Ding Dong! Zarqawi's still dead and Bush's campaign of war crimes is still alive

The media celebration of Al Zarqawi's alleged death last week is uninformed, stupid, obscene. No one ever said Zarqawi was a boy scout. The media ignores some important facts. The "insurgency" could not target U.S. troops if they weren't there! Bin Laden —about whom this war we were told was begun —was never said to have been in Iraq, but, nevertheless, Iraq was Bush's first choice for attack. Iraq had better targets, it was said. That's the logic of the drunk who searches for his lost keys under the street light because the light is better. It's also Bush's logic.

Bin Laden is most certainly safe in the mountains of Pakistan secure in the knowledge that Bush's second statement about him is correct:

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

—George W. Bush, Press Conference by the President, The James S. Brady Briefing Room, March 13, 2002, 4:00 P.M. EST

Earlier, September of 2001, Bush launched his fraudulent war on "tuhruhrr" with one of his first broken promises. Bush called upon the Afghan people to break with the Taliban and help him "...smoke [Islamic "terrorists] out; get them running so we can get them." Bush promised to "...bring them to justice".

None of that happened! Secondly, I would like to know when Bin Laden ever took over a country. When did Bin Laden call the "...shots for the Taliban"? When is the MSM ever going to challenge Bush's seemingly endless string of lies, absurdities, stupid remarks, and inanities? George W. Bush has most certainly murdered more Iraqi citizens than Al Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein together.

It's hard to believe that it was in the year 2004 that the Washington Post reported that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the U.S. invasion.[100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq, Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, October 29, 2004; Page A16] On January 9, 2006, Bush himself estimated Iraqi civilian deaths may be well over 180,000. By now, possibly, half a million. Deaths attributed solely to Zarqawi are not nearly so high. Moreover, Zarqawi most certainly would not be in Iraq had not Bush invaded that country to begin with. Tragically —Bush cannot be trusted to sort out the dead. He merely delivers them up and leaves to bereathed families the task of burying his victims.

Oddly, Donald Rumsfeld told the truth —however inadvertently. "It [insurgency] was more than had been predicted," Rumsfeld told CNN. He blamed the insurgency itself on "imperfect intelligence" and acknowledged that the American presence had been been "feeding" the "insurgency".

The word "insurgency" is Bush newspeak. Bush won his first propaganda battle when the MSM picked up the word and repeated it without questioning its appropriateness. It's called "framing". Insurgency does not describe a situation characterized by sectarian violence, possibly civil war. Insurgency does not describe a chaotic anarchy fed and purposefully aggravated by the very presence of U.S. troops. U.S. troops now appear to have waged a deliberate war of atrocity against the civilian population; the word "insurgency", therefore, sounds hollow, disingenuous, purposefully untruthful. Better terms to describe Iraq are "civil war" and "resistance to an aggressor".

The fact never reported by MSM is that the U.S. attack and invasion of Iraq, a sovereign nation, was from the very start an illegal war of naked aggression, a capital crime under U.S. law. But, I am wasting my breath. When Bush is charged under 18 § 2441, a packed, GOP appeals court will uphold his decree that if " the President does it, it's legal!". Why didn't Hermann Goring and the hanged Nazi war criminals think of that? They might have survived to advise the GOP!

Already, the United States has unilaterally exempted U.S. troops from war crimes prosecution in the Hague. A bill entitled To protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States Government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party was introduced by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) as an amendment to H.R. 1646, The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001, on May 8, 2001. It passed the House 282-137 on May 10 and introduced as S. 857 in the Senate on May 9 by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC), Zell Miller (D-GA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John Warner (R-VA), Trent Lott (R-MS), Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Frank Murkowski (R-AK).

The bill authorized Bush "...to use all means (including the provision of legal assistance) necessary to bring about the release of covered U.S. persons and covered allied persons held captive by or on behalf of the Court [International Criminal Court, ICC, in the Hague]. Some highlights:

The President is authorized to invade The Hague. Specifically, the bill empowers Bush to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release from captivity of U.S. or Allied personnel detained or imprisoned against their will by or on behalf of the Court. Dutch cartoonists have depicted U.S. paratroopers dropping down on the international court; U.S. assault forces hitting Netherlands beaches like D-Day!

No U.S. governmental entity --including State or local governments and court of any U.S. jurisdiction --may cooperate with the ICC in arrests, extraditions, searches and seizures, taking of evidence, seizure of assets, or similar matters.

No classified national security information can be transferred directly or indirectly to the ICC or to countries Party to the Rome Statute.

These provisions are in addition to existing U.S. law (the 2000-2001 Foreign Relations Authorization Act) which prohibits any U.S. funds going to the ICC once it has been established unless the Senate has given its advice and consent to the Rome Treaty.

Here's some more ancient history. Forty-four members of the U.S. House of Representatives on July 19, 2001 urged Bush "... to remain engaged with the Court, and demonstrate America's commitment to the often-difficult and complicated international effort to promote justice and human rights", the Bush administration, nevertheless, rejected the ICC treaty. A letter from US envoy Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that Washington had no intention of ratifying the treaty and considered itself “...no longer bound in any way to its [the treaty's] purpose and objective.”

Clearly —this represented at the time an unprecedented rift between the United States and its European allies; American isolation has only increased since then. Over the five years or so since Bush declared the U.S. above international laws that the U.S. had, in fact, insisted upon, Bush continues to thumb his nose at the civilized world while the United States plays the roll of a rogue, out of control nation dominated by a militant, extremist, right wing junta.

Iraqis are worse off under Bush —an undeniable fact glossed over by a kool-aid addicted American media. It's time to connect the dots. The United States is building permanent bases in Iraq. The observable permanent state of turmoil and chaos in Iraq is as good a pretext as any for a continued U.S. aggression and war crime. After all, there is little chance of appealing to law and treaty when it is the "President" of the United States who thumbs his nose at them. Denial and delusion are more palatable than truth: Bush invaded Iraq in order to steal its oil for his base back home: big oil! Additional resources:

• UN panel condemns U.S. torture
• The Logic of War Crimes in a Criminal War
• Rumsfeld: Iraq timetable wouldn't 'do any good' (Except, maybe, save lives!)
• How Many Iraqis Have Died Since the US Invasion in 2003?
• Iraq death toll 'soared post-war'
• International Shame for Bush

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Forget the Iraq civil war; the U.S. cultural war rages on

In 1992 Pat Buchanan addressed the Republican National convention with talk of great "culture war" that would be waged in America. What he didn't tell the convention was that the right wing would declare the war by attacking the U.S. Constitution.

Buchanan didn't tell his audience that his culture war would pit Americans against one another. He didn't tell America that his culture war was purely partisan. He didn't tell those not supporting that convention that they would become targets of a right jihad.

He didn't tell the nation that his culture war would be an entirely negative, destructive war that would treat citizens as enemies of the state —though they are protected by the Constitution and are, in fact, on the right and historically correct side of the Constitution.

From the psychotic viewpoint of the increasingly radical right wing, it must destroy and subvert the Constitution in order to wage this war on the American population. Put another way: under Bush, the right wing has learned how to make legal what had been illegal under the Constitution.

In a monument to backward thinking and circular logic, the GOP will justify its subversion of the rule of law because it is necessary in order to achieve the right wing agenda.

Since 1992, the GOP has waged this war on many fronts: the schools, congressional districts, the courts, and, most insidiously, the validity of the ballot box itself. It is a war on anyone disagreeing with a narrow, increasingly rabid, fanatical Weltanschauung.

Under George W. Bush, the GOP has waged this war on fellow Americans as Hitler waged his war on the Jew, that is, by denying the blessings of Due Process of Law to anyone who dares to dissent. It is a political war that exploits the advantages of corporate power by forging a fascistic partnership with the corporate community. In alliance with big, corporate media, for example, the right wing junta slanders individuals, undermines the Bill of Rights, and, in other ways— legal and illegal —destroys the very underpinnings of American society. This is, for them, as it was for Hitler, a single-minded quest for raw power. It is total cultural war.

The mere impeachment and imprisonment of George W. Bush will not begin to address the crisis. As many bloggers have pointed out recently: Bush is —as he has said —a war President. What escapes mere words is Bush's role. He has become the impresario of a radical, right wing, fascist agenda that pits American against American, citizen against citizen. Bush's war is not against Iraq; it is against America, the American people, the Constitution, the rule of law, and Due Process of Law. We have seen the enemy and it is George W. Bush, the GOP and all their "fellow travelers"!

Revolution is not always waged with violence in the streets. But, with Bush, there seems to be a resurrection of old tactics. Among more prominent examples is the gang of GOP "brownshirts" who feloniously attacked the recount rooms in Florida. More recently in Sugar Land, TX, a gang of thugs —supporting Tom DeLay --violently attacked a peaceful rally held by DeLay's Democratic opponent. Clearly —the right wing will not be satisfied until the Constitution is overthrown and a dictatorship installed; it has shown itself capable of violence and thuggery to make it happen.

Some recent events here at home illustrate how the right wing has racheted up their practices, strategies, lies and histrionics. Recent comments by Bill O'Reilly illustrate the extremes to which they will resort. It was bad enough that Ronald Reagan paid his "respects" to the Nazi SS at Bitburg, saying that they were likewise "victims" of Hitler's right wing regime, now we are expected sit quietly while Bill O'Reilly blames Amercans —not Nazi SS —for the massacre at Malmedy.

R. Reagan Paying Homage to SS at Bitburg

Zarqawi: Dead Again

Al-Zarqawi dies for the umpteenth time but now the US government says sincerely Zarqawi is really, really dead again.

The story goes something like this:

(Munchkins)
The house began to pitch, the kitchen took a slitch
It landed on the wicked witch in the middle of a ditch
Which was not a healthy situation for the wicked witch
Who began to twitch, and was reduced to just a stitch
Of what was once the wicked witch

But we've got to verify it legally

To see...

(Mayor)
To see...

(Judge)
If he...

(Mayor)
If he...

(Judge)
Is morally, ethically

(Munchkin 1)
Spiritually, physically


(Munchkin 2)
Positively, absolutely

(Munchkin Men)
Undeniably and reliably dead

(Coroner)
As Coroner , I thoroughly examined him
And he's not only merely dead
He's really most sincerely dead

Zarqawi has been upheld both in official statements and the media as head of "the Sunni insurgency", leader of "al-Qaeda in Iraq", allegedly responsible for the killings of thousands of civilians.

To be less than satirical, the pictures of his alleged corpse are surprisingly photogenic considering that the U.S. Military does not claim to have dropped a house on Zarqawi —merely two 500-pound bombs at the conclusion of a three day operation. Amazing that he is both recognizable and in one piece. But the U.S. Military would not lie about this...would they?

Ding-dong the witch is dead
Which old witch? The wicked witch
Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead
Wake up you sleepyhead
Rub your eyes, get out of bed
Wake up the wicked witch is dead
She's gone where the goblins go

Below - below - below

Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out
Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low
Let them know the Wicked Witch is dead

In the meantime, there is evidence even in the MSM that Zarqawi was part of a Pentagon disinformation campaign. It was said to have been launched in 2003 to justify Bush's attack and invasion of Iraq. Zarqawi played so valuable role in U.S. propaganda that he was killed and revived many times. I've lost count. According to leaked military documents published by the Washington Post, the Pentagon had set up a "Zarqawi program" in which Zarqawi's role was deliberately "magnified" to galvanized U.S. public support for Bush war of aggression in Iraq:

"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work..."

"the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

—Washington Post, April 10, 2006)

I have no idea how Bush plans to capitalize on the death of a man who obviously had more than one life to give for his cause. And to be fair, there is no reason to believe that he will not be resurrected again.

I would not be just a nuffin'
My head all full of stuffin'
My heart all full of pain
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain

—Possibly G.W. Bush in an unguarded moment

But try to have a nice day knowing that all is screwed up in Kansas, Texas, and most certainly Washington D.C. where the U.S. Military has no credibility whatsoever.

Some day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Ah! Lost innocence!

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How the U.S. Military deliberately lied about Haditha and tried to cover it up

The official military cover story goes like this:

[Fifteen Iraqis] "...were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately after the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."

—Marine spokesman, Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, Iraq,

It's hard not to conclude that the lie is deliberate.

Here's one of the best summaries of what really happened to be found on the internet:

On the morning of 19 November 2005, U.S. Marines were on their way to Haditha, in northwest Iraq. When they were attacked and later failed to find their attackers, they deliberately and indiscriminately massacred 24 Iraqi civilians in the Subhani district of Haditha. The victims ”range from little babies to adult males and females." Initially, the U.S. Marines alleged that 15 “insurgents” and civilians were killed in “cross fire." As usual, the U.S. Marines lied about the massacre and tried to cover it up. It was the video of an Iraqi journalism student from Haditha which prompted Time magazine to investigate the massacre.

—Ghali Hassan, Online Journal

What is known about the massacre at Haditha? We know that a responding unit found the bodies of 24 Iraqi civilians —babies, women, children shot in the head. The body of an old man was found still in his wheelchair, shot nine times. One wonders if the man in the wheelchair is the one referred to by 9 year old Eman Waleed, who survived by faking her own death.

Eman Waleed, a 9-year-old girl who survived the massacre told the told Time: “First, they went into my father’s room, where he was reading the Koran, and we heard shots. Then, the soldiers came back into the living room. I couldn’t see their faces very well -- only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."

—Online Journal

Girls —ages 1 to 14 —lay dead.

Clearly —none of them had been killed by a bomb as the U.S. military would have had you believe. Rather —all 24 dead had been killed by U.S. military gunfire. The source for that information are the death certificates themselves.

The U.S. military deliberately ignored accounts by eyewitnesses, letting stand a U.S. cover story for a period of six months. The truth about the case is still hidden under the cover of an "on-going" investigation. It is doubtful that any meaningful investigation has ever been conducted into the "...countless My Lai massacres" in Iraq.

"Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports.

At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials

In Fallujah, 40% of the buildings were completely destroyed, 20% had major damage, and 40% had significant damage. That is 100% of the buildings in that city."

—Mike Ferner, Lew Rockwell

Among the "...countless My Lai massacres" that have been referred to in recent days, three incidents are under current investigation: Ishaqi, Haditha and Hamandiya.

Given the utter collapse of credibility in the U.S. military and Rumsfeld Pentagon specifically, there is no reason not to believe that many other incidents are still covered up and will remain forever un-investigated. Rumsfeld's Pentagon no longer has the benefit of the doubt. The latest revelations must not be considered in isolation and higher ups —to include Donald Rumsfeld himself —must not be left off the hook.

The only way to get at the truth now is to convene a Federal Grand Jury and a Special Prosecutor with sweeping subpoena powers. Just as Sy Hersh connected the Abu Ghraib abuses to Donald Rumsfeld and even George W. Bush himself, a real investigation must not stop before it implicates the higher ups. The pattern of heinous and insane atrocities that characterize the Bush administration's illegal and treasonous occupation of Iraq can be found in various "snapshots" available from time to time. One of the most vivid is from Abu Ghraib:

In her video diary, a prison guard said that prisoners were shot for minor misbehavior, and claimed to have had venomous snakes bite prisoners, sometimes resulting in their deaths. By her own admission, that guard was "in trouble" for having thrown rocks at the detainees.^[11] Hashem Muhsen, one of the naked men in the human pyramid photo, said they were also made to crawl around the floor naked and that U.S. soldiers rode them like donkeys. After being released in January 2004, Muhsen became an Iraqi police officer.

More pieces of this evil mosaic can be found in the following links courtesy Cindy Sheehan writing for Buzzflash:

The invasion of Iraq is a preventive war of aggression against a country that was no threat to the USA or the world and was expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

• The invasion was not sanctioned or approved of by the United Nations.
• "Shock and awe " targeted civilian centers and killed many innocent people.
• Abu Ghraib.
  
• Guantanamo.
  
• "Extreme rendition."
• Use of chemical weapons, especially white phosphorous enhanced with napalm, particularly in the second siege of Fallujah.
• Targeting hospitals, clinics, and threatening Medical Doctors with execution if one treats "insurgents" (which can apparently include babies and pregnant women).
  
• Using highly compensated mercenaries to carry out executions and torture.
• Forcing a style of government on the citizens and manipulating the outcome of the elections.

Additional resources:

• Bruce Jackson: Why Haditha Happened
• Impeachable Treason
• The Road to Abu Ghraib

It's time the American people demanded an end to the Bush pattern of cover up, white wash, and lies. This illegitimate administration must be ended, and, if it is not, America is finished.

An update on the American cover up of "...countless My Lai massacres":

Press Accounts Suggest Military 'Cover-up' in Ishagi Killings

By Greg MitchellPublished: June 03, 2006 1:40 PM ET

NEW YORK The U.S military said Saturday it had found no wrongdoing in the March 15 raid on a home in Ishaqi that left nine Iraqi civilians dead. But, as with the apparent massacre in Haditha, will a military "coverup" in this case come undone? E&P coverage from back in March, and other evidence, suggest that the official story may soon unravel.

The Iraqi police charge that American forces executed the civilians, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old baby. The BBC has been airing video of the dead civilians, mainly children, who appeared to be shot, possibly at close range. Photographs taken just after the raid for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, and reports at the time by Reuters and Knight Ridder, also appear to back up the charge of an atrocity. ...

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An Emerging Pattern of U.S. War Crimes and Atrocities in Iraq Suggests a Heinous Policy

The "few bad applies" defense falls apart in the face of "...countless My Lai massacres" in Iraq and new revelations. A pattern of war crimes emerges. News of other incidents supports the proposition that the Bush administration has deliberately waged a war on the civilian population of Iraq. The new allegations first.

BBC video footage shows bodies of Iraqis

By Julian E. Barnes
Originally published June 3, 2006

Senior Defense officials pushed back yesterday against the latest accusations of wrongdoing, denying accounts that U.S. soldiers deliberately killed civilians in a March raid but acknowledging that more civilians might have died than the military first reported.

Iraqi police and other witnesses had claimed that U.S. forces had killed as many as 13 civilians in the small hamlet of Ishaqi, near the Iraqi city of Balad, tying up some and shooting them in the head. Video obtained by the British Broadcasting Corp. and the Associated Press showed bodies of victims, including several children, who apparently had been killed by gunshot wounds or shrapnel.

The U.S. military initially reported that there were four people, one insurgent and three civilians, killed in the Ishaqi raid. But yesterday, they acknowledged that eight other noncombatants had been killed, calling the additional casualties "collateral deaths." ...

From another source today:

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- In the wake of an alleged massacre of unarmed civilians in Haditha by U.S. Marines, new video has emerged with fresh allegations of U.S. troops killing Iraqi civilians in an attack on the village of Ishaqi. ...

—Global National Online

Various British media have released video footage that depicts a bloody aftermath of a U.S. attack in March that resulted in the murders of 11 Iraqis —including at least five children.

Overshadowed by the events at Haditha is an earlier account of a U.S. attack near Baghdad:

Other eyewitness reports state that American military forces surrounded the Al Mustafa mosque in northeast Baghdad, while helicopters buzzed overhead and a fleet of heavily armed Humvees sealed off the exits. The mosque's 80-year-old imam, and many other civilians, were killed in the attack.

Videotape showed a pile of bodies with gunshot wounds on the floor of the Imam's living quarters in the mosque. There were also 5.56mm shell casings on the floor, which is the type of ammunition used by U.S. soldiers.

Another massacre of Iraqis occurred on November 19, when marines shot dead at least 15 Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children. The shooting took place in the village of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad in the western province of Anbar.

—U. S. Massacres in Iraq, Anti-Imperialist News Service

The lid is at last off this story. And it just doesn't end:

Countless My Lai Massacres in Iraq

The media feeding frenzy around what has been referred to as "Iraq's My Lai" has become frenetic. Focus on US Marines slaughtering at least 20 civilians in Haditha last November is reminiscent of the media spasm around the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib during April and May 2004.

Yet just like Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed Iraqi "security" forces has not stopped either. ...

The war itself is illegal under the Principles of Nuremberg. The subsequent murders of civilians and the cover-ups throughout the chain of command are most certainly prosecutable at the Hague. When it is learned that there is probable cause that Bush himself conspired with Donald Rumsfeld to "...export death and destruction to the four corners of the earth", then the people of the United States must rise up and demand that Bush step down and surrender for arrest and war crimes trials.

Let's have a real investigation for a change. I would put forward this testable proposition: that there is more probable cause that Bush is culpable for these crimes under 18 § 2441 and the Nuremberg Principles than there is reason to believe that any one of the millions of Americans whose rights to Due Process of Law have been denied by Bush's widespread domestic surveillance program have been engaged in any way at any time with "terrorism". Let's make public the probable cause that Bush himself is responsible for the policies that have been executed in Iraq.

It's time that the real "bad applies" be brought to book!

Robert Fisk: On the shocking truth about the American occupation of Iraq

Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave? The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of America's army of the slums go further?

I remember clearly the first suspicions I had that murder most foul might be taking place in our name in Iraq. I was in the Baghdad mortuary, counting corpses, when one of the city's senior medical officials - an old friend - told me of his fears. "Everyone brings bodies here," he said. "But when the Americans bring bodies in, we are instructed that under no circumstances are we ever to do post-mortems. We were given to understand that this had already been done. Sometimes we'd get a piece of paper like this one with a body." And here the man handed me an American military document showing the hand-drawn outline of a man's body and the words "trauma wounds".

What kind of trauma? Indeed, what kind of trauma is now being experienced in Iraq? Who is doing the mass killing? Who is dumping so many bodies on garbage heaps? After Haditha, we are going to reshape our suspicions. ...

Press Accounts Suggest Military 'Cover-up' in Ishagi Killings

By Greg MitchellPublished: June 03, 2006 1:40 PM ET

NEW YORK The U.S military said Saturday it had found no wrongdoing in the March 15 raid on a home in Ishaqi that left nine Iraqi civilians dead. But, as with the apparent massacre in Haditha, will a military "coverup" in this case come undone? E&P coverage from back in March, and other evidence, suggest that the official story may soon unravel.

The Iraqi police charge that American forces executed the civilians, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old baby. The BBC has been airing video of the dead civilians, mainly children, who appeared to be shot, possibly at close range. Photographs taken just after the raid for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, and reports at the time by Reuters and Knight Ridder, also appear to back up the charge of an atrocity. ...

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Dante Lee: Short Memories

Adolf Hitler once said to one of his advisers worrying about how History might look on the Fuhrer’s plan for the Jews: “Who remembers about the Armenian genocide?” The monster unfortunately nailed it right on the head.

History of wars and genocides can be compared to labor pain. It is absolutely excruciating but instantly forgotten at the very first cry of the child. And humans, just like the mothers who infant them, have an incredibly short memory when it comes to History.

Even the names of the men and women who have contributed to shape the world history, who have died for the sake of its progress, often get the hardest time to be remembered in our classrooms: who, for instance, remembers Hypatia, the last scholar of Alexandria; woman mathematician, neo-Platonian philosopher, astronomer and charismatic orator, who was the very first scientist martyr into being forcibly undressed, lynched, skinned by rough sea shells and tiles, and finally dismembered by an angry Christian mob in the streets of Alexandria in 415 AD?

Who remembers Margaret Sanger, the inventor of Family planning? She was lynched seven times -often closed to death – by angry men for her passion to help early 19th century women whose husbands only regarded them as mere baby factories. I can go on and on and write a huge list of reformers, an encyclopedia out of those forgotten heroes. But my point is, why are hard earned progress and reforms endangered once again —and so soon? And why do the battles have to be re-fought anew?

When it comes to genocides, massacres, abuses and atrocities, our memory skills get even more pathetic. If it is already challenging to feel personally the pain inflicted to an individual other than oneself, it is just impossible to funnel the pain of an entire community into one’s brain. How can we feel all these different pains at the same time?

In movies depicting such events like the Holocaust in WWII, directors show the need to focus their cameras on scenes involving a sole victim, in order to illustrate the crime committed on a group. When screening the Spielberg’s movie, “Schindler’s list”, one can witness how murderous acts committed on one individual result often in a buzzing of tear jerking throughout the theater, while the emotionally charged shot of a mountain of human corpses is invariably taken with a solemn silence from the crowd.

A mass of people dying is too much of a fuzzy thought for the common news readers. For instance, is there a newspaper out there that has ever published anything more than a few reader’s comments about the 36 millions Africans left to die since the day when Dick Cheney went to Davos, Switzerland, in order to defend the un-defendable: the “right” of American pharmaceutical industries to hold on to their patents on the AIDS drug cocktail and prevent the third world countries to be able to produce them cheaply? Or the billions confiscated by the Bush administration from the UN war chest for the war against AIDS, because this administration can not tolerate that the world’s NGOs preaching condoms instead of abstinence.

Genocides have become a bore. A journalist from Time magazine on the ground in Darfour, complained last week on National Public Radio for the fact that world news agencies pick up and relate a massacre only if it contains sexual contents such as rapes and sexual tortures.

Networks have understood this long ago. The near half-million dead from the Christmas 2004 Tsunami, the sinking of a ferry-boat, the last big earthquake in Iran, Katrina; these are just “sensationalist” events. Meanwhile, the genocide in Darfour, in Rwanda, or the major human and economic disaster that is unfolding inside the republic of Congo, are treated in the news as mere natural disasters. We tend to have accepted that, for Western networks and media, blacks killing blacks, even by the millions, is just a natural thing, in the same level as a category 3 Hurricane or a bad monsoon.

When it comes to wars waged by our country, if you think that abuses and cruelties perpetrated by American soldiers are committed in a different state of mind than, say, My Lai or during the gruesome Spanish-American war - most particularly in Philippines - ask yourself this question: What is the difference between the infamous 1904 letter, sent by a Marine fighting in Philippines to her mother, describing “the nigger paradise” in which Marines were free to go into a bonanza of “nigger killing”, and a cellular phone video shot inside Abu-Ghraïb?

Another important reason for our short memory and for our tendency to continuously perpetrate these evil acts upon other nations or people is greed.

If a serious poll were conducted to determine the percentage of Americans who would prefer paying 50 bucks more for their sneakers, if consumers were guaranteed that those shoes were to be made by a company that works their employees within the full range of human rights, I’m sure that the reflection in the mirror would be painful to watch for most of us.

And it’s not just the greed for money. It’s deeper than that. It’s a genuine greed of gene. The Jewish community, for instance, quite vocally denounces the atrocities committed against them; and not only by the Nazis. With their high pitch lamentation and great skills as portraying themselves – justly - as victims, westerners still have a good memory of the Spanish massacres on their Jewish community during the 15 and 16th century.

But the Jewish community rarely talks about the mass of Gypsies, Poles, Russians, gays, and common resistance to Nazi occupations who died alongside their folk. Where are they when it comes to Darfour? Where were they during the genocide in Rwanda? Have you ever heard Israel lobbying for Turkey to apologize for the Armenian genocide?

And where are the Armenians for Darfour? Where are the American Indians talking for Aborigines?

The greed of gene affects all of us —but affects Americans in a somewhat a different tone. It is best exemplified thus:

"I eat more than you. I grow taller than you. I have more freedom than you. I have a bigger car, a bigger house. I piss on public schools because I want to show the world that I have paid more for the education of my children than you have. My oil is cheaper than you so I can go faster than you while my car is bigger than yours. My church is bigger than yours and will soon eat up all the followers from your church too. My country is bigger than yours, or if it’s not it’ll be soon. My country has more goodies hidden inside its underground than your country. And if it’s not the case, heck, you don’t have the money nor the industry to get what's under your own soil anyway: You’ll soon need us to dig and pump your stuff and you’ll be praising us for leaving you a few crumb!… at night, We go to bed praying out loud for the return of a Christ who, I’m sure, has blessed MY COUNTRY. When we dream, however, We see another JC for America: a Julius Caesar! ... or a Napoleon. What kind of Duke of Wellington any nation will oppose against the superpowers God had bestowed on us?”

You see, Imperialism is the oldest ideal of a human government. It is here to endure as it shows up time and time again when you expect it the least. Ask Beethoven how he felt when Bonaparte was declared Emperor! Imperialism has always been considered the ultimate award a civilization can obtain, once it has reached the top the world’s peaking order.

It is amusing how people get only shocked and disturbed by the atrocities perpetrated by other Empires, while coming up with the most stunning excuses for tolerating the same abuses done by their own empire.

American Protestants, who stunningly chose to call themselves Christians, believe staunchly that the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire is comparable to the Jewish Holocaust. What they don’t want to know - or even hear - is that the Roman Empire had actually been, in the beginning, quite tolerant toward the strange new Jewish sect; following the Roman spirit of inclusiveness of other religion and cultures. As long as Arabs, Jews, Greeks or others accept to pledge allegiance to Rome, despite of whatever they want to pray or believe, Rome accepted them as full citizen of her Empire. Racism did not exist under Rome, from Augustus to Constantine.

Christians under Rome, however, started, early, to aggressively proselytize their religion based on the axiom of civil disobedience, “Give Caesar what belong to Caesar and to God what belongs to Him.” The Empire justly saw this as a threat but opted for the wrong solution: scaring them. Therefore Rome started the gruesome episodes of sending the Christians to the lions, for the joy and entertainment of the mass.

Today’s America evinces the same attitude toward Muslims. Because of a few bad apples The United States feels threatened by the entire muslim community. True —we don’t send them to the lions; instead, we lock them up in Guantanamo Bay for indefinite lengths of time. But wait, we do send them to the lions: In Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, or anywhere where the CIA can operate torture chambers in perfect secrecy, or, if they cannot, outsource the torturing job.

The greed of gene, folks: The thing that makes us all forgetting the past, the heroes, the martyrs, the victims. The thing that made me understand why Colleges and High schools all have history books that always come into a new edition every year, despite the fact that the information they contain does not change overtime.

Because History is just like that: For every generation the same stories, framed into spanking new editions.

—Dante Lee, Guest Columnist.

You know you're living in a dictatorship when public opinion becomes irrelevant

The liberal celebration of the collapse of Bush's popularity seems misplaced amid Bush's continued offensive against the American people, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law. If poll numbers meant anything —or if the United States could still maintain even a pretense of accountability —Bush would have already been impeached, resigned, or investigated. Instead, Bush has consolidated his power on several fronts and he has done so in the face of vehement, widespread opposition and revulsion. He has done so despite the fact that most people think he's a liar if not an outright fraud.

Much of the opposition to Bush still seems naive, locked into the GOP/Democrat paradigm. In fact, this is not Democrats vs GOP; it's freedom vs slavery, democracy vs totalitarianism. We will be no better off, nothing will have been gained if Democrats should win but fail to rescind Bush's power gains.

Bush holds several trump cards, not the least of which is how he dictates the agenda through the mainstream media. Big media means big corporations. They will pay lip service to equal time even when equal times means balancing truth with more lies. Big corporations spend billions to outshout the independent voice. The assault on "net neutrality" is just one example, but, perhaps, the most pernicious and catastrophic in the longer term. A successful attack on "net neutrality" will most probably bring to an end the existence of blogs like "The Existentialist Cowboy" or, at the very least, it will marginalize them.

Though FOX pretends to be "fair and balanced", it will never tell you the truth. Though FOX jingoism would have embarrassed even Randolph Hearst, it is not only Fox but CBS, ABC, NBC, and CNN that will be forever silent on the following propositions:

• The Bush administration has installed a fascist regime and has deliberately sought to consolidate for Bush dictatorial powers that violate the separation of powers, the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, and equal protection under the law.
• The Bush administration had planned to invade Iraq even before the election of 2000 and began planning a campaign of deliberate lies and frauds that might be cited as pretexts for the illegal attack and invasion of Iraq.
• The Bush administration deliberately quashed and obstructed in various ways all investigations into the events of 911 even to the extent of destroying physical evidence and sealing records in other instances.
• The recent revelations of murder at Haditha et al are but a part of an emerging pattern of war crimes, atrocities and abuse from Afghanistan to Iraq —in fact, wherever there are U.S. troops under the command of Donald Rumsfeld and his commander-in-chief.

Media silence on these issues is not merely that the media will never utter those propositions as "truth". They will never even be debated! The debate about the investigations of 911, for example, take place on the embattled and endangered internet —not the evening network news programs, PBS, or NPR.

Bush holds still other cards. The Bush administration, for example, eats its own. Bushies are expected to fall on the sword for the naked emperor. Bush has claimed total control over government secrets and, in doing so, fended off Congress and media. As Nat Parry points out, Bush stymied even the investigators in his own administration. It was with Bush's blessing that the NSA killed the investigation into widespread NSA surveillance; it simply refused to grant security clearances to lawyers from the independent Office of Professional Responsibility.

So —yet gain, the Bush administration manages not only to hide the truth about itself but quash the very investigation that might have ferreted it out. Under Bush, no one speaks for the people; no one represents their interests; no one represents them to those who make the plans that violate their rights, their sovereignty, their freedoms. For Bush, the state is absolute and the people exist for the state.

Of the more worrisome trends is an idea sponsored, encouraged and actively promoted by the Bush administration and its supporters in Congress: that the United States is somehow exempt from principles of international law —even those insisted upon by the United States itself. I refer specifically to the Geneva Conventions and the Principles of Nuremberg. I had this debate with an aid to my congressman who tried to tell me that Geneva and Nuremberg infringe upon U.S. sovereignty. That's utter nonsense, of course.

A May 3 Amnesty International report says torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees by U.S. forces is widespread. The AI report states there is clear evidence that much of the physical and psychological abuse stems directly from officially sanctioned procedures and policies including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use in Guantanamo and later exported to Iraq. A now declassified document with Rumsfeld’s signature calls for various forms of harsh interrogation including sleep deprivation, extreme environments (hot or cold), holding prisoners naked and keeping them in painful positions such as squatting with feet and hands shackled to the floor.

The evidence shows that these are not the “aberrant acts of irresponsible or immature individuals but a consistent pattern of abuse that reflects government policy,” said Joshua Rubenstein, Amnesty International USA northeast regional director.

—UN panel condemns U.S. torture

The U.N. panel that recently called for the closure of GITMO is aware of the Bush administration attempt to rewrite law and history, expressing skepticism about U.S. pledges that it would, in effect, stop torturing people illegally. The panel, therefore, called on the U.S. to "cease" the process of "rendition" i.e., the transfer of "suspects" to countries where "...they face the real risk of torture."

I am quite sure that the members of the panel phrased their remarks diplomatically. They are most certainly aware that increasing "...the real risk of torture" is the very purpose of "rendition". But, again, you will not find this issue debated in the MSM.

But the panel is to be commended for bluntly challenging the U.S. position that "...some elements of the anti-torture convention are not applicable in times of war." Challenging the very premises of the Bush regime, the panel wrote that United States should ensure that the principles of the Geneva Convention "...appl[y] at all times, whether in peace, war or armed conflict." This is nothing less than a sweeping, stinging rebuke. It asserts the authority of Geneva not only abroad but over the questionable administration of prisons inside this country. Such an investigation should begin in Texas, Bush's shameful legacy.

In the meantime, however, we have little choice but to slug it out in the trenches, behind the barricades. There is little hope of reward or even eventual victory. I am always buoyed by stories of courage. True courage is often overlooked, unsung, little chronicled. The most profound instances of courage often fail to make the pages of a scholarly history. Fortunately, however, some of them survive to be told again to later generations.

One such story is about Voltaire, who was roused by Catholic atrocities in Toulouse. He literally papered Europe with his pre-internet polemics. Voltaire always spoke truth to power and often paid dearly for having done so. He was the first existentialist. He was once accosted by a gang of young aristocrats envious of the attentions Voltaire received at a fashionable soiree. "Who do you think you are?" they demanded of him. He answered calmly: "I have no name but the name that I have made for myself!" For his wit and for the courage to stand up for what he believed, Voltaire was beaten, condemned and thrown into the Bastille.

No one said this would be easy.

• US Military Investigates Multiple Alleged Massacre Incidents
• Senator Feinstein Warns Against the Bush Administration's Efforts to Vastly Expand Executive Power
• US faces third charge of killing Iraqi civilians
  
• UN panel issued a stinging report of US torture policies
• Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws
• Now We Know How A Dictator Can Game The Presidency
• Evesdropping on America

The Existentialist Cowboy
Iraq
Bush
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The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush's Lawless Administration Must End

Bush's stolen elections of 2000 and again in 2004 make his regime an illegitimate one. That is reason enough to impeach. But his crimes are compounded by Bushco's ongoing war against the rule of law and the American Constitution.

The Bush regime —among the most unpopular in American history —has simply become intolerable. Bush has made of the Presidency a rogue dictatorship exploited for the commission of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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

— Ernesto "Che" Guevara, General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare

That precisely describes the situation. The time has come to organize for the purpose of bringing his lawless administration to an end.

Thomas Jefferson, I believe, wrote something very similar about that other King George and, according to Jefferson, it justified an armed insurrection against the illegal regime.

"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, Declaration of Independence

Just how unpopular is Bush?

The results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 2,085 U.S. adults

...surveyed online by Harris Interactive® between May 9 and 16, 2006.

Specifically, this poll finds:

• President Bush's rating on his handling of events in Iraq is currently 68 percent negative, 29 percent positive. This is virtually identical to March's ratings when, by 68 to 30 percent, U.S. adults gave the President negative marks. This remains the lowest measure for the president.
• In this new poll, 43 percent of U.S. adults think that the situation for U.S. troops is getting worse, down three percentage points from the 46 percent who felt this way in March. Only 20 percent now think things are getting better, a slight improvement from 17 percent in March.
• Six in 10 (61%) U.S. adults are not confident "that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful." This has remained the same from March. Only 22 percent are confident about U.S. policies in Iraq; a slight improvement from March's 20 percent.
• By 47 to 38 percent, a plurality of U.S. adults believes that "taking military action against Iraq" was the wrong thing to do. In March, a nearly identical 48 to 37 percent plurality also felt this way.

The Washington Post has this snapshot from Bush's quagmire and ongoing war crime in Iraq:

Iraq Is the Republic of Fear

Every morning the streets of Baghdad are littered with dozens of bodies, bruised, torn, mutilated, executed only because they are Sunni or because they are Shiite. Power drills are an especially popular torture device.[]

At first, the dominant presence of the U.S. military -- with its towering vehicles rumbling through Baghdad's streets and its soldiers like giants with their vests and helmets and weapons -- seemed overwhelming. The Occupation could be felt at all times. Now in Baghdad, you can go days without seeing American soldiers. Instead, it feels as if Iraqis are occupying Iraq, their masked militiamen blasting through traffic in anonymous security vehicles, shooting into the air, angrily shouting orders on loudspeakers, pointing their Kalashnikovs at passersby.

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. []

One is tempted to believe that Bush's strongest defense is the unimaginable scope of his crimes against man and nature. For quite a long time, the truth about Bush was not believed because it was beyond imagining. Now Bush has the converse working for him. His crimes exceed the ability of mere words to describe. Or as the Emperor Augustus said: words fail me.

I cannot write a complete history Bush's failures in Iraq, but, in the weeks to come, I will certainly try to outline them and provide referencing links. For those still supporting one of the most evil regimes in world history, I can only say: "The truth? You can't handle the truth!"

More developing news about ongoing U.S. atrocities against civilians in Iraq:

Pregnant woman shot dead by US soldiers in Iraq

By unison.ie

05/31/06 "unison.ie"-- -- US soldiers have shot and killed a pregnant Iraqi womanand her cousin while they were driving to a maternity hospital north of Baghdad.

Iraqi police said the two women were travelling to hospital in Samarra when their vehicle came under fire from the Americans.

The US military issued a statement today saying the shots were fired "to disable the vehicle" after it entered a clearly marked prohibited zone near a US observation post.

It said the car failed to stop despite repeated "visual and auditory signals" and the loss of life was "regrettable"...

The Existentialist Cowboy
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The Existentialist Cowboy

The Haditha Massacre: a product of a phony, failed, and immoral war!

The massacre at Haditha is a product of Bush's policy of aggressive war, U.S. sponsored war crimes, and outsourced torture. The massacre at Haditha is but a single tile in a bigger Bush mosaic that includes Fallujah, Abu Ghraib and the gulags of Eastern Europe.

I would put money on this proposition: nations that are losing wars commit atrocities. Logically, the situation can only be worse in wars that are themselves crimes. Like My Lai, an atrocity from the earlier failed war in Viet Nam, the massacre at Haditha has already become the symbol of American imperialism —a disease born of hubris, frustration, and, in this case, the black hearted, evil lies told by Bush to justify and sell the war. Those lies all but guaranteed its failure at the outset.

Not surprisingly, Bush is not worried about the moral implications. Rather, his administration is reported to be anxious about the fallout, the PR, the "damage control". It is the mindset of an utterly failed administration that believes that truth doesn't matter —only perception. Perception, a la principles acted upon by Joseph Goebbels, can be controlled, designed, manipulated by the spin masters, the dispensers of Bush kool-aid.

It won't work.

A de-hypnotized people, inured to Bush rhetoric about "liberating Iraq", are already convinced that Bush's war of aggression in Iraq was and continues to be a disaster, a debacle from which there is no strategy for winning.

Bushco, predictably, has already resorted to the "bad apple" defense. Clue: this only works once, maybe twice. Given the fact that we still don't know the extent of the Abu Ghraib atrocities and war crimes and given the fact that details of "rendition" throughout Eastern Europe is still covered up, it's reasonable to conclude that the atrocities of Bush's so-called "war on terrorism" cannot be dismissed so easily. It would appear that war crimes, murder, and torture are endemic. There is evidence in Bush's State of the Union address, that atrocities are, in fact, Bush policy:

We will export death and destruction to the four corners of the earth ...

—George W. Bush

And, on the occasion of his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush cackled and chuckled:

All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies. (Applause.)

—George W. Bush, 2003 State of the Union Address

Clearly, this is a reference to summary executions —or, if the victim was unlucky —death at the end of a long period of torture. Bush put forward no proof, no evidence whatsoever that any of those persons summarily executed by American armed forces were ever involved in terrorism. Most certainly, none of the people murdered by U.S. Marines were ever, in any way, involved in terrorism against the United States. Certainly, even Bush concedes that Iraq, itself, as a nation, had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of 911.

Then why are we killing people —innocent people —who had nothing to do with 911? There might be more universal outrage if the American media had not made it necessary for bloggers to find the real story in the European media.

The downplaying of U.S. torture as an institutional rather than an exceptional strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan was successful, at least in the public’s mind. The evidence suggests otherwise. It does so as well when it comes to wanton killings, whether it’s the trigger-happy soldiering at Iraqi checkpoints or the killing of civilians in allegedly collateral circumstances. Yet you can see the Haditha massacre’s dowplaying game already in full swing. The Times has the story over two columns above the fold, but to the left of a four-column spread about the Enron verdict. Enron is news. It isn’t bigger news than the massacre of twenty-four Iraqis at the hands of U.S. marines. Not by any stretch of journalistic calibration.

—Pierre Tristam, Mathaba News Network

And then there is this report from Stan Goff writing about Haditha specifically:

These Marines have already been — collectively — slaughtering civilians at an alarming rate, often in ones and twos, but in Fallujah they did so by the bushels, often as they lay abed or cowered in corners trying to hide.

So someone will have to explain to me why, after this mechanical ambush killed one Marine, there was something out of the ordinary enough to be categorized as “rogue” when these de-empathized, militaristic boys from an imperial society, freshly trained to holler “Kill, kill, kill!” leapt out and shot down 24 “hajjis,” male and female, all ages.

—Stan Goff, Massacre at Haditha: Return of the Bad Apple Defense

The Bushco/Rumsfeld Pentagon tried to cover it all up. Representative John Murtha says the cover up may go all the way up the chain of command. We wouldn't have known about Haditha unless, as Goff points out, someone got the pictures. Because of a fluke —the truth about Bush's lies is known. And because the truth is known, Bush is engaged in damage control —not reform.

Murder charges will be filed against the Marines involved. I submit to you that if war crimes charges are not likewise filed against Bush and the gang who ordered this war, then justice will not have been served. Who will organize a world wide movement to bring Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to trial for waging an illegal war, for violating the Principles of Nuremberg, for authorizing the commission of atrocities to include murder, mass murder and torture?

Enough is enough.

From ITV News:

Iraqi Girl Tells of U.S. Attack in Haditha

"A young Iraqi girl has given a shocking first hand account of what witnesses claim amounts to mass murder by US troops in the war-torn country.

Ten-year-old Iman Walid lost seven members of her family in an attack by American marines last November.

If her story is true - and it has been disputed by the US military - human rights workers say it is the worst massacre of civilians by US troops in the country.

Iman tells of screaming soldiers entering her house in the Iraqi town of Haditha spraying bullets in every direction.

Fifteen people in all were killed, including her parents and grandparents. Her account has been corroborated by other eyewitnesses who say it was a revenge attack after a roadside bomb killed a marine....

Initially, the US marines issued a statement saying that a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians, while eight insurgents had been killed in a later gunbattle.

US military officials have since confirmed the 15 civilians were actually shot dead."

Buzzflash often sums up an entire story in a single "second coming" headline. They've done it again. Kudos to Buzzflash:

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists". As a BuzzFlash Reader Noted, "I don't care if Gore doesn't run, just as long as he keeps talking!"

An update and additional reference:

High court limits whistleblower lawsuits

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for government employees to claim they were retaliated against for going public with allegations of official misconduct.

By a 5-4 vote, justices said the nation's 20 million public employees do not have carte blanche free speech rights to disclose government's inner-workings. New Justice Samuel Alito cast the tie-breaking vote.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court's majority, said the First Amendment does not protect "every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job."

The decision came after the case was argued twice this term, once before Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor retired in January, and again after her successor, Alito, joined the bench. []

Paul Craig Roberts: 'The evil is in our government'

Posted on Monday, May 29 @ 10:25:02 EDT

Is the Bush Regime a state sponsor of terrorism?

A powerful case can be made that it is.

In the past three years, the Bush Regime has murdered tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and an unknown number of Afghan ones.

U.S. Marines, our finest and proudest military force, are under criminal investigation for breaking into Iraqi homes and murdering entire families. In an unprecedented event, Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, has found it necessary to fly to Iraq to tell our best-trained troops to stop murdering civilians.

Gen. Hagee found it necessary to tell the U.S. Marines: "We do not employ force just for the sake of employing force. We use lethal force only when justified, proportional, and most importantly, lawful."

The war criminals in the Bush Regime have dismissed the murders as "collateral damage," but they are in fact murders. Otherwise, there would be no criminal investigations, and the Marine commandant would not be burdened with the embarrassment of having to fly to Iraq to lecture U.S. Marines on the lawful use of force.

The criminal Bush Regime has now murdered more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein. The Bush Regime is also responsible for 20,000 U.S. casualties (dead, maimed for life, and wounded).

Bush damns the "axis of evil." But who has the "axis of evil" attacked? Iran has attacked no one. North Korea has attacked no country for more than a half century. Iraq attacked Kuwait a decade and a half ago, apparently after securing permission from the U.S. ambassador.

Isn't the real axis of evil Bush-Blair-Olmert? Bush and Blair have attacked two countries, slaughtering their citizens. Olmert is urging them on to attack a third country – Iran. ...

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'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission
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The Method and the Madness of King George

Recently, with his pet poodle Tony Blair in tow, Bush said he regretted having said "Bring it on!" He called it "tough talk". Is this mere alcoholic's remorse publicly confessed until he can spin and sin again? It is more accurately described as "misdirection". He is publicly contrite to disarm opponents while he spoils for a showdown that will have the effect of consolidating power already claimed for himself.

A raid on congress, for example, is not a "big deal" if you buy Bushco's logic that the executive can routinely raid an independent and equal branch of government. A raid on congress is not a "big deal" —if one buys the Bush/Gonazales re-write of the Fourth Amendment. It is a "big deal", if you don't.

I don't buy the Bush rewrite of both history and Constitution; and I deny that Bush, Gonzales and Hayden have the authority to rewrite the Bill of Rights. The standard is "probable cause" —not "reasonableness". I don't care what Gonzales or Hayden may say to the contrary. They are either wrong or lying or both. There is no excuse for Hayden's not having read the Fourth Amendment and his ignorance of it should have disqualified him from heading the CIA where his pig-headed ignorance will further harm the nation.

What Bush has really done is to throw down the gauntlet. The range of issues taken together makes a sinister mosaic.

• Bush has apparently completed what many of the right wing have desired: an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress' sole authority to wage war:
  

The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.

—James Madison

• Bush has both defended and denied a campaign of wide spread domestic surveillance;
• The Bush administration is most certainly continuing —amid world wide outrage —a policy of outsourced torture —called "rendition" in our Orwellian world. Contrary to administration obfuscation, lies, and spin, this program thumbs its nose at international principles that the United States itself insisted upon at the end of World War II;
  
• And, at last, Presidential "signing statements" —Bush's way of reminding Congress and the nation that it matters little what Congress has done; the law is what Emperor Bush says it is.
  

It all takes on the appearance of a well-organized plan. Bush is spoiling for a judicial showdown —but only because he thinks the fix is in! "Rendition" seems to be the only issue to have surfaced prominently prior to the confirmation of Alito.

My memories of Bush v Gore are too vivid to desire a resolution of this issue in a court that I no longer trust to rule upon the Constitution but upon a Bush/Scalia/Gonazales perversion of it. Certainly, the GOP seems eager to get the recent raid on Congress to SCOTUS.

Too eager!

There is little downside risk for Bush. The worst that could happen is that SCOTUS slaps his limp wrist and tells him to make nice-nice with Congress. On the other hand, Bush is willing to gamble that he will come away with a novel NeoCon friendly interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that only Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft or Michael Hayden could love. There is a reason the right wing wanted to pack the court.

Like Ashcroft, Gonzales favors greater executive branch secrecy. Like Ashcroft, Gonzales favors the centralization of presidential power -- as well as its expansion. Indeed, Gonzales provided the legal arguments used to claim that the president has the power, under the Constitution, to order torture, despite the fact that torture violates the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements the United States has ratified and implemented.

Indeed, Gonzales deemed international law -- which becomes the law of the United States, under our Constitution, when properly ratified by the Senate -- to be "quaint" and outdated when applied to the war on terrorism. To say this, is to say, in effect that the Constitution itself is quaint and outdated.

Unsurprisingly, Gonzales -- like Ashcroft -- has been a strong supporter of the Patriot Act, and the president's recent calls to renew its key provisions which are set to sunset next year. And Gonzales, like Ashcroft, has been a proponent of the administration's policy of detaining any person it labeled an "enemy combatant" without giving them access to the courts to make an effective determination of their status.

According to Gonzales -- and to Ashcroft before him -- even judicial review to determine whether the facts support the "enemy combatant" designation should not occur. Gonzales, like Ashcroft, believes that the president's -- and attorney general's -- kingly power trumps even some of the most prized of American's basic rights, the rights to physical liberty, and to due process of law.

—CNN: Alberto Gonzales, a gentler(?) Ashcroft

The two words —probable cause —seem more precious than ever when they are so ominously threatened. A favorable ruling for Bush could all but consolidate his dictatorship. Just two words —probable cause —now stand between us and tyranny.

There are some interesting comments on this article at the Smirking Chimp.

Bush Administration’s Lies About Iraq: A Compendium
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A Constitutional showdown looms —but not the one we expected

At stake is a system of checks and balances established by the founders in 1787! Will it fall victim to the Bushco train wreck? For the first time in American history, armed federal agents of the executive branch of the government executed a raid on Congress and spent hours "rifling through papers" and removing materials that they alone deemed necessary to an investigation.

This time even Republicans are alarmed. House speaker Dennis Hastert —no friend of the Constitution —denounced the assault on the checks and balances; House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio predicted the issue would be decided by the Supreme Court.

The target of their investigation is Rep. William Jefferson, D-La, himself little defended by either party. The condemnation of the raid, however, comes from both sides of the aisle. Rarely have the GOP so boldly defended the Constitution as when Hastert reportedly told George W. Bush that the raid violated the U.S. Constitution, the separation of powers, and the "Speech and Debate" clause specifically.

"[Senators and Representatives] shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same, and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."

—Speech and Debate Clause

The raid smacks of Oliver Cromwell and his armed troops storming into the long parliament and dismissing them at the end of a long and thunderous harangue: "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing! Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

I will not defend the "target" just because he's a Democrat. If the allegations against him have substance, he must be investigated —but not at the expense of what little remains of the rule of law. The allegations against him must not become the pretext by which the last vestige of Constitutional law is jettisoned on Bush's watch.

I am also slow to applaud Hastert in the role of "good" Republican for denouncing the raid. Hastert himself is so compromised that FOX News made it a point to report that Hastert himself was NOT under investigation. It is a sign of immoral times when headlines trumpet that someone is not facing indictment. Surely, we are living in the end game —when Bush will either consolidate his dictatorial rule or he will fail and be removed precipitously.

Charles Dickens was prescient. Mr. Bumble, in David Copperfield, could very have been describing contemporary life in the United States: “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass —a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience —by experience.”

Congress would be well-advised to begin its impeachment investigation of Bush now —while there is still a Congress. The downside risks are not insignificant. In a showdown —Rumsfeld will take his orders from Bush who would not hesitate to order the arrest and detentions of those members of Congress organizing to impeach and remove.

The harm Bush has done to the Constitution will outlive his administration but the GOP will not have to wait for retribution. A popular firestorm will sweep through Washington like a Kansas tornado through a trailer park. Republicans —Bush fanatics, in particular —have argued that Bush could be trusted with increased executive power. To their everlasting chagrin they have been proven wrong, and many —Hastert among them —are giving evidence that they regret having thrown in with a gang of crooks and usurpers.

The GOP must surely realize that saving Bush will be the end of the American republic —but also the end of the Republican party. Surely the GOP must realize that Bush "ain't" worth it. The alternatives to Congressional action are simply too terrible to contemplate —the end of the Constitution, the end of the republic, the end of the rule of law, the end of the separation of powers, the end of due process of law, the end of the United States.

Some updates: A Register-Guard Editorial asks some tought questions of a Congress that has too often just rolled over for the would-be emperor:

Where, pray tell, was Congress' outrage and determination to defend the Constitution when the Bush administration:

• Assumed unilateral executive authority over any and all questions of war and peace, and brazenly manipulated intelligence reports to justify its prior decision to invade Iraq?

• Declared that the president has the power to ignore federal statutes and international treaties governing the treatment of enemy prisoners?

• Assumed the power to designate American citizens as "enemy combatants" and lock them up without charges or any semblance of due process for the duration of an amorphous "war on terror" that has no end in sight?

• Claimed that the president has the inherent power as commander in chief to order the secret surveillance of the international e-mail and telephone conversations of U.S. citizens - and to obtain their phone re- cords to create vast databanks?

• Issued more than 750 presidential signing statements, far more than any other chief executive in history, reserving the right to interpret new laws on his own terms? Examples include a congressional ban on torture of prisoners, a prohibition on the military keeping illegally gathered intelligence on American citizens, and a requirement that the Justice Department keep Congress informed on how the Patriot Act is being used to search the private homes of citizens.

Bush's Garroting of Democracy

By Robert Parry

May 24, 2006

The Bush administration’s steady garroting of American liberties – already strangling the right to a fair trial and protections against warrantless searches – is now tightening its chokehold around the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press and respect for Congress as a co-equal branch of government.

Over the past weekend, George W. Bush and his Justice Department signaled to the U.S. press corps and Congress that they are not beyond the reach of Bush’s “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief or his authority as “unitary executive,” deciding what laws to enforce and how.

On May 21, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told ABC’s “This Week” that news organizations like the New York Times could be prosecuted for publishing classified information about the “war on terror,” such as the disclosure of Bush’s secret program of warrantless wiretapping inside the United States.

The night before that TV interview, the FBI conducted an extraordinary raid on the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson of Louisiana as part of a bribery investigation, raising bipartisan concerns about the Executive Branch trampling congressional rights and intimidating members of Congress.

“The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in a statement.

“Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night crossing this Separations of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by members of Congress,” Hastert said. [Washington Post, May 23, 2006] ...

Bush orders FBI-Congress documents sealed

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush stepped into the Justice Department's constitutional confrontation with Congress on Thursday and ordered that documents seized in an FBI raid on a congressman's office be sealed for 45 days.

The president directed that no one involved in the investigation have access to the documents under seal and that they remain in the custody of the solicitor general. ...

Hastert lashes out at Justice Dept.

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused the Justice Department Thursday of trying to intimidate him in retaliation for criticizing the
FBI's weekend raid on a congressman's office, escalating a searing battle between the executive and legislative branches of government.

"This is one of the leaks that come out to try to, you know, intimidate people," Hastert said on WGN radio Thursday morning. "We're just not going to be intimidated on it."

Additional resources:

• The Nation: Checks, Balances & an FBI Raid on Congress
  
• Rowan Wolf: A Slow Motion Coup
  
• Robert Parry: Bush's Garroting of Democracy
• Jim Hightower: Inside Donnie Rumsfeld's Orwellian Pentagon

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'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission
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