"The New York Times lead editorial gives false comfort to American citizens by assuring them that they will not be victims of George W. Bush’s new draconian system for prosecuting enemies of the U.S. government in military tribunals outside constitutional protections. 'This law does not apply to American citizens,' the Times editorial stated, 'but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening.' [NYT, Oct. 19, 2006] However, the Times analysis appears to be far too gentle. While it’s true that some parts of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 target non-citizens, other sections clearly apply to U.S. citizens as well, putting citizens inside the same tribunal system with resident aliens and foreigners. 'Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,' according to the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in September and signed by Bush on Oct. 17....Though the new law specifically strips non-U.S. citizens of habeas corpus – the right to a fair trial – American citizens caught up in Bush’s legal system also would be denied the right to challenge their incarceration.   Besides allowing for 'any person' to go into Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside the system from appealing to the traditional American courts until a defendant is fully prosecuted and sentenced, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out. The law states that once a person is detained, 'no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever ... relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.' That court-stripping provision – barring 'any claim or cause of action whatsoever' – would seem to deny American citizens habeas corpus rights just as it does for non-citizens. If a person can’t file a motion with a court, he can’t assert any constitutional rights, including habeas corpus."
Who Is 'Any Person' in Tribunal Law?
Baltimore Chronicle, 19 October 200

Aliens And Citizens The Military Commissions Act is widely understood to apply to 'aliens' only, whether living in the United States or elsewhere. But does the use of the phraseology "Any person" in the section of the Act shown above also allow inclusion of US citizens? If so, a mere allegation of aiding, abetting, counselling, commanding, or procuring a relevant offence could result in indefinite detention without trial for any American. Conversely, however, the Act specifically states elsewhere that persons subject to trial by military commissions are "Any alien unlawful enemy combatant". To legally bring an American citizen within the ambit of this law, it would therefore seem necessary to first strip them of their citizenship - an extreme measure, but one which has nonetheless been under consideration by the Bush administration as previously revealed in a leaked copy of its draft 'Domestic Security Enhancement Act' sometimes referred to as 'Patriot II'.

Eroding Rights One Step At A Time
Waiting For The Right Moment To Introduce 'Patriot II'?

"Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity reveals the leaked text of a new anti-terrorism bill. Called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, it becomes popularly known as the Patriot Act II. The text of the bill is dated January 9, 2003.... Some, including a number of congresspeople, speculate that the government is waiting until a new terrorist act or war fever before formally introducing this bill. [NOW with Bill Moyers, 2/7/2003; Associated Press, 2/10/2003; United Press International, 3/10/2003; Village Voice, 3/26/2003] .... The citizenship of any US citizen can be revoked if they are members of or have supported any group the attorney general designates as terrorist. [St. Petersburg Times, 2/16/2003] A person who gives money to a charity that only later turns out to have some terrorist connection could then lose his or her citizenship. [CNN, 3/6/2003] "
Profile: Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (Patriot Act II)
Cooperative Research

"Our leadership may distrust or despise certain people, but it cannot strip them of their citizenship involuntarily. Murderers, child molesters, and tax evaders are subject to criminal punishment, not denationalization. Yet with the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, informally known as 'Patriot II,' this basic rule is under attack. The draft legislation, the Justice Department's proposed sequel to the 2001 USA Patriot Act, was recently made public after being leaked to the Center for Public Integrity. The bill would go well beyond its predecessor in threatening essential civil liberties. Among Patriot II's most worrying provisions are those affecting citizenship. Section 501 of the bill, deceptively titled 'Expatriation of Terrorists,' would provide for the presumptive denationalization of American citizens who support the activities of any organization that the executive branch has deemed 'terrorist.' While it is already illegal to provide material support to such groups, even for their lawful activities, such support is considered grounds only for criminal prosecution, not for the loss of citizenship. By permitting denationalization based on a person's illegal activities, the Patriot II bill attempts to push the legal rules back toward a time in which Ashcroft and his ilk would feel at home: the McCarthy era....  Patriot II extends to a citizen's support of even the legal activities of an organization that the executive branch has deemed terrorist. In other words, if you help fund an orphanage administered by one of the three Chechen separatist groups that the government has labeled as terrorist, or if you give pharmaceutical supplies to a medical outpost run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or if you are on the wrong side of any of a number of other political conflicts in the world, you are vulnerable to the loss of your citizenship. Considering the almost non-existent due process safeguards of the laws on labeling terrorist organizations, the political uses of the terrorist label, and its inherent malleability is dangerously broad.... If the government is free to incarcerate American supporters of terrorist groups, why would it even want to strip them of their citizenship? One can only speculate.... "
Patriot II's attack on citizenship
CNN, 22 January 2004

Why The Bush Administration Just Might Like To
Take That Kind Of Approach

"In February 2005, attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted of providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy. The charges arose from her representation of Sheik Abdel-Rahman, convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The government wanted her to serve 30 years in prison. But this Monday, October 16, Stewart was sentenced to 28 months. The translator who was her codefendant, Mohamed Yousry, was sentenced to 20 months. Stewart is free on bail, pending her appeal. U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl, of the Southern District of New York, did the right thing. Stewart is sixty-five, and battling cancer and diabetes. As Koeltl noted, she has devoted her career to representing court-appointed criminal clients in the state and federal courts of New York. Moreover, as I will explain below, the government did not show that anyone was harmed by her actions. (In contrast, this has not prevented harsh sentences in other cases--such as those of a set of defendants in the Virginia 'paintball' case.) Upon conviction, Stewart commented, 'I hope [this case] will be a wake-up call to all the citizens of this country and all the people who live here that you can't lock up the lawyers, you can't tell the lawyers how to do the job, you've got to let them operate.' But Stewart was wrong. Her case, the treatment of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, a career Navy JAG lawyer; and a possible pending investigation of a civilian attorney (Clive Stafford Swift) for a Guantanamo Bay prisoner, evidence the government's modus operandi to try to control attorneys for terrorism suspects or convicts and, if it cannot control them, to punish them--perhaps even charging them as terrorists themselves, as occurred with Stewart.... Of course, the MCA [Military Commissions Act] became law on this Tuesday, October 17, when President Bush, with much fanfare, signed the bill in a jubilant White House ceremony. And its broad sweep, in an ugly irony, may force military commissions not only of terrorism suspects, but also of lawyers, as well. The MCA is purportedly limited to 'unlawful combatants,' but the definition is extremely broad. The definition includes those who 'purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents.' Mariner also notes that the MCA, by its language, seems to allow the President or Secretary of Defense unrestricted power to deem literally anyone an unlawful enemy combatant. Recall that 'material support' charges were the charges brought against Lynne Stewart--and there, the 'support' came down simply to bearing messages. With precedents like this, it is not inconceivable that we could see a military commissions proceeding against supposed 'enemy combatant' Clive Stafford Smith, if the government indeed claims he was somehow behind the three Guantanamo detainees' suicides. If this sounds far-fetched, consider that the government deems the three Guantanamo suicides themselves an act of terrorism ('asymmetric warfare'), and that it seems to be trying to establish--through interrogation of Smith's own client--that Smith was behind these supposed terrorist acts. Stewart says her sentence is a victory over an overreaching government. It is victory for her, no doubt, considering that the government wanted what would have been a life sentence. But neither the verdict nor the sentence is a victory for the rest of us. The meta-message in the Stewart verdict and sentence, taken in the context of the government's tendency to frame the most far-fetched set of facts as terrorism and the sweeping powers given the President under the Military Commissions Act, is that people who stand up for their own rights and the rights of others face not open and transparent prosecution in federal court--like Stewart--but arrest, trial, and imprisonment by the President of the United States."
The Bush Administration's Assault on Defense Lawyers
CounterPunch, 19 October 2006

Newspaper Editors Beware

"Aiding the enemy, did 'The New York Times', 'Los Angeles Times', and 'Wall Street Journal' go too far in revealing a secret administration program to examine banking records in terror investigations?"
Did Media Aid, Abet Enemy?
CNN, 25 June 2006

"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. ... The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted."
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
New York Times, 16 December 2006

"For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from. We have been here before - and we have been here before led here - by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush. We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors. American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America."
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC anchorman
Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: 'Your words are lies, Sir.'
MSNBC, 18 October 2006

So Don't Get Merely Accused (Never Mind Convicted)
Of Aiding Or Abetting
Because You May Never Be Seen Again

"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern on Thursday at the United States' tough new anti-terrorism law. The president of Swiss-run humanitarian body, Jakob Kellenberger, said that there were questions over its compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.  The Military Commissions Act of 2006, signed by President Bush on Tuesday, allows for tough CIA interrogation techniques and military trials for terrorism suspects.... It follows a Supreme Court ruling in June that military tribunals set up to try detainees at the US military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -where the ICRC has been carrying out visits - violated US and international law. Under the new law, the definition of 'enemy combatant' is expanded to include those who provide weapons, money and other support to terrorist groups, which human rights groups say casts the net too wide."
ICRC 'concerned' over US anti-terrorism law
Swissinfo, 19 October 2006

"The president Tuesday morning signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which he says is one of the most important laws passed during his administration. Now the law states that the military will be responsible for trying captured terror suspects — the guys in Gitmo. It works this way: A three officer military panel will determine a detainee's status. If the person is deemed to be an 'enemy combatant,' he can be held indefinitely."
President Bush Signs Military Commissions Act Into Law
Fox News, 18 October 2006

"With the final passage through Congress of the detainee treatment bill, President Bush on Friday achieved a signal victory, shoring up with legislation his determined conduct of the campaign against terrorism in the face of challenges from critics and the courts. Rather than reining in the formidable presidential powers Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have asserted since Sept. 11, 2001, the law gives some of those powers a solid statutory foundation. In effect it allows the president to identify enemies, imprison them indefinitely and interrogate them - albeit with a ban on the harshest treatment - beyond the reach of the full court reviews traditionally afforded criminal defendants and ordinary prisoners. Taken as a whole, the law will give the president more power over terrorism suspects than he had before the Supreme Court decision this summer in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that undercut more than four years of White House policy.... The bill, which cleared a final procedural hurdle in the House on Friday and is likely to be signed into law next week by Mr. Bush, does not just allow the president to determine the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions; it also strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to his interpretation. And it broadens the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant' to include not only those who fight the United States but also those who have 'purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.' The latter group could include those accused of providing financial or other indirect support to terrorists, human rights groups say. The designation can be made by any 'competent tribunal' created by the president or secretary of defense."
Detainee Bill Shifts Power to President
New York Times, 30 September 2006

Who Is Undermining American Values
And The US Constitution?

The Quakers?

"The US military has kept a database of unverified reports on US civilians who were deemed possible threats to national security interests, US forces or military installations, a defense spokesman said. The acknowledgement followed the disclosure of the database by NBC News, which said it contained indications that the military has been monitoring anti-war activists and protests. It recorded 1,500 suspicious incidents over a ten month period, including four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, NBC reported. One example cited in the report was a small gathering of activists at a Quaker meeting house in Florida to plan protests of military recruiting in high schools.... The document indicates that information was being gathered about people who attended the meetings and the vehicles they used, a military analyst told NBC. The defense spokesman, who would not be identified by name, would not say whether reports on activists or anti-war incidents were in the database, which is known as the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) reporting system....The database is made up of unverified reports of suspicious activities filed by 'concerned citizens' and Defense Department personnel as well as by law enforcement, intelligence, security and counterintelligence organizations, he said.... He said US law and Defense Department directives allow the military to gather information on civilians or incidents in the United States if a threat to Defense Department property, personnel or national security interests is perceived."
Pentagon Admits Keeping Database on US Civilians Deemed Suspicious
Agence France Presse, 15 December 2005

Or The Bush Administration?

"We have lived as if in a trance. We have lived as people in fear. And now - our rights and our freedoms in peril - we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing....  A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.We have been here before - and we have been here before led here - by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.... Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons. And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting. Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased. Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell. And Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.... 'With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?' Wise words. And ironic ones, Mr. Bush. Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act. You spoke so much more than you know, Sir. Sadly - of course - the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you."
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC anchorman
Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: 'Your words are lies, Sir.'
MSNBC, 18 October 2006

"Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election... A dangerously broad definition of 'illegal enemy combatant' in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.... The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.... Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts."
Rushing Off A Cliff
New York Times, 28 September 2006

"Except for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, few television news reporters have bothered to mention that the Military Commissions Act has changed the U.S. justice system and our approach to human rights. As Olbermann said of the new law on his October 17 Countdown program, the new act 'does away with habeas corpus, the right of suspected terrorists or anybody else to know why they have been imprisoned.' Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Constitutional Law Professor, was Olbermann's guest. Olbermann asked him, 'Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?' Turley responded, 'It does. And it's a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president…People have no idea how significant this is. What, really a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values.' Although we have a free press, rather than follow Olbermann's good example, most television news reporters have responded to this nullification of America's fundamental principles by avoiding the subject. News networks which voluntarily relinquish their right and duty to challenge government officials function more as the Soviet Union's Pravda or Hitler's Nazi press program than as a genuinely free press. Just as the mainstream media failed to adequately question the Bush administration's many shifting rationales for invading Iraq in the lead-up to the war, they're now failing to challenge Bush's logic and motives as he justifies eviscerating the Constitution in the name of his ever-expanding 'war on terror.'"
Bush's Absolute Power Grab
Consortium News, 21 October 2006

Don't Rely On A Clueless Congress For Protection
They Don't Even Know Who They Are Fighting

"A complete collapse in Iraq could provide a haven for Al Qaeda operatives within striking distance of Israel, even Europe. And the nature of the threat from Iran, a potential nuclear power with protégés in the Gulf states, northern Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, is entirely different from that of Al Qaeda. It seems silly to have to argue that officials responsible for counterterrorism should be able to recognize opportunities for pitting these rivals against each other. But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?... At the end of a long interview, I asked Willie Hulon, chief of the bureau’s [FBI] new national security branch, whether he thought that it was important for a man in his position to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. 'Yes, sure, it’s right to know the difference,' he said. 'It’s important to know who your targets are.' That was a big advance over 2005. So next I asked him if he could tell me the difference. He was flummoxed. 'The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following,' he said. 'And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following.'  O.K., I asked, trying to help, what about today? Which one is Iran — Sunni or Shiite? He thought for a second. 'Iran and Hezbollah,' I prompted. 'Which are they?' He took a stab: 'Sunni.' Wrong.... Representative Jo Ann Davis, a Virginia Republican who heads a House intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.’s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information, was similarly dumbfounded when I asked her if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. 'Do I?' she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. 'You know, I should.' She took a stab at it: 'It’s a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia.' Did she know which branch Al Qaeda’s leaders follow? 'Al Qaeda is the one that’s most radical, so I think they’re Sunni,' she replied. 'I may be wrong, but I think that’s right.' Did she think that it was important, I asked, for members of Congress charged with oversight of the intelligence agencies, to know the answer to such questions, so they can cut through officials’ puffery when they came up to the Hill? 'Oh, I think it’s very important,' said Ms. Davis, 'because Al Qaeda’s whole reason for being is based on their beliefs. And you’ve got to understand, and to know your enemy.' It’s not all so grimly humorous. Some agency officials and members of Congress have easily handled my 'gotcha' question. But as I keep asking it around Capitol Hill and the agencies, I get more and more blank stares. Too many officials in charge of the war on terrorism just don’t care to learn much, if anything, about the enemy we’re fighting. And that’s enough to keep anybody up at night."
Jeff Stein, national security editor at Congressional Quarterly
Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?
New York Times, 17 October 2006

In The Land Of The Blind The One Eyed Man Is King
And He Will Decide Who Is An 'Enemy Combatant'

"A few days after terrorists toppled the World Trade Center in 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. would have to 'work ... the dark side' in order to destroy Osama bin Laden's network. Just what the dark side could mean became clearer last month when George Bush suddenly announced that 14 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists had been shipped from mysterious overseas locations to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was the first White House confirmation of a secret CIA-operated network of overseas prisons, places where unorthodox methods of interrogation were not unknown. 'Were it not for this program,' Bush said, referring to the secret prisons and the things done there, 'al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland.' When Congress adopted legislation last week to establish military commissions to try terrorist suspects, it also gave approval to that program and then some. By allowing coerced testimony to be entered as evidence in trials, Congress potentially legitimized torture as a means of obtaining information. It left the President in charge of filling in the details of what the allowable methods should be. The clearest limit to what might be done was actually not so clear. The new methods could not constitute 'grave breaches' of the Geneva Conventions. But after all the huffing and puffing from Republican Senators John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham, the Executive Branch kept control over what exactly could happen to an 'enemy combatant.' It was allowed to decide who an enemy combatant might be. The package of measures widened the definition to include any person determined to be one under criteria defined by the President or the Secretary of Defense. More than that, the measures adopted by Congress last week stripped defendants of the ancient habeas corpus right to challenge their detention in court--a step that makes it possible that the Supreme Court will strike down some portion of the law and send everybody back to the drawing board. 'The Supreme Court has made clear on three recent occasions that those whom the White House labels enemy combatants are entitled to challenge their detention before a federal judge,' says Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who is a legal consultant to Guantánamo detainees. 'This new law was passed in outright defiance of those rulings.' What the legislation is likely to do even sooner is put the CIA's secret-prison program back online. That's right: back online."
Letting the President Say
A new bill lets Bush define who is an enemy combatant and denies detainees habeas corpus
TIME magazine, 1 October 2006

"And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an 'unlawful enemy combatant' — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you? This President now has his blank check. He lied to get it. He lied as he received it. Is there any reason to even hope, he has not lied about how he intends to use it, nor who he intends to use it against?"
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC anchorman
Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: 'Your words are lies, Sir.'
MSNBC, 18 October 2006

Olbermann: 'Why does habeas corpus hate America'

'It Can't Happen Here'
The 20th Century German Experience

Deja Vue

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Pastor Martin Niemoeller
Who was first arrested in 1937 for his vocal opposition to Hitler's Third Reich policies

"Along with the usual reminders to hold the noise down and pay overdue fines, library patrons in Santa Cruz are seeing a new type of sign these days: a warning that records of the books they borrow may wind up in the hands of federal agents. The signs, posted in the 10 county branches last week and on the library's Web site, also inform the reader that the USA Patriot Act 'prohibits library workers from informing you if federal agents have obtained records about you.' 'Questions about this policy,' patrons are told, 'should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. 20530.' Library goers were swift to denounce the act's provisions.... Section 215 of the act allows FBI agents to obtain a warrant from a secret federal court for library or bookstore records of anyone connected to an investigation of international terrorism or spying. Unlike conventional search warrants, there is no need for agents to show that the target is suspected of a crime or possesses evidence of a crime. As the Santa Cruz signs indicate, the law prohibits libraries and bookstores from telling their patrons, or anyone else, that the FBI has sought the records. The provision was virtually unnoticed when the Patriot Act, a major expansion of government search and surveillance authority, was passed by Congress six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."
Libraries post Patriot Act warnings
San Francisco Chronicle, 10 March 2003

"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible 'dirty numbers' linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications. The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches. 'This is really a sea change,' said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. 'It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches.' ... The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted."
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
New York Times, 16 December 2006

"In an interview with The Times George Soros, the billionaire American financier, accused the Bush Administration of deliberately manipulating the aftermath of September 11 to promote an authoritarian right-wing agenda. Mr Soros singled out Mr Ashcroft’s treatment of [alleged 'dirty bomber'] Padilla, an American citizen who is being held indefinitely as an 'enemy combatant' and denied further access to judicial process. 'I feel that what happened was that Ashcroft basically detonated a ‘dirty bomb plot’,' Mr Soros said. 'The plot is his. The detonation is his. The Bush Administration is exploiting the terrorist threat for its purposes, to generate fear and to overcome constitutional constraints on the use of force.' Mr Soros, who grew up in Hungary under the Nazis, said that the public mood in the US made it difficult to defend civil liberties, but that people should remember the lessons of the 1940s."
Padilla 'travelled in central Asia looking for bomb material'
London Times, 14 June 2002

"...  the Bush Administration, on at least two occasions before the new law [Military Commissions Act] was passed, tried to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for U.S. citizens. The men, Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, both were designated as 'enemy combatants' by the White House and held for years in military custody without charges or due process before the U.S. Supreme Court essentially bailed them out."
Habeas Corpus: Working on Commissions
CBS News, 19 October 2006

"Our leadership may distrust or despise certain people, but it cannot strip them of their citizenship involuntarily. Murderers, child molesters, and tax evaders are subject to criminal punishment, not denationalization. Yet with the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, informally known as 'Patriot II,' this basic rule is under attack. The draft legislation, the Justice Department's proposed sequel to the 2001 USA Patriot Act, was recently made public after being leaked to the Center for Public Integrity.... If the government is free to incarcerate American supporters of terrorist groups, why would it even want to strip them of their citizenship? One can only speculate.... It may be, in fact, that Patriot II's citizenship-stripping provision is the Bush Administration's imaginative response to the criticism it has faced for its treatment of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi. Padilla and Hamdi, as you'll recall, are the two American citizens that the government currently holds in incommunicado detention as 'enemy combatants.' Although there are over 600 foreign citizens similarly detained at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, there has been far more public outcry about the detention of Padilla and Hamdi than about all the other detainees combined. The government would no doubt prefer that Padilla and Hamdi had no claim to U.S. citizenship. But to give the government the power to pick and choose among its citizens would reflect an unconstitutional – one might even say un-American – understanding of citizenship."
Patriot II's attack on citizenship
CNN, 22 January 2004

Soros Was Right About Jose Padilla
The American Citizen Who Was Held For More Than Three Years Without Charge
On Claims Of A 'Dirty Bomb' Plot Which Were Trumped Up By The Bush Administration

"Jose Padilla, an American citizen held without charge for more than three years as an enemy combatant, has been indicted in what the federal authorities said today was a plot to 'murder, kidnap and maim' people overseas.... Scott Silliman, a Duke University law professor, who specializes in national security, theorized that the government had secured the indictment against Mr. Padilla so that it could sidestep a Supreme Court showdown over when and for how long American citizens could be held in military prisons. 'That's an issue the administration did not want to face,' Mr. Silliman told The Associated Press.... Although today Mr. Gonzales described Mr. Padilla as a violent jihadist, there was no mention of the earlier 'dirty bomb' accusation, which was never the subject of formal charges. Nor was there a mention in the indictment of any violence that Mr. Padilla had hoped to wreak in the United States. Asked by a reporter today if the 'dirty bomb' accusations against Mr. Padilla were now 'off the table,' Mr. Gonzales declined to comment."
U.S. Indicts Padilla After 3 Years in Pentagon Custody
New York Times, 22 November 2005

"As of yesterday, Mr. Padilla stopped being an unlawful combatant, and the new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, refused even to talk about that issue. Mr. Padilla is not going to be charged with planning to explode bombs, dirty or otherwise, in the United States. Just in time for the administration to prod Congress on extending the Patriot Act and to avoid having to argue the case before the Supreme Court, Mr. Padilla was charged with aiding terrorists in other countries and will be turned over to civilian authorities.  Mr. Padilla was added late in the game, and in a minor role, to a continuing case against four other men. He faces serious charges that carry a possible life sentence, but they do nothing to clear up the enormous legal questions created by this case, nor do they have the remotest connection with the original accusations. The Padilla case was supposed to be an example of why the administration needs to suspend prisoners' rights when it comes to the war on terror. It turned out to be the opposite. If Mr. Padilla was seriously planning a 'dirty bomb' attack, he can never be held accountable for it in court because the illegal conditions under which he has been held will make it impossible to do that. If he was only an inept fellow traveler in the terrorist community, he is excellent proof that the government is fallible and needs the normal checks of the judicial system. And, of course, if he is innocent, he was the victim of a terrible injustice."
Um, About That Dirty Bomb?
New York Times, 23 November 2005

Promoting Fear And Lies In Order To Launch Wars

"Having been captured and put on trial by the Allies after the end of World War II, Goering was found guilty of war crimes and was sentenced to death by hanging at the Nuremberg Trials. Hours before his execution, Goering committed suicide by ingesting smuggled cyanide capsules. During the trial, Gustave Gilbert, a psychologist who published his conversations with the prisoners in the book Nuremberg Diary, interviewed Goering. The following is an excerpt from a conversation Gilbert had with Goering in his cell on the evening of April 18, 1946. Goering: 'Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.' Gilbert : 'There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.' Goering: 'Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.'... Regardless of your position on the war, there is no denying this basic fact: America is not under attack, and certainly not by Iraq. Yet the Bush administration has been doing its utmost since 9/11 to fan the fires of fear among Americans in an effort to convince us that we are being attacked, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding."
Protest the protest of the protest
Boulder Weekly, 3 April 2003

"... on 1 September, Hitler had unleashed his massed tanks, planes and infantry on Germany's weaker neighbour Poland.  It was the move that finally sparked World War II - one of the largest conflicts in human history... German troops tore across the border, using faked Polish attacks on the German radio transmitter at Gleiwitz as their excuse for invasion...."
Hitler's war
BBC Online, 2 September 1999

"A memorandum came to the CIA's notice (from the Italians, according to Time Magazine) which appeared to document the sale or proposed sale of uranium by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. Such a sale would have suggested that Iraq was seeking to build a nuclear bomb since it had no civilian nuclear programme...  In March this year the head of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei told the UN that 'these documents are in fact not authentic.' The documents were faxes apparently exchanged between Iraq and Niger - but it turned out, for example, that they carried the alleged signatures of people not in the Niger Government at the time. Why they were not found to be forgeries earlier is not known."
The Niger Link
BBC Online, 15 July 2003

"The great mass of people ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one."
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), German dictator
Mein Kampf, vol. 1, ch. 10 (1925).

"Not since 'Mein Kampf' has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow. Adolf Hitler clearly spelled out his plans to destroy the Jews and launch wars of conquest to secure German domination of world affairs in his 1925 book, long before he ever assumed power. Despite the zigzags of rhetoric he later employed, the various PR spins and temporary justifications offered for this or that particular policy, any attentive reader of his vile regurgitation could have divined his intentions as he drove his country -- and the world -- to murderous upheaval. Similarly -- in method, if not entirely in substance -- the Bush Regime's foreign policy is also being carried out according to a strict blueprint written years ago, then renewed a few months before the Regime was installed in power by the judicial coup of December 2000. The first version, mentioned in passing here last week, was drafted by a team operating under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. It set out a new doctrine for U.S. power in the 21st century, an aggressive, unilateral approach that would secure American domination of world affairs -- 'by force if necessary,' as one of the acolytes put it. When the Dominators were temporarily ousted from government after 1992, they continued their strategic planning with funding from the military-energy-security apparatus and right-wing foundations. This culminated in a new group, the aptly-named Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Members included hard-right players like Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad (now 'special envoy' to the satrapy of Afghanistan) and other empire aspirants currently perched in the upper reaches of government power. In September 2000, PNAC updated the original Cheney plan in a published report, 'Strengthening America's Defenses.'  In this and related documents, the earlier precepts were reiterated and refined. The plans called for unprecedented hikes in military spending, the plantation of American bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, the toppling of recalcitrant regimes, the militarization of outer space, the abrogation of international treaties, the willingness to use nuclear weapons and control of the world's energy resources. And the present course of action was clearly set forth: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.' But Iraq is just a stepping stone. Iran is next -- indeed, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the PNAC team say that Iran is 'perhaps a far greater threat' to U.S. oil hegemony."
Dark Passage
Moscow Times, 20 September 2002

"In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. The president's spokesperson warns people to 'watch what they say'. Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed. The so-called Patriot Act - along with a host of similar measures on the state level - gives police sweeping new powers of search and seizure, supervised, if at all, by secret proceedings before secret courts. In our name, the executive has steadily usurped the roles and functions of the other branches of government. ... There is a deadly trajectory to the events of the past months that must be seen for what it is and resisted. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist. President Bush has declared: 'You're either with us or against us.' Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say not in our name. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our solidarity in word and deed. We who sign this statement call on all Americans to join together to rise to this challenge. We applaud and support the questioning and protest now going on, even as we recognise the need for much, much more to actually stop this juggernaut."
Prominent Americans have issued this statement on the war on terror
Guardian, 14 June 2002

"There's a disturbing irony in a U.S. administration that claims it intends to establish democracy in Iraq - yet all the while systematically dismantling democracy at home. Access to information about government actions, the ability to share that information with other citizens and the right to protest government policies are all fundamental to a representative democracy. Open government and open records are not popular concepts with the Bush administration. Yet they are essential to a citizenry that wishes to participate in helping the government select a wise direction in both domestic and foreign policies. Attorney General John Ashcroft, with the blessing of the Bush administration, has stifled the flow of information and its sharing - in the name of national security. Crucial government Web sites have been shut down. Access to presidential records has been dramatically limited. Freedom of Information Act requests for government documents have been denied or the documents heavily blacked out. The president and the attorney general have both refused to give proper congressional committees the information they have requested. These House and Senate committees are supposed to exercise oversight in regard to the Department of Justice. President George W. Bush has forced peaceful protesters into so-called Free Speech Zones - out of sight and hearing of the president - as he passes by in his motorcade. Only those cheering citizens who support Bush and his policies are allowed curbside to be seen by the president..... In a recent interview, now retired General Tommy Franks, who led the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, told the men's lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado that if the United States were hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicted large casualties, the Constitution would probably be discarded in favor of a form of military government. Such a statement from a former four-star general may be meant to prepare the American people for the end of their constitutional form of government, the end of democracy. Because Franks said it, however, doesn't mean it will happen. The Constitution has survived more than 200 years of wars and serious threats to the nation. Franks's statement may be a scare tactic or a political trial balloon to see how the American public reacts. In either case, the general's comment reveals his own doubts about the inner strength and will of the American people - to uphold the rule of law and to trust the document that has made their nation great, the U.S. Constitution."
Dismantling US Democracy
International Herald Tribune, 23 December 2003

"The US president, George Bush, last night signed an executive order that allows either a past or sitting president to block access to White House papers, a move that has angered historians, journalists and former president Bill Clinton. The order amends - and some argue, reverses - a 1978 law that allowed journalists, historians and other interested parties to read presidential papers twelve years after the term of office finished. The law, known as the Presidential Records Act, was the result of a lengthy legal battle over the papers of Watergate president Richard Nixon. Under the terms of Mr Bush's order, any sitting or former president could veto the release of presidential papers. The current president could not override a former president's veto, nor could a former president override the decision of sitting president....The immediate provocation for last night's order is believed to be an outstanding request for 68,000 pages of former president Ronald Reagan's papers, which should have been opened to public scrutiny in January. The Bush administration has delayed that release three times, and yesterday White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would not say when or if the Reagan documents will be placed in the public domain. Some historians have voiced suspicions that the Bush administration is worried about what the Reagan papers might reveal about officials now working for Mr Bush.... the order would also mean that Mr Bush's personal papers detailing the decision-making process in the current war on terrorism could remain secret in perpetuity."
Bush blocks public access to White House papers
Guardian, 2 November 2001

"This is like being at a Nazi rally.”
Karle Rove, President Bush's political strategist,
as he watches the crowd erupt to Bush making the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game in
the New York Yankees stadium October 2001
'The Inside story of US cabinet at war'
London Times, 23 November 2002

How The Banking Arm Of The Bush Family Aided Nazi Germany's War Effort

Germany's Own 9/11Type Incident Took Place In March 1933 More Than Six Years Before The Start Of World War II
Which Followed The Third Reich's Occupation Of Austria And Czechoslovakia
Today What Will Follow America's Occupation Of Afghanistan And Iraq
Which Flowed From 'The New Pearl Harbor' Incident Of  11 September 2001?

"Berlin was thrown into great excitement last night by two fires - the one at the Reichstag building (the German Parliament) and the other at the former Imperial Palace.... It is believed (says an Exchange Berlin telegram) that the fire was due to arson, as it commenced at five or six different points simultaneously. A man was arrested in the building . He was found clad only in his trousers..... The wildest rumours were circulating in Berlin last night, adds Reuter. One was to the effect that secret orders had been issued to the Nazi Storm Troopers to create a Bartholomew night on Saturday, when all political opponents of renown were to be 'disposed of.' Although the police asserted the Communists are responsible, some people think that the fire might have bee started by irresponsible Nazis with the object of provoking trouble..... The fires were extinguished at 10.45 p.m.  A Reuter telegram says that the fire was started by heaps of documents which were set alight in six different places. The police assert that Communists are responsible, and apart from the man who was arrested there were several other people in the building, although the Reichstag is not in session. The police, 'suspecting the conflagration to be the first of a series of Communist acts of terrorism,' have arrested a number of Communist leaders 'in order to forestall any attempt to cover up tracks.' The man who was discovered in the Reichstag building and arrested is stated to be a Dutchman named Van der Luebbe, aged 24. He is said to have confessed that he started the fire, but denied that he was acting as anyone's agent.... Herr Hitler, Herr Göring, Herr von Papen, and other prominent persons including Prince August Wilhelm, entered the building whilst it was still burning, and Herr Goring, President of the Reichstag and 'Commissarial' Minister for the Interior in Prussia, took command of the police and issued orders to keep the crowds at a distance.'"
Big fire at Reichstag
Guardian, 28 March 1933

"Our country [USA] has been experiencing consequences that are the direct result of two branches of government acting as one. With the Supreme Court as the final arbiter, I fear that the state of the union is in peril. Being in an undeclared war against an ideology (terrorism) without any definable success cannot be won and justification is not believable. The cost in human suffering has been intentionally obscured from view.  It is audacious to state that we have to give up our liberties to be secure. To explain, making laws that circumvent the Constitution as a measure to preserve liberty is a false representation of the role of government. It is an attempt to permanently gain control of the people.  The Weimar Republic, a constitutional democracy in Germany, ended with a power grab in 1933. Immediately following a fire set by the Nazis which burned the German Legislature building, the Reichstag, a decree was issued that suspended their constitution under the guise of being under the siege of communists."
Time for a profound change in course
Minnesotan Daily, 23 October 2006

"The same issues that were placed before the German people in 1933 are now before us, and our grandchildren may one day implore us to explain our silence in the face of a vicious tyranny. It will do you no good to plead the statist’s claim that the current totalitarian structures and unilateral war against the entire world were occasioned by events of September 11th. Just as Adolf Hitler was able to convert the burning of the Reichstag into the raison d’etre for his military campaigns and domestic police-state, George Bush has been exploiting the World Trade Center attacks to advance a political agenda that goes far beyond the brutalities of early September..... There is scarcely a pip being squeaked anywhere in the major media over any of this.... Our experience with Nazi holocaust films may cause us to shake our heads in disbelief over such revelations [in Germany] – after all, Nazism has come to symbolize as heinous a form of tyranny as we can imagine. But how different is our mindset from that of the Germans who, in 1933, watched as their police state was rapidly put into place and who, fifteen years later, could not imagine that anything untoward had taken place? "
When Didn’t They Know It, and What About You?
Butler Shaffer, Southwestern University School of Law, 13 June 2002

"With demands for a full-scale investigation of the manipulation of intelligence by the administration of Pres. George W. Bush mounting steadily, it appears increasingly clear that key officials and their allies outside the administration intended to use the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as a pretext for going to war against Iraq within hours of the attacks themselves. Within the administration, the principals appear to have included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, and his national security adviser, I. Lewis Libby, among others in key posts in the National Security Council and the State Department. Outside the administration, key figures included close friends of both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, including Richard Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey -- both members of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB); Frank Gaffney, head of the arms-industry-funded Center for Security Policy; and William Kristol, editor of Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), among others... A close examination of the public record indicates that all of these individuals -- both in and outside the administration -- were actively preparing the ground within days, even hours, after the 9/11 attacks, for an eventual attack on Iraq, whether or not it had any role in the attacks or any connection to al Qaeda. The challenge, in their view, was to persuade the public that such links either did indeed exist or were sufficiently likely to exist that a preventive strike against Iraq was warranted. Their success in that respect was stunning, although, in order to pull it off, they also had to distort and exaggerate the evidence being collected by U.S. intelligence agencies. Cheney, according to published accounts, had already confided to friends even before Sep. 11 that he hoped the Bush administration would remove Hussein from power. But the evidence about Rumsfeld is even more dramatic. According to an account by veteran CBS newsman David Martin last September, Rumsfeld was 'telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks' five hours after an American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon. Martin attributed his account in part to notes that had been taken at the time by a Rumsfeld aide. They quote the defense chief asking for the 'best info fast' to 'judge whether good enough to hit SH (Saddam Hussein) at the same time, not only UBL (Usama bin Laden). The administration should 'go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not', the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying. Wolfowitz shared those views, according to an account of the meeting Sep. 15-16 of the administration's war council at Camp David provided by the Washington Post's Bill Woodward and Dan Balz. In the 'I-was-there' style for which Woodward, whose access to powerful officials since his investigative role in the Watergate scandal almost 30 years ago is unmatched, is famous: 'Wolfowitz argued (at the meeting) that the real source of all the trouble and terrorism was probably Hussein. The terrorist attacks of Sept 11 created an opportunity to strike. Now, Rumsfeld asked again: 'Is this the time to attack Iraq?' "
Key Officials Used 9/11 As Pretext for Iraq War
Inter Press Service, 16 July 2003

"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.' ... the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement."
This war on terrorism is bogus
Guardian, 6 September 2003

Today
On The Brink Of World War?

"... comparisons between the US war in Iraq and the quagmire of the Vietnam War are frequently made by critics of President Bush's foreign policy. But now the most famous whistleblower of the Vietnam era, former State and Defence Department official, Daniel Ellsberg, is speaking out, calling on Bush Administration officials to do what he did with the Pentagon papers more than 30 years ago and leak secret documents and war plans to the public. Ellsberg claims President Johnson lied to take America to war in Vietnam. He accuses President Bush of lying to take America to war with Iraq and he believes secret groundwork is being laid for a war with Iran."
Tony Jones speaks with Daniel Ellsberg
ABC (Australia), 12 October 2006

"USS Boxer (LHD 4), the flagship for the Boxer Expeditionary Strike Group (BOXESG), uploaded its defensive weapons Sept. 27-28 to prepare for its arrival into the Arabian Gulf in support of the global war on terrorism. The two-day evolution involved several divisions and many Sailors working together to ensure the weapons upload was completed safely... Boxer has been preparing for the weapons upload for two months by completing required maintenance and electronic pre-checks. Checks ensure that the ship’s missile and launching systems are up to standard and safe to load with live ordnance....BOXESG is comprised of USS Boxer (LHD 4), USS Bunker Hill (CG 52), USS Dubuque (LPD 8), USS Comstock (LSD 45), USS Benfold (DDG 65) and USS Howard (DDG 83). The strike group also includes Amphibious Squadron 5, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Coast Guard Cutter Midgett (WHEC 726) and Canadian Frigate HMCS Ottawa (FFH 341). BOXESG is currently conducting operations in support of the global war on terrorism while transiting to the Arabian Gulf."
Boxer arms for Gulf
USS Boxer public affairs, 3 October 2006

"Elsewhere, the Bush-Cheney White House and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon have ordered a broadening of US military operations in the Middle East. Led by the Nimitz class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Eisenhower, a strike force bristling with Tomahawk missiles is headed to the Persian Gulf to take up a position to launch an aerial 'shock and awe' campaign against Iran. The Prepare To Deploy Orders (PTDO) issued to the USS Eisenhower led Time magazine to call public attention to American moves in apparent preparation for imminent war with Iran. The USS Eisenhower is scheduled to arrive in the Persian Gulf on the 21st of October, just slightly over two weeks before the ominous midterm elections on the 7th of November."
With a Little Help from Republicrats - World War W
Counterpunch, 11 October 2006

"Tuesday, Oct. 17, the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group steamed into the Persian Gulf to join the US naval, air and marine concentration piling up opposite Iran’s shores. It consists of the amphibious transport dock USS Nashville, the guided-missile destroyers USS Cole and USS Bulkeley, the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea, the attack submarine USS Albuquerque, and the dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island. The Iwo Jima group is now cruising 60 km from Kuwait off Iran’s coast. As DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported exclusively two weeks ago, three US naval task forces will be in place opposite Iran in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea by October 21. The other two are the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and the USS Enterprise Strike Group."
The American Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group joins US build-up opposite Iran
Debka, 23 October 2006

"Iran has criticised planned US military exercises in the Gulf as provocative. Iran's official news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as describing the military manoeuvres as dangerous and suspicious. Reports say the US is to hold naval exercises at the end of October with Bahrain, Kuwait, France and Britain."
Iran condemns US Gulf exercises
BBC Online, 24 October 2006

"The repercussions of a US attack on Iran could well be dire--especially for Israel and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There have been reports in the international media of tens of thousands of suicide bombers awaiting the order from Iran to launch themselves against targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, America, the United Kingdom and other allied targets--if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld give the orders to launch 'pre-emptive' war against Iran. Some of the world's leading military experts now believe that a unilateral US strike against Iran could broaden America's wars in the Middle East to engulf the oil-rich regions of Central Asia. Kazakhstan and Russia are now in possession of massive reserves of untapped oil. The enlargement of NATO that began in the 1990s has led to a new system of counter-balancing alliances in Central Asia involving Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgztan in a new organization called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Recently, CSTO conducted joint military exercises at the same time that Iran staged the largest war games in her history. These collateral military operations between CSTO and Iran were stage-setting defensive manoeuvres in advance of the anticipated American attack against Iran so stridently threatened by the Bush-Cheney White House and their minions led by Condoleezza Rice in Foggy Bottom and Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon."
With a Little Help from Republicrats - World War W
Counterpunch, 11 October 2006

Leaf Out Of An Old German Book
How To Create Enemies
And Jeopardise National Security

Germany Handed Eastern Europe To The Soviet Union
To Whom Is Bush Handing The Middle East?

"It is no small thing to find oneself on the wrong side of an argument when the debate is about the biggest disaster in British foreign policy since Suez; no small thing to have handed Iran a final, undreamt-of victory in an Iran-Iraq war that we thought had ended in the 1980s....They didn’t think it would end like this. But it has: more killed than even Saddam could boast, and nothing to show for it but an exhausted British Army and the global energising of violent Islamism on a scale of which Osama bin Laden never dreamt...."
Time for the neocons to admit that the Iraq war was wrong from the start
London Times, 21 October 2006

"A complete collapse in Iraq could provide a haven for Al Qaeda operatives within striking distance of Israel, even Europe. And the nature of the threat from Iran, a potential nuclear power with protégés in the Gulf states, northern Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, is entirely different from that of Al Qaeda. "
Jeff Stein, national security editor at Congressional Quarterly
Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?
New York Times, 17 October 2006

"In effect, Bush and bin Laden share a common goal in Iraq. They both want U.S. forces to 'stay the course.' Recently disclosed internal al-Qaeda communiqués make clear that bin Laden’s terrorist band is counting on a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq to build its movement. In a letter, dated Dec. 11, 2005, a senior al-Qaeda operative known as 'Atiyah' lectured the then-leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the necessity of taking a long view and building ties with elements of the Sunni-led Iraqi insurgency who have little in common with al-Qaeda except hatred of the Americans. Atiyah told Zarqawi that 'the most important thing is that the jihad continues with steadfastness and firm rooting, and that it grows in terms of supporters, strength, clarity of justification, and visible proof each day. Indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest.' [Emphasis added.] The 'Atiyah letter' – like a previously intercepted message attributed to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri – suggests that a U.S. military pullout in 2005 or earlier would have been disastrous for al-Qaeda’s militants in Iraq, which are estimated at only about 5 to 10 percent of the anti-U.S. fighters. Without the U.S. military presence to serve as a rallying cry and a unifying force, the al-Qaeda contingent faced disintegration from desertions and attacks from Iraqi insurgents who resented the wanton bloodshed committed by Zarqawi’s non-Iraqi terrorists. The 'Zawahiri letter,' which was dated July 9, 2005, said a rapid American military withdrawal could have caused the foreign jihadists, who had flocked to Iraq to battle the Americans, to simply give up the fight and go home. 'The mujahaddin must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal,' said the 'Zawahiri letter,' according to a text released by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. The 'Atiyah letter,' which was discovered by U.S. authorities at the time of Zarqawi’s death on June 7, 2006, and was translated by the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, also stressed the vulnerability of al-Qaeda’s position in Iraq and the need to buy time.... So, by extending the U.S. occupation of Iraq – rather than looking for an early exit – Bush has played into al-Qaeda’s hands. Indeed, looking back over Bush’s almost six years in office, his actions – or some might say his blunders – have repeatedly benefited bin Laden’s strategies. Not only did Bush fail to react to U.S. intelligence warnings about the 9/11 attacks, he then failed to finish off bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders in the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. Then, with al-Qaeda needing a respite, Bush shifted American focus to attack the secular government of Iraq, one of al-Qaeda’s regional enemies. That bought time for al-Qaeda to regroup, recover and reorganize. But the biggest boon for al-Qaeda was Bush’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which served as a major recruiting tool for Islamic radicals. The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, written in April 2006, confirmed this fact, calling the Iraq War the 'cause celebre' that spread militancy throughout the Muslim world."
Giving Osama What He Really Wants
Consortium News, 21 October 2006

Just How Bad Is It Really In Iraq?

"The Iraqi Government sacked 3,000 police officers for human rights abuses, corruption and complicity with militias yesterday. The drastic action came only a fortnight after the authorities laid off an entire police brigade for aiding death squads. Washington is increasingly looking to the Iraqi Government to take more responsibility for the country’s security. Yet its writ barely extends beyond the blast walls of the green zone in central Baghdad, let alone on to the streets of the capital. In the US-protected fortress, Iraq’s Government huddles, riven by sectarian splits and cut off from its terrified people. Inside their bubble ministers live in comparatively luxurious compounds, each sectarian bloc divided from the next by barricades. They are hard to reach by telephone. Some spend more time outside the country than in it. After just four months in office, the administration of Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister, has become a virtual Government-in-exile in its own country. Even the cautious optimism of Western diplomats who never set foot outside a highsecurity compound is being tested. 'I don’t pretend there is effective Government all over Iraq. Is that a result of the security situation or low capacity inside the ministers? Well, a bit of both — but quite a lot of the latter,' one told The Times. The chaos and bunker politics have led to increasingly extreme scenarios for Iraq’s future being floated. A Sunni leader, Saleh Mutlaq, has toured the Middle East promoting the idea of a five-man junta to replace the Government with martial law — effectively a call to return to the old days of repression which has fed into rumours of an impending coup. Insurgent groups have declared a breakaway Islamic state in central Iraq. Mr al- Maliki responded to the crisis by calling a reconciliation conference — and then cancelling it for 'emergency reasons'. At a checkpoint outside the Green Zone, graffiti reads 'Long live General Moqtada', referring to the anticoalition Shia cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, whose al-Mahdi Army militia — accused of running death squads — is the real force on many of Baghdad’s streets. A three-month security crackdown in the capital involving 60,000 US and Iraqi troops, failed to quell the violence. As part of the Government’s much-revised security plan, every police checkpoint is supposed to have Sunni and Shia officers on duty, as much to watch each other as to look out for terrorists. The civil war crippling the capital is spilling into surrounding areas. US and Iraqi forces have fought open battles with al-Mahdi Army in the Shia town of Diwaniyah, while a weekend of sectarian revenge killings left 91 people dead to the north in Balad. Balad is in an area declared part of a six-province Islamic state, or Caliphate, centred around Baghdad, according to a statement by the Mujahidin Consultative Council, a group of Sunni militant organisations that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. The gloom among ordinary Iraqis, who feel dispossessed by a parliament that responds to each massacre with mutual recrimination, has deepened. Mr al-Maliki constantly vows to disband militias but is himself guarded by them, and criticised a US Army raid on al-Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City in July. Hojatoleslam al-Sadr has 32 deputies in the Government, and could pull out — smashing the façade of a political process — if his militia is singled out. As a result, the US military censors any mention of al- Mahdi Army when talking to the media, insisting that it is only going after individual death squads."
3,000 police are sacked as rulers remain cut off and impotent
London Times, 18 October 2006

"There are no good options left in Iraq. To those who have lived through the daily carnage wrought by organized criminals, sectarian militias and jihadist terrorists, the idea that the U.S. can prevent a full-scale civil war--let alone transform Iraq into a stable democracy--has been dead for months. The main question is, How long will it take for military officials in Iraq and policymakers in Washington to concede that the whole enterprise is closer to failure than success? Midway through what is already one of the deadliest months this year, the U.S. military's spokesman in Baghdad, Major General William B. Caldwell IV, last week called the persistence of sectarian violence in Baghdad 'disheartening' and acknowledged that the three-month-old U.S. campaign to take back the city has gone nowhere.... Foreign policy hands in both parties are hoping that the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic Representative from Indiana, will provide the White House with the political cover to abandon its now quixotic goals of creating democracy in Iraq in favor of a more limited focus on establishing enough stability to allow U.S. troops to leave without catastrophic consequences. 'You can't sugarcoat that. The Iraq situation's not winnable in any meaningful sense of the word. What the U.S. needs to do now is look for a way to limit the losses and the costs,' Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Administration's foreign policy team, said last week. The question, Haass added, is 'how poorly it's going to end up.'"
5 Ways To Prevent Iraq From Getting Even Worse
TIME, 22 October 2006

In The End What Did 'Mein Kampf' And 'The Project For The New American Century'
Achieve For All The 'Patriots' In Their Respective Countries?

"Five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the U.S. public has become increasingly anxious about world events and the role that their country is playing in them, according to the latest 'Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy' survey released here Wednesday by a non-partisan group, Public Agenda, and Foreign Affairs journal. The survey found a substantial increase in the percentage of respondents that gave the administration failing grades on most of some two dozen foreign policy issues, compared to the January poll and a previous one conducted in June, 2005. The survey, which was overseen by legendary pollster Daniel Yankelovich, found a substantial rise in concern about how the U.S. is perceived in the world and particularly in predominantly Muslim countries, compared to the last survey, which was conducted in January. Nearly 90 percent of respondents said they considered it a threat to U.S. national security when 'the rest of the world sees the United States' in a negative light."
Poll of US Public Finds Growing Anxiety About World Affairs
Inter Press Service, 19 October 2006

"Over the past two years, America and the global community have been bombarded with reports of the White House and Pentagon's detailed military planning to wage war against Iran. With the time clock ticking, and Bush's presidency on the wane, the window of opportunity to launch the next phase of the Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) schemes of global conquest to deliver ongoing US control of world oil reserves is swiftly drawing to its close. George W. Bush's presidency is deeply unpopular in America, and it is disastrously unpopular throughout the rest of the world. Faced with the probability that Bush will lose power through the midterm elections, the Republicans have been grasping at straws in pursuit of their neoconservative vision of a muscular and aggressive America on a permanent war footing in hot pursuit of the dreams of full-blooded military glory of PNAC. These Republican neoconservatives have a fifth column of support inside the Democratic Party.... The repercussions of a US attack on Iran could well be dire--especially for Israel and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There have been reports in the international media of tens of thousands of suicide bombers awaiting the order from Iran to launch themselves against targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, America, the United Kingdom and other allied targets--if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld give the orders to launch 'pre-emptive' war against Iran. Some of the world's leading military experts now believe that a unilateral US strike against Iran could broaden America's wars in the Middle East to engulf the oil-rich regions of Central Asia. Kazakhstan and Russia are now in possession of massive reserves of untapped oil. The enlargement of NATO that began in the 1990s has led to a new system of counter-balancing alliances in Central Asia involving Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgztan in a new organization called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Recently, CSTO conducted joint military exercises at the same time that Iran staged the largest war games in her history. These collateral military operations between CSTO and Iran were stage-setting defensive manoeuvres in advance of the anticipated American attack against Iran so stridently threatened by the Bush-Cheney White House and their minions led by Condoleezza Rice in Foggy Bottom and Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon."
With a Little Help from Republicrats - World War W
Counterpunch, 11 October 2006

"Mullah Muhammad Amin, a former official in the Taleban Government before it was overthrown by the US-led coalition in 2001, told Sky News that the Taleban had been inspired by extremists in Iraq and now wanted to export terror to the West. He said that they had large stockpiles of weapons and that fighters hiding in Pakistan were being helped by people sympathetic to their cause."
Taleban 'will target Britain'
London Times, 24 October 2006

"Across the globe many of the West’s hopes for a better world lie in smouldering heaps. The optimism that we felt when freedom swept across eastern Europe is now a distant memory. ... America’s role since the Soviet collapse as the world’s single superpower has brought it unforeseen difficulties. Its supremacy has bred resentment and defiance among both its enemies and friends... since the end of the cold war Washington has not matched its monopoly of power with either humility or wisdom. Its foreign policy failures have been humbling. Intending to show that it could project power anywhere in the world, it has instead demonstrated the severe limitations of its military and diplomatic reach... after that first Gulf war [in 1991] the Americans left a garrison in Saudi Arabia, which Osama Bin Laden used as his main pretext to attack the United States.... America’s intrusion on Muslim soil redoubles the strength of its enemy, and the US has shown that all its impressive weaponry cannot defeat fanatical insurgents.....Afghanistan is as big a problem as Iraq, although for different reasons.....The North Atlantic alliance, which for decades intimidated the Soviet Union, has fallen apart as a result of Iraq. Anti-Americanism in France and pacifism in Germany have rendered the alliance almost useless. Nato’s secretary-general has resorted to appealing through the media to those governments that make little contribution to fighting Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan... Six decades after the defeat of the Nazis, Germany still uses its fear of militarism as a reason to play only a token role in the alliance."
Michael Portilo, former UK Conservative Defence Minister
The world looks a darker and more dangerous place
Sunday Times, 15 October 2006

The Bankrupt Path Of Failure
It's Time For Some Serious Lateral Thinking

"There obviously was a serious strategic failure in Iraq after the original military victory. On this point General Dannatt’s critique is almost universally accepted. Tony Blair shares responsibility for that failure, but the three men who have the greatest share of responsibility are President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence. The President gave the post-war responsibility for the reconstruction of Iraq to the Pentagon under Mr Rumsfeld rather than the State Department under Colin Powell. He preferred the unqualified and, in this respect, the incompetent department. Mr Cheney backed that disastrous choice. Mr Rumsfeld failed on the job. It is not reasonable to ask the British people to accept whatever new strategy for Iraq is chosen by these men. Those of us who believe in the Anglo-American alliance, and have always believed in it, must take this point. Just as General Dannatt has cautioned that the Army could be broken in Iraq, so we must face the danger that the alliance could be broken. The Bush Administration has treated the US-UK alliance with supercilious negligence, if not with outright arrogance. As a result, the United States is more unpopular in Britain than at any time in my life."
The three guilty men who ha