Presidential Candidate Thompson Standing by His $$ Man For Now

ABC News - November 04, 2007

Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson says he will stand by his friend and campaign fundraiser, Phil Martin, who, in the past, pled guilty to drug charges and whose past financial dealings may have been questionable.

"Nobody's made any accusations that he's done anything illegal with regard to our campaign," Thompson said on NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning, adding, "I know Phil is a good man. He is my friend. He is going to remain my friend."

Thompson –- who says he read about reports of Martin's past last night in the Sunday's Washington Post said he is "going to have to talk to Phil, make sure I understand the nature of the situation and figure out what the right thing is," while adding "I'm not going to throw my friend under the bus."

During his Sunday morning appearance, the former Tennessee senator was also asked to clarify many statements he's made on the campaign trail, specifically on 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden, who he said "is more symbolism than anything else."

Thompson stated this morning he's "never been accused of being soft on Osama Bin Laden."

"What I think sometimes happens in this country is we fixate on a personality -- and even someone as evil as this man -- we need to understand if he goes, if he's killed, someone will take his place. It's almost like the focus is on him that we think our problem will go away if we get him," Thompson said.

Citing that the "stakes are too high," Thompson says the country must stay in Iraq, and believes there has been "substantial progress" and "things have started turning" in the past couple of months.

"This would be the worst time in the world to start talking about deadlines, cutting off funding … I would like to see nothing more than our troops start coming out of there, but as part of a success scenario," Thompson said.

He said the U.S. needs to learn all it can about the state of emergency in Pakistan so the country "knows what (President Perez Musharaff) knows and the reasons why he's doing what he's doing."

On domestic issues, Thompson said he would not support a "human life" constitutional amendment banning abortion or a federal ban on same-sex marriages, falling back on his federalist stance.

Thompson –- who is in remission with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma –- also batted away questions on his health and weight-loss. Thompson said he's on a diet ("if it tastes real good, don’t eat it") and says recent health tests show he is in "good shape."

Obama: Cheney is 'a crazy uncle in the attic'

Obama is sworn into the Senate by his eighth cousin, Vice President Cheney.

CNN News - Nov 3, 2007

At a campaign event Saturday, Sen. Barack Obama called his distant cousin, Vice President Dick Cheney, "a crazy uncle in the attic."

Obama was referencing the recent revelation by the Vice President's wife, Lynne Cheney, that he and the Vice President are distantly related.

"For the first time in a long time, the name George Bush will not appear on the ballot," he told the crowd of about 500 people at Converse College in Spartanburg.

"The name Dick Cheney, my cousin, will not appear on the ballot," Obama said. "We had been trying to hide that cousin thing for a long time. Everybody's got a black sheep in the family. A crazy uncle in the attic."

Warning, this film could make you very angry

by Robert Fisk, The Independent - November 4, 2007

At university, we male students used to say that it was impossible to take a beautiful young woman to the cinema and concentrate on the film. But in Canada, I've at last proved this to be untrue. Familiar with the Middle East and its abuses – and with the vicious policies of George Bush – we both sat absorbed by Rendition, Gavin Hood's powerful, appalling testimony of the torture of a "terrorist suspect" in an unidentified Arab capital after he was shipped there by CIA thugs in Washington.

Why did an Arab "terrorist" telephone an Egyptian chemical engineer – holder of a green card and living in Chicago with a pregnant American wife while he was attending an international conference in Johannesburg? Did he have knowledge of how to make bombs? (Unfortunately, yes – he was a chemical engineer – but the phone calls were mistakenly made to his number.)

He steps off his plane at Dulles International Airport and is immediately shipped off on a CIA jet to what looks suspiciously like Morocco – where, of course, the local cops don't pussyfoot about Queensberry rules during interrogation. A CIA operative from the local US embassy – played by a nervous Jake Gyllenhaal – has to witness the captive's torture while his wife pleads with congressmen in Washington to find him.

The Arab interrogator – who starts with muttered questions to the naked Egyptian in an underground prison – works his way up from beatings to a "black hole", to the notorious "waterboarding" and then to electricity charges through the captive's body. The senior Muhabarat questioner is, in fact, played by an Israeli and was so good that when he demanded to know how the al-Jazeera channel got exclusive footage of a suicide bombing before his own cops, my companion and I burst into laughter.

Well, suffice it to say that the CIA guy turns soft, rightly believes the Egyptian is innocent, forces his release by the local minister of interior, while the senior interrogator loses his daughter in the suicide bombing – there is a mind-numbing reversal of time sequences so that the bomb explodes both at the start and at the end of the film – while Meryl Streep as the catty, uncaring CIA boss is exposed for her wrong-doing. Not very realistic?

Well, think again. For in Canada lives Maher Arar, a totally harmless software engineer – originally from Damascus – who was picked up at JFK airport in New York and underwent an almost identical "rendition" to the fictional Egyptian in the movie. Suspected of being a member of al-Qa'ida – the Canadian Mounties had a hand in passing on this nonsense to the FBI – he was put on a CIA plane to Syria where he was held in an underground prison and tortured. The Canadian government later awarded Arar $10m in compensation and he received a public apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But Bush's thugs didn't get fazed like Streep's CIA boss. They still claim that Arar is a "terrorist suspect"; which is why, when he testified to a special US congressional meeting on 18 October, he had to appear on a giant video screen in Washington. He's still, you see, not allowed to enter the US. Personally, I'd stay in Canada – in case the FBI decided to ship him back to Syria for another round of torture. But save for the US congressmen – "let me personally give you what our government has not: an apology," Democratic congressman Bill Delahunt said humbly – there hasn't been a whimper from the Bush administration.

Even worse, it refused to reveal the "secret evidence" which it claimed it had on Arar – until the Canadian press got its claws on these "secret" papers and discovered they were hearsay evidence of an Arar visit to Afghanistan from an Arab prisoner in Minneapolis, Mohamed Elzahabi, whose brother, according to Arar, once repaired Arar's car in Montreal.

There was a lovely quote from America's Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff and Alberto Gonzales, the US attorney general at the time, that the evidence again Arar was "supported by information developed by US law enforcement agencies". Don't you just love that word "developed"? Doesn't it smell rotten? Doesn't it mean "fabricated"?

And what, one wonders, were Bush's toughs doing sending Arar off to Syria, a country that they themselves claim to be a "terrorist" state which supports "terrorist" organisations like Hizbollah. President Bush, it seems, wants to threaten Damascus, but is happy to rely on his brutal Syrian chums if they'll be obliging enough to plug in the electricity and attach the wires in an underground prison on Washington's behalf.

But then again, what can you expect of a president whose nominee for Alberto Gonzales's old job of attorney general, Michael Mukasey, tells senators that he doesn't "know what is involved" in the near-drowning "waterboarding" torture used by US forces during interrogations. "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional," the luckless Mukasey bleated.

Yes, and I suppose if electric shocks to the body constitute torture – if, mind you – that would be unconstitutional. Right? The New York Times readers at least spotted the immorality of Mukasey's remarks. A former US assistant attorney asked "how the United States could hope to regain its position as a respected world leader on the great issues of human rights if its chief law enforcement officer cannot even bring himself to acknowledge the undeniable verity that waterboarding constitutes torture...". As another reader pointed out, "Like pornography, torture doesn't require a definition."

Yet all is not lost for the torture lovers in America. Here's what Republican senator Arlen Spector – a firm friend of Israel – had to say about Mukasey's shameful remarks: "We're glad to see somebody who is strong, with a strong record, take over this department."

So is truth stranger than fiction? Or is Hollywood waking up – after Syriana and Munich – to the gross injustices of the Middle East and the shameless and illegal policies of the US in the region? Go and see Rendition – it will make you angry – and remember Arar. And you can take a beautiful woman along to share your fury.

NSPD-51 and the Potential for a Coup d'Etat by National Emergency

by William H. White - Nov 5, 2007

Can you think of anyone better than George W. Bush with whom to entrust the dictatorial powers hinted at in NSPD-51? Or perhaps you are unwilling to trust anyone with such powers, even Bush. That is not an option in NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE 51 (NSPD-51), signed by Bush and released without comment by the White House on May 9, 2007. To quote from NSPD-51: “This policy establishes ‘National Essential Functions,’ prescribes continuity requirements for all executive departments and agencies, and provides guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program that will enhance the credibility of our national security posture and enable a more rapid and effective response to and recovery from a national emergency.” What one would expect, but for some of its few details.

Under NSPD-51, only limited ‘National Essential Functions’ of government will continue, which may or may not include Congress and the courts. NSPD-51 assures us: “Enduring Constitutional Government means a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches...” This “matter of comity,” which usually refers to the informal and voluntary recognition of jurisdiction among courts, is troublesomely ambiguous in this context. Is Bush claiming that he, rather than the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court, determines which functions the three branches of the federal government shall continue to perform? Does the president decide for himself, as he "coordinates," which laws and court orders to faithfully execute?

NSPD-51 claims that it "provides guidance” to state and local governments, when in fact it does the opposite because it revoked the then existing Presidential Decision Directive 67 of October 21, 1998 ("Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations"), including “all Annexes thereto.” And replaced them with NSPD-51, along with: “Annex A and the classified Continuity Annexes, attached hereto.” But then the rabbit disappears as NSPD-51 soldiers on: “This directive and the information contained herein shall be protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.” In other words, all the details are secret and even the non secret “Annex A” remains undisclosed by the White House.

Having revoked on May 9, 2007 the nation’s then existing emergency plan for continued national governance without explanation, Bush’s NSPD-51 calls for: “The Plan shall be submitted to the President for approval not later than 90 days after the date of this directive.” One assumes, during this lapse in emergency plans, no emergency was expected, or at least presented less risk than leaving that old Clinton plan in place. Since the national media, except one story each in the Washington Post and Boston Globe, have ignored NSPD-51, Bush has not bothered to explain any of this.

Especially if such explanations might raise questions about the decision to revoke the existing plan before finishing work on the new plan, which some might conclude serves only to rush the review of one of the most complex and sensitive plans in government in an attempt to slip something by the rest of us. Whatever the motive, abruptly revoking the existing plan, while mandating a new plan within 90 days, exhibits the same reckless, delusional optimism that characterizes much of Bush's planning record. Clearly Bush is confident he can do far better than Clinton, whose administration labored for years on that old plan. Much of the old plan may even be in the new plan, who knows?

Among those who do not know are members of the House Committee on Homeland Security. The Bush administration has repeatedly denied the committee access to NSPD-51, about which Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio (D) complained in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. What we do know is those 90 days passed without a new plan approval being announced. Perhaps no plan gives the president exactly the maximum power and minimum accountability desired; or, perhaps the plan's approval is secret as well. Apparently, the "matter of comity"among the three branches of government, referred to in NSPD-51, does not include allowing NSPD-51 to be read by members of Congress, which the Congress, in a continuing pattern of acquiesce, has not challenged.

This almost entirely secret directive can be invoked when the president decides “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions” occurred. Bush alone will decide when he must assume this burden, though surely only upon prayerful contemplation during the time saved not having to consult Congress. In addition, because of a change to the Insurrection Act of 1807, enacted as part of the 439-page 2007 Defense Authorization Bill signed into law in October 2006, Bush need no longer obtain a governor’s consent to take control of a state’s national guard units. This same bill overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limited the use of US military forces within the United States for law enforcement. In addition, Bush issued an executive order on July 17, 2007 authorizing the government to seize the assets of anyone "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq" under provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Could this include critics of the Iraq war, whom Bush has repeatedly accused of undermining the war effort?

When might Bush invoke NSPD-51? My own guess would be Spring ‘08, after Bush is "forced" to attack Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons, and Iran then fails to cooperate, attacking US ships in the Gulf and Mediterranean instead of accepting our offers of assistance. Even if Iran denied Bush his basic objective by refusing to be goaded into reacting beyond its own borders, the resulting global economic chaos and spontaneous popular reactions beyond Iran could compel Bush to invoke NSPD-51, quite apart from whatever our new enemy might undertake. On the other hand, under NSPD-51 any provocation of Bush could lead to him creating a pretext for declaring a national emergency. For example,Ralph Nader quotes Massachusetts Rep. John W. Olver (D), who has a PhD from MIT, when presented with the votes of 13 Town Meetings [real Town Meetings, not the media events staged for candidate performances] in Olver's congressional district calling for impeachment of Cheney and Bush, Olver responded that he opposed any impeachment move against Bush because "the current autocratic executive [Bush] would attack Iran from the air, declare a national emergency, institute marshal law, and call off the 2008 elections were the Democrats to initiate impeachment."

Should Bush declare a national emergency and begin exercising the many powers available to him in law, as well as the ever expanding powers he claims by fiat, our nation would cross into a world increasingly difficult to predict, largely beyond our national experience, except perhaps for our revolution and civil war, subject to ad hoc, unchecked decision making, with genuine rule of law no longer an available guide. It would likely become increasingly difficult, in the absence of reliable information, to understand and deal with the originating crisis, however real or contrived. And to distinguish it from the difficulties arising from the declaration of a national emergency itself. However, this sort of thing has sadly occurred in many other countries, with much the same result likely here: a self-sustaining crisis, in which the chief rationales for continuing the national emergency are the effects of the national emergency themselves, compounded by errors in governance and crimes by those who seized power, sustained by their fear for what would happen to them should they give it up. The longer term prospect would likely include national decline and insurrection, with an even more unpredictable array of international consequences starting with a widening war.

In the short term, one can imagine Congress, demonstrating its usual wisdom and courage, expressing concern about the clearly large, though secret, number of American citizens "detained," surprise at the scope of firearm and asset seizures, discomfort with the pace of executions under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and outrage at being locked out of its capital offices due to a classified biological threat of undetermined duration, thus preventing Congress from voting to set benchmarks for Iran and to demand our readmission to NATO. But Congress would likely find some comfort in the "delay" of the 2008 elections, given Bush's decision to allow all incumbents, including those temporarily detained, to remain in office, which many in Congress would praise for its "unifying bipartisan comity," and await the president's determination when it is safe for Congress and the Supreme Court to actually meet again. Just as many in corporate American would appreciate the need to "defer" collecting capital gains and corporate taxes in the interests of helping the economy in a time of national crisis. Besides, how could anyone resist the perfectly Orwellian logic of declaring a dictatorship to insure "Constitutional Continuity" for the “homeland,” while setting aside the actual Constitution of the United States?

Whatever unknowable future a declaration of national emergency might bring, clearly many are going to be profoundly unhappy with such a turn of events. And that may be why Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is already building detention centers around the nation to “support the rapid development of new programs” that could accommodate those incompatible with Constitutional Continuity, the dead-enders who actually protest or resist, plus the usual suspects who might think to object.

But how would all those potential incompatibles, certainly tens of thousands and likely far more, find their way to an appropriate detention center? After all, the Bush administration has managed to prosecute only a handful of businesses for hiring illegal aliens who number in the millions. Its clearly a matter of priorities. So, despite such distractions as hurricane Katrina, the Justice Department has been conducting mass arrest exercises code named Operation Falcon, whereby thousands of law enforcement officers from federal, state, county and local agencies arrested some 10,000 individuals within seven days, working from lists provided by the U.S. Marshall’s Service, all coordinated to commence across the country simultaneously. Since practice makes perfect, three mass arrest exercises have been conduced: Two national (Falcon I April 4-10, 2005 arresting 10,340; Falcon II April 17-23, 2006 arresting 9,037); and one “eastern half of the country” (Falcon III October 22-28, 2006 arresting 10,733).

What can not be found among these data is mention of any legitimate law enforcement purpose served by these mass arrests. While some arrested were serious criminals, most were of the unanswered warrantee and support payment delinquent sort, soon released. The important element here appears to be getting operational experience and, perhaps most critically, habituating state and local police agencies to conducting mass arrests from lists provided by the federal government. In the eastern regional Falcon III alone, 103 state agencies, 430 county sheriff's offices/departments and 482 police departments did just that according to the U.S. Marshals Service web site. At the current pace, perhaps Falcon IV, for the western half of the U.S., will be the last drill and then the real thing: Operation Falcon V.

So its likely, when Bush addresses his fellow citizens after declaring the national emergency, many of his critics will be listening most attentively to detention camp loud speakers. As for how detainees will be treated, one can assume every effort will be made to maintain our current standards for indefinite detention without trial and torture assisted interrogation, where little slip-ups under the press of numbers and emergency conditions are likely to be of little consequence. What is certain, should coup d'etat by national emergency take place, is it will be denied even as it unfolds, and this is likely to be followed by assurances it will be temporary, lasting "not one day more than it needs to," followed by accusations the resistors are responsible for prolonging the state of emergency, and finally appeals to turn in others if you want your own relatives released soon from detention or your property/assets returned; all lies to sustain a long planned, permanent state of national emergency.

What is likely to be important in most corporate media is demonstrating our determination to carry on by shopping as well as selecting the proper anthem for our new world order. I'm hoping for something stirring along the lines of "Deutschland Uber Alles," except with a touch of Texas twang as in "Dallas Uber Alles," in an arrangement using fewer trombones plus a weeping steel guitar. However, since this is such an important decision, our new anthem, with its companion national prayer and corporate logo, should be selected by ‘We the people of the United States’ from among three finalists chosen by our First Lady, in our first-ever national referendum, proving yet again our commitment to democracy and putting all those new voting machines to use in November '08 after all.

Or you might send this and/or additional such materials to others, including your congressional delegation as well as the press, to warn about the danger Bush’s NSPD-51 presents, and demand steps be taken to prevent it. Since the courts are hopelessly slow given the immediate danger, Congress must do its duty. And we must do our duty and demand Congress end its reluctance to stand up to Bush's repeated, escalating, bullying contempt: if its unnecessary, it should be easy; if its not easy, it is all the more necessary.

NOTE TO THE READER:

It is entirely true that each real event cited here has alternative, plausible explanation, and those participating in these events may be entirely unaware of the darker ends to which their work may be put. The essay's many conjectures are exactly that. However, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance not good faith or trust. Nor is the US Constitution based on trust, but rather on checks and balances, in a arrangement designed to avoid the gravest of follies and to contain inevitable mischief, embracing sound assumptions about the weaknesses of human nature rather than its virtuous pretenses. Knowing the Bush administration's record of reckless lawlessness and radical mind set, the possibility of a coup d'etat by national emergency can not be ignored, especially within the context of recent institutional actions that can be reasonably interpreted as being consistent with and preparatory to such an undertaking. These include Bush's relentless assault on and blatant affront to the constitutional limits on executive power, exemplified by the brazenly sly release without comment of NSPD-51, and encouraged by congressional failure to stand up to his flagrant excesses. I believe the risk to our republic is real. And needs to be confronted immediately, with the objective of using existing congressional power and establishing additional safeguards, formal and informal, to prevent it. Better to prevent what some may claim was never going to happen, than to suffer betrayed good faith, with the appalling costs of experiencing and undoing this grave folly Bush appears to be edging toward, as relentlessly as he undertook the invasion of Iraq from the first days of his administration.

Further reading:

Congressional Research Service Report - National Emergency Powers

Operation Falcon and the Looming Police State by Mike Whitney

The Bush Push to Militarize America by Jerome Corsi

Pakistan Sinks Deeper Into the Night

Intoxicated by the Incense of Power

by TARIQ ALI - Nov 4, 2007

For anyone marinated in the history of Pakistan yesterday's decision by the military to impose a State of Emergency will hardly comes as a surprise. Martial Law in this country has become an antibiotic: in order to obtain the same results one has to keep doubling the doses. What has taken place is a coup within a coup.

General Pervaiz Musharraf ruled the country with a civilian façade, but his power base was limited to the Army. And it was the Army Chief of Staff who declared the emergency, suspended the 1973 Constitution, took all non-government TV channels off the air, jammed the mobile phone networks, surrounded the Supreme Court with paramilitary units, dismissed the Chief Justice, arrested the President of the Bar association and the civil rights activists of the Human Right Commission of Pakistan, thus inaugurating yet another shabby period in the country history.

Why? They feared that a Supreme Court judgement due next week might make it impossible for Musharraf to contest the elections. The decision to suspend the Constitution was taken a few weeks ago. Benazir Bhutto, was informed and left the country. She is reportedly on her way back. Till now she has offered no comment on the new martial law, despite the fact that a senior leader of her party, Aitzaz Ahsan has been arrested for denouncing the coup. Intoxicated by the incense of power she might now discover that it

Remains as elusive as ever. If she supports the latest turn it will be an act of political suicide. If she decides to dump the General(she has accused him of breaking his promises and it will be difficult for her to remain allied to a dictator) she will be betraying the confidence of the US State Department, which pushed her in this direction. At a recent off-the-record gathering at Ditchley Park(a British Foreign Office think-tank), the would-be Secretary of State, James Rubin, became short-tempered when Pakistani participants challenged his view that Bhutto was a decisive player in the 'war on terror' on the Western borders of the country.

The two institutions targeted by the Emergency are the judiciary and the lively network of independent TV stations, many of whose correspondents supply information that can never be gleaned from politicians. Geo TV the largest of these continued to broadcast outside the country. Hamid Mir, one of its sharpest journalists, reported yesterday afternoon that according to his sources the US Embassy had green lighted the coup because they regarded the Chief Justice as a nuisance and 'a Taliban sympathiser'.

For a whole year now, the regime was confronted with a severe crisis of legitimacy that came to a head earlier this year when General Musharraf's decision to suspend the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Hussein Chaudhry, provoked a six-month long mass movement that forced a government retreat. Some of Chaudhry's judgements had challenged the government on key issues such as 'disappeared prisoners', harassment of women and rushed privatisations. It was feared that he might declare a uniformed President illegal.

The struggle to demand a separation of powers between the state and the judiciary, which has always been weak, was of critical importance. Pakistan's judges have usually been acquiescent in the past. Those who resisted previous military leaders were cajoled, blackmailed, bullied and persuaded to retire. Pakistani judges spring from the same milieu as the rest of the ruling elite, which is why the decision of this chief justice to fight back was surprising, but extremely important and won him enormous respect, a commodity in short supply.

Global media coverage of Pakistan suggests a country consisting of Generals, corrupt politicians and bearded lunatics. The struggle to reinstate the Chief Justice presented a different snapshot of the country. This movement for constitutional freedoms revived hope at a time when most people are alienated from the system and cynical about their rulers, whose ill-gotten wealth and withered faces consumed by vanity inspire nil confidence.

That this is the case can be seen in the heroic decision taken by the Supreme Court in a special session yesterday declaring the new dispensation 'illegal and unconstitutional'. The hurriedly sworn in new Chief Justice will be seen for what he is: a stooge of the men in uniform. If the constitution remains in suspension for more than three months then Musharraf himself might be pushed aside by the Army and a new strongman put in place. Or it could be that the aim of the operation was limited to a cleansing of the Supreme Court and controlling the media. That is what Musharraf indicated in his broadcast to the nation. In which case a totally rigged election becomes a certainty next January. Whatever the case Pakistan's long journey to the end of the night continues.

US Cannot Be Said To Be Good

by Philip J Cunningham - Nov 4, 2007

George W. Bush may indeed be the worst president ever, and Dick Cheney the worst vice-president imaginable but that does not exonerate the American people because Americans have the constitutional right and responsibility to remove miscreants from office.

The Bush-Cheney administration has not just given freedom a hollow ring, they have not just made a mockery of American democracy and human rights in the present, and they have not just put future generations at risk with reckless deficit spending, environmental degradation and the burden of war without end, but they have effectively caused the past to be rewritten as well. America is beginning to understand what it’s like to be on the wrong side of history.

This point was driven home to me when I read that respected American historian Herbert Bix, author of “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan” recently pointed out some striking similarities between Tojo’s Japan and Bush-Cheney’s America, particularly the willful disregard of international law, the pursuit of diplomacy by force and failure to account for war criminality.

Let’s consider for the moment that current US policy bears some eerie parallels to that of Tojo’s Japan. Is that a result of having judged militarist Japan unfairly, or has America gotten worse? Is that to say Japan's criminal past was not as bad as we used to say it was, or is it still every bit as bad, only now, we, the American interlocutors, are debased in such a way that the moral distance is less distant?

Scholars have long been familiar with US lapses in civilized behavior, even in the great and just war carried out by the "greatest generation." The enemy was understandably viewed with contempt for his actions, but improperly viewed with racist contempt. Indiscriminate killing took untold innocent life, nowhere more vividly than in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with equal cold-blooded consequences in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.

For decades now, scholars have been effectively challenging the Truman era myth that the atomic bombing was necessary and saved millions of lives. While reasonable interpretations differ, the twin atomic bombings remain a uniquely uncomfortable and awkward topic for Americans who subscribe to the otherwise generally positive national narrative that starts with the day of infamy, the day on which the peace-loving US was sneakily attacked at Pearl Harbor, and continues with a series of heroic battles for sea, sky and land control across the Pacific, followed by a generally enlightened occupation of Japan’s home islands.

Given the incessant mutual violence that the war extracted from both sides, epitomized by the brutal battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it took decades for ordinary soldiers on both sides to be viewed with sympathetic respect --basically unfree men following orders as required by the tragedy of the time. Last year Clint Eastwood did a remarkably even-handed job of conveying the equivalency of the rank and file on both sides of the Pacific with the twin films “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.”

The US occupation of Japan saw many a samurai’s sword turned into treasured souvenir, if not plowshare. It was none other than US war hero Douglas MacArthur who set the tone for sanitizing and containing Japan's war criminality at the elite level by letting the Emperor off the hook and selectively exonerating war criminals who were of utility to the US. But if it wasn't the people, and it wasn't the penultimate leader, then who takes the blame?

To blame everything on a few bad apples is bad history, incongruent with the complex, interactive way things usually happen, but it allows nagging, difficult-to-resolve issues to be buried or put on the back burner as happened at the Tokyo trials. The entirety of Japan’s war guilt was deftly shifted onto the shoulders of Tojo and a handful of "Class A War Criminals."

Scapegoating, even of the obviously odious, is not fair, but it is expedient because it staves off more damaging and nuanced reckonings. That's not to say scapegoated Class A war criminals are innocent in the same way their hapless victims were; the criminality of the Class A men is clearly documented. But they were unfairly singled out and unfairly apportioned more of the blame than even their cruel shoulders could bear. They were made caricatures of evil in contrast to the aloof, doddering emperor and the witless soldier in the field.

George W. Bush publicity handlers take note; better to spin your client as a dodderer playing with something less than a full deck than have him be held accountable. In today’s America, as in wartime Japan, there is plenty of blame to be passed around, but no takers. It's too hurtful to the American ego to even contemplate war criminality. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is not an option. The State Department has granted immunity to the criminally negligible including the thugs of Blackwater. Is this apparent benevolence not just another type of denial, that Americans don't torture, Americans don't commit crimes of war?

Eventually, narratives that blame no one have to round up a few suspects, and that's where the bad apples come in. But this sort of selective justice unduly burdens middling war criminals with more historical agency than they ever possessed.

Does making Tojo an example of evil incarnate exonerate Japanese war veterans, among them mean-spirited soldiers who violated the conventions of war by gratuitously killing, raping and torturing non-combatant Chinese? And what about Japanese civilians on the home front, making weapons, churning out propaganda, feeding the beast? Blame it on Tojo?

What about people like Akira Kurosawa who worked uninterrupted with ample state support during a war that wreaked murder and mayhem on Japan's neighbors under the guise of racial superiority? To hear Kurosawa tell it in his biography, his main beef with the Tojo authorities was over artistic control, not the insane politics of the time.

The bad apple school of thought thrives in national narratives because it aids and abets denial for proud individuals and powerful constituencies.

The problem with Japanese rightists, and America's problem understanding them, is not so much the seemingly futile attempt polish up the bad apples, the futile attempt to make the class A Criminals shine. It's not even the rightists' dubious campaign to re-configure war criminals as honorable Shinto spirits at Yasukuni Shrine. The problem with the rightists is they are bound to honor the penultimate leader at all costs, which short-circuits all other arguments and prevents blame from being fairly apportioned.

The result of this implacable cognitive dissonance is denial. Denial is the worst thing about the Japan's rightists, not their contrarian desire to challenge the America-centric narrative as articulated in the admittedly clumsy and compromised Tokyo War Crimes Trials.

Americans are starting to learn more about war crimes and denial than they ever dreamed of. The divisive words and belligerent actions of George W. Bush, the contempt for diplomacy, the lack of accountability, the tortured rhetoric and the rhetoric defending torture have caused America’s global prestige to drop to an unprecedented low. America is increasingly seen as the crux of the problem rather than a flawed but otherwise normal country, let alone a beacon of hope.

The horror of an unjust and unnecessary war is forcing Americans to confront the opacity of their own self-image, and in doing so, to seek lessons and parallels than now, in a way not possible even four years ago, make it possible to see Tojo and Japan's war criminality in slightly more sympathetic way. This is not to exonerate but rather to heave a heavy sigh of understanding, to acknowledge that even the most refined and civilized of nations can be disfigured and disabled by the politics of fear and denial.

America has been diminished to such an extent under the Bush-Cheney “unitary presidency” that a crime like torture -- once comfortably seen as beyond the pale because it was only associated with the most despicable of enemies-- suddenly resonates in an uncomfortably familiar way.

Just as it should be acknowledged that the people of Japan share a certain culpability in Tokyo’s terrible war, a war that ravaged Asia and eventually Japan itself, Americans have to own up to Iraq. But it can also be said in defense of the average Japanese in the days after Pearl Harbor that there was much they didn’t know and couldn’t talk about; --the media was completely censored and the Kempeitai dealt brutally with domestic opposition.

When the day of reckoning comes for ordinary Americans to assess their culpability in the debacle of Iraq, a hideous and heinous war fought in view of a free media and in the context of relatively unfettered freedom to protest, what will the excuse be?

If Bush is unjust, if he is, as they say, the worst ever, then the free people who support, tolerate and enable him cannot be said to be good.

Rice says US will defend Israel in peace process

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (L) shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during their meeting in Jerusalem. Olmert said he may be able to make peace with the Palestinians by the end of 2008 as the United States vowed to defend Israel's security during the difficult process.(AFP/GPO/HO)

I totally disagree with Secretary Rice on just about everything she stands for, but I do believe she loves her country and therefore, is a loyal American. So, as a loyal American, I wonder how she "really" feels about Israel, considering Israel's history of spying on her country and the upcoming AIPAC spy trial to which she must provide testimony.

by Ron Bousso Yahoo News - Nov 4, 2007

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that the United States was fully committed to Israel's security in order for it to make bold steps towards peace with the Palestinians.

"All Israelis should be confident that America is fully behind you, that we are fully committed to your security and that you can thus be bold in your pursuit of peace," she said in a speech in Jerusalem.

"This is a time for us all to make difficult decisions for the sake of peace."

Rice gave the speech at Jerusalem's Saban Forum think-tank shortly after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said Israel may be able to conclude a peace agreement with the Palestinians by the end of 2008.

Rice, on her eighth visit to the region since the begining of the year, warned that if peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians flounder, extremists would take over the Palestinian leadership.

"If we do not act now to show the Palestinians a way forward, others will show them a way forward," Rice said. "We can succeed. Failure is simply not an option."

Israel and the Palestinians have been engaged in intensive talks in an effort to draft a joint statement outlining a solution to the decades-old conflict ahead of a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland expected later this year.

The two sides plan to launch intensive bilateral talks on a permanent agreement following the international meeting, aimed at reviving a peace process that has been dormant for seven years.

The Palestinians have repeatedly demanded that the joint statement include a clear timetable for the negotiations, but Israel has insisted on a looser document based on a 2003 peace blueprint known as the roadmap.

"We agreed that if and when we reach understanding with the Palestinian Authority, this understanding will be implemented in accordance with the roadmap, on all its steps and outline," Olmert said.

"The Palestinians must fight terror and radically change their internal reality. I must recall that the roadmap requires measures from the state of Israel. These, like the Palestinian commitments, are yet to be applied."

The internationally drafted peace plan has made next to no progress since it was adopted more than four years ago, and has already missed its first deadline for creating a Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel.

But Olmert insisted that the blueprint is still worth pursuing. "I do not intend to allow the Palestinians to forego their commitments, and I have no intention, as hard as it is, to dodge Israel's duties," he said.

A key cabinet ally of the Israeli prime minister had already spoken of the government's readiness for a final peace deal with the Palestinians while Bush remained in office.

"We hope to agree a final settlement before the end of President Bush's term of office, or between now and the end of 2008," Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon told public television on Friday.

But Ramon stressed Israel would continue to resist Palestinian demands for a firm timetable for the negotiations on the most divisive issues of the Middle East conflict -- the borders of the promised Palestinian state and the fate of annexed east Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

A look at rights suspended in Pakistan

Does any of the below "Suspended Rights" sound familar?

Associated Press - Nov 4, 2007

A look at some of the restrictions and suspended rights in the state of emergency declared by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf:

• Protection of life and liberty.

• The right to free movement.

• The right of detainees to be informed of their offense and given access to lawyers.

• Protection of property rights.

• The right to assemble in public.

• The right to free speech.

• Equal rights for all citizens before law and equal legal protection.

• Media coverage of suicide bombings and militant activity is curtailed by new rules. Broadcasters also face a three-year jail term if they "ridicule" members of the government or armed forces.

Congress's Unused War Powers

by George F. Will, Washington Post - November 4, 2007

Americans are wondering, with the lassitude of uninvolved spectators, whether the president will initiate a war with Iran. Some Democratic presidential candidates worry, or purport to, that he might claim an authorization for war in a Senate resolution labeling an Iranian Revolutionary Guard unit a terrorist organization. Some Democratic representatives oppose the president's request for $88 million to equip B-2 stealth bombers to carry huge "bunker-buster" bombs, hoping to thereby impede a presidential decision to attack Iran's hardened nuclear facilities.

While legislators try to leash a president by tinkering with a weapon, they are ignoring a sufficient leash -- the Constitution. They are derelict in their sworn duty to uphold it. Regarding the most momentous thing government does, make war, the constitutional system of checks and balances is broken.

Congress can, however, put the Constitution's bridle back on the presidency. Congress can end unfettered executive war-making by deciding to. That might not require, but would be facilitated by, enacting the Constitutional War Powers Resolution. Introduced last week by Rep. Walter B. Jones, a North Carolina Republican, it technically amends but essentially would supplant the existing War Powers Resolution, which has been a nullity ever since it was passed in 1973 over President Richard Nixon's veto.

Jones's measure is designed to ensure that deciding to go to war is, as the Founders insisted it be, a "collective judgment." It would prohibit presidents from initiating military actions except to repel or retaliate for sudden attacks on America or American troops abroad, or to protect and evacuate U.S. citizens abroad. It would provide for expedited judicial review to enforce compliance with the resolution and would permit the use of federal funds only for military actions taken in compliance with the resolution.

It reflects conclusions reached by the War Powers Initiative of the Constitution Project. That nonpartisan organization's 2005 study notes that Congress's appropriation power augments the requirement of advance authorization by Congress before the nation goes to war. It enables Congress to stop the use of force by cutting off its funding. That check is augmented by the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits any expenditure or obligation of funds not appropriated by Congress, and by legislation that criminalizes violations of the act.

All this refutes Rudy Giuliani's recent suggestion that the president might have "the inherent authority to support the troops" even if funding were cut off. Besides, American history is replete with examples of Congress restraining executive war-making. (See "Congress at War: The Politics of Conflict Since 1789," a book by Charles A. Stevenson.) Congress has forbidden:

Sending draftees outside this hemisphere (1940-41); introduction of combat troops into Laos or Thailand (1969); reintroduction of troops into Cambodia (1970); combat operations in Southeast Asia (1973); military operations in Angola (1976); use of force in Lebanon other than for self-defense (1983); military activities in Nicaragua (1980s). In 1993 and 1994, Congress mandated the withdrawal of troops from Somalia and forbade military actions in Rwanda.

When Congress authorized the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" against those complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Congress refused to adopt administration language authorizing force "to deter and preempt any future" terrorism or aggression. The wonder is that the administration bothered to seek this language.

The administration's "presidentialists" -- including the president -- believe presidents are constitutionally emancipated from all restraints regarding core executive functions, particularly those concerning defense and waging war. Clearly they think the rejected language would have added nothing to the president's inherent powers.

Congress's powers were most dramatically abandoned and ignored regarding Korea. Although President Harry S. Truman came from a Congress controlled by his party and friends, he never sought congressional authorization to send troops into massive and sustained conflict. Instead, he asserted broad authority to "execute" treaties such as the U.N. Charter.

For today's Democrats, resistance to unilateral presidential war-making reflects not principled constitutionalism but petulance about the current president. Democrats were supine when President Bill Clinton launched a sustained air war against Serbia without congressional authorization. Instead, he cited NATO's authorization -- as though that were an adequate substitute for the collective judgment that the Constitution mandates. Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates, and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a "living Constitution." They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for war-making.

Unless and until Congress stops prattling about presidential "usurpation" of power and asserts its own, it will remain derelict regarding its duty of mutual participation in war-making. And it will merit its current marginalization.

Pakistan Rounds Up Musharraf’s Political Foes

Political activists looked out from a police van after they were detained Sunday in Multan, Pakistan. Hundreds were held.

A Dictator tighens his grip - Bush learns well from his friends.

by JANE PERLEZ & DAVID ROHDE - November 5, 2007

The government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, making no concessions a day after seizing emergency powers, rounded up leading opposition figures and said Sunday that parliamentary elections could be delayed for as long as a year.

Security forces were reported to have detained about 500 opposition party figures, lawyers and human rights advocates on Sunday, and about a dozen privately owned television news stations remained off the air. International broadcasters, including the BBC and CNN, were also cut off.

The crackdown, announced late Saturday night after General Musharraf suspended the Constitution, was clearly aimed at preventing public demonstrations that political parties and lawyers were organizing for Monday.

“They are showing zero tolerance for protest,” said Athar Minallah, a lawyer and a former minister in the Musharraf government.

In Islamabad, police forces continued to block the Parliament and Supreme Court buildings. But the day was mostly quiet, there was no formal curfew, and most people went about their business as usual. Several small protests were broken up, including one involving two dozen people who scuffled with the police.

Police officers armed with tear gas broke up a meeting at the headquarters of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission in Lahore and took dozens of people away in police vans, including elderly women, schoolteachers and about 20 lawyers, according to people at the meeting. In all, about 80 lawyers were detained, and many others who faced arrest warrants remained in hiding, according to members of a nationwide lawyer’s lobby that has grown increasingly influential as an anti-Musharraf voice.

The head of the human rights commission, and one of Pakistan’s most prominent democratic figures, Asma Jahangir, was placed under house arrest on Saturday night. Among others arrested were Javed Hashmi, the acting president of the political party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and workers of the political party of the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Ms. Bhutto remained in her Karachi home on Sunday.

Despite repeated warnings by the United States and other Western nations over the past several days, the Musharraf government also appeared set to put off parliamentary elections that had been scheduled for January. At a news conference on Sunday, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said that the government was holding internal discussions on the future of the elections. “We are still deliberating,” he said. “In an emergency the Parliament could give itself one year.”

As the Bush administration has seen General Musharraf, one of its closest allies in fighting terrorism, become increasingly unpopular with the Pakistani public in the past several months, American officials have urged the general to abandon his military post and hold fair elections to bolster his standing. But even though he promised from time to time to step down as Pakistan’s military leader while remaining as president, he never did so.

His decision to suspend the Constitution and fire the Supreme Court was taken days before the court was due to decide whether his re-election on Oct. 6 was valid. A close aide to General Musharraf said the Pakistani leader had decided to declare an emergency when he was told last week by a Supreme Court justice that the court would rule within days that he was ineligible to continue serving as president. The ruling would have been unanimous, according to the aide.

A government spokesman, Tariq Azim Khan, when asked Sunday why 500 people had been arrested, said the arrests were “preventive measures” because the people presented “a threat to future law and order.”

Ms. Bhutto returned to Karachi from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates hours after emergency rule was imposed. Leaders of her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, had said she would fly to Islamabad on Sunday to hold talks with other opposition parties on how to proceed. But Ms. Bhutto did not show up here.

In interviews with foreign broadcast outlets, she called on the Musharraf government to lift what she called “martial law” and to hold elections.

Sympathizers of Ms. Bhutto, who came back to Pakistan with the backing of the United States and the specific mandate of bringing a democratic face to Pakistan, said her options for influencing the situation were limited.

Ms. Bhutto’s potential to rally large numbers of demonstrators, her most potent weapon, was now in severe trouble, said Najem Sethi, the editor in chief of The Daily Times. Organizing large protests under emergency rule, and after the bomb attack on her arrival procession Oct. 18 that killed 140 people, would be very difficult for her, he said.

“She will be very critical,” Mr. Sethi said. “But she is not going to participate in protests. She’s going to make a token representation. Behind the scenes she will work with the government for election as soon as possible.” Enver Baig, a senior leader of her party, said that the group’s strategy in the immediate future would be announced Monday.

Among the lawyers arrested was the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has opposed General Musharraf in legal arguments before the Supreme Court. Mr. Ahsan led the protests last spring over the firing of the Supreme Court Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

A legal colleague of Mr. Ahsan’s, Ayesha Tammy Haq, waited outside the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjacent to the capital, to see Mr. Ahsan on Sunday. “If you want to take the country away from Talibanization, these are the people who can do it, the secular middle class,” Ms. Haq said.

One of General Musharraf’s main justifications for suspending the Constitution and firing the members of the Supreme Court was the need to combat extremists sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In his address, he blamed the Supreme Court for hampering the government’s antiterror efforts by releasing terror suspects.

Even though the government was doing all it could to prevent public demonstrations by the legal profession, lawyers said they had other strategies to undermine the emergency rule.

An effort would be made to persuade lawyers not to appear before any judges who had agreed to be sworn in as judges under the emergency decree, said Mr. Minallah, the lawyer and former government minister.

Further, two thirds of the judges in the high courts had resigned or were not invited to be sworn in again under the emergency laws, said Feisal Naqvi, a lawyer who was at the raided meeting. Only 5 of the Supreme Court’s 17 judges agreed to take a new oath of office on Sunday morning, Mr. Naqvi said.

At the government news conference in Islamabad, Prime Minister Aziz spoke further about controls on the news media that were reported Saturday night. Broadcasters had said that the government had issued orders that journalists who brought “ridicule or disrepute” to General Musharraf and other officials could face up to three years in prison. On Sunday, Mr. Aziz said that the government would meet with television broadcasters to work out a “code of conduct.”

Pakistani journalists, proud of the dozen or so privately owned news channels that have flourished in the last three years, said Sunday they would refuse to knuckle under. “We will resist by not institutionally accepting this,” said Talat Hussein, the director of news and current affairs at Aaj TV.

After a meeting of the Federal Union of Journalists here, the president of the Islamabad Press Club, Afzal Butt, said the press would boycott government functions and briefings on Monday.

Earlier, the director of the Aaj channel, Wamiq Zuberi, said a magistrate accompanied by five buses of gun-toting police officers showed up at the studios on Saturday night and tried to confiscate an outdoor broadcasting van. The magistrate did not have a warrant and the workers at the studio stood their ground, forcing the officials to leave empty-handed, Mr. Zuberi said.

Funds halted for Iran quake relief, water projects

U.S. sanctions closed channels normally used by World Bank

by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times - November 4, 2007

The World Bank, newly caught up in the Bush administration's campaign against Iran, has had to suspend payments for earthquake relief, sanitation and other projects there in response to new U.S. sanctions on leading Iranian banks, World Bank officials say.

Officials said $5.4 million in payments has been suspended for four projects, involving earthquake relief, water and sanitation, environment management and urban housing. They do not expect the suspensions to be permanent.

But the bank has no plan to resume payments because it is having trouble finding banks in Iran through which to route them now that the United States has barred dealing with four of Iran's largest banks, accusing them of involvement in terrorism, or nuclear or missile programs.

"At this point, the World Bank is looking for alternate ways to support these projects," said a bank official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is unknown how difficult that might be. It is not that easy to find alternatives. We have no answer on how or when at this point."

U.S. officials said they hope the decision by the World Bank will increase pressure on Iran, not necessarily by stopping humanitarian projects but by dramatizing the country's economic isolation in light of its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and negotiate with the West over its nuclear program.

The World Bank step, while small, illustrates the extraordinary reach of U.S. sanctions, even though they were imposed unilaterally after the United States was stymied in its recent efforts to get the U.N. Security Council to approve wider penalties.

The payments for the World Bank projects have all gone through Bank Melli, one of Iran's largest banks, but Bank Melli was accused last month by the United States of being involved in nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Also listed were two other institutions, Bank Mellat and Bank Saderat. Bank Saderat had already been listed by the United States as being involved in financing terrorism.

Some congressional critics of the administration's Iran policies have called on the United States to block World Bank aid programs for Iran altogether. The World Bank has nine active projects in Iran and, by last year, had financed 48 operations worth about $3.4 billion, according to the bank's Web site.

The effect of the United States' listing these major Iranian banks is that no American bank is allowed to facilitate any dollar-based transaction between them and any other bank in the world.

AIPAC, Espionage, and Legal Sabotage

Has the AIPAC spy trial been derailed?

by Justin Raimondo - Nov 5, 2007

CBS broke the story three years ago: a high-ranking Pentagon analyst had been caught handing over highly classified information to a foreign government – sensitive intelligence about al-Qaeda, U.S. policy deliberations regarding Iran, and other top-secret information of particular interest to his two American handlers. The spy's native-born confederates, top officials of one of Washington's most powerful lobbying groups, passed America's most closely guarded secrets directly to foreign government officials in hurried meetings in empty restaurants, outside a train station, and over the phone, whispering their treason in some of Washington's darkest corners so as not to leave a paper trail of purloined documents.

As clever as they were, however, these spymasters apparently outwitted themselves, because the FBI's counterintelligence unit was on to them from the very beginning: the two core members of the spy nest had been under surveillance for years, along with the foreignofficials who operated out of their Washington embassy. The FBI had everything on tape, and they let the Pentagon mole weave enough rope to hang himself with until they moved in on him: confronted with his treason, the mole – the Pentagon's top Iran analyst, working directly under then-undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith – agreed to wear a wire to future meetings with his handlers. An extensive record of treason was documented, until indictments were issued and charges brought against all three. When the news first broke, it was a national scandal – and then the story sank like a stone, for three solid years, while the extensive litigation surrounding the case played out.

The analyst pled guilty to espionage and was sentenced to 13 years in prison and a substantial fine – with time off for his cooperation in the future trial of his two ex-cohorts. The trial, as I've said, has been delayed for nearly three years and is scheduled to finally begin on Jan. 14. But I wouldn't count on that happening: the trial has been delayed on several occasions through the years, and recent developments augur ill for the speedy resolution of this case.

You might think this is odd: after all, it seems like an open-and-shut case. With so much evidence accumulated by government prosecutors, one would think this would be a cakewalk. And it would be, if the recipient of this stolen intelligence weren't Israel. It would be, except the two key figures in this cloak and dagger episode were top officials of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Washington powerhouse whose former chief lobbyist once boasted to the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg: "You see this napkin? In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin."

So said Steve Rosen, the spark plug behind AIPAC's legendary lobbying success – the very same Steve Rosen indicted for espionage, along with his top Iran specialist, Keith Weissman, on Aug. 4, 2005, and whose trial is scheduled for Jan. 14, 2008.

Rosen and Weissman contacted, cultivated, and befriended Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin for the specific purpose of culling classified information from him. They even promised to put in a good word for him with top Washington officials as a partial reward for his betrayal. However, Franklin, a committed neoconservative ideologue, didn't need much material incentive: he was convinced that U.S. policy in the Middle East wasn't nearly as pro-Israel as it ought to be, and he was particularly concerned about Iran.

Starting in the late summer of 2002 and continuing until the late summer of 2004, these three spun their web of subversion, gathering vital intelligence and passing it on to Israeli embassy officials. And the FBI has a great deal of this on its surveillance tapes, so much of it – "four years of tracking AIPAC staffers," according to the Jerusalem Post – that the footage could be made into a reality show with a unique "spy versus spy" theme.

The defense, in what would normally be an open-and-shut case, has been struggling frantically [.pdf] to avoid a trial at all costs. That's understandable: after all, the FBI has the whole thing – the entire course of their crimes against America – on record. The verbal transmission of classified information, the elaborate arrangements to avoid detection, the open boasting of the analyst's two handlers that they had a live one on the hook, it's all there: raw, naked treason. Rather than come up against the incontrovertible facts, the defense has tried hard to divert the energies of the court away from actually bringing this to trial, in the hopes that the administration will back down and drop the charges.

The defense strategy has been to constantly up the ante, daring government prosecutors to present the full scope of the recorded evidence in open court – and thus compromise the sources and methods of U.S. clandestine services, such as the FBI's counterintelligence unit. In addition, the nature and specific contents of various U.S. secrets stolen by the Rosen-Weissman-Franklin spy ring and transmitted to the Israelis could come out in open court.

This is why the government has made several attempts to mask the evidence, proposing that testimony made available to the public would be presented in a kind of code, but that was rejected byJudge T.S. Ellis, for the most part. A mediation process was set up, and for months the lawyers have been haggling over what is admissible evidence and what has to be kept secret in the national interest – with the defense constantly pressuring the court to be as liberal as possible, and government prosecutors arguing for secrecy.

Now there has been a major development on this front. No one took seriously the defense's motion, made a few months ago, that they be allowed to subpoena Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Council chief Stephen Hadley, and a whole platoon of government officials and former officials. The motion was made on the grounds that these officials, too, had transmitted classified information to AIPAC, and that this is proof that such behavior was and is routine, part of the normal way of doing business in the world of Washington lobbyists. The defendants' case has always been that they have a First Amendment right to commit espionage, and that their indictment amounted to a government assault on their right to "free speech." Gee, too bad the Rosenbergs never thought of this unique rationalization for treason, although I doubt it would've gotten them anywhere. The AIPAC defendants, however, may have more luck in this department…

No judge had ever allowed such a thing, at least in recent memory, and no one expected Judge Ellis to look favorably on this request. That he granted the defense motion in all but a few cases is bad news for the government – and good news for the Israel lobby, which may just be spared the embarrassment of having its essential nature as a fifth column for Israel exposed to the light of day.

In addition to Rice, Wolfowitz, and Hadley, the following can expect to be served with a summons to appear at a trial that may never happen: Larry Franklin's boss, Douglas J. Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Elliott Abrams, neocon par excellence and Iran-Contra alumnus, who served as Bush's "deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy"; Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council adviser to Bill Clinton and author of the now infamously influential book The Threatening Storm, which convinced so many liberal Democrats to support the invasion of Iraq; Marc Grossman, former undersecretary of state for political affairs; Marc Sievers, chief political affairs officer at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and one of Rice's chief advisers on Iraqi affairs; David Satterfield, a political officer at our Tel Aviv embassy; William Burns, the American ambassador to Russia; Lawrence Silverman, currently a deputy chief at the American embassy in the Slovak Republic; Matthew Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state; and Michael Makovsky, a former staff member of the Office of Special Plans, the policy shop where the "intelligence" pointing to Saddam Hussein's fabled "weapons of mass destruction" was cooked up into talking points. Franklin also served in that policy shop.

The idea that the U.S. government is going to allow this is absurd. Rather than expose the entire Israeli covert operation in its midst and permit testimony that would dramatize how much access the Israelis already have to our officials and the policy-making process, the Bush administration now has an ideal excuse to shut this case down. Rice wouldn't even show up to a congressional hearing to answer questions about prewar intelligence, and she similarly tried to defy the 9/11 Commission on the grounds of "executive privilege." In spite of her expressed willingness to "cooperate with our legal system," I fully expect her to show the same disdain for Judge Ellis' court.

The recent book by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt documenting the existence of a powerful Israel lobby has generated a storm of controversy, with the Lobby's advocates smearing the two professors as "anti-Semites" and the more reasonable members of the foreign policy community at least open to the argument that undue reverence for the Lobby – and its political clout – has distorted the policy-making process, perhaps fatally. Yet even Mearsheimer and Walt go out of their way to emphasize that the Lobby is "not a cabal" and "not a conspiracy," and, although they mention the AIPAC spy case briefly, they draw no conclusions from it. Perhaps they thought they had enough of a burden in making the case they did make, without sinking the knife in deeper. Yet this case shows that at the very core of the Lobby a cabal was operating, which was – and, for all we know, still is – engaged in a conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of a foreign power.

This is undeniable to anyone who has followed the details of this case, and the embarrassment of a public trial would have rendered it irrefutable in the public mind: AIPAC would be ruined, its name and image forever associated with the stealing of U.S. secrets. Almost certainly a trial would force AIPAC to register as an agent of a foreign power, namely Israel, in which case its political effectiveness would be seriously impaired, and for all intents and purposes ended.

There is going to be tremendous pressure now, coming from the White House as well as the Lobby, to quash this trial before it ruins them all. The odds are that this effort will succeed, if only because the case has slipped beneath the media's radar. It has been going on, after all, for nearly three long years, during which time the original memory of the FBI's two raids on AIPAC's Washington office and the sensational confession and conviction of Franklin have faded in the public mind. Even the nearly unprecedented news that a judge has ordered such a personage as Rice to give testimony in this case hasn't garnered all that much notice. If the case dies, it will die a largely silent death. If it ever comes to trial, however, it will be the show of the decade, much more entertaining than anything remotely promised by the trial of Scooter Libby.

Rice's refusal to testify, and similar refusals by some or all of the currently serving U.S. officials, could torpedo the trial once and for all, or at least delay it indefinitely as the government appeals the judge's decision. Douglas Feith will never be asked why he was in such a hurry to resign, and Wolfowitz and Hadley will be spared the embarrassment of having to explain how Israeli agents managed to penetrate the Pentagon. The Lobby can breathe a sigh of relief, as can the White House – and, most importantly, from the Israeli point of view, their spy nest can continue to operate without further ado.

After all, you don't really believe that Franklin is the only neocon fish caught in AIPAC's web of espionage, do you? The existence of one spy implies the presence of others, and, in this case, it's a virtual certainty. A public trial would expose the whole network to the blinding light of day, an ugly scene that both Washington and the Israelis would much rather avoid. To obscure the implications of their espionage, the Lobby has done its best to sabotage this case – and it looks like they may have succeeded.

Attack on Iran will be military suicide

by Gordon Prather - Nov 4, 2007

A couple of weeks ago, Russian President Putin made a historic visit to Iran, nominally to attend a summit of the Caspian Sea littoral states - Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran.

The summit, itself, resulted in a number of 'milestone' agreements, including one prohibiting other countries (such as the United States) from using - 'in any circumstances' - territory or facilities of any Caspian Sea littoral state (such as Azerbaijan) for 'use of force or aggression' against another (such as Iran).

And if that message wasn't clear enough, Putin also met privately with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, declaring afterwards in a joint press conference that Iran is an important regional and global power'.

Putin also took the opportunity to tell the world that he had seen no 'evidence' - Director-General ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency hasn't even found an 'indication' - that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Therefore, Russia would go ahead and complete the IAEA safeguarded nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

Talk about pinning the tail on Bush's donkey with a nail-gun.

But, protested Bush, who had just been told by Putin that he wouldn't even be allowed to launch a 'surgical' attack - much less another war of aggression - against Iran from our 'temporary' air base in Azerbaijan, [says]

'We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel.'

(That's a lie, of course. Ahmadinejad has never made such an announcement.)

As Bush must know, even if Ahmadinejad wanted to merely effect regime change in Israel - much less destroy the country - he couldn't. Iran's President is not - even in time of war - commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. Or even of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which Condi-baby has just designated to be somehow involved in 'nuclear proliferation'.

Of course, in time of wars declared by our Congress, our President is the commander-in-chief of our armed forces. And Bush believes - or acts as if he believes - our Congress has declared war on anyone Bush 'determines' to be a terrorist or on any state Bush 'determines' to be a supporter of terrorists.

So, quoth Bush,

"I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

It's frequently difficult - sometimes impossible - to make sense of Bush's pronouncements.

But apparently, Bush recently told Russian President Putin that World War III could result not because Iran allegedly has nukes with which to allegedly attack Israel, or not because Iran has the capability of making the fissile material absolutely necessary for making nukes with which to allegedly attack Israel, or not even because Iran allegedly wants to make nukes with which to allegedly attack Israel.

Taking Bush literally, all it will take for the Israelis or the United States to attack Iran, risking WWIII - with the United States and Israel on one side and Russia and China on the other - is some indication that some Iranians know how to make a nuke.

Now, Putin has frequently expressed his opposition to the Iranians acquiring nuclear weapons. But, Putin has repeatedly expressed his support for the 'inalienable right' (guaranteed by the NPT) to the use of atomic energy by the Iranians, for peaceful purposes, to be verified by the IAEA.

The Israelis - on the other hand - have repeatedly expressed their outrageous view that the capability of enriching the Uranium-235 content of large amounts of natural uranium to any level is tantamount to having the capability to make a nuclear weapon.

Are they serious?

Well, back in 1981 Israel "took out" Osiraq, a French-built IAEA-safeguarded research reactor, apparently because they had concluded that Saddam Hussein expected Osiraq - in lieu of the Tooth Fairy - to miraculously leave a few nuclear weapons under his pillow.

Since 1991, thanks to the IAEA, the whole world has known that Saddam began his quest for nuclear weapons as a direct result of the Israeli raid on his IAEA safeguarded research reactor.

Here are excerpts from UN Security Council Resolution 487 condemning the Israeli pre-emptive strike.

"Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that, in accordance with that treaty, Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date;

"Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel - in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct;

"Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof;

"Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime, which is the foundation of the non-proliferation treaty."
Now, Bush the Younger has apparently adopted the equally idiotic and outrageously inflammatory view of the Israelis about Iran's IAEA safeguarded programs.
Nevertheless, it was something of a surprise when Zogby America's latest poll of likely voters revealed that 52 percent "would support a US military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon."

Worse still, according to Zogby, 53 percent believe it is 'likely' that the United States will be 'involved' in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election.

It's too bad Zogby didn't phrase the first question this way;

"Given that the IAEA continues to verify that Iran is engaged in the pursuit of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, as is their 'inalienable right' as a signatory to the NPT; Would you support a US or Israeli strike - in violation of the UN Charter - against Iran's IAEA safeguarded nuclear facilities, including the nuclear power plant nearing completion by the Russians at Bushehr?”

“Would you support such a strike even if it resulted in World War III, with US-Israel on one side, and Russia-China-Islam on the other?"

US commander converts to Islam

Press TV News - Nov 4, 2007

The US commander of International Security Assistance Force in the Andar district of Ghazni Province in Afghanistan has embraced Islam.

The commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) embraced Islam in the presence of 2,000 people on Thursday.

Cap. Cormier Michel - 45 - commands 300 ISAF troops in the Taliban-infested district. The Ghazni governor, district chief, provincial council members, local officials, elders, ISAF soldiers and students attended a ceremony marking the commander's conversion to Islam.

The ceremony, which lasted well over three hours, concluded with chants of 'Allah-o-Akbar (Allah is Great).

Cap. Michel, who changed his name to Abdul Wahed, started his brief speech with Bismillah (In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent and the most Merciful). During the last five years, Abdul Wahed pointed out, he had been studying Islamic books and he concluded that Islam is the first religion.

“Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood, but terrorists and extremists are bringing a bad name to it," he noted.

Israel tells Rice security comes before Palestinian state

AFP - Nov 4, 2007

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heard a strong message from Israel on Sunday that security must precede the creation of a Palestinian state, as she sought to bridge gaps ahead of a peace meeting.

Making her eighth visit this year for shuttle diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinians, Rice lowered expectations of rapid agreement on a joint document for the US-sponsored meeting expected later this year in Annapolis, Maryland.

"I think what you are really starting to see here is that people are starting to see Annapolis as the beginning of a process, not a single point in time," Rice told a group of journalists travelling with her.

"People are starting to address really difficult issues that they had not addressed in a long time," she added.

Israeli officials have said that negotiations should be based on a 2003 peace blueprint endorsed by the international community, insisting that Israeli security come before the creation of a Palestinian state.

"The roadmap should be the guiding principle for any further progress between Israel and the Palestinians," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Rice during their meeting, according to a senior Israeli official.

The internationally drafted peace plan has made next to no progress since it was adopted more than four year ago, and has already missed its first deadline for creating a Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, have pushed for a more ambitious document that addresses the most hotly contested issues of the conflict -- Jerusalem, borders, and refugees -- and sets a timetable for implementation.

"The negotiations are going to be difficult and challenging, but we have the desire and we have hope, and we are confident we will arrive at a good result," Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Sunday in a speech in Ramallah.

Israeli negotiators and their Palestinian counterparts have been divided for weeks over a joint document they are supposed to draw up for the meeting aimed at reviving the peace process after a seven-year hiatus.

Not a single word has yet been written for the conference document and wide gaps remain between Israel and the Palestinians, although both sides have agreed that commitment to the roadmap would be part of the statement.

Rice met Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, and international Middle East envoy Tony Blair before she was to address the Saban Forum think-tank in Jerusalem.

On Monday, she is to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Ahmed Qorei who heads his negotiating team and prime minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.

The Palestinians have asked that Rice put more pressure on Israel, insisting that Israeli security will only come with a larger political settlement.

"The statements of some Israeli officials that consider Israeli security more important than the establishment of a Palestinian state hinder an agreement," Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

"The establishment of a Palestinian state is what will guarantee the security and stability of the whole region," he added.

Abbas has called for a six-month deadline for a comprehensive deal with Israel, insisting: "We will not accept leaving these questions open for ever."

No firm date has yet been announced for the US meeting, and Arab powers likely to be invited to the conference have been sceptical about its chances of success without any serious effort to address the concerns of all involved.

The Islamist movement Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since a bloody takeover in which security forces loyal to Abbas were defeated nearly five months ago, has rejected the conference altogether.

"Its well-known goals are normalisation with the Arabs, the hardening of internal divisions and the preparation for the coming attack on Iran and Gaza and Syria and Lebanon," Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said on Sunday.

"It is a preparation to impose the roadmap, which means the disarmament of the resistance," he added.

Israeli air strikes and shelling killed four Palestinians in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Sunday, after militants fired three rockets toward the Jewish state, medical and security officials said.