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Capital Crimes: Another Smoking Gun on Terror War Torture
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 10 April 2008 |
From ABC:
In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.... Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding. The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic... At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney Former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of State Colin Powell CIA Director George Tenet Attorney General John Ashcroft. |
This is not just a smoking gun — it's a MOAB dropped right on the White House, confirming, yet again, what any sentient being should already know: the illegal torture tactics (yes, they are torture; and yes, they are illegal, no matter what "the Attorney General says") used on George W. Bush's Terror War captives were approved by the highest officials of the government, all of whom knew — in exacting, sickening detail — just what they were inflicting.
These cold-blooded atrocities were not restricted to "high value al Qaeda suspects" — the demure fiction that the ABC report, like most others in the mainstream media that have begun, gingerly, to delve into these crimes, still retains. As mountains of evidence has already shown, these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used throughout the Terror War prison system, from top to bottom:
On prisoners rounded up at random in mass raids in Iraq and Afghanistan
On innocent people sold into captivity by bounty hunters
On innocent people snatched off the streets in Asia, Africa, Europe.
They've been used on "low-level prisoners" in Bagram
Diego Garcia
Guantanamo Bay
Abu Ghraib
In the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, South Carolina
And all the other "secret prisons" and holding pens of the Terror War regime.
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All of the atrocities and murders that have thus far come to light from the hellish pit of the Bush gulag are the direct responsibility of the "Principals," the inner circle, the Privy Council, the Star Chamber of the real American government: the "National Security State" that operates outside all law, all oversight, all constitutional legitimacy.
Yet even as the media digs out the workings of this junta, they feel compelled to offer what they believe is a fig leaf that will allow all good and decent folk to retain their sacred faith in American exceptionalism:
"Hey, we're not evil; we only torture the really bad guys, the worst of the worst, the high value al Qaeda scum.
"Torture's too good for the likes of them!"
And the sad fact is, the media mandarins are right.
American society has become so degenerate
American society has become so degenerate that the majority of people — and the entirety of the American Establishment — will now countenance torture, as long as they can convince themselves it is used only against "the bad guys."
At one time, the leaders of this nation condemned and punished the torture even of proven Nazis, on the principle that we must uphold our own humanity, and not descend to the brutish level of the most degraded among us.
But no more.
We are the degraded now.
Ruled by brutes
By deliberate torturers
Military aggressors
Mass murderers who walk the streets freely
Live in wealth and comfort
Receive public honors
Will never face justice
Never have to answer for their crimes against humanity.
If this were not so, these evil counsellors and their leader would already be subjected to the workings of the law:
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Impeachment proceedings
Criminal investigations
Arrest
Trial.
The fact that they are not is yet another crime — a crime in which the entire political establishment is deeply complicit.
We'll say it again.
Anyone in public life who accords these criminals the slightest legitimacy is an accomplice to their crimes.
It's really that simple.
You can move toward the light
Or you can hang back with the brutes |
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Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures What CNN never shows you |
US militarismUS Terror StateUS War Crimes
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Published on Thursday, July 28, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Source Beyond Rove — Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandalby Roger Morris
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
It was September 2002, and then-National Security Advisor, now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was fastening on CNN perhaps the most memorable and frightening single link in the Bush regime’s chain of lies propagandizing the war on Iraq.
Behind her carefully planted one-liner with its grim imagery was the whole larger hoax about Saddam Hussein possessing or about to acquire weapons of mass destruction, a deception as blatant and inflammatory as claims of the Iraqi dictator’s ties to Al Qaeda.
Rice’s demagogic scare tactic was also very much part of the tangled history of alleged Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger:
The fabrication leading to ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s now famous exposé of the fraud.
The administration’s immediate retaliatory “outing” of Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.
And now the revelation that the President’s supreme political strategist Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby were involved in that potentially criminal leak—altogether the most serious political crisis Bush has faced.
Pivotal role
In fact, though her pivotal role has been missed entirely—or deliberately ignored—in both the media feeding frenzy and the rising political clamor, now-Secretary of State Rice was also deeply embroiled in the Niger uranium-Plame scandal, arguably as much as or more so than either Rove or Libby.
For those who know the invariably central role of the NSC Advisor in sensitive political subjects in foreign policy and in White House leaks to the media as well as tending of policy, especially in George W. Bush’s rigidly disciplined, relentlessly political regime, Rice by both commission and omission was integral in perpetrating the original fraud of Niger, and then inevitably in the vengeful betrayal of Plame’s identity.
None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution could have gone on without her knowledge and approval, and thus complicity.
Little of it could have happened without her participation, if not as a leaker herself, at least with her direction and with her scripting.
"God's never failed me yet"
One summer weekend in 1998 at the family estate at Kennebunkport, Me., former president George H. W. Bush introduced his ambitious son George W. to a 43-year-old political science professor, Condoleezza Rice.
One of the rare African-American women in the field of Soviet studies, she was rarer still for her archly conservative views.
She had interrupted a teaching career at Stanford to work from 1989 until 1991 on the elder Bush's National Security Council staff as a specialist on Russian and East European affairs, and remained a vocal Bush loyalist.
George W. Bush was planning on running for the White House and was woefully uninformed about world politics.
At Kennebunkport, the politician and academic hit it off right away, and Rice was entrusted with a vital task: "to instruct and protect G.W. at his most vulnerable," as a friend put it.
How the woman who became his National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State has fulfilled that trust has had fateful consequences for the United States, other nations, and not least for George W. Bush.
Since the end of the Second World War, the National Security Adviser's staff domain has varied between a dozen and nearly 100, but its function has remained strikingly the same:
To be the presidency's eyes, ears, and brain, devoted like no other institution in Washington to protecting and serving the Chief Executive, the National Security Adviser's constituency of one.
Rice, who worked for Brent Scowcroft, a cautious NSC adviser under the elder president Bush, defined her role early in 2001 as "stitching the connections together tightly."
The gravity of the NSC Adviser's role demands an extraordinary combination of intellect and substantive knowledge, with shrewd understanding of both the world and Washington — a capacity that previous office-holders have had to varying degrees, from Henry Kissinger's 'mastery of power' on down.
Although usually relatively hidden from public view in her sensitive role as the president's advisor without peer, the Nigerien uranium scandal and case for war mounted by Rice illustrates vividly that she was a full party to the now notorious intelligence claims about Iraqi weaponry and ties to terrorists.
Prey to the same impulse of the uninformed men around her, she repeated to the 9/11 commission, in one of her rare under oath testimonies before Congress, the regime's cant about terrorism in general — insisting "they attacked us for who we are, for no other reason" ignoring a half century of history of American foreign policy and musing with stunning hubris that victory in Iraq will "inspire hope and encourage reform throughout the greater Middle East."
However history records Bush's policy and Rice's counsel of war, to all appearances Rice has succeeded at the one task required for advancement in the current Bush regime — maintaining by her fierce loyalty the patronage of the President.
And in line with an administration that joins eagles claw to religious cloak, Rice looks to the same sense of divine guidance that fortifies her patron. "When I'm concerned about something, I figure out a plan of action, and then I give it to God. I just ask to be carried through it," she said in a 2002 interview with Essence magazine. "God's never failed me yet." It is an opinion, of course, that history will not share. *
The evidence of Rice’s complicity is increasingly damning as it gathers over a six-year twisting chronology of the Nigerien uranium-Wilson-Plame affair, particularly when set beside what we also know very well about the inside operations of the NSC and Rice’s unique closeness to Bush, her tight grip on her staff, and the power and reach that went with it all.
What follows isn’t simple.
These machinations in government never are, especially in foreign policy.
But follow the bouncing ball of Rice’s deceptions, folly, fraud and culpability.
Slowly, relentlessly, despite the evidence, the hoax of the Iraq-Niger uranium emerges as a central thread in the fabricated justification for war, and thus in the President’s, Rice’s, and the regime’s inseparable credibility.
The discrediting of Wilson, in which the outing his CIA wife is irresistible, becomes as imperative for Rice as for Rove and Libby, Bush and Cheney.
And when that moment comes, she has the unique authority, and is in a position, to do the deed.
Motive, means, opportunity—in the classic terms of prosecution, Rice had them all. *
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1995: Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel, in charge of Iraq’s strategic weaponry, defects to the West.
He tells CIA debriefers that at his command after the Gulf War, “All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed.”
His claim is supported by continuing reports of UN inspectors and US intelligence, including sophisticated imagery analysis by both the CIA and Pentagon.
1999: The first rumors begin to circulate in Europe that the Iraqis may be trying to buy “yellow cake” weapons grade uranium from Niger, a poor West African country that earns more than half its export income from the strategic ore.
Since Iraq is known to have used only amply available Iraqi uranium in nuclear research until its disbanding in 1991, and because Niger’s yellow cake is produced solely at two mines owned by a French consortium and the entire output strictly controlled and committed to sale to France, European intelligence agencies and UN officials soon discount the story—though the rumors persist along with other alarming allegations by Iraqi exile groups long working to incite the US Government to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
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Meanwhile, American embassies and CIA stations in Europe routinely report the rumors in repeated, widely circulated cable traffic to Washington over the summer and fall of 1999.
Among the recipients is the nuclear non-proliferation section of the Clinton Presidency’s NSC staff, whose files on Iraq, a “red flag” country, are turned over to Rice and her staff when she assumes office eighteen months later
January 2001: Parties unknown burgle the Nigerien embassy in Rome. Stolen from the torn-up offices are various valuables along with stationery and official seals, which the Italian police warn might be used to forge documents.
February 24, 2001: “Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capacity with respect to weapons of mass destruction,” says Secretary of State Colin Powell. “He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”
July 29, 2001: “We are able to keep his [Saddam’s] arms from him,” NSC advisor Rice tells the media. “His military forces have not been rebuilt.”
August 2001: An African informant reportedly hands Italian intelligence what are purported to be official Nigerien documents of “great importance.”
Among them are letters apparently dealing with Niger’s sale of uranium to Iraq, including an alleged transaction in 2000 for some 500 tons of uranium oxide, telltale in a weapons program.
The Italians routinely pass the letters on through NATO channels to the US, where by the fall of 2001 both State Department and Department of Energy nuclear intelligence analysts doubt the genuineness of the documents, and duly report their findings to Rice’s NSC staff.
January 2002: In cables cleared by both Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rice, the first high-level reference to the subject after 9/11, Washington asks the US ambassador to Niger to uncover any possible Iraqi purchases of uranium.
After talks with senior Nigerien officials and French executives in the uranium mining operations, along with a still wider investigation by the embassy, including the CIA, the ambassador reports back that there is no evidence of such dealings, and no reason to suspect them.
February 2002: Vice President Cheney hears “about the possibility of Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Niger,” according to what his chief of staff Libby later tells Time.
In his daily intelligence briefing by the CIA, as Libby relates, Cheney asks about “the implication of the [Niger] report.”
CIA briefing officers tell Cheney and Libby of the documents passed on months before by the Italians, including the State and Energy Department judgment that the papers are probable forgeries.
A few days later, with the routine concurrence of Rice and her staff, Cheney through Libby asks the CIA to look into the matter further.
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The Agency has no ready experts in Niger suitable to assign the Vice President’s requested inquiry.
After routinely canvassing the relevant offices and relatively brief discussion, they seize on the suggestion of one of their operatives working on nuclear proliferation issues, a mid-level CIA veteran named Valerie Plame who has worked abroad and in Washington under ”NOC” –non-official cover in private business in contact with several foreign sources.
Her pertinent if personal recommendation for the assignment is her husband, then-fifty-three year-old Joseph Wilson IV, a retired Foreign Service Officer who has served briefly as Charge d’Affairs in Baghdad in 1990 and then from 1992-1993 as US Ambassador to Gabon, a seasoned diplomat with experience in both Iraq and West Africa, and even some specialization in African strategic minerals.
February 19, 2002: A meeting at the CIA discusses sending Wilson to Niger.
Attending is an analyst from the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research who says the trip is unnecessary, since the US embassy in Niger and European intelligence agencies have already disproved the story of an Iraqi purchase — and whose notes of the meeting, including the facts of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity as an NOC operative on WMD and her role in recommending her husband, will be the basis for later crucial memos in the scandal.
Despite State Department objection, the CIA decides to go ahead with the Wilson mission to satisfy the Vice President’s request, and the former ambassador is “invited out [to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia] to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject,” as he will remember it.
Wilson is introduced to the gathering by his wife, who then leaves the room.
In late February, with the concurrence of CIA Director George Tenet as well as Rice and Powell, Wilson flies to Niger.
February 24, 2002: Meanwhile, to further emphasize the importance of the issue and with Washington’s concurrence, the US Ambassador in Niger has invited to the capital of Niamey Marine four-star General Carlton Fulford, Jr., deputy commander of the US-European Command, which is responsible for military relations with sub-Saharan West Africa.
Fulford meets with Niger’s president and other senior officials on the 24th, and afterward confirms the Ambassador’s earlier findings, as he later tells the Washington Post, that there is no evidence of the sale of yellow cake to Iraq, and that Niger’s uranium supply is “secure.”
The General’s report duly goes up through the chain of his command to the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon and on to Rice at the NSC, Powell at State, the CIA, the Energy Department and other interested agencies.
March 5, 2002: Having met with several Nigerien officials and sources over a ten-day visit and debriefed at length the US Embassy staff and Ambassador (who promptly cables a report on to Powell and Rice), Wilson returns from Niger and gives CIA officers, as they request, an oral report which is the basis for a CIA-written memo on his trip then forwarded to Rice and Powell, and for a further CIA debriefing for Cheney in response to his original request.
Republicans will later dispute about how categorical or emphatic Wilson’s report and its derivatives actually are at this point.
He refers to "an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary" for Iraq who had approached Niger about sales of ore, though adds that Niger “ignored the request.”
But the essence of his conclusion is, once again, that there is no evidence of Iraq procuring uranium from Niger.
In de facto acceptance of this finding, the several Washington agencies involved in the issue, including Rice and her NSC staff, make no other effort — beyond the US embassy investigation, General Fulford’s trip, and the Wilson mission — to investigate the matter further in Niger or anywhere else.
May-June 2002: With the Iraq-Niger uranium issue apparently laid to rest, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld establishes in the Pentagon, with the full knowledge of Rice, a new Office of Special Plans, under the direction of Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and cabal of neo-conservatives the Bush regime has assembled at the upper civilian reaches of the Defense Department.
Believing the CIA, FBI and other agencies in myriad negative reports, including the Wilson mission, have simply “failed” to find existing evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s ties to al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz direct “Special Plans” to gather and interpret its own “intelligence” on Iraq.
Meanwhile Rice takes over coordination of efforts to stymie ongoing arms inspections of Iraq by the United Nations.
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June 26, 2002: In a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior British officials at Ten Downing Street, Sir Richard Dearlove, “C,” head of MI6 British intelligence, reports on what he found during recent Washington conversations at the highest levels of the CIA, White House and other US official quarters.
“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,” as a summary records his words.
“But intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
July 2002: Concerned at the potential opposition to the war, and to coordinate policy and media relations for the coming attack on Iraq, a special White House Iraq Group (WHIG) is set up, chaired by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and composed of Rice, Rove, Libby, Rice’s deputy Stephen Hadley, and media strategists Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush aide, Mary Matalin and others.
The WHIG is to plan and control carefully all high-level leaks and public statements on Iraq and related issues.
“Everything, I mean everything, was run through them and came out of them,” a ranking official will say of the group.
“It was understood, of course, that Condi or Hadley would clear everything from a policy point of view, Rove and Libby would do the politics, and the rest would handle the spin.”
August 26, 2002: “Now we know,” Vice President Cheney tells the VFW convention, “Saddam Hussein has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.” Rice routinely clears this speech.
September 2002: Several months earlier, the US and UN embargo of Iraq has seized a shipment of high strength aluminum tubes, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the US State and Energy Departments duly identify as designed solely for launch tubes for conventional artillery rockets.
Despite those expert findings, Rice now claims publicly that the tubes are “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.”
Apparently reflecting the original rumors of the Iraq-Niger deal and the subsequent dubious documents handed the Italians thirteen months before (copies of which have reportedly been given to MI6 British intelligence by an Italian journalist), a British Government White Paper on Iraq released in September mentions that Baghdad “had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Pressed on the issue by the CIA (on the basis of its now-several reports debunking the story) to drop that statement as inaccurate, the British claim they have sources for the assertion “aside from the discredited [Nigerien] letters,” but never identify them.
Rice is fully briefed on all these exchanges.
(Eventually, British intelligence officials will admit the 2002 White Paper statement on uranium from Africa was “unfounded.”
Meanwhile, however, much of official Washington is aware of the CIA-MI6 squabble over the Niger uranium and questionable letters.
“The Brits,” a Congressional intelligence committee staffer will later tell the New Yorker’s Sy Hersh in discussing the issue, “…placed more stock in them than we did.”)
It’s also that September, in answer to a question in a CNN interview about what evidence the White House has of Iraqi nuclear weapons, that Rice makes her infamous quip, a line first authored by Mary Matalin — “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
September 26, 2002: In closed-hearing testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (with a transcript closely reviewed by Rice), Powell refers to “reports” of an Iraqi purchase of Nigerien uranium as “further proof” of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
October 2002: Seizing on the British White Paper, despite the documented disagreement of the CIA as well as the State and Energy Departments, the Office of Special Plans inserts in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, apparently one of the few documents Bush reads in this sequence, a reference to the British report of an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction.
Though the NIE at CIA insistence notes “different interpretations of the significance of the Niger documents,” and that the State Department judges them “highly dubious,” the reference to Nigerien uranium is listed among other reasons to conclude that Iraq poses a danger to American national security.
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“Facing clear evidence of peril,” Bush says in a speech in Cincinnati that October, “we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Behind the scenes, an earlier draft of the October speech has also contained a reference to an Iraqi purchase of 500 tons of uranium from Niger, the now-revived claim from the discredited documents of fifteen months before.
CIA Director Tenet urges that the White House take out that reference, and though the Pentagon’s Special Plans office is pushing for inclusion of the reference, Rice’s deputy (and eventual successor) Stephen Hadley, after two memoranda and a phone call from Tenet, finally agrees to drop the passage.
Rice is fully briefed on all this.
December 19, 2002: As preparations are hurried for the attack on Iraq, a State Department “Fact Sheet,” cleared by Rice, asks ominously, “Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?”
The assumption of the Niger-Iraq uranium connection now begins to appear regularly in the President’s Daily Brief, the CIA intelligence briefing which is now also drafted under the influence of the Office of Special Plans.
January 23, 2003: In a New York Times op-ed entitled “Why We Know Iraq is Lying,” Rice refers prominently to “Iraq’s efforts to get uranium from abroad.”
January 28, 2003: "The British government,” Bush says in his State of the Union litany on the dangers of Iraq, “has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Rice and her staff, of course, have as always laboriously worked and reworked the national security passages of the speech.
In readying the address, Rice’s NSC Staff assistant for nonproliferation, Robert Joseph, asks Alan Foley, a ranking CIA expert on the subject, about the “uranium from Africa” passage, which obviously refers to the old Niger issue.
Foley says the CIA doubts the Niger letters and connection, has disputed the British White Paper (as Rice and Joseph well know), and recommends that the NSC strike the reference.
In typical bureaucratic fashion, however, Foley also says it would be “technically accurate” to say that the British had in fact issued such a report on Iraq, however mistaken.
With the approval of Rice and her deputy Hadley, the passage stays, becoming a major piece of “evidence” in the case for war.
February 5, 2003: In his now infamous presentation to the United Nations, a factor in silencing many potential dissenters in Congress, Powell pointedly omits any reference to the Nigerien uranium. The story “had not stood the test of time,” he says later.
That February, too, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as part of his own propaganda for war, issues a Ten Downing Street paper called “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,” which includes a reference to the Nigerien uranium.
Thought to be drawn from authoritative MI6 intelligence, the paper is soon widely ridiculed, eleven of its sixteen pages found to be copied verbatim from an old Israeli magazine. |
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March 7, 2003: In response to a request four months before, the State Department finally hands over to the IAEA copies of the Niger letters, which UN experts promptly dismiss as “not authentic” and “blatant forgeries.”
“These documents are so bad,” a senior IAEA official tells the press, “that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.”
A former high-level intelligence official tells The New Yorker, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there. It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.”
March 8, 2003: In reply to questions about the forgery, a State Department spokesman says the US Government “fell for it.” "It was the information that we had. We provided it,” Powell will say lamely on “Meet the Press". “If that information is inaccurate, fine."
March 17, 2003: Bush, in a statement cleared by Rice, repeats that ”Iraq continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
March 19, 2003: Bush orders the invasion of Iraq.
March 21, 2003: Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D. WVa) writes FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for an investigation of the Niger letters.
"There is a possibility,” Rockefeller says, “that the fabrication of these [Niger] documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."
May 6, 2003: In an anonymous interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Ambassador Wilson — identified none too subtly as “a former US Ambassador to [sic] Africa” — says about the failure to find WMDs in Iraq: “It’s disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this [that Saddam had no nuclear program or weapons] for a year.”
June 10, 2003: Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman asks the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) for a briefing on the Niger uranium issue, and specifically the State Department’s opposition to the continuing White House view that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake.
The resulting memo is dated the same day, and drawn from notes on the February 19 meeting at the CIA on the Wilson mission and other sources.
Befitting the sensitivity of the information, the memo is classified “Top Secret,” and contains in one paragraph, separately marked ‘(S/NF)” for “Secret/No dissemination to foreign governments or intelligence agencies, ” two sentences describing in passing Valerie “Wilson’s” identity as a CIA operative and her role in the inception of the Wilson trip to Niger.
This June 10 memo reportedly does not use her maiden name Plame.
June 12, 2003: The Washington Post reports that an unnamed “former US ambassador” was sent to Niger to look into the uranium issue and found no evidence of any Iraqi purchase.
At the State Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage asks INR to prepare a memorandum on the background of what the Post is reporting, and INR sends to Armitage that same day a copy of the June 10 memo to Grossman.
The memo is also sent to Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security (and future UN Ambassador-designate) John Bolton.
July 6, 2003: Outraged by continuing references to the Nigerien uranium, Wilson breaks his anonymity with a sensational New York Times op-ed disclosing his mission to Niger sixteen months before, and the fact that he found no evidence of an Iraqi purchase of ore."Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war," Wilson writes, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
He tells "Meet the Press," "Either the administration has information that it has not shared with the public or ... they were using the selective use of facts and intelligence to bolster a decision that had already been made to go to war."
Later in the day, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage calls INR Assistant Secretary Carl W. Ford at home, and asks him to send a briefing memo to Powell about the Niger uranium issue.
Ford simply pulls out the previous June 10 memo with its reference to Wilson’s wife (her name now corrected from Wilson to Plame), addresses it to Powell, and forwards the memo to Rice to be passed on to Powell, who is due to leave the next day with the Presidential party on a trip to Africa.
Meanwhile, the WHIG is also moving that Sunday to deal aggressively with the Wilson op-ed.
They will no longer focus on the too obviously fraudulent claim of an Iraqi purchase of yellow cake — White House orthodoxy before the invasion — but will instead discount the issue, discredit Wilson, and shift blame for the now-embarrassing State of the Union reference.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer is to try to downplay and dismiss Wilson’s article on-the-record at the next day’s press briefing, while Rice and others begin to make off-the-record calls to the media to do the same.
While pursuing their own contacts among right-wing reporters and columnists, Rove and Libby are also to work with CIA Director George Tenet in a statement by Tenet taking responsibility for any inaccuracy in the State of the Union passage.
July 7, 2003: Under a barrage of questions at a 9:30 am press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says of the Wilson claims, “There is zero, nada, nothing new here,’ adding that "Wilson's own report [shows] that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales."
(A reference to the “Algerian-Nigerien intermediary” in Wilson’s debriefings… "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the President alleged?" Wilson later that day replies to Fleischer. "These guys really need to get serious.")
But as the briefing wears on, Fleischer’s defense grows “murkier,” as the New York Times reports, and he seems to “concede” that the State of the Union reference to Niger uranium “might have been flawed.”
That evening, with the White House scrambling to defend itself against Wilson’s resonating charges, Bush leaves for a trip to Africa, accompanied by Rice and Powell.
Before the party flies out of Andrews, Rice is in several meetings with Rove, Libby and other senior aides of the WHIG.
The scene now shifts to the plush but still relatively close quarters of Air Force One, the specially configured 747 where the accompanying media are boarded through a rear door and funneled directly to their mid-level section closed off from the forward official compartment, and where Administration VIPs like Rice and Powell are in conference rooms and adjoining lounge chairs in closer and easier proximity and informality than in any other official venue.
It is in this setting, soon after takeoff, as the New York Times will report two years later, that Powell is seen walking around carrying the INR June 12/July6 memo detailing Wilson’s mission and Plame’s identity and role in the “(S/NF)” paragraph.
Powell discusses the memo with Rice and other presidential aides on board, including press secretary Ari Fleischer. Witnesses later see Fleischer “perusing” the memo.
There are reports, too, of several calls between the plane and the White House discussing the Wilson affair.
En route over the Atlantic, Rice and Fleischer both call contacts at the Washington Post and New York Times “to make it clear,” the Times will report, “that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush’s statement about the uranium — the first such official concession on the sensitive issue of the intelligence that led to the war.”
It is in these hours of late July 7 and early July 8 that Rove, Libby and other officials get word of Plame’s identity from Air Force One.
Rove and Libby will hear of Plame in the drafting with Tenet of his mea culpa, but officials on the plane reading the INR memo cannot know or be sure of this, and the memo’s passages on Wilson, including his wife, are now relayed back to Washington.
Reporters later speculate that Powell might have called either Rove or Libby with such information, but as one concludes aptly, “That was above his pay grade.”
The President himself might have read the memo and called the two aides.
But given Bush’s style and grasp, that, too, is implausible, though he may well have been informed of the calls and given his approval.
The only official on board Air Force One with the knowledge and authority — motive, means and opportunity — to instruct Rove and Libby in their leaks and so betray Plame was Condoleezza Rice. |
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| July 7-8, 2003: Right-wing Columnist Robert Novak is called by thus far unidentified senior officials leaking to him that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame (they use her maiden name), is a CIA operative who instigated her husband’s trip to Niger. “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me,” Novak tells Newsweek of the leak. “They thought it was significant. They gave me the name and I used it.” July 9, 2003: Rove discusses the Wilson imbroglio, including the role of Wilson’s CIA wife, with columnist Robert Novak, who identifies her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. July 11, 2003: Peppered by questions about Wilson’s charges, Bush in a press conference in Uganda says, “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services.” That evening, aboard Air Force One flying over East Africa, Rice speaks at length with the media about the “clearances” of the President’s speech. “Now I can tell you,” she says, “if the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, ‘Take this out of the speech,’ it would have gone without question.” She says nothing about the actual maneuvering behind the now-troublesome passage, the Joseph-Foley exchange, the controversial British memorandum US intelligence has disputed, the shadowy history of the yellow cake fraud. July 11, 2003: Back in Washington, working to discredit Wilson, Rove leaks to Time’s Matthew Cooper that “Wilson’s wife” is, in fact, in the CIA “working on WMD” and has been behind his mission to Niger. Rove “implied strongly,” Cooper later emails his editor, “there’s still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium from Niger.” After that conversation, in evidence of the central role of Rice and her staff in the betrayal of Plame’s identity to discredit Wilson, Rove emails Rice’s NSC deputy Hadley that he has “waved Cooper off” Wilson’s claim, and that he (Rove) “didn’t take the bait” when Cooper offered that Wilson’s revelations had damaged the Administration. Hadley immediately relays this message to Rice in Africa. That same day, after extensive deliberations with Rove and Libby, CIA Director Tenet makes a public statement that the Nigerien uranium allegation should never have appeared in the Bush 2003 State of the Union. "This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches,” he confesses, “and CIA should have ensured that it was removed," July 12, 2003: When asked by Cooper about Plame being CIA, Libby confirms the story to the Time reporter. That same day, in a talk with the Washington Post’s Walt Pincus, an unidentified “senior administration official” brings up Plame’s CIA identity, in what is now a widely authorized leak approved by Rice as well as Rove. July 14, 2003: Columnist Robert Novak, attributing the story to “two senior administration officials” — neither of which is Rove or Libby — identifies Plame as a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction” who was behind her husband’s mission to Niger. July 20, 2003: “Senior White House sources” call NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell to say, “the real story here is not the 16 words [Bush’s reference to Niger uranium in the State of the Union]… but Wilson and his wife.” July 21, 2003: On MSNBC, host Chris Mathews tells Wilson, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, ‘Wilson’s wife is fair game.’” July 30, 2003: Alarmed about the impact of the betrayal of Plame’s identity on current and future agents and sources abroad, the CIA asks the Justice Department to investigate the leak, which leads to the naming of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a Special Prosecutor. September 2003: An unidentified “White House official” tells the Washington Post that “at least six reporters” had been told about Plame before Novak’s column appeared. The disclosures, the source says, were “purely and simply out of revenge.” This chronology will no doubt continue to expand in the days and weeks ahead. There may well be a ticking time-bomb in the Grand Jury investigation of the Plame leak that goes beyond anything we now envision. In earlier findings in cases of reporters refusing to testify, DC Circuit Judge, David Tatel, a distinguished jurist known for his devotion to civil liberties and especially press freedoms, had stoutly maintained a federal privilege for the media, shielding it from being compelled to testify except under the most exceptional conditions. But then later joining his colleagues in ordering Cooper and the New York Times’ Judith Miller to testify, Tatel reviewed extensive secret information from the prosecutor, devoted eight blacked-out pages of his judgment to the material, and concluded that the privilege he had upheld throughout his career as a lawyer and judge had to give way before "the gravity of the suspected crime." No other element of the scandal bodes so ill for the Bush regime. |
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There is also the intriguing relationship between John Bolton, the regime’s stymied appointee to the UN, and Judith Miller, the New York Times correspondent sent to jail for contempt in refusing to divulge her sources on Plame even for a story she never wrote. Bolton’s close relationship to Miller, in which many suspect the right-wing lobbyist handed the reporter much of the fraudulent accounts of Iraqi weaponry that ended up on the front page of the Times, may well have encompassed as well the passing of information from the INR memo on Plame, which Bolton saw before Powell or even Rice. Then, too, as the Progressive Review’s Sam Smith and Counterpunch’s Alexander Cockburn have pointed out from their lonely perch of substance and perspective atop what’s left of American journalism, there is, in the end, much less to the whole story than meets the eye. In their too obvious relish of celebrity, Wilson and Plame as heroes are as dubious as the Niger letters. The CIA, and the Presidents who used it as a private mafia, account for a more than half-century history far more catastrophic than a legion of seedy Roves and Libbys or even multiple Bush regimes. Relentlessly corrupt, inept, anachronistic, if ever an institution deserved to be “outed” and prosecuted in its numbers, it is our vastly bloodstained intelligence agency. But as it is so often in politics, we are left with the lesser, still needed reckoning at hand. © 2005 The Green Institute
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June 1, 2007 47 Years Later in Havana
By SAUL LANDAU
Return to Cuba I landed at Jose Marti International airport in May of 1960, 17 months after a young, bearded man and his fellow barbudos had captured control of the island and sent a hated dictator fleeing. Musicians played a lively tune as the passengers deplaned, a young woman pushed a rum-flavored drink into my hand and I spotted a young, uniformed man with lieutenant's bars on his shoulders. I gave him the note that Raulito Roa (of the Cuban UN delegation) had given me in New York, saying I was a young progressive writer and to provide me with help in understanding the revolution. |
Bola de Nieve performing at Hotel Nacional where Meyer Lansky ran Mafia operations until January 1959
Richard's velocity of speech outpaced my meager comprehension of Spanish, but I did understand that "the revolution had opened the prisms of hope in the eyes of the Cuban people," and that I should wait outside the Hotel Presidente at 8 a.m. to get picked up for a trip to eastern Cuba.
I spent a few hours walking around Havana and trying to engage people in conversations.
I had a rum drink at Club Red and heard a singer called La Lupe.
I saw a sign for Bola de Nieve performing at the Hotel Nacional where Meyer Lansky ran Mafia operations until January 1959.
I saw the sign Habana Libre, flashing from the hotel that used to say Havana Hilton. |
I hadn't yet realized Santeria played a more powerful role in spiritual life of the island than the Church
I didn't hear explosions and shooting in the street, although the CIA's terrorist campaign from Florida was well underway.
I walked along the Malecon (the ocean walk), passing couples necking, others fishing.
In the morning, a jeep stopped in front of the hotel, a young man asked my name, introduced himself as Julio, grabbed my suit case and motioned for me to hop in.
I shared the ride with three Chileans back to the airport, bound for Santiago de Cuba, some 500 miles to the east.
What kind of revolution is this, I thought, filled with music and dancing in a Catholic country — I hadn't yet realized that Santeria played a more powerful role in the spiritual life of the island than the Church.
Marta, one of the Chileans, questioned Cuba's growing connection to the Soviet Union as well as the ever advancing role of the Cuban Communist Party in revolutionary decisions.
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We cruised the countryside outside Santiago de Cuba seeing the revolution's new construction and slum clearance projects
In the October 1959 election for head of Cuba's National Labor council Fidel personally had stepped in to prevent the victory of David Salvador who was an outspoken anti-communist.
In the same time period, Fidel personally arrested Huber Matos, who commanded Camaguey Province.
Matos had objected to the sweeping land reforms and to the growing relationship with Moscow.
The militant anti-imperialist and anti-Yankee language of Che Guevara, for example, and Raul Castro's past links with Cuba's Communist Youth movement had provoked U.S. newspaper columnists and Congressmen alike to question Fidel's commitment to the very axioms of the Cold War: anti-Sovietism uber alles.
By June 1960, we cruised the countryside outside Santiago de Cuba and saw the revolution's new construction and slum clearance projects; I heard only praise for the Soviets from revolutionary cadre.
Marta's skepticism increased. |
Cuba's National Aquarium April, 11, 2007
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The slum neighborhood seemed endless as we trudged through mud and slime
The Manzana de Gomez, a slum neighborhood in Santiago, seemed endless as we trudged through mud and slime, rickety shacks made of every leftover substance one could imagine on either side.
A trickling stream filled with garbage and feces wound its way through the center of the makeshift street.
One middle aged man, seemingly drunk, offered a girl, of about 13 or 14, to the Chilean men and me.
His daughter?
The Cuban guides said something harsh to him.
He laughed.
Some women seemed intent on sweeping their dirt floors; some even looked clean, with ironed dresses.
Mostly, I recall the barefoot kids, the emaciated dogs
Mostly, I recall the barefoot kids, the emaciated dogs, my sense of being inside chaos and cacophony.
It had seemed like hours of watching a live horror show. My watch indicated that we had only walked for ten minutes.
"Seen enough?" one of the guides asked.
It should not be permitted for human to live like this
One of the Chilean men shook his head, his complexion slightly green.
Marta looked angry. "It should not be permitted for human to live like this," she said:
"But in Chile there are similar shantytowns.
I would imagine that almost every city in Latin America has them."
By the end of the visit Marta had become convinced that Cuba could not rely on any help from the United States, and had no option but to turn to Moscow.
"But in Chile there are similar shantytowns.
"This one won't be here long," one of the Cubans pledged. "But in Chile there are similar shantytowns."
"The plans to raze it and construct new housing are well underway.
But under the old regimes no one cared to do anything about such conditions.
This is why we're showing it to you, so you'll understand why we had to make a revolution." |
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No, you really cannot make this upRice reproaches Spain for its business contacts with Cuba, says Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.Madrid, SpainJune 1, 2007
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The jeep took us about a thousand feet up into the Sierra Maestra where the guerrillas successfully operated for two years between late December 1956 and their successful capture of the island in January 1959.
I asked Julio how a few hundred men could possibly have defeated an army that numbered some fifty thousand.
He smiled.
"We had will, determination, the cooperation of a large underground organization and the vast majority of the people.
The Batista government had no support, except from Washington.
They not only tortured and murdered; they did nothing for the people.
Look around.
Moreover, Cuba's institutions did not function, which made it ripe for revolution."
The villages we saw had neither electricity nor running water.
Kids ran barefoot.
I saw no school or a church in most of the villages.
In two, I noticed a crude, hand painted sign: "El Dios se encuentra aqui. (God is here)"
"Protestants," explained our guide.
"Some kind of primitive religion," said Julio.
The sun seemed to toast the ground.
The villages had no electricity or running water.
The thatched-roof houses, bohios, had existed even before Columbus, one guide asserted.
I didn't ask how he knew.
The rocky dirt roads worsened as we climbed.
Patches of corn and malanga, clusters of coffee trees and unhealthy farm animals dotted the landscape.
The villagers filled sacks with ripe coffee beans, loaded them on burros and brought them down the dirt roads to market.
Saul Landau www.counterpunch.org June 1, 2007 |
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47 Years Later in Havana
— Return to Cuba By SAUL LANDAU D ark-skinned peasants, in dirty yellowish hats and weathered faces waved or nodded as we passed their caravans of animals with jingling bells on their necks. Often the men rode on horseback; their wives — I presumed — walked next to them. "Seen enough?" Julio asked, as one Chilean complained of physical discomfort — kidney exercise in the jeep. I tried to imagine Fidel and his bearded men disembarking to face an ambush, cries of betrayal amidst rifle and machine gun fire Then the guides brought us to the place near Manzanillo where the yacht Granma landed in early December 1956. I tried to imagine Fidel and his bearded men disembarking to face an ambush, cries of betrayal amidst rifle and machine gun fire, the sight and smell of human blood on the road lined with white shelled crabs, crawling to and from the swampy grasses on either side of the road. Fidel and a small group of sick, wounded and exhausted guerrillas somehow escaped and climbed to the high points of the nearby mountains. One of the guides told us of Fidel peering across the island and commenting to the weary survivors: "The days of the dictatorship are numbered."
As we drove downhill, I wondered whether President Eisenhower, who had supposedly authorized the CIA to organize anti-Castro Cuban exiles to in the near future invade the island and overthrow the revolutionary government, had any idea of the already living legend he would be facing.
Plans to redistribute wealth to and make investment in the impoverished countryside
Julio talked of plans to redistribute wealth to and make investment in the impoverished countryside.
The revolutionaries had already expropriated large estates and many other businesses, including major U.S. companies.
Shortly after I returned to Havana, in July 1960, Fidel took over the U.S.-owned oil refineries, which had refused on orders from Washington to refine imported Soviet oil.
Eisenhower retaliated by cutting the Cuban sugar quota, depriving Cuba of badly needed cash and credit as well.
Walking from the bus to the Tropicana to hear a jazz combo, we ran into Guillermo Cabrera Infante, then editor of Lunes de Revolucion, the cultural supplement of Revolution, the government's newspaper, and passed a demonstration denouncing Ike.
"Sin cuota pero sin amo" read the placards carried by chanting marchers.
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Cabrera Infante sneered: "Sin cuota pero sin ano."
(Without a quota but without an ass).
I chuckled at his wit.
I also feared both slogans might be right.
(Lunes de Revolucion was closed in 1961. Cabrera Infante served as Cuba's cultural attaché in Belgium. He defected in 1964 and in England wrote several acclaimed novels before his death.)
When I left Cuba in February 1961 I saw young men hoisting four barreled anti aircraft guns onto the roof of the lobby of the Hotel Riviera.
Others planted dynamite under bridges.
All of Cuba awaited the U.S.-backed invasion that finally came in April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs.
When the battle ended, Cuba had symbolically lost its boss and still had its ass.
Over the next decades it struggled to keep it. |
Boy buys bread at Agro (farmers market)March 1962, Cuba guarantee citizens a basic amount of food at low pricesHavanaJune 1, 2007
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| I would look that way also if I were a member of the U.S. congress visiting Cuba, May 29, 2007 No, you really cannot make this stuff up. Rice is in Spain two days later reproaching Spain for its business contacts with Cuba, saying Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing |
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Kisses Dolphin
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| Ecuador's Vice President Lenin Moreno tours Old Havana during his official visit to Cuba May 27, 2007 |
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Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America's 'war on terror' Circus of Torture — 2003-2007 |
| NATO STATES militarismNATO Terror StatesMore than 380 Afghanistan people killed Jan to May 2007 not including resistance members |
Suicide Bombing is response to foreign occupation Will stop once troops withdraw |
Radical analysis and action undertaken by millions will change system that requires these wars to survive
The most poignant paragraph in Sheehan's statement begins with her sad acknowledgment that her son died for absolutely nothing.
One can only imagine the emotions that come from this realization.
Like many of her fellow citizens, Sheehan wants to believe that the United States is a good place and that the people who live there do believe in the principles espoused in its documents and by its greatest leaders.
Her discovery that "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months" is a difficult thing to take.
Yet, this is not a reason to quit.
It is, instead, a motivation to change things at an even more fundamental level.
One may not like being called a radical because they oppose the wars Washington has dragged us into, but one must also become aware that only radical analysis and action undertaken by millions will change a system that requires those wars to survive.
Breather from the madness
I recall a discussion I had with a friend during the buildup to the first Gulf War.
We were talking about activist burnout and egotistical activists as we watched the antiwar movement in Olympia, WA. grow by leaps and bounds while it struggled with internal conflicts that were primarily ego-driven.
I said to my friend that whenever I felt an organization couldn't live without me, then it was time for me to step back from whatever high-profile position I happened to be in and go back to the grunt work of passing out leaflets and setting up stages.
After all, it wasn't me that mattered, but the movement. |
It is certainly not time to give up
I wish Cindy Sheehan a peaceful and restorative time away from the frontlines of the antiwar movement.
Her presence, commitment and personality have made a good deal of difference in the growth of the movement against Washington's wars.
Indeed, it can be reasonably argued that it was Cindy Sheehan that made it okay for Middle America to protest, and for that she must be thanked.
Now that she is taking a breather from the madness it is up to us to continue expanding those protests.
It is certainly not time to give up. |
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Published on Friday, June 1, 2007 by Marjorie Cohn — Uruknet.info
The Unitary King George
As the nation focused on whether Congress would exercise its constitutional duty to cut funding for the war, Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.
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What about the other two co-equal branches of government?
The directive throws them a bone by speaking of a "cooperative effort" among the three branches, "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers."
The Vice-President would help to implement the plans.
Courtesy
"Comity," however, means courtesy, and the President would decide what kind of respect for the other two branches of government would be "proper."
This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive."
A seemingly innocuous phrase, the unitary executive theory actually represents a radical, ultra rightwing interpretation of the powers of the presidency.
Championed by the conservative Federalist Society, the unitary executive doctrine gathers all power in the hands of the President and insulates him from any oversight by the congressional or judicial branches.
Alito — not just some executive powers, but the executive power — the whole thing
In a November 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, then Judge Samuel Alito said the Constitution:
"...makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that.
The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power — the whole thing."
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These "unitarians" claim that all federal agencies, even those constitutionally created by Congress, are beholden to the Chief Executive, that is, the President.
This means that Bush could disband agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve Board, etc., if they weren't to his liking.
Indeed, Bush signed an executive order stating that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee.
Consumer advocates were concerned that this directive was aimed at weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province
The unitary executive dogma represents audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province of the other two branches of government.
This doctrine took shape within the Bush administration shortly after 9/11.
On September 25, 2001, former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo used the words "unitary executive" in a memo he wrote for the White House:
"The centralization of authority in the president alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch."
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Six weeks later, Bush began using that phrase in his signing statements.
Afghan Independent Radio, which broadcasts a program in Kandahar city, reports that missing children declarations are the most commonly placed adverts on the show.
"We get about four or five missing children a month. About 20 percent of them are found before we hit the air," said Ismael Tahir, director of radio programming at the station.
However, others are taken for child labour, or abuse, or are runaways, Tahir said, adding that the station is planning to log their names and addresses to help with investigations.
The radio station is at the front line of the search for missing children because public confidence in the police has sunk so low. Even the newly appointed police chief, Lieutenant General Mohammed Ayoub Salangi, concedes that there was probably official corruption behind the kidnappings.
"It seems as if local militia or tribal commanders were involved," he told AFP.
For Mohammed Tahir's family their nightmare had only just begun when they lost their son. Police arrested two of the child's uncles, keeping one of them, Abdul Zahir, for 18 days and torturing him to try and force him to admit to the crime.
"I couldn't admit it because I haven't done anything, but now our whole family wants to leave Kandahar because we think there were powerful people involved," he said.
No police investigators have been to look at the pictures the kidnappers sent to try to find out who might be behind the killings, he added.
"It should be possible to work out where this was developed and try to trace the kidnappers that way," he said holding out a picture of his dead nephew.
As of December 22, 2006, Bush had used the words "unitary executive" 145 times in his signing statements and executive orders.
Yoo, one of the chief architects of Bush's doctrine of unfettered executive power, wrote memoranda advising Bush that because he was commander in chief, he could make war any time he thought there was a threat, and he didn't have to comply with the Geneva Conventions.
In a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles.
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The unitary executive theory has already cropped up in Supreme Court opinions.
Structural advantages of unitary Executive
In his lone dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Justice Clarence Thomas cited "the structural advantages of a unitary Executive."
He disagreed with the Court that due process demands an American citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decision maker.
Thomas wrote:
"Congress, to be sure, has a substantial and essential role in both foreign affairs and national security.
But it is crucial to recognize that judicial interference in these domains destroys the purpose of vesting primary responsibility in a unitary Executive."
Justice Thomas's theory fails to recognize why our Constitution provides for three co-equal branches of government.
In 1926, Justice Louis Brandeis explained the constitutional role of the separation of powers.
He wrote:
"The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power.
The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy."
Eighty years later, noted conservative Grover Norquist, describing the unitary executive theory, echoed Brandeis's sentiment.
You don't have a constitution — You have a king
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Norquist said, "you don't have a constitution; you have a king."
One wonders what Bush & Co. are setting up with the new Presidential Directive.
What if, heaven forbid, some sort of catastrophic event were to occur just before the 2008 election?
Bush could use this directive to suspend the election.
This administration has gone to great lengths to remain in Iraq.
It has built huge permanent military bases and pushed to privatize Iraq's oil.
Bush and Cheney may be unwilling to relinquish power to a successor administration.
Marjorie Cohn, MWC News Magazine senior editor, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be (is) published by PoliPointPress. |
US used white phosphorus chemical and thermobaric fuel-air weapons War Crimes — Fallujah — Graphic Images |
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Published on Monday, July 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Sheldon Drobny Justice O'Connor's decision in Bush v. Gore led to the current Bush administration's execution of war crimes and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places in the Middle East that are as egregious as those committed by the Third Reich and other evil governments in human history. The lesson is clear. Those people who may be honorable and distinguished in their chosen profession should always make decisions based upon good rather than evil no matter where their nominal allegiances may rest. Justice O'Connor was quoted to have said something to the affect that she abhorred the thought of Bush losing the 2000 election to Gore. She was known to have wanted to retire after the 2000 election for same reason she is now retiring. She wanted to spend more time with her sick husband. Unfortunately, she tarnished her distinguished career with the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore by going along with the partisan majority of the Court to interfere with a democratic election that she and the majority feared would be lost in an honest recount. She dishonored herself and the Supreme Court by succumbing to party allegiances and not The Constitution to which she swore to uphold. And the constitutional argument she and the majority used to justify their decision was the Equal Protection Clause. The Equal Protection Clause was the ultimate basis for the decision, but the majority essentially admitted (what was obvious in any event) that it was not basing its conclusion on any general view of what equal protection requires. The decision in Bush v Gore was not dictated by the law in any sense—either the law found through research, or the law as reflected in the kind of intuitive sense that comes from immersion in the legal culture. The Equal Protection clause is generally used in matters concerning civil rights.
The majority ignored their basic conservative views supporting federalism and states' rights in order to justify their decision.
History will haunt these justices down for their utter lack of justice and the hypocrisy associated with this decision.
Sheldon Drobny is Co-founder of Air America Radio.
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The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
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Bush v. Gore Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court — Raw political clout exercised by US Supreme Court |
Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues...
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Nanci Pelosi — U.S. House Democratic leader — Congresswoman California, 8th District
Speaking at the AIPAC agenda May 26, 2005
There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense.
In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.
The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran.
For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology....
In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.'
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The United States will stand with Israel now and forever.
Now and forever.
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The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying — Lest we forget |
Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures What CNN never shows you |
Israel, chemical weapons and phosphorous bombs New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces Undetectable poison-needle gun for 'clean' assassinations |
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For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.cc website.The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. |
