What would you do if you were tortured?

A war is lost when atrocities begin.

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Even if whatever had been said about Saddam had been true, it is now equally true of Bush; but, of course, what was said of Saddam was not true. What is said of Bush now is! As Bush conned the American people into complicity, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz painted a rosy picture of "the first Arab democracy". It would be a secular society, he said, ignoring the fact that it already was. The new Iraq would be oil rich and middle class. Aside from the fact that Wolfowitz might have been describing the GOP, Iraq had already been all of those things. The other more well known reasons for war —WMD, for example —have likewise proven to be either bald-faced lies or irrelevant nonsense. There were numerous ex post facto justifications. They, too, have been overtaken by events.

It was hoped that the US army in Iraq would moderate Iran, isolate Mullahs, weaken Hezbollah and other so-called "radical" groups. In every case, the opposite has occurred. Shiites in Iraq are the "government" and have formed an alliance with Iran. If Bush attacks Iran, "his" new Iraqi government will ask the US to leave. Radical groups —flagging prior to the US attack and invasion of Iraq —gain new converts daily. Just as Bush used radical Islam to rally the Christian right, "radical Islam" need only raise the spectre of Christian crusaders or Abu Ghraib to draw a sympathetic crowd.

Marc Lynch, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College, has concluded that so dramatic are Bush's reversals that the administration is no longer promoting democracy in the middle east:

On al-Arabiya last week, Hisham Milhem led a discussion on "Bush and democracy in the Arab world."....I was most struck by a remark by Amr Hamzawy. He pointed that the fact that most of the Arab media and political class were now discussing the "retreat" of American commitment to democracy demonstrates that at least at one point they were prepared to entertain the thought that there had been some credibility to that campaign. No longer, Hamzawy argued — America's turn away from democracy and reform had badly hurt its image and its credibility with this Arab political class....This seemed to be a well-received notion.

—Abu Aardvark

Even moderate regimes now feel threatened. The US may have only one friend in the Middle East —Israel. And, lately, that friendship is problematic.

Professor Marjorie Cohn states unequivocally: “Israel’s brutal retaliation against Palestinian civilians constitutes collective punishment. Attacks on a civilian population as a form of collective punishment violate article 50 of the Hague Regulations”, “The Fourth Geneva Convention also prohibits collective punishment. Article 33 …” and “Collective punishment is likewise forbidden by Article 75 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. As four US Supreme Court justices agreed in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld last week, Article 75 is “indisputably part of the customary international law.””[see:Marjorie Cohn Israel Creates Humanitarian Crisis].

Complicating the US position is the sheer hypocrisy of it all. The rising tide of atrocities has turned the middle east irrevocably against the US even as secular nations now associate US troops with Abu Ghraib, Haditha and the CIA with an eastern European gulag. We have yet to reap the full effect of the gathering storm.

Most startling of all is Sartre's advocacy of violence as a legitimate response to repression, motivated by his belief that freedom was the central characteristic of being human.

—From a review of Colonialism and Neocoloniam by Jean-Paul Sartre

GOP propaganda —while working for awhile —is transparently hypocritical:

If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal, conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

—Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States, Nuremberg Tribunals

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Citizens of a sovereign nation may resist an occupying force in any way they can including armed resistance. It's a principle of international law. Resistance to the US occupying force in Iraq is, therefore, not an "insurgency". The word 'insurgent' implies illegitimacy.

The recent Supreme Court decision is a step in the right direction. As more cases reach the high court, it will become clear that the US presence violates Nuremberg, Geneva, and the UN Resolution that was often incorrectly cited by Bushco.

"Freedom fighters" are never called "insurgents" —even if they are. One can only conclude that like "supply side economics", the word "insurgent" was chosen at the end of a GOP focus group session for its propaganda value, its ability to frame the issue. In the meantime, I will support in any way I can an international movement to bring the entire Bush gang of war criminals and mass murderers to justice at the Hague!

I have vague recollections of the struggle for Algerian independence and upon a quick refresher, I was impressed yet again by the strenuous opposition to the French position from Jean-Paul Sartre.

I know that we are accused of treason. But I ask, who and what do we betray? Judicially we are plunged in a civil war, since the Algerians are considered full French citizens; we thus don’t betray France. In fact, the national community no longer exists; where are its great axes, where are its lines of force, where are the fixed points of its structure?

...

And now, what? There is no longer one family in Algeria that hasn’t had a member of its family join the maquis or been tortured or killed by the French. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children of that country eat the grass on the Tunisian and Moroccan borders. 15%-20% of the Algerian population, nearly two million inhabitants of this “French province” are concentrated in camps where an average of one child a day among a “regroupement” of 1000 people dies every day, which comes to about 1500 children a day in total. Must we console ourselves by noting that in these camps there are neither gas chambers nor crematory ovens? And should we feel any scruples about rising up alongside the Algerians against those who inflict this on them, or who content themselves with deploring the fact that others inflict it on them? When things have reached such a point there is no longer room for a third camp; one is either with one side, or with the other.

—Letter from Francis Jeanson to Jean-Paul Sartre

At the time this letter was written, Sartre had taken a strong stand against torture. In his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre said of torture that it was intended "...to reduce men to vermin". Like the US in Iraq, the French used torture to suppress the Algerian resistance. And like the Bush administration which denies that it tortures even as it defends the practice, the French were equally contradictory; they denied it had ever taken place while declaring its effectiveness against the Algerian Liberation Front. True to his existentialism, however, Sarte had the courage to denounce the practice even as he urged others to ask of themselves as he asked of himself: what would I do if I were tortured!

In his unfinished and never produced play about Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare urged his audience to "...take the stranger's case"! If we, as Americans, are to retain what's left of our humanity, we simply must take the case of the Iraqi people. We must demand that the atrocities end now! We must rise up and demand that the United States withdraw immediately from Iraq! We must demand full and transparent investigations into every outrage perpetrated by the US military in Iraq. We must ask of ourselves as Sartre asked of himself: What would you do if you were tortured?

A final observation about Sartre who adamently defended the leftist La Cause du Peuple . He might have been in serious trouble had he not been seen as the new Voltaire. In my opinion, there is no greater patriot than one who would —in good faith —criticize his own country when that country is morally, even mortally wrong!

Sartre did not confine his remarks to France. A link supplied to this site by Station Agent, takes you to a speech by Sartre in which he excoriates imperialism, neo-colonialism, and the attempted American genocide in Viet Nam:

The American government is not guilty of having invented modern genocide, nor even of having chosen it from other possible answers to the guerrilla. It is not guilty - for example - of having preferred it on the grounds of strategy or economy. In effect, genocide presents itself as the only possible reaction to the insurrection of a whole people against its oppressors. The American government is guilty of having preferred a policy of war and aggression aimed at total genocide to a policy of peace, the only other alternative, because it would have implied a necessary reconsideration of the principal objectives imposed by the big imperialist companies by means of pressure groups. America is guilty of following through and intensifying the war, although each of its leaders daily understands even better, from the reports of the military chiefs, that the only way to win is to rid Vietnam of all the Vietnamese.

It is guilty of being deceitful, evasive, of lying, and lying to itself, embroiling itself every minute a little more, despite the lessons that this unique and unbearable experience has taught, on a path along which there can be no return. It is guilty, by its own admission, of knowingly conducting this war of ‘example’ to make genocide a challenge and a threat to all peoples. When a peasant dies in his rice field, cut down by a machine-gun, we are all hit.

Therefore, the Vietnamese are fighting for all men and the American forces are fighting all of us. Not just in theory or in the abstract. And not only because genocide is a crime universally condemned by the rights of man. But because, little by little, this genocidal blackmail is spreading to all humanity, adding to the blackmail of atomic war. This crime is perpetrated {364} under our eyes every day, making accomplices out of those who do not denounce it.

In this context, the imperialist genocide can become more serious. For the group that the Americans are trying to destroy by means of the Vietnamese nation is the whole of humanity.

—Jean-Paul Sarte, On Genocide, International War Crimes Tribunal - 1967

Faced with a guerrilla war, misleadingly called an "insurgency" by Bush propagandists, the illegitimate regime of George W. Bush has already involved this nation in numerous criminal acts. Our presence in Iraq is a quaqmire increasingly characterized by mass murder, rape and other atrocities. There is no victory to be achieved. Out of Iraq now! War crimes trials for Bush and his co-conspirators!

And a thanks to Mike's Round up at Crooks and Liars. Mike has linked back to the "Cowboy", adding a couple of enhancing links:

The Existentialist Cowboy: "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us." —Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States, Nuremberg Tribunals

We’re gonna need a guide to understanding fascism.

Related to the issue of the lawlessness of the Bush regime, this update:

Supreme Court’s Ruling in Hamdan Means Warrantless Eavesdropping is Clearly Illegal

Ever since the Supreme Court in the Hamdan case ruled that the Bush administration’s Guantanamo Bay military commissions violate both federal law and the Geneva Conventions, the President has been paying lip service to his "willingness" to comply with that ruling. But the Court’s ruling goes far beyond the limited question of whether military commissions are legal. To arrive at its decision, the Court emphatically rejected the administration’s radical theories of executive power, and in doing so, rendered entirely discredited the administration’s only defenses for eavesdropping on Americans without the warrants required by law.

Actual compliance with the Court’s ruling, then, compels the administration to immediately cease eavesdropping on Americans in violation of FISA. If the administration continues these programs now, then they are openly defying the Court and the law with a brazenness and contempt for the rule of law that would be unprecedented even for them ...

• Letter from Francis Jeanson to Jean-Paul Sartre
• Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl
• US Air Strike Targets Crowd in Central Baghdad
• Colonialism and Neocolonialism
• 40 Iraqis Killed, 200 Wounded in Sadr City
• US Air Raid on Fallujah Kills Dozens, Including Children
• US Strike Kills 10 In Fallujah Mosque, Iraqis Vow Revenge
• US Death Toll Hits 1,000, Fallujah Fiercely Hit
• Most Americans 'Angry' Over Iraq Invasion: U.S. Poll

The Existentialist Cowboy
Torture
Atrocities
Iraq
War Crimes

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

The Rise and Fall of The Enron Empire

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The recent death of Ken Lay revived memories of a corporate scandal that seemingly triggered the fall of lined up dominoes. I had hopes that the truth about corporate America would trigger some real reforms, a sea change in American attitudes about how business is conducted, and, at least, some introspection about the shallowness of American culture.

I was dissappointed. Greed still motivates corporate robbers barons. Corporations are still considered to be "persons" in the eyes of the law. At the time, I asked: what happened to Enron? Occupying its own gleaming glass and steel skyscraper in downtown Houston, Enron seemed invincible, epitomizing what it meant to be an American corporation. That turned out to have been its downfall.

As much of the world suspected at the time, the American corporation was revealed to be a shell. Enron, for example, produced nothing. It bought and sold natural gas and manipulated spot market prices. It's huge purchasing power literally put the screws to California; the result was a long hot summer of rolling black outs and power shortages. Enron executives and traders were tape recorded cackling and hooting over California's problems --problems that bore the Enron trademark.

What then was the source of Enron wealth? Aside from the profits made manipulating markets, Enron was the recipient of some $10 billion from Saudi royals who still have questionable ties to both Bush and world wide terrorist organizations. That the money was morally tainted didn't stop Kenneth Lay and the robber barons of Enron. Enron was, in fact, in business with "bankers to the terrorists". Only the incurable incurious would not want to know more about the Enron connection to known 'terrorist' organizations --especially those having ties to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the 'American' oil industry.

Since the Reagan "revolution" and the rise of dubious economic theories like "supply-side" economics, the actual manufacture of anything of value seems to have fallen to Chinese corporations. The effect has been a cancer on the American economy, beginning with Reagan and having resumed with George W. Bush.

American companies are encouraged by all too friendly, conservative regimes to engage in questionable business practices. The political climate in which these huge businesses operate is much more than merely pro-business, it seems to be anti-everything else. There are large margins for error when tax breaks favor you, and your company can write-off a panoply of follies, inefficiencies, and borderline behaviors. Enron literally created new subsidiaries out of thin air and put a "book" value on them that had more to do with delusion, megalomania, and psychosis than it did with economics or accounting.

That's old news. I am more inclined to confine my focus to the effects this "pro-business" climate has had on the American "character". For example: do we still have character?

Before the rise of Bush, America, despite her many shortcomings, was still admired around the world. Now, we are reviled; and if the various religious and secular guests on a recent installment of Bill Moyer's Faith and Reason are accurate, the world wide revulsion to American culture has reached epidemic levels.

One does not have to be an Islamic radical to find America crass, obsessed with bigness for the sake of bigness, and arrogant for the sake of feeling "cool". Nevermind that there is no hard evidence to support Bush's official conspiracy theory of 911; I have concluded that to the degree that there is a real terrorist threat, it is nothing more nor less than blow-back, a fatal resistance to the arrogant bully on the block.

Now George W. Bush has made of America, the "state" version of Enron. The fact that this nation is financially as well as morally bankrupt is papered over with lies that must surely be compared to Enron's phony books. Many Enron employees, for example, were encouraged to take part of their salary in company stock i.e. you let me cut your salary and I'll make up the difference with worthless pieces of paper —Enron stock. On the national level, Bush tried to sucker retirees out of their Social Security with an equally dubious plan.

Of course a good "con game" requires a willing and greedy sucker. Enron was seen to be a place where employees were seduced into believing that after ten years they could retire rich in Sugarland —Tom Delay's ultra-conservative district. The three words that summed up the Reagan years also describe Enron and the administration of George W. Bush. Those words are: Greed is good!

Because greed is good, all orgnizations, especially American corporations, will inevitably trend toward inefficiency and mediocrity. An American middle manager, for example, is not likely to hire anyone smarter than he/she; secondly, he/she will look for someone that is "like" him/herself. Should the surprisingly competent get hired, he/she will probably leave for a better job where the cycle will repeat itself. Meanwhile, mediocrity, like sour cream, will rise to the top. The truly bright and talented don't go to work for corporations and, if so, it's only until they find something better. The "company man" is not likely to change the world, is not likely to leave a footprint on history. Corporations are not looking to hire philosophers, honest politicians, revolutionaries, poets, or dramatists.

Power for its own sake has become the corporate raison d'etre, just as it similarly motivates Bush and Bushie. Corporate power is based upon an absurdity —that corporations are individuals and have all the "rights" of individuals. Moreover, corporations, if they are to be considered "people", must certainly be seen to be psychopaths. For this reason, the Bush administration, as a collective, as a corporatized government, should be locked up and straight-jacketed.

It was the Reagan administration that began the corruption of American values despite sticking on the word "family". In retrospect, the Reagan administration can be thought of as proto-Bush. Adding their own absurdities to the the moral rot, the Bush regime threatens to bring down this country like Enron, like the Twin Towers, like a collapsing bag. To greed is good has been added Thom Friedman's what does being right have to do with anything?

Thus Friedman has made his lasting contribution to American culture. In the future, when one wants to describe a society in which nothing of value is valued, where only lies are celebrated, they will quote Friedman. Indeed, if being right has nothing to do with anything, what difference did it make that Enron's subsidiaries were almost all entirely fictitious? Friedman may consider himself 'lucky' for claiming that dubious phrase; it might have been puked up by an Enron executive some six years ago.

---

---

A Death Too Convenient

It is not only Kenneth Lay's cozy connections with Dick Cheney that makes his sudden death a matter of extreme public interest. Lay's death may hide forever the subtle connections between Enron, Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, 911, the Saudi Royals, and the war against Iraq.

For a start, Ken Lay's death takes the heat off the Bush family, primarily because Lay was at the very nexus of the Bush/Saudi axis of oil and energy. In death, there are no more tales to tell save for what can be pieced together thus far. The source for much of the following information is a captured document that, according to former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, was produced by Al Qaeda. The document supports charges of a cover-up. Ongoing terrorist investigations were said to have been shut down or interfered with even as the Enron Corporation negotiated with the Taliban for pipeline rights through Afghanistan.

Who ordered the cover up? Why was Enron made off limits to federal investigation? Who but someone very high up in the Bush administration could have shut down such an investigation? Who, in fact, did?

From that document and other bits and pieces, the following picture emerges.

Before 911, US energy companies were secretly negotiating with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Unocal and Enron executives met with Taliban representatives in Tom DeLay's district of Sugar Land in 1997, an event that seems suspicious in retrospect. At the time, however, no one was suspicious of oil men flying in and out of Houston. It happens every day.

On another occasion, some 40 Enron representatives met with the Saudi royals in Tashkent. Enron was at the time "...the Afghan pipeline consultant for UNOCAL" [See Loftus vs. Sami Al Arian]; Prince Turki, son of King Faisel, was chief of Saudi intelligence. Also present at the Tashkent meeting was a Unocal consultant: Hamid Karzai —now called derisively the "Mayor" of Kabul.

At the time, the Saudis were pumping money into Enron. The Saudis wired some $10 billion "... from a Cypriot bank through Barclay's Bank in London and on to Houston" in a bid to make of Enron a "player" in the ongoing pipeline negotiations —but why? What kind of deal had Enron struck up with Prince Turki, the ruling Saudi royals, and the Bush administration?

Prince Turki, who made several trips into Afghanistan, dismisses them as mere peace missions. That rings hollow. Officially, the talks were about pipelines —not war! Peace missions are made to prevent wars, not pipelines. Did Prince Turki spill the beans?

As the Saudis placed heavy bets on Enron, the Bush State Department was at work on another front —threatening the Taliban with carpet bombs should the negotiations break down [See Forbidden Truth]

Eventually, the pipeline discussions would collapse and Prince Turki would be fired as head of Saudi intelligence. It's a safe bet, however, that he's still a major player. He was in Houston just last week. He is most certainly still close to the Bin Laden family which, according to Loftus, was promised "the" construction contract [the pipeline contract, presumably] in return for a "baksheesh" [kickback] to the Saudi Royal family. According to Loftus, this is a common business practice initiated by the Carlyle Group's contracts in Saudi Arabia.

As the Republican IPO magazine, Red Herring, confirms, President Bush' father was business partners in the Carlyle Group with the Bin Laden family during this period . This company is a Who's Who of former Democratic and Republican intelligence and political officials, whose specialty is acting as super-lobbyists at the highest levels of government. They are also suspected of arranging construction kickbacks to the Saudi royal family in return for discount oil sales. —Former Federal Prosecutor, John Loftus

Loftus has filed a private lawsuit, Loftus vs. Sami Al Arian, currently pending in Hillsborough County, Florida. It is credited with having shut down what Loftus has called the "Saudi funding conduit" and with having influenced a government raid of so-called Saudi Charities in the US. The lawsuit charges bluntly that the charities were not charities at all, rather, they "...were fronts for networking with other terrorist groups." From the lawsuit:

75. Under the guise of an ICP educational conference, Defendant and/or his agents and servants, repeatedly invited known international terrorists and leaders of extreme racist organizations to the United States. [FBI tr. P.1]

76. Defendant’s own videotapes show that Defendant regretted that some of the people he invited were prevented from attending his ICP conference, including the “Blind Sheik” who was later investigated for the first bombing of the Twin Trade Towers, and was afterwards convicted of another conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks. [FBI Tr. P.1]

77. In order to facilitate the process of obtaining visas for terrorists to attend Defendant’s terrorist conventions, Defendant, his agents and servants incorporated yet another purported non-profit entity in the State of Florida known as the “World Islamic Studies Enterprise.” (WISE).

If these allegations are true, I want to know who was funneling money into the Saudi charities. The 911 plot might also be exposed if we but knew to whom the monies are funneled.

There is reason to believe that many of these things were discussed with Enron's Ken Lay. There is reason to believe that the pipeline may have been the number one item on the agenda when Lay participated in a meeting of Dick Cheney's energy task force.

Documents turned over in the summer of 2003 by the Commerce Department as a result of the Sierra Club’s and Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oil fields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oil field Contracts.” The documents, dated March 2001, also feature maps of Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates oil fields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the project’s costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.

Documented plans of occupation and exploitation predating September 11 confirm heightened suspicion that U.S. policy is driven by the dictates of the energy industry. According to Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton, “These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public.”

When first assuming office in early 2001, President Bush's top foreign policy priority was not to prevent terrorism or to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction—or any of the other goals he espoused later that year following 9-11. Rather, it was to increase the flow of petroleum from suppliers abroad to U.S. markets.

—Secrets of Cheney's Energy Task Force Come to Light

But not all of the information was released following the lawsuit by Judicial Watch. Now, it would appear, that it will never be known to what extent the Bush administration betrayed the people of the United States and fabricated a pretext to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq.

May Kenneth Lay rest in peace. Death among Bush cronies seems to be as statistically high as GOP votes from a DieBold machine. Lay's probable complicity in the crime of the century will remain obscure on the whole and completely unknown in its details.

Jacob Bronouski had reasoned from sheer logical positivism an ethic: behave in such a way that what is true may be verified to be so! But —tragically —the Bush administration typifies an opposite and amoral view —what I call the Thom Friedman cop out: what does being right have to do with anything? It's a question that only the dead wrong would ask. Of Ken Lay, who is remembered in Houston by his many victims, it is a death too convenient!

The Existentialist Cowboy
Enron
Iraq
Oil

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

A Declaration of our Independence

At a time in our history when the President of the United States claims to be above the law, when the nation has been taken to aggressive war upon a pack of lies, when the Congress scrambles to make legal ex post facto the crimes the "President" has already committed, when the Supreme Court states bluntly that the President is a war criminal, when the private conversations and bank records of tens of millions of Americans are routinely pilfered, when the Fourth Amendment is flouted and the Constitution called "quaint" by the Attorney General and a "...Goddamned piece of paper" by the President, it is well to consider on this Independence Day the very sources of what we like to call American freedom or American liberty!

It would be well to remember that the original colonies separated from England for less. It would be well to remember that two words —probable cause —are under attack, if not killed off already. It is also important to remember that those two words stand between us and tyranny.

It is also time to make a "Revolutionary" statement: that whenever a government breaks its contract with the people; that whenever a government abrogates their "inalienable rights", it is the right of those people to abolish that government and replace it.

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence between June 11 and June 28, 1776. Since that time, it is the Declaration of Independence that is most often thought of as our nation's most cherished symbol of liberty. Even so the Declaration is too often regarded as mere high sounding words perhaps in the same way that George W. Bush says of our Constitution that it is "...just a goddamned piece of paper"!

Nothing could be further from the truth. Jefferson was an educated man, articulate and sometimes profound. The Declaration is a product of a down-to-earth, realistic political philosophy grounded in common sense even as it eschews fanciful metaphysics and meaningless speculation. It expresses an ideal of liberty that has its roots in the no nonsense empirical philosophy of John Locke.

John Locke (1632-1704), is among the most influential political philosophers of the modern period. In the Two Treatises of Government, he defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society. Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better insure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property. Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments.

—Locke's Political Philosophy

Locke wrote extensively, articulately, persuasively on such topics as the Raison d'Etre of Government, the Separation of Powers, the Ends of Government, and the Extent, indeed, the limits of governmental powers.

Jefferson was also influenced by the Virginia Declaration of Rights drafted by George Mason and adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776. Later, Mason's Virginia declaration became a major influence on the US Bill of Rights, drafted by James Madison.

I am confident that these men —Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, John Locke —would be appalled, perhaps as outraged as am I, that the modern GOP has literally thumbed its nose at these principles.

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Section 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.

Section 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

—Virginia Declaration of Rights

Both John Locke and Thomas Jefferson wrote about governments that break the social contract with the people. Both Locke and Jefferson considered such a breach to be justification for a break with the offending "government":

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

—Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence [emphasis mine]

Locke had already come to the same conclusion.

4(h). Revolution:

If a government subverts the ends for which it was created then it might be deposed; indeed, Locke asserts, revolution in some circumstances is not only a right but an obligation. Thus, Locke came to the conclusion that the "ruling body if it offends against natural law must be deposed." This was the philosophical stuff which sanctioned the rebellions of both the American colonialists in 1775, and the French in 1789.

—John Locke: "The Philosopher of Freedom."

Many years later, a young revolutionary would reprise the sentiments of Jefferson and Locke:

When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken.

—Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare

And this Independance Day is also a good day to remember what sacrifices were made for those very freedoms and rights that Bush so cavalierly dismisses with a smirk:

For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.

—Declaration of Independence

Since posting this piece, I've read Katherine Vanden Heuvel's excellent piece in "The Nation". She also believes that the Bush administration has engaged in an un-American assault on our Consitution and the very rule of law, her article carries within it the seeds of a political strategy:

In clear violation of established law and centuries-old political precedent, they [Bushco] have wiretapped American citizens; imprisoned citizens without warrants, charges, or means of redress; sanctioned and abetted the torture of foreign nationals; ignored clear Congressional legislative intent with the likes of 750 signing statements; disabled Congressional oversight of their actions; undertaken an assault on the press' right to publish the truth; and suppressed dissent and public-minded information disclosure within the Executive branch itself.

This abuse and overreach of Presidential power directly challenges the "checks and balances" at the core of our constitutional design. It proposes a government fundamentally different from that declared by the Founding Fathers.

...

The American people's most powerful weapon in defending the Constitution is their vote in Presidential elections. But we cannot afford to wait until 2008. The danger to our Constitution is clear and present. Hence our call to all patriots to put the issue before the public in this November's elections and ask of all candidates, "Do you accept or condemn the President's assault on our Constitution?"

—Katherine Vanden Heuvel, The Nation

From one of my favorite authors, another look at just what we should be "celebrating" or, in light of recent events, just what we should be mourning:

The Declaration of Independence is the fundamental document of democracy. It says governments are artificial creations, established by the people, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Furthermore, as the Declaration says, "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." It is the country that is primary--the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty.

When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power, while claiming that its motives are pure and moral, ("Operation Just Cause" was the invasion of Panama and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in the present instance), it is violating its promise to the country. War is almost always a breaking of that promise. It does not enable the pursuit of happiness but brings despair and grief.

—Howard Zinn, Patriotism and the Fourth of July

The Existentialist Cowboy
Declaration of Independence
War Crimes

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

The Rumsfeld Doctrine: Easy Victories on the Cheap!

It was the wrong war at the wrong time and for all the wrong reasons. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld conspired with Bush's big oil sponsors to attack Iraq. The WMD cover story is not merely a black hearted malicious lie, nor even an inadvertent one by an inexperienced "decider". It was, rather, a deliberate, planned, organized hoax.

The war itself falls into all three categories: war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against the peace. To the extent that Rumsfeld bypassed the chain of command with his own "Einzatzgruppen", every act of torture is traceable to Rummie, Bush, and Cheney.

A Failure of Strategy

Cut through the jargon and you can sum up the Rumsfeld doctrine in a few words: easy victories on the cheap! It seemed to work in Afghanistan where small, lightly armored units scouted the enemy and coordinated the air strike that killed them —fewer troops, fewer supplies, smaller investment. What went wrong was guerilla war and suicide bombers. What went wrong was a Shiite resurgence completely unforeseen by Bush, Rummie, Cheney. Cheap tactics are impotent in the face of a growing international movement unforeseen and misunderstood by Bush.

A guerilla war in Iraq, meanwhile, has devolved into unspeakable barbarism on all sides —at a time when lights are still not on for many Iraqis and clean water is still a premium.

Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war "is lost" and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month.

Meanwhile, the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is "just the tip of the iceberg" with overstressed, out-of-control Americans soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally.

"We are in trouble in Iraq," says retired army general Barry McCaffrey. "Our forces can't sustain this pace, and I'm afraid the American people are walking away from this war."

—Field commanders tell Pentagon Iraq war 'is lost', Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue

Amid talk that America is without allies or friends in Iraq, you can be sure that Bushies are desperately seeking a way out, an American "Dunkirk". But the much vaunted 'coalition of the willing' has melted away, leaving behind a bewildered, impotent US and a nonplussed UK. There is no country willing or capable of pulling Bush's fat out of the fire. "Staying the course" is Bushspeak for let's hope it works out before the elections.

We have no exit strategy

We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk. In 1940 the defeated British Army in Belgium was driven back by the Germans to the French seacoast city of Dunkirk, where it had to abandon its equipment and escape across the English Channel on a fleet of civilian vessels, fishing smacks, yachts, small boats, anything and everything that could float and carry the defeated and wounded army to safety.

Obviously, our forces in Iraq will not be defeated in open battle by an opposing army as happened in 1940, but there is more than one way to stumble into a military disaster. Fragmented reports out of Iraq suggest we may be on our way to finding one of them. Defeat can come from overused troops. It does not help that one by one, the remaining members of the Coalition of the Willing give every appearance of sneaking out of town.

—Nightmare Scenario, Nicholas von Hoffman

TV pundits are now saying that it will take a million troops to win a guerrilla war against an insurgency in Iraq! It was not so long ago that pundits predicted a 90 day "war", another easy victory on the cheap! Thom Friedman asked recently: "What does being right have to do with anything?" Simply this: because Bush was dead wrong, the US is left with no good options in Iraq. No one in Bush's incompetent regime foresaw the rise of a Shiite theocracy and its inevitable alliance with Iran. Ironically and predictably, Bush will use that as a defense i.e., no one could have foreseen the rise of the Shiites!

Similarly, we were told: no one could have foreseen that the levees would break!

No one could have foreseen that hijackers would use airliners.

I'll add one of my own: no one could have foreseen the rise of the "no one could have foreseen" defense for complete and utter incompetence!

A related update:

Survey of National Security Experts

U.S. losing terror war because of Iraq, poll says

Thursday, June 29, 2006

WASHINGTON — The United States is losing its fight against terrorism and the Iraq war is the biggest reason why, more than eight of ten American terrorism and national security experts concluded in a poll released yesterday.

One participant in the survey, a former CIA official who described himself as a conservative Republican, said the war in Iraq has provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza, a valuable training ground and a strategic beachhead at the crossroads of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Turkey, the traditional land bridge linking the Middle East to Europe.

"The war in Iraq broke our back in the war on terror," said the former official, Michael Scheuer, the author of Imperial Hubris, a popular book highly critical of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism efforts. "It has made everything more difficult and the threat more existential."

Some additional resources:

• When the Shiites Rise
• Greg Palast Uncovers the 'Armed Madhouse' of the Bush Reign of Greed, Fear and Stolen Elections
  
• Nightmare Scenario
• US Dunkirk in Iraqi Desert: The Tipping Point!
  
• Radio RaBe featuring Mark Stenzler [Click on webradio and select July 2, 2006 with a start time of
  15:58:30]

The Existentialist Cowboy
Supreme Court
Shiites
War Crimes

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP tries to let Bush off the hook, to make legal crimes he's already committed!

It's now official: George W. Bush is a war criminal, in violation of both the Geneva convention and US criminal codes. [See also: International Humanitarian Law - Treaties & Documents] Predictably, however, the GOP is already making plans to make legal —after the fact —crimes that Bush has already committed.[See ABC News] There is no slicker way to exalt Bush above the law than to simply make legal the crimes he's already committed.

I have more to say about ex post facto attempts to make legal the numerous crimes Bush has committed but first the Hamden decision to date: in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, handed down June 29, the United States Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush exceeded his authority. Neither the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), nor the so-called inherent powers give Bush the legal authority to set up military tribunals at Guantanamo.

For those of us who have maintained for some time now that Bush is a "war criminal" —who has breached both international conventions and US criminal codes —the high court's decision is vindication. In effect, SCOTUS has said that for a period of some five years, the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney gang has been guilty of violating the Third Convention on treatment of prisoners of war as well as a US federal law of 1996 which binds the US executive to those relevant parts of the Geneva convention.

Predictably, a conspiratorial GOP is scrambling to let Bush off the hook —though he is most certainly guilty of violating US and international law. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says that Congress will reverse the Supreme Court's declaration and Sen. Arlen Specter is already at work on the language of the bill. I submit to Sen. McCain that Congress does not have the authority to reverse a decision of the supreme court; it can only pass a new law addressing its objections. The effect of any new law is of that date; it cannot be retroactive in its effects. There is no precedent for excusing culprits ex post facto!

Ex post facto is latin for "from something done afterward" or "after the fact". Ex post facto law is retroactive. On it its face, this is unfair but more importantly, it is blatantly unconstitutional

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

—Article I, US Constitution

Bush and his GOP co-conspirators are routinely at odds with the supreme law of the land but also simple common sense. Because ex post facto laws change —after the fact —the legal consequences of acts already committed, the ex post facto law becomes an instrument of oppression and tyranny. Hoping to crack down on dissenters, for example, a tyrannical government need only make the voicing of certain opinions a crime but only after they've been printed, broadcast or spoken. Such a government need only make the law, round up the usual suspects, and prosecute them for actions that were legal at the time of their commission. Conversely, the dictator-in-chief in such a society, need only subvert the very foundations of law and order itself and demand that his actions be made legal —after the fact! Convenience is the enemy of the rule of law.

The notion that Congress can somehow exculpate Bush for the crimes he's already committed is not merely absurd, it's seditious and dangerous —a short road to tyranny and dictatorship.

To her credit, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has refuted every dubious point made by Sen. John McCain in defense of this pernicious strategy. She has shown the Democrats the way. If the Democratic party is to have any future at all, it must begin now to oppose with its every fiber a creeping, insidious Bush dictatorship. Allowing even a bright and capable leader the rope he needs to simply improvise his way through office is nothing less than the death of the rule of law.

An update from the Washington Post:

Democrats urge broader view of Bush war powers

By Matt Spetalnick

Reuters
Sunday, July 2, 2006; 4:12 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Democrats called on Sunday for a broader review of whether President George W. Bush had overstepped his war powers after the Supreme Court struck down his administration's Guantanamo military tribunals.

Seeking to capitalize on the sharpest judicial rebuke yet of Bush's tactics in the war on terrorism, Democratic critics said the ruling opens the door for a closer look at complaints he had improperly bypassed Congress in other areas as well.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the military commissions created by Bush to try foreign terrorism suspects held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo were unlawful and violated the Geneva Conventions. ...

Around the blogosphere, some great comments. Here's a excerpt from Rubicon, but I recommend the entire post:

The big question now is how Bush and his Republican Congress will respond. So far, they seem to think that they can retroactively legalize what Bush has done. That will not be easy to do. Hamdan raises the stakes: it's war crimes we're talking about.

A little legislative fix won't erase war crimes, though a few resignations and impeachments would certainly be a move in the right direction. It's a hopeful sign that Democrats are not the only people now talking about the seriousness of the situation. Andrew Sullivan has written thoughtful posts on the subject (here and here), and he points to an analysis of the case by the Cato Institute that emphasizes "command responsibility" and military "orders." Editorial boards that have until recently treated Bush's authoritarian claims with deference—including the Washington Post and the New York Times—have changed their tunes.

Many more voters are becoming disillusioned, too, and Congress may well change hands in November. A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows a 14-percent advantage for Democrats, with the gap up to 26 points among women. With a Democratic Congress, we might even see the legislative branch join the judiciary in a drive to restore nonmonarchical government.

—Rubicon, Notes on Politics, Science and Art

The Existentialist Cowboy
Supreme Court
Guantanamo
War Crimes

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush's Supreme Court to the GOP: there's more than one way to steal votes!

It was most probably the year 1980 when Tom DeLay revealed his vision thing: gerrymander the state of Texas so that only goppers can get elected. Earlier, Robert Kennedy had said:

Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?' I dream things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'"

—Robert F. Kennedy

DeLay, however, dreamed of GOP majorities that never were and asked why the hell not? DeLay dared to dream of election-proofing an entire state, striking blows against Democracy from the bottom up. That was a difficult dream in 1980, when expensive IBM mainframes lacked the power that laptops have today. It's easy to imagine a Republican circa 1980, pouring over census tracks, trying to figure out how district lines could re-drawn to

• Protect GOP majorities in right leaning districts;
• Dilute Democratic voting strength.

The goal was to divide and conquer —re-assign Democratic voters to new, overwhelmingly GOP districts. Tom DeLay must love the advances in computer technology; they've help make his vision thing come true.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

In those early days in Texas, the GOP was making noise, flexing its muscles, kissing up to the "moral majority". These were heady times for the GOP. Ronald Reagan had won the Presidency and Bill Clements had just pulled off a stunning upset to become Texas' first Republican governor since Reconstruction days.

In retrospect, the GOP sweep was not merely apocalyptic, it was the harbinger of yet more horrible things that have, in fact, come to pass.

On the morning of his own election to the State Senate, a Sugar Land "neighbor" of Tom DeLay would rub his hands like a river boat gambler and ask: "Now....when do I get to meet with those lobbyists"? I witnessed that act. And it forever changed my thinking about the GOP. It was the end of political innocence. I would never see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in quite the same way ever again.

How the GOP sold Democracy down the river

Certainly, the GOP had hit upon a sure-fire strategy for keeping what was theirs and taking what wasn't. It was a simple, three point strategy: Get power; gerrymander the state in order to keep it; and build up a powerful ruling cabal. Since then, the Abramoff scandals have proven that the GOP has most certainly blazed new trails, literally partnering with powerful lobbyists in order to enrich personal GOP fortunes. Dick Cheney has taken it to new levels, cutting out the middle man entirely, running the entire nation for the benefit of Halliburton.

Now —thanks to the US Supreme court, majorities of either party are not limited to re-districting only after a census. A worrisome 7-2 decision has clearly put the highest court in the land in the position of supporting —yet again —a purely partisan decision that helps only the GOP. Whenever it might appear to state GOP leaders that the demographics of a district are changing, new lines can be drawn. The party in power draws them. And, historically, the GOP has always drawn those lines to its own advantage. Unlike 1980, this act of theft is done by sophisticated computers.

Sure, sure.

SCOTUS threw Texas Democrats a bone. Big deal. One district in Texas was found to have been drawn such that the hispanic constituency completely lost their representation. One district, when, in fact, the GOP has stolen an entire state once yellow dog Democrat —and proud of it. One district got a symbolic nod from SCOTUS but too late to give back to some 100,000 Texans the very representation that is promised them in the US Constitution.

Sadly, Democracy in America has not died in a blaze of glory. There is no Phoenix from the ashes, no fragile promise of its return. No one has pledged its defense unto death itself. "Give me liberty or give me death" seems a relic but not because Henry was wrong. I haven't heard anyone, save Stephen Colbert, look Bush in the eye and tell him that his ship of state is the Hindenberg. There are no heroes —not even the redeeming cartharsis of Greek tragedy. American Democracy dies daily of a thousand tiny, ignominious cuts. No blaze of glory —rather, a whimper before oblivion.

Some updates on Bush's war on Constitutional government. Cautiously, I ask: has the Supreme Court —at last —decided to check Bush's unprecedented war on the separation of powers?

Supreme Court ruling blocks Guantanamo trials

(Filed: 29/06/2006)
The US Supreme Court has found that President George W Bush exceeded his authority by ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling is a major setback to Mr Bush's 'war on terror'.

John Paul Stevens, the judge writing for the majority, said the administration had violated US military law and the Geneva Convention in ordering the military tribunal.

The ruling came in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Hamdan, 36, one of over 400 foreign prisoners at Guantanamo, has spent four years in the US prison in Cuba. He faces a single charge of conspiring against US citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

Tony Snow, a spokesman for President Bush, said the White House would not comment until lawyers had had a chance to review the decision.

Mr Bush was granted expanded powers by Congress one week after the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, but the Supreme Court's decision makes it clear that Mr Bush has overstepped those powers. ...

At the very least, the high court is now on record as obliging a rogue "President" not just to specific international laws but the principle of international law itself. An aide to my congressman told me that international principles —such as the Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions —infringed upon US sovereignty. Naturally, I disagreed and pledged to work for an opposing candidate.

Signing away our freedom

By DOUG THOMPSON

President George W. Bush, through his use of "signing statements," has declared himself, on more than 750 separate occasions, above the laws of Congress, the laws of the land and even the Constitution of the United States.

With each stroke of his pen, Bush wipes away more of the freedoms once guaranteed by the Constitution, undermines the system of checks and balances that is supposed to protect our government from despots and brings this nation closer and closer to the precipice.

His actions come, ironically, as the nation prepares to celebrate the birthday of its independence, an independence threatened as never before not by Islam-spouting madmen but by an opportunistic politician with a fountain pen.

Signing statements allow a President to say he will choose to ignore a law passed by Congress if he feels that law infringes upon his powers during times of war or national crisis.

Thanks to Bush, we're at war, a war based on lies, a war predetermined by an administration that decided, long before the events of September 11, 2001, to wage against a manufactured enemy for political means.

Those attacks provided a much-welcomed opportunity to galvanize a shell-shocked nation into an ill-conceived war that cannot be won, fought against a determined enemy who cannot be defeated in a land that neither requested nor welcomed our manufactured campaign to free it. ...

The Existentialist Cowboy
Supreme Court
Gerrymandering
Democracy

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush says "stay the course" —but there is no course to stay.

The war is lost already. The "new" Shiite government in Iraq has already formed a de facto alliance with Iran.

Bush will eventually withdraw from Iraq; there is no other choice. Predictably, Bush will call an ignominious retreat a victory. Reminded that his policy was not merely wrong but wrong-headed, Bush will resort to the Thom Friedman defense: What does being right have to do with anything?

Days before he offed himself, history's other great liar —Adolph Hitler —was positioning non-existent divisions which he hoped would defeat the Russians. The Russians, by that time, were just a few blocks away from the bunker. But —What does being right have to do with anything? A question that only the dead wrong would ask.

The US position is untenable. US troops are confined to small areas inside Baghdad. In the year 2003, CNN would report:

More importantly, the U.S. control over Baghdad is going to tighten very considerably in the next 24 hours.

—CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL, U.S. Military Continues to Move About in Baghdad Suburbs, Aired April 9, 2003 - 01:00 ET

Things have changed. The US is no longer free to roam about the city. Frustrated US forces are reduced to killing, murdering civilians. This is stark reality compared to the pie in the sky promises of "Democracy" served up just prior to the invasion. By the time Paul Bremer would arrive, he was already faced with what was called a "security problem". He was, in fact, already in the midst of a guerrilla war against an illegal occupation.

The coalition of the willing' —bribed or coerced to begin with—has all but melted away. Japan —never a combatant —has washed its hands of Bush's dirty, evil little war. My remaining surprise is that Blair has managed to hang on so long. What's left of that coalition —if coalition it is —now has sole possession of what one Middle Eastern writer has called an 'opened Iraqi grenade '. It is in danger of blowing up in Bush's face.

When everyone else has gotten out, who remains but another war criminal, Tony Blair, to aid an increasingly despised US? Will even Blair so risk his government? Even if we were prepared to wage a guerrilla war, such a war is already lost.

Che Guevarra wrote a near definitive treatise on "Guerrilla Warfare". The US has already broken rule number one: win the hearts and minds of the people. Let's review how Bush and the US have gone about trying to win "hearts and minds". Clearly —John Bolton's charge was not to represent the US position to the UN; rather, he was tasked with subverting the UN from within. Moreover, the Iraqi people hate Bush and he has no friends among the some 300,000 who make up the military force of the "new" Iraqi government.

On another front: what has become of the US relationship with Europe when Bush and his criminal junta have repeatedly insulted and humiliated Europeans? Spain, Australia, and the UK have suffered humiliating backlash and deadly attacks on their own soil. What now could possibly motivate Europe to stick its neck out for Bush? And what of the Iraqi people? They are largely without running water, utlities, police protection. There is little or no security.

If Bush should attack Iran, the "new" Iraqi government, allied with Iran, would turn those 300,000 troops against the U.S. in a heartbeat. Bush is already losing a war of attrition and not even Bush can get away with increasing troop strength sufficient to deal with a guerrilla war of that magnitude.

Bush will withdraw and perhaps sooner than we think. It'll make the US withdrawal from Viet Nam —a mad scramble for helicopters atop an embattled US embassy —look like Dunkirk. Look at the map. How will Bush withdraw from Iraq if it makes of Iran an enemy? Iran guards the Straits of Hormuz —the only way in, the only way out. It will be a humiliating, world-changing experience in which a spoiled frat boy will fall and the the US will forever lose its pre-eminence on the world stage.

But we have the GOP leadership to thank for installing an illegitimate "President" and we have the GOP rank and file to thank for supporting the coup d'etat! We have FOX to thank for having written the musical score —a "whoosh" designed to match the slick animation of tanks and explosions. Gee! Wasn't war cool? And thanks, of course, to the FOX scriptwriters for this year's best work of trashy fiction.

Bush cast himself in the role of tragic hero; but Bush is no hero and the results are only tragic. Greek drama, moreover, requires a "hero" better than ourselves. Clearly, Bush is miscast. The true tragic "hero" makes of suffering a catharsis in which misery is made positive and suffering redeems our worst flaws. Bush, however, is the embodiment of hubris and it has lead him to a reckless disregard of human life and nature itself. The die is cast and Bush will fall victim to a dialectic that he himself has set into motion.

The third act has already begun.

State of emergency declared in Baghdad

The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew today after insurgent gunmen set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on US and Iraqi troops just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

With just two hours notice, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki ordered everyone off the streets of the capital. US and Iraqi forces also were engaged in firefights with insurgents in the dangerous Dora neighbourhood in south Baghdad.

The fighting along Haifa Street near the Green Zone, the site of the US and British embassies as well as the Iraqi government, was unusual in its scope and intensity.

There have, however, routinely been clashes along the thoroughfare, making it so dangerous that a sign at one Green Zone exit checkpoint warns drivers against using the street.

As the state of emergency was announced in the capital, a car bomb ripped through a market and nearby petrol station in the increasingly volatile southern city of Basra today, killing at least five people and wounding 18, including two policemen, police said.

A bomb also struck a Sunni mosque in the town of Hibhib northeast of Baghdad, killing 10 worshippers and wounding 15 in the same town where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed earlier this month, police said.

At least 19 other deaths were reported in Baghdad. ...

Mahathir: Bush, Blair must be punished for war crimes

2006/6/23

By Pauline Jasudason KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, AP

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a frequent critic of the war in Iraq, on Thursday called U.S. President George W. Bush and his Australian and British allies "war criminals," saying they must be punished for crimes against humanity.

He also said Bush had "demonized Islam." In a speech accompanied by photos of alleged torture and war crimes in Iraq and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mahathir exhorted global leaders to "summon the political will" to try Bush, his advisers and allies in an international court.

Mahathir, who led Malaysia for 22 years until stepping down in 2003, has frequently criticized Washington's Middle East policies.

During his speech, a slideshow titled "The War Criminals" showed pictures of Bush, his advisers, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Australian leader John Howard and others.

"Bush and Blair and any leader, present or future who wage wars must not and should not be addressed by any honorific," Mahathir told a crowd of some 1,000 at a public forum organized by the private Perdana Global Peace Organization, which he heads. ...

Yep! If you've paid taxes, you've helped enable Bushto murder tens of thousands of people —innocent people —known by Bush and his criminal junta to have had nothing whatsoever to do with 911:

The cost of Bush's aggression, both in money and lives, has turned America into a nation of war criminals

Faced with mounting civilian carnage, both from war crimes committed by demoralized and broken US troops and from the raging civil war unleashed by Bush's ill-fated illegal invasion of Iraq, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has decided to waste another $50 billion to continue the lost war for five more months. Our elected "representatives" are so in thrall to the powerful military-industrial complex that no amount of American shame, pariah status and military defeat can shut off the flow of taxpayers' funds to the merchants of death.

Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing hard-pressed US taxpayers $300,000,000 per day! These wars are lost. Yet, imbecilic members of Congress are in the process of funding the war for another year. Multiply $300 million by 365 days and you get $109,500,000,000. These are not the full costs. The huge figure does not include the destroyed equipment, destroyed lives, and long-term care of the maimed and disabled. ...

The Existentialist Cowboy
Iraq
Bush
War

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

Deflating Big Brother by Debunking Right Wing Lies, Myths, and Propaganda

I've never understood how the Religious Right manages it. How can followers of the "Prince of Peace" support the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians in a war of naked aggression? Did Christ not say "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God"? Did Christ not say "...turn the other cheek"? And of the merciful, did he not say that they, in turn, obtain mercy? Is the Bible not true? If not, then why do these people insist upon being seen going to church? What is gained by maintaining frauds and pretenses?

How can "Christians" insist upon believing lies when their Savior was said to have told Pontius Pilate: "I am the truth"? With his statement to Pilate, Christ implied that truth itself was the source of all that is good and absent in all that is bad. You don't have to be a Christian to believe that. Jacob Bronowski whose critique of the "logical positivist" position in his Science and Human Values pointed out an underlying, unproved social injunction implied in A. J. Ayer's analytical methods. That implied imperative is:

"We OUGHT to behave in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so."

Ironically, Bronouski's critique may have saved logical positivism from its own inflexible consistency, placing its edifice not upon an unassailable axiom but rather upon an affirmation of values which will not admit of proof. What true and lasting ethic could not be based upon the pure pursuit of truth?

I would like to create a database of the various, multitudinous right wing/GOP myths, propaganda, claptrap and urban legends cooked up by the right wing, disseminated by a dutiful mainstream media, swallowed eagerly by a flock of faithful who never question it. But, that's more work than I am willing to spend with an entire class of deluded losers. But —the denial of global climate change is among the more pernicious and immediately harmful right wing lies.

Hawking: Global warming to make Earth like Venus

By ASSOCIATED PRESS, BEIJING

Stephen Hawking provoked a group of Chinese students on Wednesday saying he was "very worried about global warming." He said he was afraid that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid."

The comment is a pointed one for China, which is the second largest emitter of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming, after the United States. ...

George Orwell's 1984 predicted a totalitarian society in which lies were truth and war was peace:

When “Lies are Truth” “War is Peace”

When the right wing is confronted by truth, it tries to shut up the source of it. Lately, Thom Friedman has taken a different tack. He discounts the very concept of "truth" itself. What does being right have to do with anything? he asked recently.

Well, for one thing: being right has survival value. Those who disagree will not refute that proposition; they will merely label it: Darwinism!

Even so, we will never know what claptrap might have been believed by Cro Magnons. They're all dead. The right wing only recognizes "survival value" in the exercise of raw power just as the US has tried to silence its critics abroad:

Ron Suskind: US deliberately bombed Al-Jazeera

Ron Suskind appeared on "The Situation Room" today to talk about his new book "One Percent Solution," and said that the US took out Al-Jazeera office in Kabul purposefully.

Ron talked about Cheney's almost "Presidential-Vice Presidency" and claimed that the CIA determined the Bin Laden tape released the weekend before the '04 election helped Bush and that Osama wanted him re-elected. ...

Video-WMP Video-QT

Listen up, MSM: There was NO "Bush Bounce".

Eric Boehlert: The Press Plays Dumb About the Bush Bounce

Eric Boehlert Tue Jun 20, 12:24 PM ET

The mainstream media's incessant, excited chatter about a looming Bush Bounce represented just the latest embarrassment in an endless parade of journalism missteps during the Bush years. The depressing puppet show--senior White House aides announce things are great, conservative 'news' outlets echo the spin and then MSM journalists gamely play along--has become annoying, tiresome and transparent. Yet the MSM won't stop embarrassing themselves....

But Thom Friedman asks: "What does being right have to do with it?" Clearly —a question that only a loser would ask. [Haloscan]

Friedman is a Dodo to wit:

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."

—(New York Times, 11/30/03)

"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."

—(CBS's Face the Nation, 10/3/04)

"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one."

—(NBC's Meet the Press, 9/25/05)

"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."

—(New York Times, 12/21/05)

"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution."

—(CBS, 1/31/06)

"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq."

—(NBC's Today, 3/2/06)

"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."

—(MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)

Friedman is not only often wrong, he's repetitive. Perhaps, he thinks that if he repeats a spin often enough, then one day it will be true. Keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick. Search for your lost keys under the street lamp; light is better there. Beat your head against a wall; one day, when you're dead, the headache will stop.

Additional resources:

• When “Lies are Truth” “War is Peace”
• War Crimes and World Domination
• Bolder rhetoric from the European camp
• PBS' Frontline looks at Darth Cheney and his role in the war on terror
• Salon.com Exclusive: AT&T may be hiding a second NSA spy facility

The Existentialist Cowboy
Iraq
Right Wing Lies
Democrats

---

The Existentialist Cowboy

Democrats took the bait, stuck with Bush's tar baby

The so-called congressional debate about Iraq was a Karl Rove dream come true. It was not a debate. It was, rather, a GOP stunt designed to make the GOP look united in defense of evil while Democrats looked divided in defense of what's right. At the end of the day, the Democrats were just as stuck to the Bush tar baby as Bush. When will the Democrats learn? Spreading guilt around is what goppers do best.

United evil always beats equivocation! It's what evil feeds on. A quote that is often incorrectly attributed to Edmund Burke is nevertheless correct: all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Burke might not have said that; but he should have.

Good men have done nothing. For all the good they've done, the Democrats might as well bend over —or go home.

Democrats must unite in opposition to the war —else they become a part of the quagmire itself. The question is: will the Democrats be a part of the solution or will they continue to "enable" the very worst, most evil and incompetent "president" in American history? Democrats had better answer that question —and quick! They've blown a chance. When Bush was on the ropes, they let him off. But because Bush is hostage to his own failed strategy, Democrats may get a second chance but only if they storm the moral high ground and hold it.

Bush can lose on every other issue, but if he is seen to be winning the war —however immoral it may be —the GOP will retain control of both houses of Congress and thus enable the Bush power grab and dictatorship. Iraq will bring down Bush's Presidency but only if the Democrats are seen to be a viable alternative on this issue. As Buzzflash put it in their recent editorial:

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid just released a Democratic Party agenda for America. Most of its social and economic goals were commendable.

But they won't win either branch of Congess on these issues.

Bush is stuck with Iraq but he will lose on Iraq only if the Democrats get unstuck. If the war is seen to be either unwinnable or lost, Bush is finished —but only if the Democrats are seen to be an alternative. Clearly, the Democrats have not done this.

Why?

The GOP can win by not losing. Democrats don't have that luxury. Bush succeeded in spreading the guilt around, sticking Democrats with the Iraq tar baby. Hillary Clinton, for example, is stuck. If she fails to get her party's nomination — or if she fails to win after getting it —it will be because her position seems to be Bushco-lite.

Despite all the GOP tricks (and they are now reaching down into the bottom of their dirty tricks bag), the overriding facts are these:

• The war itself is wrong, immoral, and has already bankrupted the US
• "Saying the course" is just another way of saying: "If we can just kill a few more then we can stop killing —eventually!" ...or "Let's keep on doing whatever it is that's making us sick!"

Rep. John Murtha gave it a shot [See: Crooks and Liars: "Murtha to Rove: He's sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big- fat backside- saying stay the course!"] —but Democrats must be as ruthless in defense of what's right as GOPPERS are ruthless in the perpetration of evil. Iraq will take Bush down but Democrats will not benefit unless they position themselves in opposition to a failed and morally bankrupt administration.

I am posting the following article —excerpted in blockquotes —with my refutations:

Half a President With Half a Vision

Written by Robert Klein Engler, Sunday, June 18, 2006

President Bush's recent trip to Baghdad established that the Iraq war will be the defining foreign policy decision of his administration.

In the vernacular, Bush, having lost every other big issue, is rolling the dice with Iraq. What are the odds he will win? Bush can't win straight up; he's betting the Democrats will shoot themselves in the foot.

As a result of that war, a new constitution and a new government is in place in Iraq.

Was it worth the American Constitution? I don't think so. Polls of Iraqis clearly want us out! Now! What are we doing in Iraq if not securing the oil fields for Halliburton?

The Iraqi people are now able to take charge of their own country.

Then we can withdraw our troops immediately, right? See: Mayhem in Baghdad puts lie to Bush's claims of increasing Iraqi security

The United States still must have a presence in Iraq, but no one, except for some disenchanted Democrats yearning for political power, will say that the removal of Saddam Hussein was a bad thing.

The Iraqi people are worse off under Bush than Saddam. Bush had boasted that under the US occupation...

"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."

—President Bush, remarks to 2003 Republican National Committee Presidential Gala, Oct. 8, 2003"

That turned out to have been another lie. Saddam tortured his political enemies at Abu Ghraib and so did Bush. If I were an Iraqi, what difference does it make to me if I am tortured by Saddam or by Bush? Lately, the US military is revealed to have been involved in mass murder. If I were an Iraqi, what difference does it make to me whether I am murdered by Saddam or by Bush?

Just for good measure, here is another absurd lie told by a Bushy:

"The Iraqi people are now free. And they do not have to worry about the secret police coming after them in the middle of the night, and they don't have to worry about their husbands and brothers being taken off and shot, or their wives being taken to rape rooms. Those days are over."

—Paul Bremer, Administrator, [Iraq] Coalition Provisional Authority, Sept. 2, 2003

Bremer was lying. There's proof: Salon published an extensive archive of photos of US perpetrated torture at Abu Ghraib on March 14, 2006. That archive is available here.

There is, therefore, no moral difference between Saddam and Bush. Bush's body count approaches or may have surpassed Saddam's by now and America has probably tortured and/or murdered as many civilians has did Saddam.

The idea that the Iraqi people are better off because the United States bombed them, killed tens of thousands of civilians, and later, attacked and invaded them is just patently absurd and intellectually dishonest. The average Iraqi is clearly worse off under Bush.

If the president's plan continues to work in Iraq, then historians will no doubt record this as a major foreign policy achievement.

The "President's" plan has never worked in Iraq. More accurately, it is doubtful that Bush ever had a plan beyond bomb and invade and hope that everything works out. That plan —if plan it is —has already failed. History will judge Bush as it has judged every other aggressor despot.

Having a successful foreign policy is a boost for the president, but it is only half of his responsibility to protect the American people. The president's vision for Iraq and victory in the so-called war on terror is only half a vision. The other half is to have a successful domestic policy and vision as well.

When has Bush ever had a successful foreign policy? A foreign policy based upon an ongoing war crime is not a recipe for restoring America's lost moral authority. Subverting democracy and the rule of law at law is not a method by which those principles are credibly extolled to the world. By what perverted standard is anything done by Bush called "successful"? An even better standard by which to measure Bush foreign policy is the timeline of attrition in the so-called "coalition of the willing". The people of the United States, however, are, because of Bush's incompetence in this area, left holding the bag and the bill.

Many believe that the most dangerous threat at the moment to the United States abroad is Al-Qaeda. We seem to be doing well in defeating that threat.

Al Qaeda was a creation of the CIA operating in Afghanistan during the Soviet Union's equally illegal, equally disastrous invasion of that country in the 1970's. I would like to know at what point in time Al Qaeda stopped acting on behalf of the CIA. Moreover, no one —not even the Bush administration —has said that Al Qaeda operated openly inside Iraq under Saddam's regime. If Al Qaeda is operating in Iraq now, it is Bush's failure —not Saddam's! At last —if Bush had been interested in attacking Al Qaeda, he would have not have attacked Iraq where Al Qaeada most certainly wasn't. Al Qaeda is smoke and mirrors, a distraction which masks Bush's real agenda, his real motive.

In short, Engler's article misses the point, misstates facts, ignores others, and, in general, paraphrases a tired and failed strategy: stay the course! Staying the course is the GOP way: keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick; beat your head against the wall until it stops hurting; keep on killing until you don't have to kill anymore. Sadly, that day never comes.

At last someone in the MSM gets it. Andy Rooney dares to ask the question that spooks many Democrats and the corporate MSM and that question is best phrased in the title of a song from the early '70's: War! What is it good for?

Ike Was Right About War Machine

October 5, 2005

Andy Rooney / Sixty Minutes, CBS

Commentary: The US is spending $5.6 billion a month fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned: "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

CBS News

NEW YORK (October 2, 2005) — I'm not really clear how much a billion dollars is but the United States — our United States — is spending $5.6 billion a month fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into.

We still have 139,000 soldiers in Iraq today.

Almost 2,000 Americans have died there. For what?

Now we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China.

Another way the government is planning to pay for the war and the hurricane damage is by cutting spending for things like Medicare prescriptions, highway construction, farm payments, AMTRAK, National Public Radio and loans to graduate students.

Do these sound like the things you'd like to cut back on to pay for Iraq?

I'll tell you where we ought to start saving: on our bloated military establishment.

We're paying for weapons we'll never use.

No other Country spends the kind of money we spend on our military. Last year Japan spent $42 billion. Italy spent $28 billion, Russia spent only $19 billion. The United States spent $455 billion.

We have 8,000 tanks for example. One Abrams tank costs 150 times as much as a Ford station wagon.

We have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons — enough to destroy all of mankind.

We're spending $200 million a year on bullets alone. That's a lot of target practice.

We have 1,155,000 enlisted men and women and 225,000 officers. One officer to tell every five enlisted soldier what to do.

We have 40,000 colonels alone and 870 generals.

We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President and on leaving the White House in 1961, he said this:

"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. …"

Well, Ike was right. That's just what's happened.

More graphic support for Andy Rooney's thesis:

U.S. Federal Funds Budget

Income tax money goes only into the Federal Funds part of the budget.

The percentages are federal funds, which do not include trust funds such as Social Security that are raised and spent separately from income taxes. What you pay (or don’t pay) with your income tax return by April 15 goes only to the federal funds portion of the budget. “Current military” spending ($643 billion for FY 2006 including estimates for the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental spending that was not included in the President’s budget request) adds together money allocated for the Dept. of Defense plus the military portion from other parts of the budget (e.g., Dept. of Energy maintains nuclear weapons). “Past military” ($384 billion for FY 2006) represents veterans’ benefits plus much of the interest on the debt (largely created by past wars and enormous military budgets).

This chart shows the amount of your tax dollar actually devoted to the military:

(For the latest budget breakdowns, see “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes”)

And Rob Kall gets it:

Trusting in Blind Stupidity

by Rob KallThat's the Rove/Republican game plan. They trust that the remaining members of their base will automatically, stupidly, continue to produce the knee jerk reactions to phrases like hold the course, cut and run, and suggestions that to fail to go the distance with the war is an act of cowardice.

And there are millions of "stupid white men" as Michael Moore so aptly described them in his book, who will embrace these right wing echo chamber spins. These are the men who use talk of war and talk of superiority over anti war democrats as a kind of Viagra that makes them feel more manly, tougher.

I call them the dumbest, dupes in the world. Since this is a kind of sexual thing, with the war talk as Viagra, that sort of makes them cuckolds-- men who are made fools of by other men.

The fact is, the Republicans are trying to justify staying in a war that should never nave been started. They're trying to legitimize keeping on engaging in what amounts to a horrible crime. Bush lied to get us into this war. He knowingly used false information. His fraudulent claims were used to justify starting a war. It's hard to think of a worse crime. He and his cronies deserve to go to jail. And what do you call some one who aids and abets criminals? I call them accomplices. That's what the Republicans in congress are. They are attempting to keep the like going. This is a war that should be stopped dead in its tracks. ...

An essential resource:

Rape Rooms: A Chronology

In the meantime, Bush will serve up delusions because spin won't make reality go away. From David Usborne in New York:

Mayhem in Baghdad puts lie to Bush's claims of increasing Iraqi security

Baghdad blasts mock US claims of Iraqi progress

Following death of Zarqawi and visit by Bush, leaders fail to bring end to cycle of violence

A series of explosions ripped through Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 23 people and dealing a shattering blow to the new Iraqi government's attempts to impose a security blanket on the capital.

The seven separate blasts at locations across the city are likely similarly to frustrate the efforts of the White House to demonstrate a degree of progress in Iraq since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi earlier this month, and the surprise visit to Baghdad last Monday by President George Bush.

In the meantime, a new Pentagon investigation revealed details of abusive treatment of detainees in Iraq early in 2004 by members of US special forces. The report said the soldiers were continuing to use interrogation techniques that had been ruled unacceptable several months earlier by the Pentagon because they were too harsh, including feeding one inmate on bread and water only for 17 days. ...

Iraq dead overwhelm US tombmakers

[links to a page with a built-in video player]

The Existentialist Cowboy
Iraq
Bush
Democrats

---

The Existentialist Cowboy