takes weeks or months and why the decision was taken to demolish the building amidst the chaos of the situation on that day.

Yesterday we reported on the testimony of an anonymous EMT named Mike who told Loose Change producer Dylan Avery that hundreds of emergency rescue personnel were told over bullhorns that Building 7, a 47 story skyscraper adjacent the twin towers that was not hit by a plane yet imploded symmetrically later in the afternoon on 9/11, was about to be "pulled" and that a 20 second radio countdown preceded its collapse.

Shortly after this article was released we uncovered more astounding testimony of ground zero rescue workers who are fully public and on the record in repeating the same claims, that Building 7 was brought down deliberately and that its collapse was not accidental as the government claims.

Indira Singh was a volunteer civilian Emergency Medical Technician at the World Trade Center on September 11th. She was a Senior Consultant for JP Morgan Chase in Information Technology and Risk Management. Singh was responsible for setting up triage sites for the seriously injured and walking wounded. These sites were closed down and consolidated one by one as the day wore on. Appearing on the Pacifica show Guns and Butter, Singh describes her experience to host Bonnie Faulkner. Click here to listen with commentary by Alex Jones.

SINGH: "After midday on 9/11 we had to evacuate that because they told us Building 7 was coming down. If you had been there, not being able to see very much just flames everywhere and smoke - it is entirely possible - I do believe that they brought Building 7 down because I heard that they were going to bring it down because it was unstable because of the collateral damage. That I don't know I can't attest to the validity of that all I can attest to is that by noon or one o'clock they told us we need to move from that triage site up to Pace University a little further away because Building 7 was going to come down or be brought down."

HOST: "Did they actually use the word "brought down" and who was it that was telling you this?"

SINGH: "The fire department. And they did use the words 'we're gonna have to bring it down' and for us there observing the nature of the devastation it made total sense to us that this was indeed a possibility, given the subsequent controversy over it I don't know."

As is discussed elsewhere in this article, the feasibility and logic of bringing the building down on 9/11 is up for debate, but what is not debatable is the fact that Silverstein Properties, NIST, FEMA and the federal government have all knowingly lied in claiming in official reports that the building came down solely as a result of damage from the towers and that the collapse of the building was not aided by means of intentionally placed explosives.

The following video from CNN clearly shows firefighters and police telling the public to get back because Building 7 was about to come down and in the words of the cameraman was about to "blow up."

Former Air Force Special Operations for Search and Rescue, Kevin McPadden traveled to ground zero completely of his own accord and spent the next four days searching through the rubble and nearby buildings for survivors.

On September 9 2006, McPadden told an audience at the Community Church in New York City how while he was stationed in a Red Cross operations center, he was told that Building 7 was going to be brought down. Click here for the audio.

McPADDEN: "They said you know you've got to stay behind this line because they're thinking about taking this building down, they're not sure if it's stable or not, so they were holding a line off because they had knowledge that something was gonna happen. Well, they pushed us back a little bit....a couple of minutes later they started coming down....people started coming back out to the street, I watched five New York City buses jam packed with people wanting to do search and rescue head down there towards Building 7 - people walk out into the middle of the street to see these people off, like bon voyage and right then Building 7 came down."

McPadden then describes the scene as a "stampede" as people ran over each other in their attempts to flee.

The testimony of these individuals meshes with others in confirming that Building 7 was deliberately brought down on the day of 9/11, a fact that eviscerates official investigations into Building 7 as nothing more than part of an orchestrated cover-up.
In February of 2002 Silverstein Properties won $861 million from Industrial Risk Insurers to rebuild on the site of WTC 7. Silverstein Properties' estimated investment in WTC 7 was $386 million. This building's collapse alone resulted in a payout of nearly $500 million, based on the contention that it was an unforeseen accidental event.

A cursory insight into professional building demolition tells us that experts are required to spend weeks and months planning the demolition of any building, ensuring that the explosives are placed in exactly the right spots, that the collapse will not impact surrounding buildings, and that a myriad of sufficient safety procedures are followed.

To imagine that demolition experts could rig such a huge building amidst the chaos of the day, unsure of whether further attacks were coming, in a matter of hours and bring the building down neatly in its own footprint without afflicting major damage to adjacent buildings is beyond belief.

Even if one entertains the notion that this is within the realm of possibility, the fact is that the federal government, FEMA and NIST and Silverstein Properties are all knowingly lying in claiming that the building collapsed by accident as a result of burning debris from the twin towers.

Now it is established that they lied about Building 7, how can we trust their often changing explanations of the collapse of the twin towers, especially considering the dozens and dozens of eyewitnesses who have gone on the record to report the fact that explosives were seen and heard on all levels of both towers, including underground?

We are being asked to put our faith in either the federal government, who deliberately lied about 9/11 in the very days after the attack in telling emergency workers and firemen that the toxic air was safe to breathe, or the emergency workers and other rescue heroes who risked their lives and are still suffering the consequences of their actions.

This testimony demands an immediate grand jury inquiry into both monolithic insurance fraud, potential manslaughter, and a complete re-appraisal and re-investigation into everything else that happened on 9/11 in an effort to discover what else the government lied about concerning the events of that day and its aftermath.


(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.