Reasons given for Goss resignation are but lipstick on a pig!

The abrupt "resignation" of Porter Goss is proof of Bush's failure to lead; his appointment, however, may have compromised national security.

The consensus is that Goss called it quits because he failed to address the reasons he was named to the post. In mainstream media speak, Goss quit after 19 months of trying to "mend" the agency "…embattled over the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the faulty intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

That's lipstick on a pig.

Bush appointed Goss amid great ballyhoo. It was, however, a political appointment from the get go. Goss's real job was to purge the CIA of anyone daring to question Bush's bogus and various rationales for waging aggressive war against a nation that had never attacked the United States and, in fact, posed no strategic threat to the United States whatsoever. His was a partisan appointment and because it was, Bush efforts to politicize the CIA may have compromised national security.

Now —if Goss was not up to the job, the responsibility must lie with the man who made the appointment: George W. Bush. Clearly -Bush wanted a toady at Langley and sadly, for the nation, he got one. That Goss is now out after a short 19 months of making enemies is nothing short of an indictment of Bush's utterly failed regime.

What intelligence failures?

Much is made in the MSM of "intelligence failures" leading up to 911. It has since been learned that Bush had numerous warnings about 911 and did nothing. There is a growing body of evidence that there was specific information even up to the very day of the attacks. Still, the United States failed to scramble fighters until after it was too late. In view of the fact that Dick Cheney was in charge of gaming a terrorist attack that very day, serious consideration should be given to bringing criminal charges against Dick Cheney. Instead, the Bush administration sought to make the CIA the scapegoat. Most certainly, Goss -as partisan as they come -was seen to be the man to bring the CIA to heel. It would appear that another nefarious plan has failed.

Since Bush tried shift the all the blame for 911 intelligence failures, it has been learned that Bush and Blair literally conspired to "fix" the intelligence to support a decision already made. Bush and Blair, according to the famous Downing Street Memos, had decided to attack Iraq but needed a pretext. WMD was it. The timeline of events supports that view: Colin Powell's address to the United Nations was known —at the time —to have consisted of old, out of date satellite photos and at least one plagiarized student paper. There was also the case of U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson who blew the whistle on the bogus "yellow cake" story. And who can forget the beat up old trailer that was said to have been a "chemical lab"?

It's hard not to conclude that Bush appointed a GOP partisan who took with him to the CIA not only Bush's political agenda but also his numerous justifications for carrying on a perpetual, so-called "war on terrorism". That the war itself is may be a fraud has not kept Bush from citing it as justification for his arrogant and arbitrary abrogations of due process of law and the other "freedoms" for which we are said to be waging this so-called "war". Goss was supposted to turn the CIA into a partisan outfit, an organization that would tell Bush what he wanted to hear. Does that make you feel safer?

If that is the case -and I think it is -then it should be considered among the many impeachable offenses that will be charged to George Bush. Any attempt to politicize the CIA weakens the nation, compromises national security, and, in many ways, weakens the nation militarily by compromising the very intelligence upon which defense decisions are made.

Another update, another interesting wrinkle in the story:

Rumsfeld Uses Colin Powell as a Human Shield

by John Nichols

Challenged by veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern to explain why he had claimed to "know" before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction when that suggestion had been repeatedly called into question, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to use former Secretary of State Colin Powell as a human shield.

From the crowd at an Atlanta gathering of the Southern Center for International Studies, McGovern asked: "Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?"

Rumsfeld replied, "Well, first of all, I haven't lied. I did not lie then. Colin Powell didn't lie. He spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence Agency people and prepared a presentation that I know he believed was accurate, and he presented that to the United Nations. The president spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence people and he went to the American people and made a presentation. I'm not in the intelligence business. They gave the world their honest opinion. It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there."

What Rumsfeld failed to mention is the hard evidence that Powell was pressured by Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others to make far more aggressive statements regarding WMDs than the Secretary of State thought to be appropriate.

British scholar Philippe Sands, the author of the very fine book Lawless World and perhaps the most dogged investigator of the internal discussions involving the cabinets of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair prior to the war, has revealed that Powell shared his doubts with his British counterpart before speaking to the United Nations in February, 2003. ...

There is obviously more to Goss' sudden departure than his hurt feelings that Negroponte was put between Goss and Bush in the chain of command. The real reasons have to do with Bush's relationship with the CIA itself, problems that started when Bush tried to make the CIA the fall guy for the WMD lies, when Bush tried to make of the CIA a "human shield".

At an even deeper level, the CIA has most certainly been at war with itself since before Bush Sr became CIA director. But more on that later. In the meantime, it's clear that the forces of corporate wealth and privilege have combined to install an absolute fascist dictatorship in the U.S. and the CIA seems to be the last battlefield. The Pentagon was bought and paid for by big business long ago.

Edmund Burke is often misquoted. What he actually said is even more applicable than the misquote:

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Bush seemed to have presided over just such an eventuality and rode the polls to the top. That even conservatives are deserting him seems to indicate that the consolidation of Bush's absolute dictatorship has failed. We can only hope and, indeed, that would appear to be our only hope.

But ...don't let down your guard.

Is the Resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss Hookergate Related?

Posted by Jon Ponder | May. 5, 2006, 10:51 am

Rumors have been swirling around Washington that CIA Director Porter Goss may have been involved in the poker and prostitute parties at the Watergate Hotel hosted by the defense contractors who bribed former Rep. Duke Cunningham. Goss was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when the parties took place, so it is possible he was involved somehow in either the bribery, the sex with prostitutes or both.

Goss’s abrupt resignation today was offered without a reason — not even the old Washington bromide of an urgent need to spend more time with his familiy. The news readers on CNN and MSNBC are pussyfooting around it but it is hard to see how Goss’s sudden departure after a little more than a year as head of the CIA is not connected to the Watergate II scandals.

Here’s some background on the scandals that posted on Alternet earlier today:

According to recent reports, federal investigators have traced the outlines of a far more extensive network of suspected corruption, involving multiple members of Congress, some of the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence officials, bribery attempts including “free limousine service, free stays at hotel suites at the Watergate and the Westin Grand, and free prostitutes,” tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts awarded under dubious circumstances, and even efforts to influence U.S. national security policy by subverting democratic oversight…

CIA director Goss tied to scandal?

Last week, Harper’s magazine reported that party-goers “under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees — including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.” CIA Director Porter Goss is perhaps the only individual who fits such a description. (”This is horribly irresponsible. He hasn’t even been to the Watergate in decades,” a CIA spokeswoman said. When asked if Goss had attended Wilkes’ parties at the Westin or other locations, she repeated the denial. “It’s horribly irresponsible. Flatly untrue.”) But the alleged links between Goss, Foggo, and Wilkes have led some to return to questions raised when Goss initially selected Foggo to be executive director in November 2004.

Update: NBC’s Tim Russert has been rushed in front of the cameras to insist that Goss’s resignation is a result of head-butting from John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. In other words, “Move along, folks, move along. Nothing to see here.” ...

Bush was motivated to politicize the CIA. His entire "War on Terrorism" continues to be a fraud. Con men perpetrating frauds are always in in need of confederates.

How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

George Bush, the man whose prime campaign plank has been his ability to wage war on terror, could have had Osama bin Laden's head handed to him on a platter on his very first day in office, and the offer held good until February 2 of 2002. This is the charge leveled by an Afghan American who had been retained by the US government as an intermediary between the Taliban and both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Kabir Mohabbat is a 48-year businessman in Houston, Texas. Born in Paktia province in southern Afghanistan, he's from the Jaji clan (from which also came Afghanistan's last king). Educated at St Louis University, he spent much of the 1980s supervising foreign relations for the Afghan mujahiddeen, where he developed extensive contacts with the US foreign policy establishment, also with senior members of the Taliban.

After the eviction of the Soviets, Mohabbat returned to the United States to develop an export business with Afghanistan and became a US citizen. Figuring in his extensive dealings with the Taliban in the late 1990s was much investment of time and effort for a contract to develop the proposed oil pipeline through northern Afghanistan.

In a lengthy interview and in a memorandum Kabir Mohabbat has given us a detailed account and documentation to buttress his charge that the Bush administration could have had Osama bin Laden and his senior staff either delivered to the US or to allies as prisoners, or killed at their Afghan base. As a search of the data base shows, portions of Mohabbat's role have been the subject of a number of news reports, including a CBS news story by Alan Pizzey aired September 25, 2001. This is the first he has made public the full story. ...

CIA, WMD, War on Terror

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A little noted victim of Bush's tyranny: the individual conscience

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

Among Bush's many crimes is one that few have written about. Bush has required of our soldiers that they violate their own consciences. And, at the end of the day, it is either a strong individual or a hopeless kiss up who can say that they served Bush in Iraq without violating or burying forever their own moral code. On the home front, support for Bush on any issue has now become a Faustian bargain. At stake is your very soul, or, less theologically, the individual conscience. This is one of the defining characteristics of dictatorship.

George W. Bush: An American Hitler

In George W. Bush's petty, pathetic, partisan world, laws he doesn't agree with don't have to be obeyed, Congressional actions that differ from his political agenda can be ignored and the Constitution of the United States is just a "goddamned piece of paper."

Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe brought this point home Sunday when he revealed Bush has chosen to ignore more laws passed by Congress than any President in history, appending more than 750 laws with "signing statements" that say, in effect, that he doesn't give a damn what the law says because he will do whatever he pleases as a "wartime president" and "commander-in-chief."

Of course it doesn't matter to him that he became a "wartime president" because he lied out his ass to justify an illegal invasion on Iraq based on fake intelligence and a determined policy of ignoring facts that disproved his lies. ...

As I had written earlier: the Bush administration is no longer a "presidency", it's a criminal conspiracy. An increasing number of astute observers have emailed me advocating that Bush and his regime be prosecuted under RICO statutes. Make no mistake —the Bush regime has become a tyranny. The first victim of tyranny is the individual conscience.

As individuals act upon what they believe to be true, a people does so collectively. American hubris, self-importance, and self-appointed moral superiority are, like all falsehoods, the source of much evil throughout the world; and it is all the more egregious that those evils are manifested recently under the worst American presidency in our history.

Aggressive war, torture, duplicity, deliberate deceptions, the abrogation of the very instruments by which Americans instituted the rule of law —all are hallmarks of this Bush "administration", best described as a criminal conspiracy to undermine the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law.

We Americans have long been guilty of these crimes. On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson's first secretary of state, described the United States as "the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes." If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the war between the British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the Bolshevik Revolution, and another 30 to 40 years of the exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Philippines, Malaya, and virtually all of Africa by European, American, and Japanese imperialists.

We Americans have never outgrown the narcissistic notion that the rest of the world wants (or should want) to emulate us. ...

—Exporting the American Model

Of course, Bush KNOWS that making the middle east safe for Democracy is absolute, right wing crap! A party that has to resort to election theft in its own country is hardly in a position to propose "free elections" in another.

A ruthless dictator who abjures the Constitution in America is hardly in a position to demonize Saddam Hussein.

A lawless bigot in the White House is hardly in a position to talk about the blessings of democracy if they could but wipe out those mean ol' "turrsts" in Iraq!

As more and more is learned about Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, the torture flights and cold blooded murders of civilians by U.S. troops, I've concluded that the war against Iraq was not even about oil, though Bush's base —the robber barons of big oil —have profited exponentially!

There are no rational explanations for continuing to perpetrate the counter productive policies of bluster, aggressive war, war crimes, torture, and murder. Therefore, Bush's real reasons for attacking and waging an ongoing war crime in Iraq are personal. Bush, a known alumnus of the super secretive Illuminati society called Skull and Bones, apparently just wants to get his jollies by murdering folk by proxy. For Bush's base of oil oligarchs, it's about the plunder of oil; but for Bush it's about the psychotic perversions of an out of control maniac in the White House.

A related update:

Dear President Bush; about that "goddamned piece of paper."

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

Let us start out with the fact that the Constitution is actually written on parchment, not paper. A trivial point, I grant you, but one that reveals (along with your inability to correctly pronounce the word "nuclear") a shocking lack of education in a head of state.

But to get to the point, the Constitution is not the parchment itself, but the ideas written upon it; ideas which form the foundations of our nation, ideas which would carry equal weight if written on stone, glass, metal, or even paper. These ideas are the soul of the nation. They include the recognition that the people of this nation have certain rights, rights which the government does not have the authority to remove. These rights include freedom of speech, to say what we think about the nation at any and all times, to write that opinion down and share it however we choose to. These rights include the freedom to worship as we choose, free from coercion. These rights include the right to privacy, in our homes and businesses, free from government intrusions other than in very specific and well-defined circumstances.

Maybe those rights are inconvenient to you, as such rights are always inconvenient to tyrants, but you are not allowed the choice which rights you will abide by or not. That too is spelled out explicitly in the Constitution. ...

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You know you're living in a dictatorship when telling the truth becomes a crime

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

If that's not tyranny, what is? As Bush descends into ratings hell, his "absolutist" rhetoric is ratcheted up. Math buffs would say the two are inversely proportional. Even as he descended into the "30's", Bush and his Bushevik regime were defending "Stalinesque" rule with words like "unitary executive","inherent powers", and "executive privilege." Now Bush wants to prosecute reporters for telling the truth about his failed administration.

It's not bad enough that Bush has arrogated unto himself the power to modify statutes with so-called "signing statements". It's not bad enough that Bush has orchestrated an unprecedented crack down on dissent to include Soviet-style prosecutions of reporters on espionage charges; it's not enough that Busheviks have taken aim on the internet itself! Bush is now enforcing —as "law" —measures that have not even passed both houses of Congress. There is a phrase for this: rule by decree! Another word is "tyranny". In response, Rep. John Conyers is taking the so-called "President" to court. Conyers, and a distinguished list of co-plaintiffs, will challenge in court the dictatorial and unconstitutional powers that Bush has arrogated unto himself. It would appear that the "third act" has already begun.

As some of you may be aware, according to the President and Congressional Republicans, a bill does not have to pass both the Senate and the House to become a law. Forget your sixth grade civics lesson, forget the book they give you when you visit Congress - "How Our Laws Are Made," and forget Schoolhouse Rock. These are checks and balances, Republican-style.

—Congressman John Conyers

At issue is the GOP budget bill that cuts funding for student loans and medicaid. According to Conyers, the bill struggled to make its way through Congress and House Republicans preferred not to make GOP members vote on it again. The GOP merely certified the measure was the same as a Senate bill and sent it to Bush for his signature. The measure, in fact, differed. Despite warnings, Bush signed it and will now enforce it as if it were the "...law of the land."

Several public interest groups have sought to stop some parts of the bill from being implemented, under the theory that the bill is unconstitutional. However, getting into the weeds a bit, they have lacked the ability to stop the entire bill. To seek this recourse, the person bringing the suit must have what is called "standing," that is they must show they were injured or deprived of some right. Because the budget bill covers so many areas of the law, it is difficult for one person to show they were harmed by the entire bill. Thus, many of these groups have only sought to stop part of it.

—Congressman Conyers

There is one group that is harmed by the measure as a whole: members of the House of Representatives. Conyers is going to court on behalf of the House!

Clearly —this is a significant development in the ongoing effort to check Bush's dictatorial power grab. This is one branch of government going to court to check an unconstitutional power grab by another. How this bill fares in the courts will affect every U.S. citizen. Anyone with an interest in stopping the Bush dictatorship had best pay attention to the progress of this lawsuit.

Here's the irony: Bush's most egregious power grabs have occurred since falling from grace. His approval ratings were already in the 30's when he declared that he was "above the law" and did not need warrants to spy on American citizens. Since that time, Bush is now poised to prosecute those who dare to make public his program of widespread domestic surveillance.

... the Bush administration is exploring a more radical measure to protect information it says is vital to national security: the criminal prosecution of reporters under the espionage laws.

—White House could prosecute journalists in news leak stories

His NeoCon constituency puts forward a dubious "unitary executive" theory, citing Bush's "inherent powers" during a time of war. Nevermind that war was never declared, was not authorized by the U.N. Resolution that Bushies often point to, and is, in fact, a violation of the Nuremberg Principles. Nevermind that the attack and invasion itself is a crime against the peace. As such, it violates U.S. Criminal Codes, Section 2441.

In fact, Bush has made of the "Presidency" a totalitarian regime in which telling the truth about the regime has been made a crime by decree. If this is not tyranny, then what is? If truth is officially suppressed, then only lies are left. A regime premised upon a pack of lies is not legitimate.

Not surprisingly, the Busheviks are covering their tracks with Stalinist tactics: official secrets. "Official Secrets", of course, are whatever Bush says they are. As we write, the Bush dictatorship has ordered the reclassification of millions of documents to prevent them being seen by American citizens. Anyone citing, quoting, or making public these documents to reveal the truth about Bush's illegal, unconstitutional coup d'etat will be prosecuted. The charge: espionage!

The Bush administration is not a "Presidency", it's a criminal conspiracy; the GOP is not a political party, it's a crime syndicate.

An update:

Bush in ‘ceaseless push for power’

By Caroline Daniel in Washington
Published: May 1 2006 19:30 | Last updated: May 1 2006 19:30

President George W. Bush had shown disdain and indifference for the US constitution by adopting an “astonishingly broad” view of presidential powers, a leading libertarian think-tank said on Monday.

The critique from the Cato Institute reflects growing criticism by conservatives about administration policy in areas such as the “war on terror” and undermining congressional power.

“The pattern that emerges is one of a ceaseless push for power, unchecked by either the courts or Congress, one in short of disdain for constitutional limits,” the report by legal scholars Gene Healy and Timothy Lynch concludes.

That view was echoed last week by former congressman Bob Barr, a Republican, who called on Congress to exercise “leadership by putting the constitution above party politics and insisting on the facts” in the debate over illegal domestic wiretapping of terrorist suspects. ...

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Carl Bernstein Calls for a Senate Investigation of the Bush Conspiracy

A real investigation will surely be the end of what's become a criminal conspiracy that is literally being run out of the White House. Some have suggested prosecution under RICO statutes. Bernstein's call for a Senate investigation comes at a time when a grass roots movement to impeach Bush "state by state" is gaining momentum even as Bush's ratings plunge seems driven by angry conservatives.

The Bush administration is not a "Presidency"; it's a criminal conspiracy. The GOP is not a political party; it's a crime syndicate.

Carl Bernstein is sure to shake up the "inside the loop" crowd with this one:

Senate Hearings on Bush, Now

In this VF.com exclusive, a Watergate veteran and Vanity Fair contributing editor calls for bipartisan hearings investigating the Bush presidency. Should Republicans on the Hill take the high road and save themselves come November?

By CARL BERNSTEIN

Worse than Watergate? High crimes and misdemeanors justifying the impeachment of George W. Bush, as increasing numbers of Democrats in Washington hope, and, sotto voce, increasing numbers of Republicans—including some of the president's top lieutenants—now fear? Leaders of both parties are acutely aware of the vehemence of anti-Bush sentiment in the country, expressed especially in the increasing number of Americans—nearing 50 percent in some polls—who say they would favor impeachment if the president were proved to have deliberately lied to justify going to war in Iraq.

John Dean, the Watergate conspirator who ultimately shattered the Watergate conspiracy, rendered his precipitous (or perhaps prescient) impeachment verdict on Bush two years ago in the affirmative, without so much as a question mark in choosing the title of his book Worse than Watergate. On March 31, some three decades after he testified at the seminal hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, Dean reiterated his dark view of Bush's presidency in a congressional hearing that shed more noise than light, and more partisan rancor than genuine inquiry. The ostensible subject: whether Bush should be censured for unconstitutional conduct in ordering electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant. ...

Dare we hope that Bush's criminal conspiracy is falling apart? An indictment of Rove is a safe bet. An indictment of Dick Cheney may follow. Bush, himself, has no where to run, no place to hide.

Bush's overall approval rating is at about 32 percent depending on which poll you choose to quote.

WASHINGTON - Angry conservatives are driving the approval ratings of President Bush and the GOP-led Congress to dismal new lows

... according to an AP-Ipsos poll that underscores why Republicans fear an Election Day massacre.
ADVERTISEMENT

Six months out, the intensity of opposition to Bush and Congress has risen sharply, along with the percentage of Americans who believe the nation is on the wrong track.

The AP-Ipsos poll also suggests that Democratic voters are far more motivated than Republicans. Elections in the middle of a president's term traditionally favor the party whose core supporters are the most energized.

While various state legislatures could petition congress to convene a new National Convention, the so-called "Thomas Jefferson Manual" seems to be the course of choice. When enough state legislatures demand it, a bill of impeachment may be brought against George W. Bush. The Senate investigation that Bernstein supports may turn out to be the crack that breaks the damn.

Goodbye, Bush! The worst President in American History.

Additional resources:

• Tens of Thousands in NYC Protest the War Crime Against Iraq
• FBI Investigated 3,501 People Without Warrants
• Dick Cheney puts himself above the law
• Bush Impeachment Follow Up

Bush, Oil Prices,War in Iraq

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Bush Flips off the Nation: It's the oil, Stupid!

It's always been about oil —but more specifically: big oil profits! Recent big oil contracts prove it. And so do record prices at the pump.

Those who thought that an oil grab in Iraq would lower prices at the pump are chagrined. Bush lied to them with GOP code words and now he's all but flippin' them off. Bush lied about the reasons prices at the pump have reached record levels just as he lied about the reasons for the war of aggression against Iraq. Despite the spin, high prices at the pump translate into record profits for big oil. Exxon-Mobil is a case in point.

The huge no bid contracts given Halliburton are, of course, old news. But the breaking news are the huge, lucrative contracts now awarded to British Petroleum, Shell and Chevron.I would like to hear Bush try to tell a nation that is paying through the nose for fuel that this was just a big GOP coincidence. What makes the contracts look like payoffs and war booty is the fact that in the short hours leading up to the U.S. attack and invasion, engineers from British Petroleum were busy teaching combat troops how to pump oil in southern Iraq.
Now —at a time when the Bush administration has yet to rebuild New Orleans, BP manager Robert Spears was picked to rebuild Iraqi refineries. Mind you, they were making plans to rebuild them even before the invasion. Bush, by contrast, knew that Katrina would be the "big one" and plans for the rehabilitation of New Orleans have yet to materialize or make a difference.

The beneficiaries of Bush's war policies are not confined to BP, Shell and Chevron.

Exxon-Mobil Posts Record Profits NEW YORK - ... it's been a record quarter and year for Exxon Mobil. The oil giant raked in $8.42 billion in the fourth quarter and more than $25 billion for all of 2004, both record-high profits in its history. ...

There are, it would appear, no delays when it comes to looting oil from a sovereign nation.

Amazingly, many people were willing to believe GOP propaganda that with Iraqi oil in U.S. hands, gasoline prices would come down. And, as I recall, there were similar expectations that oil prices would fall after Persian Gulf I. Well, that didn't happen either. Honestly —how realistic is it to expect that gasoline prices would fall when control of much of the world's largest oil reserves falls into the hands of an oil oligopoly?

The facts on the ground paint a different picture. BP got it's first payoff in mid-July consisting of "...one of the first tankers of oil from Southern Iraq". According to published reports, that first shipment amounted to an initial sale of 8 million barrels of Iraqi oil; and Chevron had already shipped back just as much oil. That makes a total of some 16 million barrels of oil.

Why did Bush go to war against Iraq? Oil is now money and Iraq is home to the world's second largest proven oil reserves. Experts, meanwhile, are quoted as saying that new exploration —presumably by American oil companies — will raise the reserves by some 200 billions barrels. We're talking high grade crude.

But don't expect gasoline prices to go down without extreme political pressure. The answer is to be found in Bush Sr's Persian Gulf I. Public transcripts of Ambassador April Glaspie's meeting with Saddam on the eve of his invasion of Kuwait proves conclusively that Hussein was lured into attacking Kuwait. He was told that the U.S. Took no position on his "Arab-Arab disputes". Bush Sr —upset because Hussein was pumping too much oil and thus depressing the spot market price of oil —needed a pretext to attack. Hussein took the bait and the trap was sprung. Hussein was pumping too much oil.

Meanwhile, the four multi-national oil companies in the U.S. and the U.K. are, as the brits would say, keen to get to Iraq. They had been excluded by the nationalization of 1972 when Hussein himself was largely responsible for the nationalization of Iraqi oil fields and oil processing plants. Until that time, the oil had been under the control of western oil companies. Despite the various stories that are told about Hussein, it was, after all, his country's oil.

Hussein actively modernized the Iraqi economy and created a secular society. But upon assuming power, Hussein sealed his own fate. The ruling oil oligopoly in the United States would never allow Hussein to control the oil spigot; they would never support the lower prices that would result from increased production in Iraq.

It's all about big oil and what big oil is willing to do to the world in the name of profits!

Additional resources:

• Slick Deals: How Republican Leadership Pads The Profits Of Big Oil
• The April Glaspie Transcript
• Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy
• Meetings with Saddam Hussein

Bush, Oil Prices,War in Iraq

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Inside Iraq

As the Bush administration flies its victims in and out of gulags around the world in order to skirt the laws against torture and other crimes, Iraq continues to descend into civil war and chaos —most of it created by the United States.

Much is made of some 140,000 civilians that were murdered by George W. Bush in the bombing campaign and the invasion —a crime against the peace begun upon a pack of lies. But where is the media coverage of U.S. atrocities that are perpetrated almost daily against the people of Iraq since that time? I am getting weary of trying to sift through the garbage that is passed off daily by the MSM.

I hope to be featuring more links and information inside Iraq.

News From Inside Iraq

Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource and he is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.

Here's a first installment:

Tuesday 25 April 2006

This weekend I received an email from a friend in Iraq. It read, "Salam Dahr, I was in Ramadi today to ask about the situation. I was stunned for the news of a father and his three sons executed in cold blood by US soldiers, then they blasted the house. The poor mother couldn't stand the shock, so she died of a heart attack." ...

Continue reading "Subject to the Penalty of Death"

Organize now to bring George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condo Rice, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft and Colin Powell to trial in the Hague for crimes against the peace with regard to the pack of lies told to justify the un-justifiable war of aggression — and war crimes with regard to what is clearly a deliberate, planned, and on-going policy of torture and atrocity.

Americans, this is being done in your name. Can you live with that?

If you think you can, then I suggest you do a little reading. If you profess to be Christian, then read your own Bible, especially the Sermon on the Mount. If you're not particularly religous, that's ok — read Sartre, Kierkegaard, Frankl, Kafka, Brecht. In the vernacular, you cannot not have an opinion. If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem. I was told very early in my broadcasting career that everyone does what they want to do; everything else is just excuses. What excuse do Americans have for continuing to let George W. Bush get away with mass murder?

The time has come to bring George W. Bush and his band of perverts and war criminals to justice.

Bush, Torture, War Crimes

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More Bush Lies: Bush's Transparent Dodge Exposed

An interim report of the Council of Europe exposes Bush lies about "extraordinary renditions". It is interesting that the Bush administration has always engaged in tortured, legalistic defenses of the very practice that it denies. It would appear, however, that the latest reports coming out of Europe prove that the Bush administration has been torturing the truth about "rendition". Clearly —the CIA has been flying "detainees" in and out of various locations —primarily eastern Europe —for the purpose of carrying out a program of torture. If the Council's report is accurate, the Bush administration is in violation of the Geneva Convention.

Article 13

Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.

—Article 13, Geneva Convention

From the MEP's report:

MEPs reveal extent of CIA flights

Kidnapping has "clearly" happened, the report says. The CIA has run more than 1,000 flights within the European Union since 2001, often transporting terror suspects for questioning overseas, MEPs have said.

The MEPs began a probe after claims the US flew suspects to secret prisons in countries that regularly use torture.

The US admits some terror suspects were flown overseas for interrogation, but denies sending them for torture.

Report author Claudio Fava said many EU states had ignored the hundreds of CIA flights that had used their airports.

Mr Fava, an Italian socialist MEP, singled out Sweden, Italy and Bosnia, which is not an EU member, for particular criticism.

A string of former detainees have come forward with stories alleging kidnap and transport by the US for interrogation in third countries - a process known as "extraordinary rendition".

Some have provided detailed accounts of alleged torture carried out in secret prisons outside EU or US jurisdiction.

The European report is "...full of frustration at American [torture] policy" and even more frustration with the idea that by flying detainees to friendly countries, the U.S. is skirting Geneva prohibitions on torture. The practice is a transaparent dodge that fools no one but tends to reinforce a growing perception abroad that the United States —under Bush —has become a rogue nation.

"In countries that pride themselves on being long-standing democracies that protect human rights, the revelation of these allegations should have sparked off reactions and categorical condemnations several months ago, but this was not the case..."

—Swiss MP Dick Marty

The report supports allegations that the U.S. program of "rendition" is part of a pattern of US policy intended to bypass the Geneva Conventions. Marty told a news conference that people have been kidnapped by the CIA, transferred to torture prison, and denied their rights under the Geneva Convention. Camps outside any legal system include well-known camps in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Other kidnap victims have been taken to camps primarily eastern Europe. Their treatment —outside the law —has been called "unacceptable", and, according to Marty, it is a case of the United States "outsourcing" in order to skirt international law —even those to which the U.S. is bound by treaty.

Pressure has grown since the Washington Post reported last year that the the CIA had orchestrated a rendition program that consisted of "...hiding and interrogating [what the CIA claims are] some of its most important al-Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe". The catch 22 is simply this: as long as the CIA is allowed to conduct such a program unsupervised and outside the law, there is no way of knowing if any of those tortured are or have ever been members of Al Qaeda.

Additional resources:

• Amnesty Accuses U.S. on Rendition
• Europe Knew About CIA Flights
  
• U.S. Shifts Position on Torture
  

Bush, Torture, War Crimes

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'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission

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A Grassroots "Velvet Revolution" Underway in America

An insurrection against the Bush regime is underway right now in America. It may turn out to be nothing less than a "velvet revolution" that brings down Bush's lawless regime. The best part is that it's entirely non-violent and legal; there is absolutely nothing George W. Bush can do about it —except throw one of his well-known temper tantrums. It's an impeachment juggernaut that will peak as Bush's support continues to wither away.

In the latest developments, the Illinois General Assembly seems certain to join a rising chorus in other state assemblies —Vermont and California —seeking the impeachment of George W. Bush. Meanwhile, Democratic state committees in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Nevada and North Carolina are sure to support articles of impeachment sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. Here's the good news: the impeachment movement is no longer quixotic. It has growing grassroots traction. The GOP had best pay attention. This impeachment movement is positioned to advance on Washington where it will dictate the national agenda.

Impeaching Bush State by State

The legal basis for these unprecedented state-level actions was discovered when, according to Steven Leser, Illinois Rep. Karen A. Yarbrough "stumbled on a little known and never utilized rule of the U.S. House of Representatives." The rule was written in a book formerly known as Jefferson's Manual, which, according to C-SPAN, "is a book of rules of procedure and parliamentary philosophy … written by Thomas Jefferson in 1801 … [used by the House] as a supplement to its standing rules." Section LIII, sec. 603 states, "There are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion … [one of them is] by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State …"

Each of the three resolutions mentions Iraq lies, torture and illegal spying, with slight variations in tone and specifics. Assemblyman Paul Koretz's California resolution (which includes Dick Cheney) and the Illinois resolution both include the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, while Vermont's focuses almost exclusively on Bush's most salient transgression, his illegal spying on Americans. The spying charge leads the other two resolutions' list of charges as well. ...

Here's why this grassroots movement has legs. Bush's approval rating is down to 32 percent. If the elections were held today, the "decider" would get only 17 electoral votes from 3 states that voted heavily for Bush in the last election: Alabama, Utah, and Wyoming. [See: SurveyUSA]

As I previously pointed out: Bush is chalking up net negatives in what had been "red" states: -12% in South Carolina, -17% in Indiana, -18% in Virginia, and -19% in Tennessee. The really bad news for Bush is that he is losing his base support in Texas where he now has a net negative 14 percentage points. Bush has no legs, no broad base support from which to counter what is beginning to look like an impeachment juggernaut.

Here's an update on another development:

Council demands Bush impeachment

BERKELEY: City joins Santa Cruz, Arcata, San Francisco in move

By Alan Lopez, CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Berkeley has joined three other California cities in calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a resolution that will be sent to U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., the Berkeley City Council accuses the president and vice president of, among other things: defrauding the country and Congress regarding the Iraq war; authorizing torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions; ordering secret surveillance of U.S. citizens; and failing to respond quickly to the Gulf Coast hurricane.

The council unanimously approved the resolution Tuesday and also took a step toward giving residents a voice. The Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission will recommend whether the city should ask voters for their opinion in an advisory ballot measure. ...

Additional resources:

• Impeachment resolution nets 24 co-sponsors, sent to committee
  
• Resolution to push Bush impeachment
• Impeachment Talk Reaches The Mainstream
  

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"Don't it make your red states turn blue? "

Bushies must be singin' the blues. Throw in a bit about "prison", "rain", a "train" and "momma" and the latest polling news might become the perfect country and western song. I hear that whistle 'a blowin'.

A phone poll by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN is bad news for Bush's failing "presidency". Only 32 percent of about 1,000 Americans polled said they approve of Bush's performance. It gets worse for Bush: that big chunk of red states in mid-America —forget about it! It no longer exists. Let's put the latest poll numbers in perspective with confirming data from even earlier studies: if the elections were held today, the "decider" would get only 17 electoral votes from only 3 states that voted went heavily for Bush in the last election: Alabama, Utah, and Wyoming. [See: SurveyUSA]

Now if that were not dramatic enough, consider that Bush is chalking up net negatives in staunchly Republican states: -12% in South Carolina, -17% in Indiana, -18% in Virginia, and -19% in Tennessee. Here's the capper. In Texas —where bad air, bullsh*t, and Bush are notable exports —George W. Gets a net negative 14 percentage points. Put another way: 55% in Texas disapprove of the job Bush is doing.

Bush's fall from grace in so-called "swing" states is tautological at this point but it may turn out to be apocalyptic for the GOP. Take the cases of Florida and Ohio, battlegrounds where Bush carved out or stole his controversial victories in the years 2000 and 2004. Now Bush gets a net negative in Ohio and a net negative 22 in Florida. One wonders: can DieBold steal enough votes without fritzin' out the computer?

The deluded decider!

Asked whether "honest and trustworthy" describes the president, 40 percent said yes, down from 56 percent a year ago.

Bush's image continues to fall apart as reality sets in. A year ago, some 62 percent thought Bush "... strong and decisive". Less than half think so now. What a difference quagmire, Katrina, and talk of a "unitary executive" can do. Dare we declare that America is now de-hypnotized?

GOP rats are jumping ship, warning Bush that keeping Rumsfeld could wind up costing the GOP the House and the Senate. Those warnings are borne out by the numbers cited above. In short: Bush may have dealt his party a near fatal blow. Inasmuch as the GOP has become the very picture of corruption, evil, prejudice and sheer pig-headedness, it may turn out to be the only good thing to come out of this debacle.

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"Free My Country, My Ass!!"; U.S taking sides in Iraq Civil War?

Sunni Arabs have accused the Shiite majority and U.S. forces of operating and supporting death squads throughout Iraq as charges surface that U.S. torture of Iraqis continues with apparent impunity. The latest charges by Sunni arabs now take on an ominous political complexion: the U.S. has taken the Shiite side in an Iraq civil war.

The charges in themselves expose the no-win situation that Bush has gotten the U.S. into in Iraq; they expose the fraudulent nature of the war. But an Iraqi civil war is not the worst of the nightmare scenarios; an incompetent Bush administration siding with one faction over another most certainly is.

Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails

Top General's Pledge To Protect Prisoners 'Not Being Followed'

Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD -- Last Nov. 13, U.S. soldiers found 173 incarcerated men, some of them emaciated and showing signs of torture, in a secret bunker in an Interior Ministry compound in central Baghdad. The soldiers immediately transferred the men to a separate detention facility to protect them from further abuse, the U.S. military reported.

Since then, there have been at least six joint U.S.-Iraqi inspections of detention centers, most of them run by Iraq's Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry. Two sources involved with the inspections, one Iraqi official and one U.S. official, said abuse of prisoners was found at all the sites visited through February. U.S. military authorities confirmed that signs of severe abuse were observed at two of the detention centers.

But U.S. troops have not responded by removing all the detainees, as they did in November. Instead, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site were removed for medical treatment. Prisoners at two other sites were removed to alleviate overcrowding. U.S. and Iraqi authorities left the rest where they were. ...

If Bush has allied de facto with the Shiite majority, America will have given up its last tenuous claim to being an honest broker. Most certainly Bush cannot square his empty "freedom" rhetoric with his support of a Shiite theocracy —especially one of his making.

If the Civil War lacks some of the outward signs of such a conflict, it's only because the Shiite leadership is content to let Americans and Brits run interference for them. Shiite leaders are not stupid. They understand that Bush is damned politically if he stays —but a full-fledged civil war will break out when U.S. troops are not around to take up the slack. It's hard to imagine how Bush —and his NeoCon propagandists —will be able to declare a victory and just leave. In the meantime, both sides have adopted Bush's simplistic lexicon; i.e. a "terrorist" is whomever either side disagrees with.

The facts on the ground, however, do not lend themselves easily to spin. Is there a chance that when the Americans are gone, everyone will make nice nice and share power? Only in your Bush inspired delusions! When the Americans no longer buffer the conflict, one side or the other, i.e., either Sunni or Shiite, will win. But only at the end of a bloody civil war. I see "theocracy" —not light —at the end of the tunnel.

But how do Iraqis themselves feel about that? 27-year-old Zeyad, a Baghdad dentist, surfs the net and blogs, He has been quoted in numerous reports recently reacting to an incipient theocracy in his country: "I wanted to kill someone after reading all that. Free my country, my ass! Do I have to immigrate and leave my country ... [to be free]?"

If Bush is allowed to get away with trashing the U.S. Constitution, replacing it with an insane and bogus "unitary executive" nonsense, Americans will be asking the same thing of their homeland: Will I have to leave my country to be free?

Some essential resources:

• Shi'ite politician will create new Iraq government
• [Too Late ] the truth dawns on Bush
• Violence claims more lives in Iraq
• Rumsfeld and his Enemies
• Arab World Raising Its Profile in Iraq

On a peripherally related topic, I am proud to allifiate with Progressive Blogosphere. You will find their headlines synidcated on this blog. Check out the nav bar. I am making this shameless plug as the topic of blogs has come up a number of times in the comments section here. There seems to be consensus that the blogosphere has become in a very short time an absolutely essential counter to the corporate mainstream media. The words "mainstream" and "corporate" are one and the same; it's a recipe for the same tired old paradigm, a guarantee that we stay in the the mess we're in.

Progressive Blogosphere has reached an incredible audience in a very short time and I am convinced that that will help many another blogger like myself. The name of the game is nothing less than making truth and informed opinion heard above the right wing noise and corporate propaganda machine.

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Bush Exports American Sleaze, Moral Rot, Perversity, and the Torture, Rape of Children!

George W. Bush is not the only American President to spread and exploit a pernicious myth: the moral superiority of the United States! Bollocks! Under Bush, our most publicized export has not been morality, freedom, or opportunity. It is, rather, torture, brutality, war crimes, perversion and moral –or, more precisely -immoral stench.

Clearly –American politicians have espoused and exploited this myth just as George W. Bush has capitalized on the idea that individual Americans are targeted by international terrorists who “…jest hate freedom”, terrorists willing to blow themselves up because we are more free and possess more material goods. I’m sorry –but having a three car garage and lots of cheap gasoline are not among my values. If that's what it means to be American, then I've been living in the wrong country since birth! I have nothing but contempt for anyone who's willing to turn a blind eye to torture in return for cheap gas which has, obviously, not been forthcoming despite Bush's many outrages to human decency.

And if George Bush were correct in believing that being free in America means having enough material wealth to waste resources in a Hummer, then I say we deserve our fate, a fate which has always been in our own hands –not the so-called “terrorists”. As Sartre said: "Man is nothing but what he makes of himself". That means that when you screw up, you've got no one to blame but yourself. Clearly, then, Bush is no existentialist! He continues to blame everyone but himself for the consequences of his evil intentions.

I submit to you that Bush’s war on terrorism is not merely a failure; it's as fraudulent as his wars against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Because of Bush’s war on terrorism, America, a net debtor nation thanks to Ronald Reagan and the GOP, has –at last –found some exports: brutality, perversity and torture.

If there is any good news to be found in the slimy residue of Bush’s sorry mal-administration it is this: a revolt against Bush seems to be brewing at the CIA where many are said to live in fear of indictments and subpoenas that may be coming down any day now. What’s called “Wehrmacht group” inside the CIA are leaking the sordid details about how the Bush administration conducted a program of torture and perversion at Abu Ghraib and how the Bush administration is deliberately trying to skirt U.S. and international laws with a program of ongoing “rendition”, that is, flying victims to other countries for the purpose of torture and other crimes.

Racking someone is bad enough but torture American-style seems especially abhorrent and always colored by more than a soupcon of sexual perversity, Satanism, and psycho-sexual morbidness that defies description in any language. Semour Hersh says that the U.S. has video tapes of children being raped, sodomized, tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Hersh: Children Raped at Abu Ghraib

Reprehensible images to be found among unreleased photographs include images of rape, torture, mutilated animals, circles of candles, swastikas, and sexual activity among the torturers themselves, often in front of the detainees. [See: Sex Rituals of Abu Ghraib]

There’s much, much more. From Salon's exclusive:

"A review of all the computer media submitted to this office revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts."

It’s hard to believe that the entire torture program is anything other than an excuse by perverts to indulge in psycho-sexual and/or satanic rituals that might be more at home inside the walls of the Skull and Bones or the Nazi SS than in a legitimate program to elicit useful information in a “war on terrorism”. In fact, the “war on terrorism” itself, premised as it is upon lies and propaganda, seems to be but an excuse to indulge satanic perversity not seen since the Holocaust. As one blogger put it: “…it's right out of a dark occultist's playbook.” Indeed, it is. And who but a Bonesman could be its chief architect? Who but the man who set records for executions in Texas could create its policies? Who but the man who ridiculed death row inmates would defend the perverted rationale of torture? Who but someone who got his jollies blowing up horned toads in West Texas could defend it, encourage it, and, at the same time, deny it and cover it up?

This program of torture seems sure to create terrorists where none had been before. Yet, the Bush administration’s defense and active cover up of these atrocities bespeaks its complicity in heinous crimes against humanity. The only rational explanation is this: Bush needs new enemies to justify a permanent occupation.

Meanwhile, a report on U.S. interrogation tactics entitled “Human Rights Standards Applicable to the United States' Interrogation of Detainees,” challenges the various rationalizations cited inexplicably in defense of an act that had been denied by Bushies. Why defend an act that had not occurred? Scott Horton, a human rights activist has since cited various “torture memoranda” to disprove Rumsfeld's position that Abu Ghraib was but the work of a few “bad apples”. The reports by Seymour Hersh are consistent with Horton’s work; they tend to support the conclusion that Abu Ghraib is but one “island” in the American gulag archipelago. Torture is Bush’s policy and it will be his sorry legacy, a cancer on the American body politic, an indictment of the national morality, a final chapter in what Theodore Dreiser called "Tragic America".

There is cause for concern throughout the CIA. Despite fawning rationalizations by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, at least one FBI attorney had written that “rendition” is illegal. Indeed, international law speaks to the commission of the acts themselves, not the location. The Bush administration’s defense of a program that it contradictorily denies is irrelevant, a shallow, transparent dodge. Clearly — “rendition” is designed to circumvent American laws. It's consistent with Bush’s delusional mindset: he is above the laws and the rule of law does not apply to him. This is clearly psychotic and the doctrine of the "unitary executive" is just symptom of a very, very sick mind.

U.N. Exec Decries Illegal Iraq Detainees

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS,

Associated Press Writer

GENEVA (AP) - Some 15,000 detainees are being held in Iraq by government ministries in violation of Iraqi law, and nearly as many are being held by U.S.-led multinational forces, a senior U.N. official said Friday.

Only the country's justice ministry is permitted to hold detainees for longer than 72 hours, but Gianni Magazzeni, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in Baghdad, said most Iraqi-held detainees are under the control of other government officials, naming Iraq's interior and defense ministries in particular.

``Those are still in the thousands and would be not in a situation which is in line with Iraqi law,'' he said at the U.N.'s European headquarters in Geneva. Magazzeni, who took over the post in mid-February, was visiting Geneva and said he was on his way back to Baghdad. It was unclear where Magazzeni obtained his figures for detainees held by the Iraqi government. ...

For more on the subject, see the Sex, Drugs, Mind Control and Torture index.
More about how Bush's Iraq debacle is laced with stories of sadism and sexual perversion:

The Missing Girls of Iraq

Sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam Hussein, has resurfaced in Iraq. TIME reports on a seldom-discussed epidemic: girls being kidnapped and sold to brothels.

...

Safah is part of a seldom-discussed aspect of the epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq: sex trafficking. No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. ...

Why we're publishing the new Abu Ghraib photos

America -- and the world -- has the right to know what was done in our name.
By Walter Shapiro ...

More than a "few rotten apples"

A U.S. soldier who tortured an Iraqi general to death got his wrist slapped. Yet his appalling sentence made a certain sense.
By Brig. Gen. David Irvine and David Danzig

America can't take it anymore

The Bush administration has embraced torture as a key part of the "war on terror." Finally, members of Congress, the military and the CIA are speaking out against the abuse.
By Mark Follman

Contract to torture

A rare look at the entire Abu Ghraib report reveals that inexperienced, under-supervised private-sector employees actively took part in horrifying prisoner abuse.
By Osha Gray Davidson

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A Family of Liars and War Criminals: The Latest 'Smoking Gun'

Normally, I would not consign so much space to a single article. But these revelations cannot be ignored; they must not be relegated.

They should be shouted from the rooftops.

This is not a single "smoking gun"; this is one of a MYRIAD of smoking guns that should lead to Bush's impeachment and removal from office. They should lead inexorably to war crimes trials.

White House knew there were no WMD: CIA

The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the 2003 US-led invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS.

Tyler Drumheller, who headed CIA covert operations in Europe during the run-up to the Iraq war, said intelligence opposing administration claims of a WMD threat came from a top Iraqi official who provided the US spy agency with other credible information.

The source "told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs," Drumheller said in a CBS interview to be aired on Sunday on the US network's 60 Minutes.

"The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," he was quoted as saying in interview excerpts released by CBS on Friday.

"We said: 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said: 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change'," added Drumheller, whose CIA operation was assigned the task of debriefing the Iraqi official.

He was the latest former US official to accuse the White House of setting an early course toward war in Iraq and ignoring intelligence that conflicted with its aim.

CBS said the CIA's intelligence source was former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and that former CIA Director George Tenet delivered the information personally to US President George W Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top White House officials in September 2002. They rebuffed the CIA three days later.

"The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," the former CIA agent told CBS.

Stay tuned to the cowboy. I am researching an article about Bush Sr, who raised the specter of the mushroom cloud in his run up to the Persian Gulf War I. Simply put, wars of aggression are crimes against the peace. Atrocities in the act of carrying out such a war are war crimes. U.S. law prohibits such violations of Nuremburg —so don't let anyone tell you that Nuremberg doesn't matter. Read U.S. Codes; Section 2441. This is serious stuff, folks. Of course we're talking about violations of Nuremberg, but we're also talking about capital crimes under U.S. law!

Bush administration committing treason

Tom DeLay, that paragon of virtue who spearheaded that impeachment movement, is now the figurehead of the congressional moral shambles that started out as the dubious "Contract with America."

If an extramarital affair deserves a censure vote, what does the implosion of our rights of privacy guaranteed by the Constitution deserve?

President Bush promised the American people that he would fire anyone working in his administration who was involved in leaks. What a surprise. The order came from our President himself. Both of these acts, plus the lies perpetrated on the American people about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Gaffney, are called treason.

The ludicrousness of tax cuts for the rich (elite) while the country is at war is fiscally and morally reprehensible. It has left us without the ability to deal with education, Social Security, and is eroding our ability to give aid to the poor. It has also left us without the strength to stand up to the real enemies of this country, Iran and North Korea.

Finally, please do not equate this quagmire with World War II. We had a dictator who was well on his way to world domination, not a tin horn [dictator wannabe] firing a shotgun from a podium. ...

Bush should resign

An excerpt:

George W. Bush should do the ultimate patriotic act for America. He should resign.

He should give up this miserable, unpopular and tragic presidency and return to Texas. [my comment: he should be arrested for felony violations of U.S. Codes; Section 2441 and tried in a court of law. When found guilty, he should be sentenced!]

There, he can reflect on the lives he has cost in Iraq, the huge deficits he is accountable for, the Medicare drug program and Katrina recovery messes he so incompetently created, the illegal spying he has promoted, and the enormous waste of time and money he has spent going around the country telling his lies to friendly, hand-picked Republican audiences who are most certainly in denial about how pitiful he is.

Louisville-area folks can do their patriotic act this fall. They can dump Anne Northrup for her rubber-stamping support of Bush's reckless, dangerous and misguided policies. ...

Bush should not merely resign. This man is armed and dangerous, a threat to U.S. Democracy, a traitor, a mass murderer by proxy, an arch criminal.

Americans, increasingly, are not buying his justifications for any of these positions. Yet Bush has made no effort to persuade them that his actions are sound, prudent or productive; rather, he takes offense when anyone questions his unilateral powers. He responds as if personally insulted.

—John Dean, Former White House Counsel, Nixon Administration

Bush must be brought to justice!

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Bush's Fraudulent War on Terrorism

Bush would have you believe that "terrorism" is the greatest threat of the 21st century but that's according to Bush, Blair and the regime du jour in Israel. The fact is your chances of being killed by terrorists are tiny; your chances of getting killed while crossing any big city street in America is much higher. According to a United Nations report by Peter Heinlein, political violence has been dropping since the end of the cold war.

A report by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center concedes that international terrorism has increased somewhat recently -but most of those incidents are linked to Kashmir. Has Bush ever proposed that we go to war with Kashmir? The Center's report concludes that terrorism is not the grave security threat that Bush and his GOP hangers-on would have you believe.

The Truth About Terrorism

0: People in the USA killed by terrorism/WMD in 2004.

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2004.

0: People in the USA killed by terrorism/WMD in 2003.

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2003.

0: People in the USA killed by terrorism/WMD in 2002.

0: People in the UK killed by terrorism/WMD in 2002.

2,752: in USA killed by terrorism in 2001 (all on 9/11).

—The Insider

In America the biggest beneficiaries of terrorism have been incumbent regimes, primarily Reagan, Bush Sr. and now Bush Jr. Is this co-incidental? If you believe pigs fly.

Waging "War" on nations said to be supporting or nurturing "terrorists" is counterproductive -unless it is the purpose of demagogues (Bush and Reagan) to exploit terrorism for political purposes. James I of England used "terrorism" to rally Protestants following the gun powder plot. Guy Fawkes was executed for high treason but not until James I denounced the act of terrorism, declaring "We dinna need the Papists now!" In fact, the gun powder that was found in the Houses of Parliament was traced to the government's own stores of armaments. Inside job? Fawkes' alleged attempt to blow up Parliament came at a time of great disillusionment with the reign of James I, Elizabeth's successor.

A grasp on power based on war and/or terror will prove to be fleeting, fading when the danger is seen to have passed. Ronald Reagan, like Bush now, waged a great "war on terrorism". "You can run but you can't hide", Reagan boasted. But after two years there was absolutely nothing to show for this great GOP war! When the Marine Barracks in Lebanon was blown up, Reagan simply withdrew. In fact, FBI Stats compiled and published by the Brookings Institute prove conclusively that over the two years that Reagan waged his great war, terrorism increased very nearly exponentially. At the end of this counter-productive war, so called terrorist attacks on U.S interests decreased.

More recently, Bush Sr's attack on Saddam Hussein following the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait came a time when Senior's approval ratings were probably even lower than Junior's are now. See Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States".

Like Junior now, Bush Sr lied about his war against Iraq. Bush told the world that Hussein had developed a nuke. Where are those nukes? Where are those WMD? Where is a single truth told by any Bush at any time about anything?

At least one poll this week has Bush plunging into the 20's. What the polls don't measure is the level of outrage among those disapproving of Bush's performance. That will require a different methodology.

The recent polls may point to a sea change in American thinking, a major re-alignment that threatens what the GOP had hoped would be a permanent majority. Bush Sr was in the 20's ratings-wise when he decided to attack Iraq. John Sununnu boasted that Senior Bush's victory in Iraq would insure his re-election. But, it was not the war —as Carville would prove —it was the economy!

Bush Sr pioneered every tactic now employed by Shrub. It was not enough to get Pappa re-elected but it may very well be enough to get Junior indicted.

One would hope that at this point the nation will wake up! As I've said before: we would call a doctor an idiot who tells you to keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick. Pappa's Bush and Ronald Reagan's failed experiments with fascism should have awakened this nation to the dangers. The back to back failures of these criminal administrations should have been warning enough. The GOP should already have been consigned to an ignominious history. What this nation needs is a party of the loyal opposition —not a party that schemes to set up a right wing, theocratic dictatorship.

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'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission

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Rumfeld's Fingerprints All Over Bush's Forgotten Quagmire

A civil war in Iraq overshadows yet another Bush failure: Afghanistan where the Taliban is reorganized and resurgent. The task of containing the "resurgency" has fallen to a force of some eleven thousand American servicemen who cannot be expected to prevent the Taliban from regaining power. Like the much bigger force in Iraq, American troop strength is completely inadequate for the job –a situation that has Rumsfeld’s finger prints all over it.

Bush, of course, paints a rosy picture of the situation in Afghanistan, calling his attack on that country an “…unqualified success.” But that’s not the picture that emerges from a recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations:

Council Special Report No. 12

Afghanistan’s Uncertain Transition argues that Afghanistan is still far from stability. While the country has reestablished basic institutions of government, it has barely started to make them work. The government and its international supporters are challenged by a terrorist insurgency that has become more lethal and effective and that has bases in Pakistan, a drug trade that dominates the economy and corrupts the state, and pervasive poverty and insecurity.

Bush will have made terrorism worse. Nations that harbor terrorists, Bush told us, would be treated like the terrorists themselves. The question no one bothered to ask was simply this: just who are the terrorists and which nations harbor them? Any recent history of Saudi Arabia is highly suspicious and full of Bush family cronies —but instead of following those leads, the Bush administration worked to cover up its own connections with the Saudi royal family. Prominent Saudi royals were ushered out of the U.S. surreptitiously; the public, the media, the world was distracted by smoke and shattered glass if not smoke and mirrors. No one in the Bush administration has ever come forward with an innocent explanation. Anyone daring to question the official conspiracy theory is a traitor by Bush's convenient definition.

Since that time, numerous stories have surfaced about how Bush had planned to attack Iraq immediately but was dissuaded by Colin Powell. Afghanistan was offered up because it was said that the Taliban was harboring Osama Bin Laden –although no hard evidence against Bin Laden has surfaced since 1998.

The mentality in the White House seemed to be never let a good pretext to war go to waste. Whose ass got kicked seemed almost beside the point! An angry American populace wanted revenge, quick results, and easy victories. Bush was just the man to supply revenge but not results. And victories are yet to be attained at all.

Enough history. Fast forward to the dismal present, a time in which Bush has failed to subdue the civilian population against whom he has waged aggressive war upon a pack of lies –none of them having anything to do with righting the wrongs of 911. An increasing number of conservatives now denounce the bone headed decision to wage war on Iraq. As a quagmire, it surpasses Viet Nam. And unlike Viet Nam where blame could be equally dispersed among GOP and Democratic regimes alike, Iraq is a tar baby that is stuck to Bush’s foot and bush’s foot alone. Bush broke Iraq and since the attack his every action has made the quagmire worse.

Bush had promised a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild Afghanistan, the tiny country where he had hoped to grab an easy victory on the cheap. The defeat of the Taliban may have been cheap but the price of victory seems beyond the ability of the United States to obtain. $3 billion has been appropriated but this hardly amounts to a “Marshall Plan”. Of that amount, some $2.3 billion is sucked up by security and military items. What's left is earmarked for public relations, i.e. making Bush look good in an election year. In simpler times that might have fooled a nation of “poltroonish goosesteppers” –as H.L Mencken called his fellow Americans.

It doesn't matter than Karzai is a photogenic puppet. He has been called derisively the mayor of Kabul as war lords, bandits and drug dealers operate with impunity outside the city limits.

Nor can Bushies cite a draft constitution as evidence of success. A proposed charter fashioned under the guidance of the United States, is hardly a result that can be pointed to as evidence of “victory”. Rather, it celebrates religious intolerance and affirms Sunni supremacy even as Bush seems to be presiding over the rise of Shias in Iraq. Afghanistan, like Iraq, is most certainly worse off since the U.S. Attacked and invaded.

The Bush administration has learned nothing from the experience. Bush’s ham-fisted, NeoCon approach ignored common sense. At last, the NeoCon approach ignored J.S. Mill's admonition that tyranny by a majority is still tyranny. What has been said of the French Bourbons can be said of Bush: that his regime forgot nothing and learned nothing.

For an update, click the pic:

Gunmen attack US-funded Afghan firm

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban guerrillas have attacked a U.S.-funded Afghan construction company, killing an Afghan guard and wounding two, the director of the company said on Sunday.

Police said that in a separate incident Taliban gunmen killed a senior government official in Ghazni province to the southwest of the capital, Kabul, on Sunday.

The attack on the construction company happened on Saturday night in Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province, where four Canadian soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb earlier in the day.

The firm targeted, Tawazo Construction Company, is building a road linking the southern province of Kandahar with neighboring Uruzgan province -- a U.S. government-funded project.

"The Taliban opened fire at the company's guards, killing one and wounding two others before setting ablaze 14 vehicles and fleeing," company director Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters.

Southern Afghanistan has seen rising violence since the Taliban announced last month they had launched a spring offensive.

Ousted from power by U.S. and Afghan opposition forces in late 2001, the Taliban have declared a war on President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government, foreign troops in the country, and anyone supporting it, including aid workers. ...

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'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission

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Pigs fly: George Will Opposes Attack On Iran!

George Will has made the best case for not nuking Iran. On ABC "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, Will said that Iran is a young society, connected to the internet, cell phone savvy, independent and aware of what’s going on throughout the world. The Mullahs, George says, cannot rule this emerging open society. Regime change will take place from within. Have conservatives re-discovered long atrophied brains —or have mainstream conservatives broken forever with NeoCons?

What might have been the case if this kind of progressive thinking had been practiced by “conservatives” before the long campaign of Saddam demonization? What if the so-called free world had not radicalized Iraqi theocrats with years of sanctions, lies, and bluster? What if the world’s most powerful Democracy had had the courage of its convictions? What if leaders of the United States had really believed in Democracy?

George Bush’s NeoCon base had best pay attention to George Will. Leaving Iran alone is, in fact, Bush’s only realistic option. There is no reason to believe that U.S. intelligence about Iran is in any way better than intelligence about Iraq. There is also no reason to believe anything said by Bush. And, at last, a bombing campaign –nukes or no –is unlikely to have any effect on Iran’s nuclear capability.

But, according to the Washington Post, reason, sanity and common sense have not prevailed in the Bush administion. The Post reports that despite Bush’s denials, the Pentagon is proceding apace with plans to attack Iran:

It's important to talk about war planning that's real. And it is for Iran. In early 2003, even as U.S. forces were on the brink of war with Iraq, the Army had already begun conducting an analysis for a full-scale war with Iran. The analysis, called TIRANNT, for "theater Iran near term," was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force. U.S. and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time. And Bush directed the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass de struction. All of this will ultimately feed into a new war plan for "major combat operations" against Iran that military sources confirm now exists in draft form.

—Washington Post

There is no upside gain, only painful blowback. As Will accurately pointed out, despite Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, the Iranian populace is overwhelmingly pro-western. Bush’s loud mouth has already undone much of that good will. A bombing campaign will most certainly turn a pro-western nation into sworn enemies. A nuclear strike, in particular, will radicalize the entire population.

Already, the U.S. Invasion of Iraq has set the stage for an Iran/Shi’ite alliance. Pledging to smash the “Axis of Evil”, Bush has, rather, created the conditions for a real “Axis of Evil”. An attack on Iran will only strengthen the rule of the Mullahs who will most certainly form an alliance with the religious majority in Iraq.

Proposals to use nukes on Iran are psychotic. But we have become accustomed to hearing about vainglorious adventures from a demagogue who lied this nation into misadventure and quagmire in Iraq. On a national scale, however, nuke talk smacks of an intoxication with imperial power. That any such thing is considered seriously by some people is evidence that nothing has been learned from the debacle in Iraq. You would call a doctor an idiot who tells you to keep on doing whatever it is that’s making you sick. Why are not “Presidents’ held to the same standard?

In the meantime, Congressman Peter DeFazio has reminded the Bush administration that any strike against Iran must be authorized by Congress, presumably in the form of a Declaration of War. Bush is not likely to get one. Therefore, any campaign against Iran will be illegal –just as was the bombing and attack on Iraq. Moreover, Iran is within the letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any attack against Iran would clearly be a violation of Nuremberg Principles, insisted upon by the United States itself. Such an attack would be a prosecutable crime against the peace.

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'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission

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