*The following letter by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has been sent to all members of the UN Security Council, with copies to the UN General Assembly and Senator Biden of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Please circulate.* International Action Center http://www.iacenter.org Founded by Ramsey Clark July 29, 2002 Dear Ambassador, Any remaining hope the peoples of the United Nations have to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war through the United Nations would be crushed by another United States attack on Iraq. Threats to attack, invade and overthrow the government of Iraq by President George Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, various cabinet officers and Pentagon officials have been routine for a year. The psychological warfare is itself a crime against peace and violates the U.N. Charter. Today's front-page headline story in the New York Times, "U.S. Exploring Baghdad Strike As Iraq Option," is typical of the in terrorem intention of the threats. The danger to civilian life in Baghdad from such a strike would be enormous. THE UNITED NATIONS MUST ACT TO PREVENT AN ATTACK BY THE UNITED STATES AGAINST IRAQ If the United Nations is unable to restrain the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, from committing crimes against peace and humanity as well as war crimes against a nation that has already been violated by the U.S. beyond endurance, then what is the United Nations worth? At the very least, opposition to any attack or attempt to overthrow the government of Iraq by force must be publicly expressed by the United Nations. THE UNITED STATES BOMBED DEFENSELESS IRAQ MERCILESSLY FOR FORTY-TWO DAYS IN 1991 The U.S. led and glorified the massive assault on Iraq in January and February 1991. The Pentagon announced it conducted 110,000 aerial sorties against the defenseless "cradle of civilization," dropping 88,500 tons of bombs. The widespread bombing destroyed the economic viability of the civilian society throughout the nation. It killed tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and others. A major part of the bombing was directed at civilians and civilian facilities. It was less accurate than the recent indiscriminate attacks in Afghanistan. U.S. bombs destroyed Iraqi water systems, electric power transmission, communications, transportation, manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, poultry and livestock, food storage facilities, markets, fertilizer and insecticide production, business centers, archeological and historical treasures, apartment houses, residential areas, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches and synagogues. The Pentagon stated its casualties were 156. One third were from "friendly fire"; the rest were accidental. The U.S. had no combat casualties. THE UNITED STATES FORCED THE IMPOSITION OF GENOCIDAL SANCTIONS ON IRAQ IN 1990 The U.S. crafted economic sanctions against Iraq which the Security Council approved on August 6, 1990, the 45th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. Those sanctions are the direct cause of the very cruel deaths of more than a million people. This is the greatest crime against humanity, in the last decade of the most violent century in history. Each painful death of an individual wasting away?from malnutrition; Kwashiorkor; the rush of dehydration from contaminated water and from diseases was preventable. The sanctions continue to this time to cause hundreds of deaths each day. Every United Nations agency dealing with food, health and children--including FAO, WFP, WHO, UNICEF--has proclaimed the horror, magnitude and responsibility for this human catastrophe. The great majority of the deaths caused by the sanctions are infants, children, the elderly, the chronically ill and emergency medical cases. These are the people most vulnerable to polluted water, malnutrition, and the lack of medicines and medical equipment and supplies. U.S. claims that it is the Iraqi government that is responsible for deaths from shortages of food and medicine are false. The U.S. blocked oil sales by Iraq for six years before appearing to yield to humanitarian pleas to permit oil sales to purchase food and medicine. Since 1997, when sales began, it has effectively frustrated and delayed the Oil for Food program, which does not provide sufficient income at the levels approved to stop the daily deterioration of health and growing death rates in Iraq. Before sanctions there was virtually no malnutrition in Iraq and free hospital, health services and medicines were a model for the region. Its present system of government distribution of available food staples is a model of fairness and efficiency, lacking only in quantity and variety of food. UNITED STATES MILITARY AIRCRAFT HAVE ATTACKED IRAQ AT WILL FOR ELEVEN YEARS The U.S. has engaged in air strikes against Iraq at will since March 1991, when the massive attacks averaging one aerial sortie every 30 seconds ended. Without losing a single plane, U.S. attacks have killed: cleaning personnel at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in a failed attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein; scores of people each year in attacks on radar stations in or near the U.S.-imposed no-fly zones; all the persons aboard a U.N. helicopter shot down by U.S. aircraft; and civilians from all walks of life, including the internationally famous artist and Director of Iraqis' National Center for Arts, Leila al Attar. IRAQ IS NOT A THREAT TO THE U.S., COUNTRIES IN THE REGION OR OTHERS The U.S. has falsely claimed that Iraq is working to develop weapons of mass destruction to attack the U.S., Israel, its neighbors and others. The U.S. claimed its 1991 attacks destroyed 80% of Iraq's military capacity. The U.N. inspection efforts claimed to discover and dismantle 90% of Iraq's post-1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction. Iraq, its peoples and resources are exhausted. It has a "stunted" generation of children under age 10 and a debilitated population at all ages. It is the victim of the worst crime against humanity in recent decades. THE UNITED STATES IS THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE ON EARTH Two of the highest U.N. officials responsible for U.N. weapons inspection within Iraq and a principle U.S. citizen participating in the inspections have resigned, denounced the sanctions and denied that there is a threat that Iraq will develop weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. has more nuclear weapons than all other nations combined as well as the most sophisticated and numerous systems for the delivery of nuclear weapons, including the Trident II submarine fleet. It possesses the greatest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and the most advanced and extensive research in mass destruction weaponry in the world. Military spending by the U.S. exceeds that of the nine next largest budgets for war combined. President Bush has repeatedly declared the right to strike first. The U.S. attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs and continues to justify those acts. The U.S. has renounced treaties controlling nuclear weapons and their proliferation; voted against the protocol enabling enforcement of the Biological Weapons Conventions; and rejected the treaty banning land mines, the International Criminal Court and virtually every other international effort to control and limit war. The U.S. War Against Terrorism is a declaration of right by the U.S. to attack first?anyone, anywhere, on mere suspicion, or without excuse, unilaterally. The U.S. wants to overthrow the government of Iraq and many others in violation of law. Unless restrained the chance for peace and global equality of economic, social, cultural and political opportunity among nations will be lost. Which government presents the greater threat to peace globally or for Mesopotania and its neighbors?the U.S. or Iraq? AN ATTACK BY THE UNITED STATES ON IRAQ TO OVERTHROW ITS GOVERNMENT WOULD BE A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE U.N. CHARTER, THE NUREMBERG CHARTER AND INTERNATIONAL LAW If, as promised so many times, the U.S. does attack Iraq to overthrow its government, it will be the most notorious, arrogant and contemptuous violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the Nuremberg Charter and international law yet experienced, or likely hereafter. Only absolute power unrestrained by any rule of law or standard of human decency openly taunts an intended victim as President Bush has taunted Iraq. Because the U.S. has committed historic injustices against Iraq, most during his father's presidency, and still seeks dominion in the region, President Bush, his Vice President and others in his administration hate Iraq and want finally to destroy it. I am writing this letter to you; to each U.N. Representative of a Security Council Member; the President of the General Assembly; and President Bush. This is one of a series of letters describing and protesting U.S. and UN wrongs against Iraq. The threatened wrong addressed here is the worst. If twelve years after its devastating aerial assault and after twelve years of genocidal sanctions, the omnipresent risk and frequent fact of random attack with the ever present stalking by U.S. aircraft and endless threats against its helpless victim, the U.S. commits its coup d'grace on the people of Iraq to the silence of the U.N. and wealthy nations of the world, human shame and impotence will doom us to ever greater violence. A U.S. ASSAULT ON IRAQ WILL CAUSE MORE AND GREATER VIOLENCE; URGENT ACTION BY THE UNITED NATIONS TO PREVENT A U.S. ASSAULT OF IRAQ IS REQUIRED I urge you to immediately activate the United Nations, the General Assembly, the Security Council and all its agencies to denounce the continuing threats by the United States against Iraq, to demand immediate cessation of the threats and to warn the United States that an attack by it on Iraq will violate the Charter of the United Nations, international law and the friendship of all who seek peace and respect the dignity of humanity. AN ATTACK BY THE U.S. ON IRAQ WOULD VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES REQUIRING IMPEACHMENT, TRIAL BEFORE THE U.S. SENATE AND CRIMINAL CHARGES IN FEDERAL COURTS AGAINST PRESIDENT BUSH AND ALL OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE An attack on Iraq by the United States would also violate the Constitution and laws of the United States and expose President Bush to impeachment by the House of Representatives under the Constitution of the United States for the highest of crimes, those against peace and humanity, to judgment by the United States Senate and trial in federal court for crimes charged. Unfortunately in recent years our Constitution has been more honored in the breach than in faithful observance of the rights it is intended to protect for all. But the effort to hold accountable any U.S. authority who participates in an assault against Iraq will be made here by those who love their country and for that reason insist that its acts be just. Sincerely, Ramsey Clark International Action Center 39 W. 14th St., Suite 206 New York, NY 10011 212-633-6646 fax: 212-633-2889 http://www.iacenter.org iacenter@iacenter.org ****************************************************************** ****************************************************************** http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2002_08_04_archive.html#85318144 KRUGMAN CITE: Brendan Nyhan's post on changes made to a press release on the website of the Office of Management and Budget is cited in Paul Krugman's New York Times column. The patriot patrol strikes again! (8/6) Questioning a possible war with Iraq is equated with supporting Saddam. By Bryan Keefer [First published on Salon.com (Salon Premium subscription required)] With the invasion of Iraq under discussion, several commentators have made troubling first attempts to define opposition to a war as subversive and dangerous. The strategy directly echoes attacks on dissent in the wake of Sept. 11, questioning the patriotism and good faith of those who raise legitimate -- and important -- issues. Leading the charge are two highly influential pundits: Andrew Sullivan and Rush Limbaugh. Last week, Sullivan vaguely suggested that articles in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times on the growing debate over invading Iraq and congressional hearings on the subject are part of a "campaign to protect Saddam's weaponry." He also suggested that such arguments opposing the war constitute "appeasement" of Saddam. This emotionally charged analogy to pre-World War II European policy toward Nazi Germany is too pat: Deciding not to invade Iraq is not obviously comparable to actively granting territory or other concessions in exchange for peace. Limbaugh extended those allegations to their logical extreme last week, claiming [Windows Media Player audio] that "It is obvious now that the New York Times has launched an effort to thwart America's war effort." He continued by suggesting that, assuming the Pentagon is not intentionally leaking plans in an effort to deceive Saddam, "[The Times is] publishing detailed military options and plans under consideration by the Pentagon, which could end up harming or killing God knows how many young American soldiers. They're giving aid and comfort to our enemies." Of the Times' sources, Limbaugh commented, "I know we have a bunch of traitorous types in the State Department, but I never thought they existed at the Pentagon." A close, and much nastier, cousin of this argument is the suggestion that Democrats want a war in Iraq -- but want it to fail in order to harm Bush politically. Frank Gaffney, a syndicated columnist and president of the Center for Security Policy, made exactly this point on CNN's "Crossfire" last week, suggesting in response to a question about leaks of potential attack plans, "I suppose it's because there are people who want the president's policy to fail in Iraq, and who keep leaking this information." [emphasis added] National Review's Rob Long makes a similar suggestion in the Aug. 12 issue, writing in a fictitious diary entry by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., that "some kind of quagmire in Iraq, with tens of thousands of American casualties and international scorn, is just not something I can really count on, unfortunately." Attacking the patriotism and motivations of those who question aspects of the war on terrorism has been an all too common tactic since Sept. 11. It has also been devastatingly effective at quieting dissent. One can only hope that the debate over whether and how to invade Iraq is not truncated by the same kind of chilling rhetoric. -- --- Speak Truth to Power Tom Baxter, USA 66-69, Vietnam 67-69 Progressive Librarians http://www.libr.org/PL/index.html VVAW http://www.prairienet.org/vvaw/ Veterans for Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org/ PO Box 10358, Tallahassee, Florida 32302 W 850-414-3300 H 850-893-7390 August 8, 2002 Bush Administration Tries to Hide Role in Venezuela Coup by Mark Weisbrot Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill's trip to Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay has brought some needed attention to the financial and economic crises there. But there is one country where the US is playing an enormous -- and thoroughly destructive -- role that has been left out of the picture: Venezuela. Last April the Bush Administration sent a powerful message not only to Venezuelans but to all of our Southern neighbors: if we don't like the presidents you elect, we will use our muscle to get rid of them. By any means necessary. That is what was understood when the Administration endorsed the attempted military coup on April 11 against the elected president of Venezuela. (The White House later justified its response by saying it thought that President Hugo Chavez had "resigned;" but nobody south of the Rio Grande was fooled). Now we will see whether the Democratic-led US Senate will object to this 1950s-style foreign policy. On May 3, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee requested an investigation from the US State Department, to find out what it did wrong in Venezuela. What he got was a complete whitewash -- which was turned over to the Senate last week. The State's Department's supposedly independent Office of the Inspector General didn't even interview a single Venezuelan, but relied on US embassy officials and others who had a direct career interest in covering up what happened. This is comparable to investigating Enron by talking to Ken Lay and Andrew Fastow. Significant parts of the report remain classified -- most tellingly, a section entitled "Miscellaneous Issues Raised by the News Media in Venezuela or the United States." Just what issues raised by the Venezuelan and U.S. news media are our State Department trying to keep away from the public discussion? Of course they can't hide what the press has already printed. The Washington Post and New York Times cited numerous meetings between top US officials and the people who led the military coup on April 11. The European press was even more explicit about these meetings: "The coup was discussed in some detail, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent," reported the Observer of London, citing sources at the Organization of the American States. There were dozens of such leads in the press that the State Department could have investigated. But they chose not to do so; or if they did, they have apparently withheld the results from the public. Some of the report's admissions are even more damning than the omissions. Listing the reasons for US hostility to President Chavez, the report notes "his involvement in the affairs of the Venezuelan oil company, and the potential impact of that on oil prices." There you have it: the number one reason for the US State Department supporting a military coup against a democratically elected president. He had the nerve to get involved in deciding how much oil Venezuela should produce, instead of leaving these decisions to Washington! And people wonder why anti-US sentiment is rising in Latin America. Even more importantly, the report admits that US officials did little or nothing to warn the coup leaders that the United States would impose sanctions on a government that was installed by military force. This means that all the admonishments from the US embassy about not supporting a coup -- while Washington was funneling millions of dollars to pro-coup organizations -- were a mere formality. The real message was a big green light. The anti-democratic Venezuelan opposition will continue to understand that message, until there is an explicit statement from the Bush Administration that a coup would result in a cut-off of economic and diplomatic relations with the United States. The Senate should demand exactly such a statement, and conduct a real investigation in place of the State Department's cover-up. Anything less would tell the world that our Congress -- not just the Bush Administration -- has little respect for democracy in Latin America. Mark Weisbrot is co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is co-author (with Dean Baker) of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press). Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69 San Francisco, CA http://www.veteransforpeace.org August 7, 2002 The First 21st Century Police State by Anis Shivani The New York Times wrote recently about Russia getting a new "Western-style" legal code: "The code enshrines the fundamental concept of presumption of innocence and gives new responsibilities--and, in theory, independence--to judges, while it will gradually strip prosecutors of the enormous powers they have wielded over almost every step of any prosecution, from arrest to trial. Defense lawyers will have the right to challenge the admissibility of evidence, throwing out, among other things, evidence collected by wiretaps without a warrant." The Times writes without a sense of irony. None of these constitutional protections exist anymore in the U.S. The Times goes on to describe Russia, but unwittingly provides a perfect description of the new Aschroftian fascist state in America: "...is...a country where suspects can be detained indefinitely, where arbitrary, politically...motivated prosecutions are common, where coercion of suspects is rampant, where the police can stop anyone on the street without any reasonable cause." In Tom Cruise's new movie, Minority Report, based on Philip K. Dick's story, individuals can be arrested before they've committed a crime. It's not much different in America today. Consider, from Matthew Rothschild's Progressive magazine, these few instances from his McCarthyism Watch. At the Milwaukee airport on April 20, high school students were detained before going to peace demonstrations in Washington, D.C. because their names were on a no-fly list. Stephen K. Jones, a graduate student at the University of Maine at Orono, was fired for developing a lesson plan on Islam and Islamic civilization as part of his world history course at Old Town High School. Musical group Alma Melodioso, on their way from Monroe to Park City, Utah were surrounded by cops, asked harassing questions, and had their bus subjected to a search by FBI and Secret Service agents, because they had earlier asked at a gas station if there were any Olympics security checkpoints along the way. Like several other journalists, Tim McCarthy, prize-winning editor of the Courier in Littleton, New Hampshire, was fired for questioning the rush to war. A Palestinian activist has been in detention for six weeks, on minor, unrelated vehicular charges, after he joined in a demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in Boston. His teeth were forcibly pulled out while in jail. Another Palestinian student activist in the Chicago area has suffered a nearly identical fate. Legislators are considering the formation of a domestic intelligence agency, like Britain's MI-5. The new Homeland Security agency, which will lead overt martial rule in the event of a future "attack," is seeking to be exempted from access to information, conflict of interest rules, and whistle-blower protections. The military is extending its involvement in all phases of day-to-day "security." The category of "enemy combatant" is arbitrarily being applied to an American citizen named Yaser Esam Hamdi who is being held indefinitely in a naval brig in Virginia to evade constitutional protections. Mr. Hamdi was born in Louisiana and grew up in Saudi Arabia. He has been denied access to a lawyer, and is being held indefinitely without a crime being charged. The judge in this case asked the public defender, "What is unconstitutional about the government detaining that person and getting from that individual all the intelligence that might later save American lives?" Similarly, Jose Padilla, the American citizen accused of being a "dirty bomber" (on flimsy evidence) is being held in a navy brig in Charleston, S.C. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus, filed on his behalf in Manhattan and asking a federal judge to return him to New York, is being fought by the government as interfering with the president's conduct of war. As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe argues, members of an enemy force with which a nation is engaged in armed combat may be held in military confinement for the duration of war. But the rationale for such imprisonment is narrowly defined, not, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would have it, to find out what the detainees know. In recent months, there have been some positive signs as lower courts have sought to deny the government the fascist powers it seeks. But on its first opinion on the rollback of civil liberties, the Supreme Court on June 28 blocked a federal judge's order to open immigration hearings for detainees to the public. The First Amendment, according to the federal judge, requires immigration hearings to be open. But the Supreme Court has sided with the government, which has adopted a blanket policy of barring the public and media from detention and deportation hearings. To justify secret trials, the government claims that sensitive intelligence information may leak out; however, adequate provisions are in place to protect sensitive information. Across the nation, FBI agents are visiting public and university libraries, and checking up on the reading habits of people. The FBI does not require probable cause for a search warrant to conduct this type of inquiry under the USA Patriot Act. Bookstores can also have their records searched by the FBI. On May 29, the FBI was "reorganized" to give it carte blanche to spy on speech and thought--libraries, the Internet, religious groups, political meetings, all will be subject to surveillance in cooperation with the CIA. Last year, federal and state police legally intercepted 2.3 million conversations and pager communications, not including secret surveillance done under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FBI, without any court order, without any evidence of a potential crime, can now monitor chatrooms, political or religious meetings, and commercial databases that include subscriptions to publications, travel records, credit profile, and medical records. This takes us right back to the infamous days of COINTELPRO, the bureau's program in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to spy on radical and dissident groups. COINTELPRO infiltrated dissident groups to push them through agents provocateurs into unlawful actions, engaged in disinformation campaigns, and drove civil rights activists toward burnout and desperation. An unknown number of detainees remain held in secret. The INS has been reorganized into an arm of the spy state. Visitors from certain countries will be fingerprinted and made to report their whereabouts with a registry. Colleges are singling out students on the basis of ethnic identity, asking them to carry special identity papers. Committees of local vigilantes are being encouraged around the country as legitimate militias to root out suspicious people. Much of the fascist agenda is being implemented by back channel means. This is how the national ID card is being developed. The planned unique identifier will instantly provide cops with every possible information--credit history, student loans, welfare payments, drug arrests, minor traffic violations, not to mention citizenship status. If one is poor, one is by definition criminal and suspect, subject to harassment and imprisonment. If one so much as raises one's voice or violates a traffic rule, the result could be jail. Boston's pleasant Logan airport is being transformed by an Israeli security chief into a nightmare of surveillance including biometric devices matching employees' identity cards to their facial features or retinas, closed-circuit cameras that match the faces of terrorists and criminals, and wireless handheld computers that allow troopers patrolling terminals to instantly check a vehicle's license plate or the criminal history, outstanding arrest warrants, or immigration status of anyone they choose. The real reason for the war on terror is to suppress domestic political dissent and to fully realize the authoritarian state. Americans must be radically separated into the privileged minority and the oppressed majority. Nearly a century and a half after Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the civil war, historians single out this dictatorial act for condemnation. Bush has appropriated all the civil liberties violations of the past--the Alien and Sedition acts, the Palmer raids, the Japanese internment, McCarthyism--and added new technological twists that didn't exist before. American public schools look more and more like prisons. On June 26 the Supreme Court approved random drug-testing for high school students participating in any extracurricular activity. Precisely those participating in extracurricular activities are least likely to be involved in drugs, as dissenting Justice Ginsberg observed. The idea is to ingrain an absolute prison and surveillance mentality in all institutions of society. Recently, Martina Navratilova said in the German weekly Die Ziet: "The most absurd thing about my escape from injustice [from Czechoslovakia] was that I simply exchanged one system which oppressed opinion for another." Tom Cruise has said that he wouldn't raise his kids in the U.S. because "the U.S. is terrifying and it saddens me." These kinds of denunciations used to be reserved for the nightmares instigated by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. The world is scared of the brutal fascist regime emerging in this land whose ruling elite is deluded of a pax Americana lasting for the next millennium, as recent articles in Foreign Affairs repeatedly testify. Holding Jose Padilla and other citizens indefinitely on no charges, and monitoring citizens' reading habits, is tantamount to creating thought crimes. Liberal cities like Northampton, Cambridge, Berkeley, and Ann Arbor are defying enforcement of the Patriot Act. But this only proves the point about two Americas: small oases of relative freedom for a few (but for how long?) and the surrounding garrison state for everyone else. Anis Shivani studied economics at Harvard, and is the author of two novels, The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist. He welcomes comments at: Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu Article & Essay: A Malignancy On The Republic The domestic political threats are the real threat to America. By Regis Sabol America, July 4, 2002 -- On this, the 226th birthday of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America faces the dangers of terror from without and, even more frighteningly, the dangers of corruption and greed from within what the British novelist C. P. Snow called "The Corridors of Power." Not since Richard Nixon and his henchmen attempted an executive coup d'état to subvert the Constitution has the United States been more threatened. John Dean, counsel to Nixon, described the Watergate conspiracy as "a cancer on the presidency." Thirty years after a botched second-rate burglary eventually exposed Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman, Colson, and company as felons in that enormous conspiracy, we face an even greater danger. What we have now is a malignancy on the republic. A right wing conspiracy of enormous proportions involving the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government is methodically undermining not only the civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, but also the system of checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers to ensure that no one political party, no small group of powerful forces could hijack their great experiment in democratic government. Yet, that is exactly what is happening in America today. Since taking over the White House in what the respected journalist Daniel Schorr aptly described as a judicial coup d'état, George Bush and his junta are methodically converting "a nation of, by, and for the people," into a plutocratic, oligarchic, authoritarian corporate state in which all real wealth and power rests in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. The Bush administration has junked international treaties approved by Congress and signed into law, rolled back federal regulations, also signed into law, that protect the environment and all Americans who have to live and breathe in that environment, and made a mockery of civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. With the approval of a lap dog Congress, it has pushed through fiscally irrational tax cuts that amount to nothing less than welfare handouts to the rich at the expense of most Americans. Perverting a National Tragedy Worst of all, George Bush and his co-conspirators have taken obscene advantage of a national tragedy of epic proportions to achieve their reckless agenda under the banner of patriotism and national unity. We should never forget that Bush, when speaking at Republican fundraisers, repeatedly refers to 9/11 as "hitting the trifecta." In horse racing parlance, that means Bush got lucky. In other words, nearly 3,000 people died to provide a convenient excuse for why the budget surplus inherited from Bill Clinton went down the tubes because of Bush's tax cuts. They have used the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to declare endless war on an ephemeral enemy that justifies pushing through a $45 billion dollar military budget increase that will do little to help us win the Bush "War on Terrorism." Will a missile defense shield or space-based weapons protect us from the kind of attacks that occurred last September? Of course not. Will more submarines, aircraft carriers, jet fighters, and tanks, thwart terrorist guerrillas? Of course not. What this budget will do is allow Secretary of War Donald Rumsfield to pour billions into wars against enemies that don't exist, fatten the pockets of military contractors whose campaign donations helped put Bush in power, and satisfy pusillanimous Congressmen whose own ethics do not go beyond these same fat cats who keep them in office. It will also suck the United States Treasury dry of funds for any social programs that may actually strengthen America by improving healthcare for all citizens, education, Social Security, and other programs that would benefit the many and not the few. Smoke and Mirrors Patriotism By and large, the American public does not view 9/11 as terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists against what they saw as symbols of American economic and military power. Thanks to the Bush propaganda machine, they have become attacks on liberty and freedom. On July 3, CBS news anchor John Roberts called 9/11 an "attack on freedom." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a sickening display of political opportunism, described the victims of the World Trade Center attack as heroes in the war to defend freedom. That would have certainly been a surprise to the luckless thousands buried in the rubble of that attack. With the notable exception of the valiant firefighters and police, the other victims thought they were just at work making money for their families. But that didn't matter to Bloomberg. Indeed, politicians -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- the media, and the public accept that the United States is in a state of war. Against whom? Can military actions against violent militants legally and legitimately be considered a state of war? Yet Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield have used the "War on Terrorism" to justify our military adventure in Afghanistan, the purported purpose of which was to capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." We haven't done that, but we are still bombing Afghan villages and killing civilians. We are also sending advisors to counter terrorism in the Philippines, Columbia, and anywhere else on the globe we perceive "evil." A Splendid Little War? The primary locus of Bush's "axis of evil" is, of course, Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Bush, Sr., are just itching to invade Iraq and topple Sadam Hussein. They continue to feed the public a daily diet of propaganda painting Hussein as the root cause of all terrorism, even though most evidence indicates that countries the Bush administration is on speaking terms with are the more likely culprits. (Consider this: most of the 9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia, our most important ally in the Middle East.) Bush Sr., you will recall, likened Hussein to Hitler. The extent to which Bush has used the mantra of patriotism to achieve a state of permanent war became obvious when the two most powerful Democrats in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt gave their wholehearted support to Bush's plan for covert actions in Iraq to remove Hussein. (Isn't the whole idea of a covert action to keep it a secret?) Daschle and Gephardt pretty much indicated that they would support an actual invasion of Iraq. Just what are they thinking? Does anyone remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the legislative miscue that led to the folly of Vietnam? Do they think this is going to be "a splendid little war?" Do they think invading Iraq is going to be like the Gulf War or our little adventure in Afghanistan. Well, it's not. Any invasion of Iraq will result in casualties on the scale of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Ashcroft's Private War For Attorney General John Ashcroft, 9/11 was just what he needed to advance his Bill of Rights-busting, theocratic agenda for America. Even before a toadying Congress nearly unanimously passed the odious USA PATRIOT Act, the FBI was picking up anyone from the Middle East they could find and throwing them in jail without benefit of habeas corpus or any of those other inconveniences. Thus, we now have the curious paradox of two foreign nationals facing criminal trials under the American system of justice while two American citizens remain locked up in military brigs without benefit of counsel for as long as Ashcroft deems fit. Never mind that Ashcroft has made a mockery of the Constitutional concept of separation of church and state by declaring Jesus our only king and holding daily prayer sessions with top staff in his office. Never mind that he made a mockery of his avowed belief in state's rights by devoting valuable Justice Department resources to fight California's marijuana initiative for the seriously ill and Oregon's Right to Die law. Never mind that he made a mockery of his own promise to Congress not to let personal beliefs interfere with his duties as attorney general by filing a brief involving the Second Amendment that overturned 60 years of government policy regarding private ownership of handguns in a relatively minor Supreme Court case. And never mind that Ashcroft made a mockery of his post-9/11 claim to being committed to stopping terrorism after he had already previously turned down a Justice Department request for $305 million to investigate terrorist activities. A Complicit Congress, a Constitution-Blind Supreme Court Congress, by its failure to live up to its constitutional responsibilities, has also fed this malignancy destroying the fiber of our republic. Led by one-time Republican majority leader and now minority leader of the Senate Trent Lott and his House cohorts Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay, Congress has taken a wrecking ball to the nation's economy, creating enormous wealth for one percent of Americans and a lingering recession for the entire country. With the aforementioned PATRIOT Act, it has smashed the Bill of Rights. It has stymied an election reform act approved by Congress itself. It has threatened the future of Social Security. And it is on the verge of approving an outlandish military budget that will bankrupt the country. Even worse, Democrats in both houses have been accessories before and after the fact of these legislative felonies. Equally complicit in the destruction of our Constitutional system of checks and balances is the Supreme Court. Not since the Courts that issued the infamous Dred Scott decision justifying slavery and the equally infamous Plesy vs. Ferguson ruling that codified segregation have we had a court do so much damage to the Constitution. Led by the unholy trio of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, along with Justices Kennedy and O'Connor, this Court has overturned a presidential election and put George Bush in the White House. It has methodically stripped away civil liberties and individual protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. And, lastly, it has taken its own wrecking ball to the wall between church and state that the Founding Fathers had so carefully constructed. With Bush and his cabal in the executive branch, a sufficient number of Republican (and Democratic) minions in Congress, and a Supreme Court, the majority of whom, are committed to reshaping America in their own narrow reactionary image, one can only ask this question: is there a doctor in the | |