Thousands Rally in DC Against Iraq War

Protest was expected to draw smaller crowds
By ASHA BEH, NBC Washington, March 20, 2010

click here for video

On the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, demonstrators carried flag-draped cardboard coffins as they marched from Lafayette Park across from the White House through downtown DC Saturday.

President Barack Obama's decision to send more troops into Afghanistan helped build momentum for the anti-war protest, which was expected to draw smaller crowds, according to military veterans and activists Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan, who helped organize the protest.

The protesters picked on another president as well, carrying signs reading "Indict Bush Now."

Saturday’s large-scale protest signaled the revival of the anti-war movement, that has been largely silent since January 2008, according to The Hindu.

In a statement obtained by the newspaper, the ANSWER Coalition said that although “the enthusiasm and desire for change after eight years of the Bush regime was the dominant cause that led to the election of a big Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress and the election of Barack Obama to the White House… [it was now] obvious to all that waiting for politicians to bring real change… is simply a prescription for passivity by progressives and an invitation to the array of corporate interests from military contractors to the banks, to big oil, to the health insurance giants that dominate the political life of the country.”

Stops on the route included military contractor Halliburton, the Mortgage Bankers Association, The Washington Post offices and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. On the website for the March 20th protest, the ANSWER Coalition claims "Halliburton has become synonymous with war profiteering" and the Washington Post "has been a staunch supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and continues to operate as an apologist for U.S. aggression."

Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide

Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world's weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating
By Suzanne Goldenberg and Damian Carrington, guardian.co.uk, July 26, 2009


Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse.

"These are one-metre resolution images, which give you a big picture of the summertime Arctic," said Thorsten Markus of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre. "This is the main reason why we are so thrilled about it. One-metre resolution is the dimension that's been missing."

Disappearing summer sea ice poses considerable dangers, scientists have warned. Ice shelves are used by animals such as polar bears as platforms for hunting seals and other sea creatures. Without them, they could starve. In addition, ice reflects solar radiation. Without that process, the Arctic sea could warm up even more. The phenomenon threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet, say climatologists.

The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change. Last week the head of the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Jane Lubchenco, warned that the gathering of satellite data - crucial to predicting future climate changes - was now at "great risk" because America's ageing satellite fleet was not being replaced.

"Our primary focus is maintaining the continuity of climate observations, and those are at great risk right now because we don't have the resources to have satellites at the ready and taking the kinds of information that we need," said Lubchenco, who was appointed by Obama. "We are playing catch-up."

Even before her warning, scientists were saying that America, the world's scientific superpower, was virtually blinding itself to climate change by cutting funds to the environmental satellite programmes run by the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Nasa. A report by the National Academy of Sciences this year warned that the environmental satellite network was at risk of collapse.

In February, a Nasa satellite carrying instruments to produce the first map of the Earth's carbon emissions crashed near Antarctica only three minutes after lift-off.

The satellite would have measured carbon emissions at 100,000 points around the planet every day, providing a wealth of data compared to the 100 or so fixed towers currently in operation in a land-based network.

The NOAA is under additional pressure to provide environmental data because of the re-emergence of the El Niño climate phenomenon, where warming of the tropical Pacific causes heatwaves, droughts and flooding around the world. June's land and sea surface temperatures were the second hottest on record, and scientists are predicting this will be the warmest decade in recorded history. The last major El Niño was in 1998, the hottest year in recorded history.

The Obama administration has already taken steps to tackle America's flagging scientific lead. The president's economic recovery plan allotted $170m (£100m) to help close the gaps in climate modelling. The NOAA is seeking an additional $390m in its 2010 budget to upgrade environmental satellites, and help make data more available to researchers and government officials.

Honduras, Washington, and Liberal-Left Grasping at Straws

By Paul Street, ZNet, July 7, 2009

So liberal-left Obama supporters think they've got something to crow about in regard to Honduras. As George Ciccareillo-Maher noted recently on Counterpunch: "Previously resigned Obamaphiles, desperate to grasp at any shred of proof suggesting that they were right to get high on hope and expect imminent change, are closing ranks around their government and insisting that the U.S. government's response to the Honduran coup is proof positive of such change. Some even go so far as to claim that the Obama administration's support for Zelaya has been ‘unambiguous,' adding that ‘complaints that Washington hasn't acted fast enough to denounce the Honduran coup are silly and ignorant on the face of them.'"[1]

SOME "BLUNT LESSON[S] ABOUT POWER"

"Rebranding War and Occupation"

We'll return to Washington and Honduras in a moment, after some comments on why Obama's "progressive" fans are clutching at straws. It's been a weird and lonely time for many of them, what with Barack Obama's blatant escalation of terrorist, civilian-slaughtering war in South Asia, his apparently indefinite continuation of the Iraq occupation, his increase of the "defense" (empire) budget (Morgan Stanley reported last November that Obama rejects the silly concept of a "peace dividend"), his advance approval for an Israel attack on Iran, his refusal to move in any serious way against Israel's occupation of Palestine, his continuing refusal to permit Jean Bertrand Aristide back into the Caribbean, and...so on (the list goes on and on).

Did anyone besides Noam Chomsky notice the June 10th New York Times article in which we learned that Obama was pressuring the Iraqi government not to permit the popular referendum required by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) - the withdrawal document forced on the Bush administration by the Iraqi resistance. As the Times explained, the Obama administration fears that the Iraqi population might insist on the immediate removal of all U.S. troops, rejecting the SOFA provision that delays U.S. withdrawal until 2012. Such insistence, described as "anti-Americanism" by U.S. officials, would be consistent with longstanding majority Iraqi opinion, recorded in Pentagon-run polls and other Western surveys. The legally mandated referendum (described by the Times as a "potent poison pill approved at the same time as the security agreement as a way to appease political factions that did not want to be tarred with the accusation that they had voted for a measure that allowed American soldiers to stay on Iraqi soil until 2012") was scheduled for July 30, 2009. In likely "deference to American concerns," the Times reported, the Iraqi cabinet declared its wish to delay the vote for six months so that it could be held at the same time as national elections in January "to save money and time."[2]

"Overall," the prolific left journalist Jeremy Scahill noted in mid-June of 2009, Obama is "implementing a U.S. foreign policy that in some ways --or, I think, in many ways--advances the interest of the American empire in a way the Republicans could only have dreamed of doing." Further:

"What people, I think, misunderstand about Barack Obama is that this is a man who is a brilliant supporter of empire - who has figured out a way to essentially trick a lot of people into believing they're supporting radical change, when in effect what they're doing is supporting a radical expansion of the U.S. empire."

"I think that Obama is showing himself to be a master of misdirection--almost like a magician. He'll say a few things in his speech that sound like they're new, like a totally different U.S. approach, but then he'll also at the same time roll out a policy that is further than even Bush took things."

The title of the article in which Scahill made these comments said a mouthful: "Rebranding War and Occupation." [3] In comments made around the same time during a speech at the annual meetings of the International Socialist Organization, Scahill observed that "Obama is an incredibly Orwellian character. He can make people think that war is peace."[4]

"The Architects of Policy Protect Their Own Interests"

Then there's Obama's domestic agenda of, for, and by the wealthy Few. In the May 2009 edition of the centrist public affairs magazine The Atlantic, Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (no leftist!), argued that the Obama administration was for all intents and purposes in Wall Street's pocket. In an article titled "The Quiet Coup," Johnson argued that, in the words of the Atlantic's editors, "the finance industry has effectively captured our government— a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF's staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we're running out of time." By Johnson's account, "Throughout the crisis, the government has taken extreme care not to upset the interests of the financial institutions or to question the basic outlines of the system that got us here...[the] elite business interests [who] played a central role in creating the crisis...with the implicit backing of the government" [are] "now using their influence to prevent precisely [the] reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive...The [Obama] government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them."[5]

Chomsky rightly sees this statement as chilling confirmation of the great 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith's warning that "the architects of policy protect their own interests, no matter how grievous the effect on others."

"And they are the architects of policy," Chomsky adds. "Obama made sure to staff his economic team with advisors from [the financial] sector."[6]

As giant financial bailouts for Wall Street oligarchs combined with growing destitution amongst the popular Many to expose the chasm between the investor and political classes and the broad citizenry last March, the liberal-left journalist and author William Greider made a telling observation in the Washington Post:

"People everywhere [have] learned a blunt lesson about power, who has it and who doesn't. They [have] watched Washington run to rescue the very financial interests that caused the catastrophe. They [have] learned that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it. ‘Where's my bailout,' became the rueful punch line at lunch counters and construction sides nationwide. Then to deepen the insult, people [have] watched as establishment forces re-launched their campaign for ‘entitlement reform - a euphemism for whacking Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid." [7]

A glowing Los Angeles Times assessment of Obama's first hundred Days reproduced an interesting statement from Obama to the leaders of the banking industry last March. As the financial chieftains began to complain to him about the public's failure to understand their industry's need for high levels of compensation, Obama cut them off. "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen" Obama said. "The public isn't buying that. My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." [8]

A student who told me about this Los Angeles Times report wrote me with an interesting comment: "The question for me (and I assume for many leftists) is why is Obama using his administration to protect the bankers from the angry rabble (us)? Why doesn't his administration simply address the people's needs and leave the bankers to their fate? These are, of course, rhetorical questions. We know that he is serving to protect and legitimate the highly undemocratic and destructive class system of state capitalism through another crisis."

HONDURAS

Oh, but look, liberal-left Obama fans exult, there's Honduras! Yes, Honduras, where right-wing generals and politicians undertook a coup against a left-leaning and democratically elected president and....our "progressive" NOT Bush president.... DID NOT RUSH TO DEFEND the criminal action! He even "condemned" it!! Obama has "unambiguously" expressed his belief that the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, should be returned to power - an opinion shared with nearly every Latin American state and the United Nations General Assembly!!!

Isn't it wonderful, indicative of a dramatically new democratic day in U.S. foreign policy? Isn't it just so different from how the Bush-Cheney administration responded to the short-lived business-media-military coup against Venezuela's leftist president Hugo Chavez in April of 2002? Hosanna Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Ho Sanna Hey Sanna Ho Superstar!

"Lukewarm, Proper, Belated, and Mixed"

Not so fast. Obama has responded with pronounced imperial ambiguity toward the blatantly illegal[9] coup, which was of course carried out by U.S.-trained and U.S. funded military forces and conducted with U.S.-supplied military equipment.[10] While he somewhat belatedly condemned the Honduran coup, Obama has "stepped lightly" (as the Washington Post put it)[11] when it comes to reacting. The White Houses possesses [12] but has yet (as of this writing, on the morning of Monday, July 6th) to decisively exercise the power to quickly restore Zelaya to his rightful office in Honduras, a nation whose government and economy had long been exceedingly dependent on the U.S.

On the first evening following the Honduran coup, Obama expressed "deep concern" regarding "the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya" and called on "all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms" and the "the rule of law" so as to resolve "existing tensions and disputes... through dialogue free from any outside interference." Still, the White House refused to officially/legally declare the removal of Zelaya "a coup." Making such a declaration would have triggered (under the Foreign Assistance Act) a cutoff of tens of millions of dollars of U.S. aid to the Central American nation.[13] John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras and a leading, blood-soaked figure in U.S. coordination of mass-murderous right-wing state terror across Central America under Ronald Reagan [14], told the Post that the Obama administration's disinclination to fully acknowledge the reality of recent events "appeared to reflect reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power."[15]

Would the U.S. work seriously for Zelaya's return? Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives."[16] Clinton refused to say whether the declared U.S. goal of "restoring the constitutional order" meant returning Zelaya to power. Her spokesperson Ian Kelly acknowledged on June 29th (one day after the coup) appeared to be holding back from calling the coup a coup because of White House hopes for some sort of "negotiated solution," [17] which could only have meant the possible return of Zelaya on more U.S. friendly terms.

The White House's tepid condemnation and measured rhetoric stood in sharp contrast to most Latin American nations' and the European Union's quick and sharp call for Zelaya's rapid and unconditional return to power, raising what economist and Latin America expert Mark Weisbrot called "suspicions about what the U.S. government is really trying to accomplish in this situation."[18]

Yesterday the Honduran government denied Zelaya's plane the right to land at the airport in Honduras' capital and killed at least two protestors calling for the restoration of democracy. In the wake of these events, Washington applauded as "positive" the coup's government's apparent willingness to "offer some sort of dialogue"[19] with the Organization of American States. As it turns out, however, the coup's foreign minister says this has proclaimed that Zelaya's return is "not negotiable."[20] According to the liberal-left journalist Al Giardano, "this situation has evolved beyond the capacity of diplomacy to solve it. Calling for ‘dialogue' - although it's what diplomats do, including in their sleep - isn't going to shake anything loose from [the coup leaders]. It is time for State to move aside and bring on the officials with the badges....The hour has now arrived for Washington to classify Honduras as a ‘military coup,' triggering the cut-off of aid to a country whose budget is 65 percent dependent on foreign assistance." [21]

Perhaps that will occur tomorrow or the day after - quite tardily from my perspective. Perhaps not. Either way, the veteran left U.S. foreign policy critic William Blum is right: "the response to the coup from the Obama administration can be described with adjectives such as lukewarm, proper but belated, and mixed." [23] It's certainly nothing for "liberal"-progressive types to write home to their leftist grandmas about - that's for sure. With just a tiny portion of the military and political force it pours into sustaining illegal invasions and occupations (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine) and dictatorships in oil-rich Southwest Asia, the Obama administration could (in line with majority Latin American and global opinion) have quickly and "unambiguously" restored the democratically elected president to power in Honduras. It seems likely that the White House is working to bring Zelaya back on a conditional basis (on the model of the Clinton administration's re-installation of Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1994)[22], returning him to power on more disciplined, U.S.-friendly terms. But, as Weisbrot notes, any effort to "extract concessions from Zelaya as part of a deal for his return to office" violate the essence of "how democracy works. If Zelaya wants to negotiate a settlement with his political opponent after he returns, that is another story. But nobody has the right to extract political concessions from him in exile, over the barrel of a gun."[24]

How Much Better Than Bush-Cheney 2002?

Insofar as there is anything "progressive" about the Obama administration's willingness to condemn the Honduran coup, much of the credit should go to popular forces and left political developments in Latin America. The southern half of the hemisphere (home to left governments now in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina, and Chile has moved in a left-progressive direction since the failed coup against Chavez. The Obama operatives, smarter on the whole than the Bush team, certainly know very well that the balance of political forces and opinion has shifted in ways that would make it counter-productive to be seen as allied with a transparently criminal coup in Central America. They know they have bigger fish to fry in the oil-rich Middle East. At the same time, the Bush administration actually abandoned the anti-Chavez coup fairly quickly, once it saw the handwriting on the wall. As Weisbrot notes:

"Many press reports have contrasted the Obama administration's rejection of the Honduran coup with the Bush administration's initial support for the 2002 military coup that briefly overthrew President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. But actually there are more similarities than differences between the U.S. responses to these two events. Within a day, the Bush administration reversed its official position on the Venezuelan coup, because the rest of the hemisphere had announced that it would not recognize the coup government. Similarly, in this case, the Obama administration is following the rest of the hemisphere, trying not to be the odd man out but at the same time not really sharing their commitment to democracy"

"Washington Says it Tried Its Best"

Last but not least, there are some disturbing, yet-to-be answered questions about the Obama administration's role leading up to the coup. As Scahill noted one day after Zelaya's removal:

"It is impossible to imagine that the US was not aware that the coup was in the works. In fact, this was basically confirmed by The New York Times...While the US has issued heavily-qualified statements critical of the coup—in the aftermath of the events in Honduras—the US could have flexed its tremendous economic muscle before the coup and told the military coup plotters to stand down. The US ties to the Honduran military and political establishment run far too deep for all of this to have gone down without at least tacit support or the turning of a blind eye by some US political or military official(s)."

"Here are some facts to consider: the US is the top trading partner for Honduras. The coup plotters/supporters in the Honduran Congress are supporters of the ‘free trade agreements' Washington has imposed on the region. The coup leaders view their actions, in part, as a rejection of Hugo Chavez's influence in Honduras and with Zelaya and an embrace of the United States and Washington's ‘vision' for the region. Obama and the US military could likely have halted this coup with a simple series of phone calls." [25]

According to Blum in the latest edition of his always instructive Anti-Empire Report:

"The United States, by its own admission, was fully aware for weeks of the Honduran military's plan to overthrow Zelaya. Washington says it tried its best to change the mind of the plotters. It's difficult to believe that this proved impossible. During the Cold War it was said, with much justification, that the United States could discourage a coup in Latin America with ‘a frown.' The Honduran and American military establishments have long been on very fraternal terms. And it must be asked: In what way and to what extent did the United States warn Zelaya of the impending coup? And what protection did it offer him? It is not unthinkable that the United States gave the military plotters the go-ahead, telling them to keep the traditional "golpe" bloodiness to a minimum. Zelaya was elected to office as the candidate of a conservative party; he then, surprisingly, moved to the left and became a strong critic of a number of Washington policies, and an ally of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, both of whom the Bush administration tried to overthrow and assassinate."[26]

The administration can claim that it tried to "discourage" the coup in advance through conversations with top Honduran military officials. But, as Weisbrot notes, "It would be interesting to know what these discussions were like. Did administration officials say, ‘You know that we will have to say that we are against such a move if you do it, because every one else will?' Or was it more like, ‘Don't do it, because we will do everything in our power to reverse any such coup?'" As Weisbrot correctly observes, "The administration's actions since the coup indicate something more like the former, if not worse." [27]

"Rather Than Conform to America's Rules"

Obama recently told a Chilean reporter that the U.S. cannot apologize for its critical role in the September 11, 1973 coup that overthrew Chile's then elected president Salvador Allende and ushered in the bloody rule of the neo-fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. This, Obama explained, is because the U.S. is "an enormous force for good in the world," one that prefers to "look forward," not "backwards" (sound familiar?). Obama's lukewarm response to the Honduran coup of June 28 - ???? 2009 may fall short of what one might expect from such an "enormous force," but it fits rather nicely the imperial mindset articulated in his deeply conservative 2006 campaign book The Audacity of Hope:

"Of course there are those who would argue with my starting premise - that any global system built in America's image can alleviate misery in poorer countries...Rather than conform to America's rules, the argument goes, other countries should resist America's efforts to expand its hegemony; instead, they should follow their own path to development, taking their lead from left-leaning populists like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, or turning to more traditional principles of social organization, like Islamic law...I believe [Chavez and other] critics [of the U.S. and neoliberalism] are wrong...The system of free markets and liberal democracy... offer[s] people around the world their best chance at a better life" [28]

If I might step outside immediate events for a moment, it's worth noting that neoliberal global capitalism has offered no such thing, especially to Latin Americans. [29]Candidate Obama's reflections ended on a profoundly false judgment, properly rejected by "Mel" Zelaya, who came into office in early 2006 as a center-right politician but who subsequently moved left and shifted his desperately impoverished and U.S.-controlled nation into Hugo Chavez's socialist "Bolivarian Alternative for the America's" (ALBA).[30]


Paul Street is the author of many essays, speeches, chapters, reviews, and books, including (most recently) Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) and Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (order the latter at http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=186987).

NOTES

1 George Ciccareillo-Maher, George Ciccariello-Maher, "The Counter-Revolution Will Not be Tweeteed," (July 5, 2009), read at http://www.counterpunch.org/maher07032009.html.Ciccareillo-Maher quotes the intelligent but occasionally abusive Al Giardano, "America Held Hostage: Day Two of the Coup in Honduras," The Narcosphere (June 29, 2009), read at http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/am%C3%A9rica-held-hostage-day-two-coup-honduras.

2 Noam Chomsky, "Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours," Speech to the Riverside Church, New York City (June 12, 2009), transcript available at www.democracynow.org/2009/7/3/noam_chomsky_on _crisis_and_hope; Alissa Rubin, "U.S. Moves Ahead With Vote on Security Pact," New York Times, June 10, 2009. As Chomsky noted, "the current U.S. efforts to prevent the legally required referendum are extremely revealing. Sometimes they're called ‘democracy promotion.'"

3 Jeremy Scahill and Anthony Arnove, "Rebranding War and Occupation," Socialist Worker (June 19, 2009).

4 Jeremy Scahill, "Barack Obama and U.S. Foreign Policy," speech at "Socialism 2009," annual conference of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), June 19, 2009, Chicago, Illinois.

5 Simon Johnson, "The Quiet Coup," The Atlantic (May 2009), read online at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice.

6 Chomsky, "Crisis and Hope."

7 William Greider, "Obama told Us to Speak Out, But Is He Listening?" Washington Post, March 22, 2009.

8 Fay Fiore and Mark Barabak, "AUDACITY AND AMBITION: Obama Begins Leading America in a New Direction," Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2009.

9 Albert Vallente Thoreson, "Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal," CounterPunch (July 1, 2009), read at http://www.counterpunch.org/thorensen07012009.html; Mark Weisbrot, "Does the U.S. Back the Honduran Coup?" The Guardian (UK), July 1, 2009.

10 Evan Gollnger, "Obama's First Coup d'Etat: Honduran President Has Been Kidnapped," Venezuelanalaysis (June 29, 2009), read at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4554; Nicholas Kozloff, "The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?" CounterPunch (June 29, 2009), read at http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff06292009.html.

11 Mary Beth Sheridan, "U.S. Condemns Honduran Coup: Still, Administration Steps Lightly," Washington Post, June 30, 2009, read at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062904239.html.

12 Roberto Lovato, "Obama Has the Power and Responsibility to Restore Democracy in Honduras," Huffington Post (June 29, 2009), read at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roberto-lovato/obama-has-the-power-and-r_b_222170.html.

13 FOX News, "Obama Calls for Order," FOX News (June 28, 2009), read at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/28/obama-calls-order-military-arrests-honduran-president/; Scahill, "A Few Thoughts;" Greg Grandin, "Democracy Derailed in Honduras," The Nation (June 30, 2009), read at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090713/grandin/single; Reuters, "U.S. Could Cut Off Aid to Honduras After Coup," AlterNet (June 29, 2009), read at http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29384895.htm.

14 Noam Chomsky, "John Negroponte: From Central America to Iraq" (July 28, 2004), pp. 89-92 in Chomsky, Interventions.

15 Sheridan, "U.S. Condemns Honduran Coup: Still, Administration Steps Lightly."

16 Quoted in Sheridan, "U.S. Condemns Honduran Coup."

17 http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2009/125481.htm

18 Weisbrot, "Does the U.S. Back the Honduran Coup?"

19 Jose De Cordoba and David Luhnow, "Honduras Standoff Heats Up," The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009, p.A6.

20 Al Giardano, "Honduras Coup's Preconditions Leave Nothing to Negotiate," The Narcosphere (July 6, 2009), read at http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/honduras-coups-preconditions-leave-nothing-negotiate#comments.

21 Giardano, "Honduras Coup's Preconditions"

22 William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2005), pp. 202-03.

23 William Blum, The Anti-Empire Report (July 3, 2009), read at http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer71.html

24 Weisbrot, "Does the U.S. Back the Honduran Coup?"

25 Jeremy Scahill, "A Few Thoughts on the Coup in Honduras," Common Dreams (June 30, 2009), read at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/29-11.

26 Blum, Anti-Empire Report.

27 Weisbrot, "Does the U.S. Back the Honduran Coup?"

28 Obama, The Audacity of Hope (New York, 2006), p. 315.

29 Mark Weisbrot, "The Mirage of Progress," American Prospect (January 1, 2002), read at http://www.prospect.org/cs/articlesarticle=the_mirage_of_progress; Mark Weisbrot, "Globalization Fails to Deliver the Goods," Common Dreams (August 29, 2002), read at http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0829-05.htm

30 Kozloff, "The Coup in Honduras;" Grandin, "Democracy Derailed."

Sheehan leads group of protesters near Bush home

AP, June 8, 2009

DALLAS — Around 50 people joined antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan as she led a brief protest Monday afternoon near former President George W. Bush's Dallas home.

Sheehan's son was killed in the war on Iraq.

The event also brought out about a dozen people protesting the protest and about two dozen members of the media.

The march was sponsored by the Dallas Peace Center, which has been involved in protests with Sheehan since 2005. That year, Sheehan staged a prolonged demonstration outside Bush's ranch near Crawford. She said that her issues with Bush didn't end with his presidency.

"My guess is that the neighbors would probably rather that we not be there," said Trish Major, communications director for the Dallas Peace Center.

"But it's also important to remember this is the neighborhood that welcomed the Bushes warmly, and they knew that by having a person of this stature in their neighborhood, this is something they would have to deal with."

Protesters met at an intersection and then walked about a mile to John J. Pershing Elementary School, across from Bush's new home. Sheehan carried a sign that read, "For what noble cause."

Debbie Valentine, who lives down the street from the Bushes, told The Dallas Morning News, "I understand their right to protest, but this is just disrespectful."

Bush supporters carried signs that said "Pro Bush" and "Go Home Cindy."

Television footage showed children operating a lemonade stand that had been set up near the protest.

Activist Cindy Sheehan in Dallas to renew anti-Bush protests

By SCOTT FARWELL, The Dallas Morning News, June 8, 2009

Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist whose son was killed in the war on Iraq, plans to lead a protest this afternoon near former President George W. Bush’s Preston Hollow home.

The march is sponsored by the Dallas Peace Center, which has been involved in protests with Sheehan since 2005, when the California mother staged a prolonged demonstration outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.

“I think this is going to be the protest of the summer,” Sheehan said. “It’s really picking up a lot of energy.”

Protesters plan to gather about 4:30 p.m. at the southwest corner of Preston Road and Royal Lane. From there, they will walk about a mile to John J. Pershing Elementary School, which is across the street from gates leading to the Bush home on Daria Place.

Organizers did not apply for a permit from the city and will be required to stay on sidewalks and not cross or impede major streets, said Trish Major, communications director for the Dallas Peace Center.

“My guess is that the neighbors would probably rather that we not be there,” Major said, anticipating a cool reaction.

“”But it’s also important to remember this is the neighborhood that welcomed the Bushes warmly and they knew that by having a person of this stature in their neighborhood, this is something they would have to deal with.”

Sheehan said people who live near the former president will be joining the march. She would not provide names.

“I’m sure most people who live there won’t be happy with the protest,” she said. “But we’re going to be exercising our rights as Americans to do this and hopefully people who don’t agree with us, and us with them, will agree that all sides have the right to express their opinion.”

“There won’t be any civil disobedience or anything,” Major said. “There will be no climbing of the gates.”

sfarwell@dallasnews.com

Sept. 1: David Swanson Book Tour in Charlotte

Tues., Sept. 1, 2009
7:00 pm

Park Road Books (Park Road Shopping Center)
4139 Park Rd
Charlotte, NC 28209

Info: Action Center For Justice
http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com
charlotteaction@gmail.com
704.759.6529

Download flyers

Forthcoming Book:

Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union
by David Swanson

BOOK TOPIC:

Daybreak is a prescription for political reform that literally ends with a to-do list for citizens, and draws inspiration from the misdeeds and missteps of the Bush and Obama presidencies.

What powers were stripped from Congress and handed to the White House while George W. Bush lived there, and what would it take to permanently move them back? Which of these powers is Barack Obama making use of or even expanding upon? And in the future, how can we expand our rights, create democratic representation in Congress, and make presidents into executives rather than emperors?

This is a citizens' guide to the long-term task of removing power from the hands of one person, placing it in a body of representatives, and (here's the hard part) making that body truly representative of the American people.

Swanson's analysis makes clear that the imperial presidency, which advanced so dramatically during the Bush-Cheney era, will not be stopped merely by electing better presidents. Major structural changes are needed in our system of government to rein in both the imperial presidency and, at the same time, the presidential empire.

Only through the active efforts of citizens, Swanson argues, can we restore and protect our rights, and expand our conception of political rights to meet new challenges.

AUTHOR BIO:
David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press and of the introduction to "The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush" published by Feral House and available at Amazon.com. Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace. Full bio here.

PRAISE:
"David Swanson is the most thoughtful, determined, and energetic progressive activist in America, and one of the most important voices of his generation. He's also a unique bridge between traditional real-world organizing and the brand new world of online activism. His combination of cheerful organizing, passionate speaking, and brilliant blogging is an inspiration to everyone who craves a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world." --Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com

"In this important book, David Swanson carefully documents the myriad ways in which Bush-Cheney has amassed unprecedented imperial power, while Congress has abdicated its constitutional duty to check and balance the executive. A useful guide to restore the balance of powers and reclaim our constitutional system of government." --Marjorie Cohn, President of National Lawyers Guild

"Swanson's book gives a most compelling description of the significance of signing statements -- those mostly invisible steps to fascism. As for the role of the 110th Congress...if it's possible, they turn out to be bigger weasels than I had previously thought." -- Mike Ferner, National President of Veterans For Peace, author of "Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq."

"Swanson has been an indefatigable commentator and activist tirelessly advocating for the dismantling of the imperial presidency and the restoration of the principles of our Constitution. His energy and passion are infectious, as is his cogent reasoning. 'Daybreak' urgently reminds us that good political intentions are not sufficient to ensure the continuation of our democracy; informed vigilance is vital to that task." -- Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, BuzzFlash.com

"When people ask about how and where to follow what is happening with the movements to end the war in Iraq, to prevent a war with Iran and to hold to account those who launched one mad war and now seek to initiate another, the answer is always www.AFTERDOWNINGSTREET.org site. Constantly updated by the indefatigable DAVID SWANSON, the site is fresh -- there were even six posts on Christmas Day -- and it features local actions (via YouTube) as well as national interventions. Because it is so thorough and so engaged with local and regional protests and events, the AfterDowningStreet site provides the best illustration of the extent to which mainstream media has neglected the most vital movements of the moment." -- John Nichols, The Nation

Convergence and Continuity: The American-Backed Terror Campaign in Iran

Chris Floyd, OpEdNews, May 29, 2009

On Thursday, a suicide bomber walked into a mosque, detonated his explosives and killed and wounded almost 140 people. In the wreckage and confusion afterward, a final death count has not yet been established, but the latest available information puts it at 23.

It is unlikely that you heard about this terrorist attack -- because it took place in Iran. For years, Iran has endured a series of terrorist actions -- suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, open assaults by fanatical gunmen, sabotage, and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and others. Multitudes have been slaughtered in these operations, whose ferocity and frequency are surpassed only by the atrocities that have been unleashed in the four countries that have been on the forefront of America's Terror War: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. One shudders to think what Washington's response would be to such a sustained campaign on American soil.

Of course, it is no mystery why the attack on the mosque in Zahedan -- a city situated at the strategic point where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan converge -- attracted so little attention in the Western press. Every day, we are schooled relentlessly by our political and media classes to regard the Iranians -- heirs to one of the world's oldest and most sophisticated civilizations -- as demons and subhumans, whose lives are of little account. This can be seen in the long-running debate over an attack on Iran, which focuses almost entirely on the advantages or disadvantages such an assault would pose for American and Israeli interests -- and not at all on the thousands of human beings living in Iran who would be killed in the operation.

But there is another reason why the terrorist attack in Zahedan has not been greeted with commiserations from the White House or excited coverage from our government-spoonfed media: because it is highly likely that the United States played a role in fomenting the attack, either by direct or by collateral hand.

As AFP notes, Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, with "a large ethnic Sunni Baluch minority," which is often at odds with the Shiite-dominated central government. The region -- which is also a prime conduit for arms and drug trafficking across the volatile borders -- has been roiled for years by the militant Sunni extremist group, Jundullah (Soldiers of God). This group, aligned philosophically if not operationally with al Qaeda, has openly boasted of killing hundreds of people in its campaigns, and, as Chris Hedges notes, "has a habit of beheading Iranians it captures, including a recent group of 16 Iranian police officials, and filming and distributing the executions."

You would think that such violent, frenzied zealots -- fellow travellers of Osama bin Laden! -- would be taken up by our Terror Warriors as poster boys for the evils of "Islamofascism." But as we noted here a few months ago, "bombings and beheadings and deathporn videos are not inherently evil; they can also be a force for good -- as long as they put to the service of America's ever-noble, ever-lofty foreign policy ideals."

For Jundullah is one of the several armed insurgent groups inside Iran being supported by the United States. As Andrew Cockburn reported last year:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush's secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother-in-law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi Arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

Thus the attack this week in Zahedan is an integral part of a wide-ranging campaign of American-supported terrorism inside Iran -- even if the "darksiders" in the U.S. security organs had no direct involvement or knowledge of this particular attack. When you are in the business of fomenting terror (see here and here), there's no need for micro-management. You co-opt the armed extremists who best serve your political agenda of the moment; you slip them guns, money, intelligence, guidance -- and then you turn them loose on the local populace.

We have seen this over and over; in Iraq, for example, where American death squads -- such as the ones led by Stanley McChrystal, recently appointed by Barack Obama to work his "dirty war" magic in Afghanistan -- joined with mostly Shiite militias to carry out massive "ethnic cleansing" campaigns and individual assassinations. We saw it years ago, in the American-led construction of an international army of mostly Sunni extremists raised to hot-foot the Soviets in Afghanistan -- then turned loose upon the world. And of course this lineage of terror-breeding as an instrument of American foreign policy goes back for many decades. with one of the earliest, most spectacular successes being the use of religious extremists to help bring down the secular republic in Iran in 1953.

And as we noted here last year:

Bush's directive represents an intensification of the drive for open war with Iran, but it is not a new development; rather, it is a major "surge" in a state terror campaign the Administration has been waging against Iran (among others) for years. As I wrote as along ago as August 2004, the Bushists have openly sought, and received, big budgets and bipartisan support for terrorist groups and extremist militias all over the world. Here's an excerpt from that 2004 report:

If you would know the hell that awaits us – and not far off – there's no need to consult ancient prophecies, or the intricate coils of hidden conspiracies, or the tortured arcana of high-credentialed experts. You need only read the public words, sworn before God, of top public officials, the great lords of state, the defenders of civilization, as they explain – clearly, openly, with confidence and pride – their plans to foment terror, rape, war and repression across the face of the earth.

Last month, in little-noticed testimony before Congress, the Bush Regime unveiled its plans to raise a host of warlord armies in the most volatile areas in the world, Agence France-Presse reports. Bush wants $500 million in seed money to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" – i.e., bands of lawless freebooters – to serve as Washington's proxy killers in the so-called "arc of crisis" that just happens to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South America.

Flanked by a gaggle of military brass, Pentagon deputy honcho Paul Wolfowitz told a rapt panel of Congressional rubber-stamps that Bush wants big bucks to run "counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" of the world – and in the hinterlands of nations providing "sanctuary" for terrorists. Making copious citations from Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked aggressive war against "potential" enemies, Howlin' Wolf proposed expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to any nation that allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even verbal encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour....

There's nothing really new in Bush's murder-by-proxy scheme, of course; America has a long, bipartisan tradition of paying local thugs to do Washington's bloodwork. For example, late last month, Guatemala was forced to pay $420 million in extortion to veterans of the U.S.-backed "paramilitaries" who helped Ronald Reagan's favorite dictator, right-wing Christian coupster Efrain Rios Montt, kill 100,000 innocent people during his reign, the BBC reports. The paramilitaries, whose well-documented war crimes include rape, murder and torture, had threatened to shut down the country if they weren't given some belated booty for their yeoman service in the Reagan-Bush cause.

But Wolfowitz did reveal one original twist in Bush's plan: targeting the Homeland itself as a "terrorist sanctuary." In addition to loosing his own personal Janjaweed on global hotspots, Bush is also seeking new powers to prevent anyone he designates a "terrorist" from "abusing the freedom of democratic societies" or "exploiting the technologies of communication" – i.e., defending themselves in court or logging on to the Internet. As AFP notes, Wolfowitz tactfully refrained from detailing just how the Regime intends to curb the dangerous use of American freedom, but he did allow that "difficult decisions" would be required.

[Perhaps some of those measures to prevent people from "exploiting the technologies of communication" to spread discontent with the Imperium are being formalized right now in the new Administration's plans for a "cyberspace command," where "the armed forces [will] conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare," as the NY Times reports. And since "cyberwar" -- like the Terror War -- "knows no borders" (as the usual anonymous "senior intelligence official" told the Times), the Obama White House is now busying trying to figure out just how you can aim its cyberwar offensives at the Homeland itself. After all, said the official, "how do you fight them if you can't act both inside and outside the United States?" How indeed? Better start training your carrier pigeons for any private messages you might want to send.]

II.
In any case, whatever its provenance, the attack on the Zahedan mosque serves a confluence of interests. For it comes not only at a strategic location but also at a strategic time: just two weeks before the Iranian presidential election, with the hardline incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, facing a strong challenge from two reformist candidates.

Of course, the very last thing that the militarists in Washington and Israel want to see is the election of a moderate in Iran. They want -- and need -- Ahmadinejad, or someone just like him, so they can keep stoking the fires for war. A moderate president, more open to genuine negotiations, and much cooler in rhetoric than the loose-lipped Ahmadinejad, would be yet another blow to their long-term plans. Because the ultimate aim -- the only aim, really -- of the militarists' policy toward Iran is regime change. They don't care about "national security" or the "threat" from Iran's non-existent nuclear arsenal; they know that there is no threat whatsoever that Iran will attack Israel -- or even more ludicrously, the United States -- even if Tehran did have nukes. They don't care about the suffering of the Iranian people under a draconian, repressive and corrupt regime. They are not worried about Iran's "sponsorship of terrorism," for, as we've seen, the militarists thrive on -- when they are not actively fomenting -- the fear and anguish caused by terrorism. This fear is the grease that drives the ever-expanding war machine and 'justifies' its own ever-increasing draconian powers and corruption.

No, in the end, the sole aim of the militarist policy is to overthrow Iran's current political system and replace it with a regime that will bow to the hegemony of the United States and its regional deputy, Israel. There is no essential difference in aim or method between today's policy and that of 1953. (Except that the regional deputy in those days was Britain, not Israel.) What they want is compliance, access to resources and another strategic stronghold in the heart of the oil lands -- precisely what they wanted, and got, with the installation of the Shah and his corruption-ridden police state more than a half-century ago.

They play the long game, our militarists. For example, they agitated openly -- and plotted covertly -- for the invasion of Iraq for almost 10 years before they finally got their way. They have worked for 30 years now to restore a client regime in Iran, and today, with the relentless bipartisan demonizing of the Iranians -- and the "mushroom cloud" fearmongering over a non-existent nuclear weapons program -- they are as close as they have ever been to their goal. To lose a fear-raising (and fundraising!) asset like Ahmadinejad now would be a bitter disappointment.

And what better way for an incumbent president to stand tall before the voters than to rally the nation around him in the face of a horrible terrorist attack? A mosque full of Shiite worshippers, blown to pieces, with photos showing the blood of the innocent martyrs splattered on the ruined walls? This serves the interests of all the major players in the great geopolitical game: the Iranian hardliners, the American and Israeli militarists, the Jundullah extremists. Of course, it doesn't serve the interests of the murdered dead, or the Iranian people -- or the American people, for that matter. But this too is nothing new. As we noted here in 2007, in a piece about an earlier escalation of state terror by the American government:

There are really no words to describe how morally depraved and monumentally stupid this policy is. It is of course not all that surprising that it springs from a family whose political fortunes are founded, at least in part, from the financial fortunes it reaped from helping build the Nazi military-industrial complex; a family that continued trading with the Nazis even after Americans were in battle against Hitler's forces. The Bushes and their outriders have always been attuned to the kind of brutal realpolitik that is willing -- at times eager -- to see American blood shed in order to advance their elitist agenda. (Which they have of course internalized as being identical with the "national interest.")

But as we've also noted many times, this political "philosophy" is by no means unique to the Bush Family faction. It is resolutely bipartisan, and deeply embedded in the mindset of the American Establishment. The Bushes are nothing but second-rate camp followers, empty shells and non-entities, originating nothing, ignorant and cynical in equal measure, their only unusual trait being how open they are in their scorn for the worthless rabble and the bullshit Constitution that the crypto-Commies like Madison and Jefferson foisted on the proper rulers of the country. Otherwise, they simply regurgitate the unprocessed prejudices, unexamined assumptions and vulgar ambitions of the clique that spawned them.

Of course, at times the idiot George W. Bush and the criminally ignorant crew that surrounds him have brought the inherent lawlessness, greed, brutality and incompetence of the American elite to what seem like new heights -- although even the sick-making murder of the Iraq campaign has still not approached the genocidal fury of, say, the bipartisan bombing of Indochina, and the millions of dead that the "best and the brightest" left behind there. Nor have Bush's domestic repression and flagrant abuse of authority -- as bad as they are -- yet approached the toxic and all-pervasive level of the "Red Scares" launched by Democratic icons Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman. (Joe McCarthy merely took the ball that Truman put into play and ran with it.) But sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof; the crimes of the Bush Administration are not any less heinous -- and the people they have murdered are not any less dead -- just because these crimes are not some aberration of the idiot and his crew but are instead continuations and at times accelerations of long-standing Establishment thinking and policy.

But with each passing decade, the technological tools of repression and militarism grow more overpowering and far-reaching. With each passing decade, the pernicious after-effects and blowback from past depredations build up and compound, breeding new evils. With each passing decade, the societal rot engendered by the rapacity of the elite spreads deeper, eating away at the foundation of the Republic and the fabric of our communities, and weakening or destroying the social and institutional counterbalances to unchecked greed and ambition.

Thus in one sense it doesn't matter if the Bush Faction is any more or less criminal and destructive than other administrations. The world in which they are blundering around killing people is far more unstable and dangerous than before, because it is filled with the compounded evil and folly of previous times.

Of course, that was written a long time ago, back in those dark days when Bush Family factotum Robert Gates was still running the Pentagon and operators of death squads and torture shops like Stanley McChrystal were given high commands; back when the government was going to court to protect warantless spying on Americans and seeking to strip all rights from Terror War captives held indefinitely at the arbitrary will of the president, and devising "legal" justifications for these exercises of authoritarian power; back when the Pentagon and CIA were expanding their operations in Pakistan and intensifying the civilian-shredding air war in Afghanistan; back when we had militarist leaders who considered the mass-murdering war crime in Iraq to be "an extraordinary achievement;" back when cynical and hypocritical presidents would travel to harsh dictatorships in the Middle East to deliver "major speeches" on America's great commitment to freedom and democracy in Muslim lands; and back when the president and his secretary of state routinely ignored all contrary evidence to insist that the Iranians were developing a nuclear arsenal that would soon threaten the whole world with destruction, while U.S. covert agencies were funding and fueling the death and suffering of Iranian civilians in terrorist operations.

Thank god everything is different now, in our glorious new era of Progressive Continuity. Too bad those people in Zahedan can't tell the difference.


Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many (more...)

Obama Betrays The Liberals

Sherwood Ross, The Smirking Chimp, May 24, 2009

America's liberals stand betrayed. Their new president, the one they sweated to elect -- a brilliant, charismatic leader with a professional background in constitutional law -- has transmogrified himself from the champion who denounced in his campaign the illegalities of the Bush White House into a president bent on their perpetuation.

Liberals are stunned by Obama's plan to "restart Bush-era military tribunals" for some Guantanamo detainees, reviving what the Associated Press pointed out, is "a fiercely disputed trial system he once denounced."(May 15). Liberals are appalled by Obama's May 21st proposal to hold terrorism suspects in "prolonged detention" inside the U.S. without a trial. "Such detention," Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) wrote him, "is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world."

If liberals chaffed over Obama's centrist cabinet choices, they were dismayed by his decision not to release photographs depicting the sadistic tortures the Bush Gang inflicted on prisoners during a so-called "War on Terror" that was nothing but terror itself. A typical reaction comes from Joe Kishore, writing on the World Socialist Website (May 22): "Whatever verbal warnings Obama may make about the erosion of democracy in the United States, the actions of his administration facilitate and escalate its breakdown."

deObama's latest policy reversals come as liberals are still reeling from his April 16th speech to the CIA, ignoring its documented history of 60 years of overthrows and assassinations, and reassuring the Agency of its "right" to continue "covert activities," as if such conduct was not prima facie illegality in the eyes of law-abiding nations. Earlier, Obama's pledge not to prosecute CIA torturers that followed orders likely brought relief to the throne room in Langley that is a throbbing heart of the Dark Side. Obama calls upon the nation to "look forward" as he ignores his presidential obligation to prosecute those who, like Bush and Cheney, trampled the Constitution when they ordered torture in violation of international laws that by treaty are America's laws as well.

And if Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive magazine hasn't accused Obama of betraying his liberal subscribers, he charged in his May 21 column the President "tried to carve out an extra-constitutional arrangement for indefinite detention of some detainees without trial." Rothschild accused Obama of "chiseling away at the basic habeas corpus right that has been the foundation of our jurisprudence dating back to the Magna Carta of 1215."

One campaign promise on which Obama has not reversed himself is his pledge to intensify the war in Afghanistan, which, one liberal essayist predicted, will "doom" his presidency. This war is already under heated attack from the liberal quarter. Justin Raimando of antiwar.com (May 20) denounces the appointment of Lt. General Stanley McChrystal to head U.S. forces in Kabul. Asserting McChrystal oversaw torture at Camp Nama near Baghdad that was "notorious" for its "beatings, degredation of prisoners and outright, cold-blooded murder," Raimando writes: "That's what they call 'fresh thinking' over at Obama's Pentagon. If Bush and Cheney ordered it, it's reprehensible and might even be a war crime. If, however, a known torture-enabler is elevated by Obama's secretary of defense to the position of commander of our armed forces in Afghanistan - well, then, that's a far different matter."

The danger in Obama's foreign policy was seen clearly by Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University historian, who described it in his best-seller "The Limits of Power"(Henry Holt), published the year before Obama won the White House. He quoted then Senator Obama's view that "The security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders. The mission of the United States is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity." Of this, Bacevich states:

"Accept the proposition that America is freedom's tribune, and it becomes a small step to believing that the 'peace process' aims to achieve peace, that Iraq qualifies as a sovereign state, and that Providence has summoned the United States to wage an all-out war against 'terrorism.'"

Obama's grandiosity perhaps explains why he boosted the Pentagon's swollen budget (about as great as all other nations combined) by four percent in the absence of any significant immediate foreign military threat. As one disappointed lifelong Democrat with a son in the Army told me, "I had hoped he was going to put an end to the war." This particular liberal now trashes appeals from the Democratic National Committee, adding, "In the next presidential election I may just not vote."

And in a column entitled "Obama's Betrayals," author Sheldon Richman writes on MWC News, "In Obama we have a new Jekyll and Hyde. From harsh critic of Bush's trampling of individual rights, Obama has transmogrified into a champion of the omnipotent state that cannot let the niceties of the traditional criminal-justice system stand in the way of 'national security.'" Richman, editor of "The Freeman" magazine, concludes, "It's time for the opponents of empire to see the man in the White House for who he is. Fortunately, that is starting to happen."

Yes, indeed. And as this painful recognition sinks in like iodine burning into a raw wound, America's humanist Left may yet muster its forces for a last-ditch fight to preserve a bit of sanity in this epoch of messianic presidents hell-bent upon waging war.

Sherwood Ross has worked on major dailies and as a columnist for wire services and served as a press secretary to civil rights leaders. He currently runs a public relations agency for non-profits. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

The Politics of Office

by Mumia Abu-Jamal, Prison Radio, recorded May 18, 2009

click here to listen to audio column

The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!

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George & the Water Board

By David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org, May 17, 2009

George W. Bush has been compared to Curious George the monkey for many years, but the comparison didn't quite fit until now. Every Curious George story must include these plot elements:

1. The man with the yellow hat shows George something irresistible, asks him to leave it alone, and then wanders off.
2. George resists everything except temptation and causes all kinds of trouble.
3. Someone makes the bizarre claim that George has done more good than harm, gives him a prize.

So, George tours a chocolate factory, sneaks into the production room, speeds up the machine causing chocolates to land on the floor, catches the chocolates and randomly sticks the ones he doesn't eat in boxes, getting credited with saving the poor chocolates. George is left alone in a dog pound, lets the dogs loose, wreaking havoc, and gets thanked because one of the dogs locates a missing puppy. George feeds all the zoo animals, endangering their lives, but gets credited with saving a parrot that happens to fly near him. George steals a hot air balloon and gets the credit for rescuing a man from Washington's nose on Mount Rushmore because the balloon drifts by him. George breaks into a dump truck and dumps a load of dirt into a pond, but gets credited with creating a lovely island. George knocks over half the stacks of toys in a new toy store on opening day, and gets an award for entertaining one of the customers. And so forth. I'll grant you there are a few CG stories that don't fit the pattern perfectly, but I could tell you lots more that do if my son weren't sleeping in the same room his books are in.

The third crucial element in a Curious George story has been missing from the tale of George W. Bush for all of these years, but has now been provided. That being the case, I humbly offer for your bedtime reading pleasure, the story of

"George and the Water Board"

This is George.

He was a good little monkey and always very curious.

He lived with his friend, the man with the yellow hat.

One day, the man with the yellow hat took George on a tour of Washington, D.C., and showed him all the sights, including the ones most people don't have access to.

The man with the yellow hat gave George a pass that provided him the highest level of national security clearance, and then remembered that he needed to pick up some other papers at Kinko's.

"Tour the national security apparatus carefully while I'm gone," the man with the yellow hat told George, "and don't get into any trouble."

Well, George explored the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, the lobbyists' offices, the weapons makers, AIPAC, the Washington Post, and the White House. In the White House he found a war room. George remembered what the man in the yellow hat had said, but sometimes it's hard for a little monkey to behave. When a monkey sees a war room, he just has to start a war.

George put on a military uniform and pranced around a big table, and under and over it, and pretty soon he forgot all about being good. He began ordering major wars. He ordered people brutally tortured until they agreed to made up reasons for his wars.

George found a drawer containing absolute imperial power. He tried it on for size. It hung down over George's eyes so that he couldn't see straight, but George was having too much fun to care. He invented news stories, spied on everyone's phones and Emails and letters, hired and fired people based on whether or not they would play with him, and generally bounced about the only way a little monkey can when he's gotten the sadistic scent of blood into his little nostrils.

George didn't realize it, but before long an election happened, and all of his absolute power was taken away from him and handed to a man named Obama.

At first Obama was upset with George and at first George wanted to run and hide, but before George could stash his torture implements out of sight, Obama bent down and handed George a bag of Iraqi ears and fingers.

"You may have been a little blunt and offensive, George," Obama said, "but without you I wouldn’t have acquired these humanitarian wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the power to detain people indefinitely without charge, or the power of rendition, the illegal spying operations that you set up, the standard of secrecy you established, the wonderfully expanded powers of state secrets, executive privilege, executive orders, signing statements, secret laws, military commissions, treaties made without Congress, the power to raise and spend money without Congress, or for that matter the complete disempowerment of Congress which used to be a branch of our government. And I can abuse all these powers but still look good compared to you. Thank you, George!"

George was a hero.

--

David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can pre-order it for a discount price at http://tinyurl.com/daybreakbook

http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/42687

Lawrence Wilkerson Drops an Iraq-Torture Bombshell

By Bob Fertik, Democrats.com, May 14, 2009

On Wednesday, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson dropped a bombshell (h/t Heather):

what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 -- well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion -- its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

On April 21, McClatchy's Jonathan Landay first suggested the Bush Administration used torture to intentionally extract false confessions linking Al Qaeda (and 9/11) to Iraq, to give Bush a false "casus belli" to invade Iraq.

Landay's suggestion was shocking. I called it the "Iraq-Torture Scandal" because of its similarity to the Iran-Contra Scandal, where two seemingly unconnected scandals (Reagan's illegal sale of weapons to Iran and his illegal funding of the Nicaraguan contras) were suddenly linked. Paul Krugman called it the "Grand unified scandal":

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There’s a word for this: it’s evil.

A number of prominent progressives came to the same conclusion, including Keith Olbermann (who calls it "backfilling"), Rachel Maddow, Ron Suskind, Frank Rich, and Dan Froomkin. But serious coverage of this humongous scandal did not go beyond progressives.

Why? First, because Landay is not a TV regular like investigative reporters Seymour Hersh or Michael Isikoff, although his work is just as good. Second, because his two sources didn't quite prove the scandal.

His first source was anonymous - "a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue" - which undercut his/her impact. And this source made the "Iraq-Al Qaeda" motive secondary to "preventing another attack."

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

Landay's second source was former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, who

told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Landay did not specify when Burney's interrogations were taking place, but it was October 2002. That was still during the pre-war sales campaign (the invasion began on March 19, 2003), but it was after the fall "product rollout" when Bush, Cheney, and Rice repeatedly insisted they had proof from Al Qaeda captives of Iraq ties. That story came from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose false confession in Egypt was much earlier - in February 2002. (See Update 3 below for correction.)

So Wilkerson's account is a bombshell for three reasons. First, he is well-known - and credible. Second, he says the desire to manufacture an Iraq-Al Qaeda link was the principal priority - not secondary to preventing another attack.

its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

Third, he pushes the timeline back to "April and May of 2002" - not as far back as February 2002, but getting close.

The "smoking gun" of the Iraq-Torture Scandal will be proof that the CIA took Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi away from the FBI in February 2002 and sent him to Egypt for one specific reason: to use torture to extract a false confession of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties.

Lawrence Wilkerson's account takes us much closer to finding that "smoking gun." And al-Libi's mysterious death guarantees that everyone will be looking for it.

Update 1: Liz Holtzman just reminded me that Bush decided on February 7, 2002 to exclude Al Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan from the Geneva Conventions. Obviously that opened the door for the CIA to torture them. al-Libi was captured in on December 18, 2001, so he may have decided to revoke Geneva with al-Libi in mind.

Update 2: Former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem ties Cheney's office to a waterboarding request after the invasion of Iraq in April 2003:

*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

*Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees.

This isn't a smoking gun for the Iraq-Torture Scandal because it followed the invasion, but it's another piece of evidence that the Buseviks used torture to try to link Iraq and al Qaeda.

Meanwhile Windrem is trying to get a formal response from Cheney. '

Update 3: According to the Senate Armed Services Committee report, Burney arrived in Guantanamo in June 2002. He was immediately seconded by Maj. Gen. Michael Dunleavy into Task Force 170 - the military interrogation team - because it lacked a psychiatrist. TF-170 started formally using "harsh" interrogation in October 2002 on Gen. James Hill's vocal approval, before Rumsfeld signed off on them. Prisoner "063", Mohammed al-Qahtani, was earlier subjected to "certain types of deprivation and psychological stressors."

Update 4: Andrew Sullivan reaches the same conclusion:

Lawrence Wilkerson has a must-read on what he now believes is the real reason Cheney was so insistent on torturing prisoners - he needed proof of an al Qaeda-Saddam connection to justify the war he had already decided to wage. This really is the explosive charge, because it reveals the real danger of torture in the hands of big government: it means our leaders can manufacture facts to justify anything. It gives them the crucial weapon they need to, as Ron Suskind's famous source explained, "create reality"

Indeed they did.

Update 5: Dan Froomkin cites Wilkerson in writing:

I've been amazed at how little media pickup there's been of the revelation by the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that the White House started pushing the use of torture not when faced with a "ticking time bomb" scenario from terrorists, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks.

Word.

Update 6: Josh Marshall cites Wilkerson too:

Next you have a flurry of claims that a key motive behind the push to torture was to elicit 'confessions' about an alliance between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida, which was of course the key predicate for the invasion of Iraq. That again has to create much more pressure to clarify what happened. The basis of most of the anti-torture push has been the assumption that torture was used for the purpose of eliciting information about future terrorist attacks. Whether it was illegal, wrong-headed, misguided, immoral -- whatever -- most have been willing to at least give the benefit of the doubt that that was the goal. If the driving force was to gin up new bogus intel about the fabled Iraq-al Qaida link, politically it will put the whole story in a very different light. And rightly so.

Update 7: Marcy Wheeler drills down on Dick Cheney's role:

Wilkerson is stating, clearly, that in early 2002, Dick Cheney ordered Ibn Sheikh al-Libi to be tortured even after the interrogation team reported that al-Libi was compliant.

While we can't be sure of the date when Cheney started ordering people to be waterboarded even after they were compliant, we know this order had to have occurred before February 22, 2002--because that's when al-Libi first reported on ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. From DIA's report on that day:

"This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh [al-Libi] in which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qa'ida's CBRN efforts. However, he lacks specific details on the Iraq's involvement, the CBRN materials associated with the assistance, the location where the training occurred. It is possible he does not know any futher details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."

So sometime in February 2002--when Bush was declaring that the Geneva Convention did not apply to al Qaeda and when Bruce Jessen was pitching torture to JPRA--Cheney was personally (according to Wilkerson) ordering up waterboarding. The DIA immediately labeled the result of this session of waterboarding probable disinformation.

And a month later, when the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah, James Mitchell immediately set up as a contractor so he could waterboard Abu Zubaydah.

We chose waterboarding--not simply torture, but waterboarding itself--knowing it'd be unreliable. Or rather, Dick Cheney chose it.

I'm not sure Cheney ordered up waterboarding in particular because it would produce disinformation. I think he chose waterboarding because it was the only form of outright torture that American officials had experience with (thanks to the SERE program). That meant it could be administered by Americans (Jessen and Mitchell) and also could be "sold" to the numerous American intelligence agencies as producing reliable information.

As I argued previously, I believe Cheney had to in-source torture (by America) because the out-sourced torture (by Egypt) produced results that an American intelligence agency - the DIA - rejected as unreliable.

Update 8: Andy Worthington recaps the investigative reporting that preceeded Wilkerson's revelation. He also raises some useful questions about Wilkerson's timeline.

http://democrats.com/lawrence-wilkerson-drops-an-iraq-torture-bombshell