Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on November 3rd after the Pakistani Supreme Court indicated it would overturn the results of an illegitimate election that would have extended Musharraf's term as president. Musharraf quickly fired the Supreme Court justices who planned to rule against him. And his declaration of emergency attacked the entire population of Pakistan by suspending fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty, freedom of speech, assembly and association, and equal protection of the law.

As a result of Musharraf's action, Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry is being held under house arrest, and over 2500 lawyers in different parts of Pakistan have been detained. The detainees include the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and officials of the Democratic Lawyers Association of Pakistan. The government also ordered that journalists who brought "ridicule or disrepute" to Musharraf could face three years in prison.

The real motivation for Musharraf's declared emergency is not to defend the country against "Islamic extremists," as he claims, but to maintain Musharraf in power. He acted to prevent public protests that lawyers and political parties were organizing. And his scheme is working. Musharraf's brand-new, handpicked Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Musharraf can remain in power for five more years.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is scurrying around in damage control mode. Musharraf's actions would be very embarrassing for Bush -- if Bush were the type of guy to get embarrassed. After all, Bush has been claiming for the past several years that he wants to spread democracy throughout the Islamic world. Somehow, Musharraf's declared state of emergency, followed by mass arrests of his political opponents, doesn't seem very democratic.

Bush dispatched Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to Pakistan to talk sense to Musharraf. Negroponte urged Musharraf to end the state of emergency. But Bush's man didn't complain about Musharraf shutting down the Supreme Court and replacing it with his loyalists. Negroponte also failed to tell Musharraf to release the judges and lawyers from prison. So much for democracy and an independent judiciary.

The recipient of nearly $11 billion of U.S. aid since 9/11, Musharraf will cover for his benefactor Bush to keep him from losing face in light of the Pakistani strongman's blatant and tyrannical power grab. Musharraf has agreed that parliamentary elections scheduled for January will proceed and that he will take off his military uniform after the sham elections are held. Of course, Musharraf's jailed political opponents will likely find it difficult to campaign effectively for seats in parliament while incarcerated under a state of martial law.

American citizens whose tax dollars are being used to prop up this ruthless and corrupt regime should demand an accounting of how their money is being spent.

Bush claims that Musharraf is an indispensable ally in his "war against terror," and that money sent to Pakistan supports that goal. It appears from my vantage point, though, that Musharraf is playing Bush for a fool. Musharraf tells Bush he will help destroy the Taliban. However, Pakistani Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote in the November 18 Los Angeles Times that some people in Pakistan believe Musharraf is "secretly supporting the Taliban as a means for countering Indian influence." Moreover, if Musharraf wants to regain and maintain support of the Pakistani people, he will continue to support the Taliban. Hoodbhoy also wrote, "Most Pakistanis see the [Taliban] as America's enemy, not their own. The Taliban is perceived as the only group standing up against the unwelcome American presence in the region." According to Hoodbhoy, "For more than 25 years, the army has nurtured Islamist radicals as proxy warriors for covert operations on Pakistan's borders in Kashmir and Afghanistan."

Hoodbhoy's remarks are corroborated by Adrien Levy, co-author of "Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy." Levy told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, "The [Musharraf] agenda is to destabilize Afghanistan, to create a government there which is favorable to Islamabad. These are goals which are actually contrary to the goals - very largely contrary to the goals of the West. Yet," Levy, said, "this slowly moving car crash of the U.S. pumping billions of untraceable cash into the Pakistan military has continued since 2001 and we're left with the position where Pakistan is devoid of democracy, democracy is weakened and feeble, and we have just increased instability, quite honestly."

If Congress stands by and does nothing to cut off the funds to Musharraf while he maintains martial law in Pakistan, it will confirm our worst fears that Democrats and Republicans alike are making a sham of our democracy.

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Overruling Democracy

George W. Bush claims he wants to bring democracy to the Middle East. But the evidence indicates that Bush only likes democracy when the elections go his way.

The Palestinians, subjected to a ruthless occupation by Israel for nearly four decades, held a democratic election in January. Much to Bush's dismay, they elected Hamas to lead their parliament.

Likewise, voters in Lebanon democratically elected representatives of Hezbollah to parliament.

Yet Bush and his minions are doing everything they can to undo those election results.

After Hamas's election, Israel and the United States spearheaded the imposition of severe economic sanctions against the Palestinians that have virtually crippled their infrastructure. Israel, which continues to control Gaza's economy, withholds about $50 million of Palestinian monthly tax revenues.

When Palestinians in Gaza captured an Israeli soldier and members of Hezbollah in Lebanon captured two Israeli soldiers, Israel unleashed massive armed attacks against the people of Gaza and Lebanon.

Although justified as necessary to free the captured soldiers, Israel really hopes to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah in the process.

The Israel military demolished hospitals, airports, highways, power stations, fuel depots, and entire buildings with their inhabitants in Lebanon and Gaza. Hundreds of innocents have been killed and thousands injured. Israel kidnapped dozens of Hamas leaders.

Since Israel began its assaults in Gaza and Lebanon, Bush has cheered Israel on.

The United States supplies Israel with the sophisticated weapons it employs to slaughter Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, in violation of the US Arms Export Control Act. That law requires military items transferred to foreign governments by the US be used solely for internal security and legitimate self-defense.

"In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place," Bush sensibly observed. But then he continued, "And that's because Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel, and because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. That's why we have violence."

Wrong.

"Israel's actions in no way can be seen as a legitimate response to the small-scale attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah," Robert Dreyfuss wrote Monday on TomPaine. "Instead, what Israel has done has used the pretext of those pin-prick attacks - a couple of border raids and a handful of errant rockets - to launch a strategic attack whose goals are to crush Hamas and the remaining institutions of Palestinian self-rule and decapitate and destroy Hezbollah politically and militarily in Lebanon."

When Hamas and Hezbollah captured the Israeli soldiers, they intended to use them to negotiate the release of hundreds of prisoners, including women and children, who have languished in Israeli jails for years in barbaric conditions with no charges against them.

But Israel, with the blessing of the US government, reacted with overwhelming military force, killing hundreds of people and crippling the infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.

This is not self-defense. It is a war of aggression that violates the United Nations Charter. Israel is engaging in collective punishment in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The United States was the only country to veto a Security Council resolution that would have accused Israel of a "disproportionate use of force" in Gaza. This sends a clear message that Israel can do whatever it wants and Washington will support it.

US Ambassador John Bolton echoed this sentiment when he said there was no "moral equivalence" between the civilian casualties from the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist attacks." In other words, an Israeli life is worth more than a Lebanese life, in the eyes of our ambassador to the United Nations.

Both houses of the US Congress are poised to express their support for Israel and condemn Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. Bush claims that Iran and Syria are pulling the strings in Gaza and Lebanon. Although some of the arms Hezbollah is using are made in Iran, many analysts doubt that Iran or Syria is calling the shots.

So where do Hamas and Hezbollah come from?

These two Islamic resistance movements were born in the 1980s in reaction to Israel's invasion, occupation and oppression.

When the civil war in Lebanon ended, Hezbollah became a political party, winning seats in Parliament, and it continues to function in mainstream Lebanese society. Hezbollah was successful in 2000 in forcing Israel to withdraw from the southern strip of Lebanon which Israel had occupied since its 1982 invasion.

Before 1994, Hamas restricted its guerrilla actions to political and military targets in the occupied Palestinian territories. On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler, shot and killed 29 Muslim worshippers in the Mosque of the Patriarch in Hebron. Hamas took revenge with a new weapon - the suicide bomber.

One of the deadliest attacks was a Tel Aviv bus bombing in October 1994 that killed 23 people. Posters at universities in the West Bank and Gaza read: "Israel has nuclear bombs, we have human bombs." Indeed, Sheik Hassan Yousef of Hamas told the Journal of Middle East Affairs in 2002, "We do not have F-16s, but we do have one weapon that is more powerful than the F-16 or anything else. It is a weapon that is unconventional and at the same time mightier than any nuclear bomb. It is the martyrdom bomber."

James O. Goldsborough, a former columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, correlated increases in the number of suicide bombers with Israel's stepped up violence against the Palestinian people.

Hamas and Hezbollah enjoy widespread popular support because they stand up to Israeli aggression. Both combine political action and militant jihad with humanitarian, social and educational programs.

As Robin Wright wrote in Saturday's Washington Post, Hezbollah "runs a major hospital as well as schools, discount pharmacies, groceries and an orphanage. It runs a garbage service and a reconstruction program for homes damaged during Israel's invasion. It supports families of the young men sent off to their deaths. Altogether, it benefits an estimated 250,000 Lebanese and is the country's second-largest employer."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told Wright that he joined Hezbollah after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. "We used to discuss issues among ourselves," he said. "If we are to expel the Israeli occupation from our country, how do we do this? We noticed what happened in Palestine, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, in the Golan, in Sinai. We reached a conclusion that we cannot rely on the Arab League states, nor on the United Nations," he added. "The only way that we have is to take up arms and fight the occupation forces."

There is tremendous support for Hezbollah among Arabs. Abdel-Menem Mustapha, Egypt bureau chief of the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, said, "The Arab street feels strong sympathy with Hezbollah and Nasrallah, because its pride has been battered, and it is weary of decades of concessions made to Israel by Arab governments."

Journalist Dahr Jamail, reporting this week from the Lebanese/Syrian border, said tens of thousands of Arab protestors took to the streets, condemning Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Jamail also reported that thousands of angry Iraqis marched in Baghdad in solidarity with Nasrallah and denounced Israel and the United States for the attacks.

Bush is determined to control the entire Middle East - propelled by the neo-cons who seek economic and political hegemony over the region, and the Christian Zionists who await Christ's second coming in Israel. William Kristol, editor of the neo-con Weekly Standard, said, "It's our war."

Bush has been itching for an excuse to expand his war on Iraq to Iran and Syria.

"The U.S. Strategic Command, supported by the Air Force, has been drawing up plans, at the President's direction, for a major bombing campaign in Iran," Seymour Hersh wrote in last week's New Yorker. Senior military commanders have warned the administration that "the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran's nuclear program" and "could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States," including endangering our troops in Iraq, Hersh added.

On Saturday, the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat claimed that Israel, with backing from the United States, had given Syria 72 hours to pressure Hezbollah into releasing the two captured Israeli soldiers and stopping their cross-border attacks into northern Israel. Washington has neither confirmed nor denied the report.

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, says, "The escalation in Gaza reflects the failure of Israeli unilateralism, the failure of the Quartet-backed 'Roadmap,' the failure of the US-orchestrated exclusion of the UN, the failure of the international community to end the occupation, and the failure of the UN to intervene and provide international protection in the meantime."

The real tragedy from Israel's recent aggression in Gaza is that it threatens to dismantle negotiations for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. The Hamas-Fatah "prisoners' statement" would confine armed resistance to the Israeli occupation to the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, not inside Israel.

The US corporate media is a mouthpiece for Israeli foreign policy. For example, Fox News Correspondent Bill Hemmer, stationed in Kiryat Shmona, Israel, near the Golan Heights the other day, might as well have been working for Israeli television. He reported, "We took more rockets here," referring to the primitive Katyushas launched by Hezbollah.

George W. Bush, the champion of democracy, is playing with fire. If he continues his uncritical support for Israeli aggression, and follows his "Bring 'em on!" strategy in Iraq with Iran and Syria, he may just unleash the Armageddon he yearns for.

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The Haditha Massacre

They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart.
- Observations of Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones after the Haditha Massacre

On November 19, 2005, Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division based at Camp Pendleton allegedly killed 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in a three to five hour rampage. One victim was a 76-year-old amputee in a wheelchair holding a Koran. A mother and child bent over as if in prayer were also among the fallen. "I pretended that I was dead when my brother's body fell on me, and he was bleeding like a faucet," said Safa Younis Salim, a 13-year-old girl who survived by faking her death.

Other victims included girls and boys ages 14, 10, 5, 4, 3 and 1. The Washington Post reported, "Most of the shots ... were fired at such close range that they went through the bodies of the family members and plowed into walls or the floor, doctors at Haditha's hospital said."

The executions of 24 unarmed civilians were conducted in apparent retaliation for the death of Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas when a small Marine convoy hit a roadside bomb earlier that day.

A statement issued by a US Marine Corps spokesman the next day claimed: "A US Marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."

A subsequent Marine version of the events said the victims were killed inadvertently in a running gun battle with insurgents.

Both of these stories were false and the Marines knew it. They were blatant attempts to cover up the atrocity, disguised as "collateral damage."

The Marine Corps paid $38,000 in compensation to relatives of the victims, according to a report in the Denver Post. These types of payments are made only to compensate for accidental deaths inflicted by US troops. This was a relatively large amount, indicating the Marines knew something was not right during that operation, according to Mike Coffman, the Colorado state treasurer who served in Iraq recently as a Marine reservist.

Congressman John Murtha, D-Pa., a former Marine, was briefed on the Haditha investigation by Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee. Murtha said Sunday, "The reports I have from the highest level: No firing at all. No interaction. No military action at all in this particular incident. It was an explosive device, which killed a Marine. From then on, it was purely shooting people."

The Haditha massacre did not become public until Time Magazine ran a story about it in March of this year. Time had turned over the results of its investigation, including a videotape, to the US military in January. Only then did the military launch an investigation.

These Marines "suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results," a US official told the Los Angeles Times.

"Marines over-reacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," Murtha said.

Murtha's statement both indicts and exonerates the Marines of the crime of murder.

Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Premeditation and deliberation - cold-blooded planning - are required for first degree murder. Complete self-defense can be demonstrated by an honest and reasonable belief in the need to defend oneself against death or great bodily injury. The Marines might be able to show that, in the wake of the killing of their buddy Terrazas by an improvised explosive device, they acted in an honest belief that they might be killed in this hostile area. But the belief that unarmed civilians inside their homes posed a deadly threat to the Marines would be unreasonable. An honest but unreasonable belief in the need to defend constitutes imperfect self-defense, which negates the malice required for murder, and reduces murder to manslaughter.

An honest but unreasonable belief in the need to defend constitutes imperfect self-defense, which negates the malice required for murder, and reduces murder to manslaughter.

Many of our troops suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones, a Marine in Kilo Company, did not participate in the Haditha massacre. TJ Terrazas was his best friend. Briones, who was 20 years old at the time, saw Terrazas after he was killed. "He had a giant hole in his chin. His eyes were rolled back up in his skull," Briones said of his buddy.

"A lot of people were mad," Briones said. "Everyone had just a [terrible] feeling about what had happened to TJ."

After the massacre, Briones was ordered to take photographs of the victims and help carry their bodies out of their homes. He is still haunted by what he had to do that day. Briones picked up a young girl who was shot in the head. "I held her out like this," he said, extending his arms, "but her head was bobbing up and down and the insides fell on my legs."

"I used to be one of those Marines who said that post-traumatic stress is a bunch of bull," said Briones, who has gotten into serious trouble since he returned home. "But all this stuff that keeps going through my head is eating me up. I need immediate help."

A key quote from a Marine officer could be used to show premeditation - and thus malice - in support of a possible murder charge against the shooters. An article in yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune which is reprinted from the New York Times News Service, cites a report by "one Marine officer" that "inspectors suspected at least part of the motive for the killings was to send a message to local residents that they would 'pay a price' for failing to warn the Marines about insurgent activity in the area."

Curiously, that paragraph is missing from the same story in both the print and online editions of yesterday's New York Times. For some reason, the Times had second thoughts about that paragraph, and removed it, after the copy had been sent to other papers over the wire.

Regardless of how those who may ultimately be charged with murder fare in court, a more significant question is whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld will be charged with war crimes on a theory of command responsibility.

Willful killing is considered a war crime under the US War Crimes Act. People who commit war crimes can be punished by life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes and he failed to stop or prevent it.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are knowingly prosecuting a war of aggression in Iraq. Under the United Nations Charter, a country cannot invade another country unless it is acting in self-defense or it has permission from the Security Council. Iraq had invaded no country for 11 years before "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and the council never authorized the invasion.

A war that violates the UN Charter is a war of aggression.

Under the Nuremberg Tribunal, aggressive war is the supreme international crime.

Hagee flew from Washington to Iraq last week to brief US forces on the Geneva Conventions, the international laws of armed conflict and the US military's own rules of engagement. He is reportedly telling the troops they should use deadly force "only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful." This creates a strong inference that our leaders had not adequately briefed our troops on how to behave in this war.

This, combined with the evidence that US forces are committing torture based on policies from the highest levels of government, as well as reports of war crimes committed in places such as Fallujah, served to put Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld on notice that Marines would likely commit war crimes in places such as Haditha. Our highest leaders thus should have known this would happen, and they should be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act.

Murtha told ABC there was "no question" the US military tried to "cover up" the Haditha incident, which Murtha called "worse than Abu Ghraib." Murtha's high-level briefings indicated, "There was an investigation right afterward, but then it was stifled," he said.

"Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long?" Murtha asked on "This Week" on ABC. "We don't know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command."

Murtha said the decision to pay compensation to families of the victims is strong evidence that officers up the chain of command knew what had happened in Haditha. "That doesn't happen at the lowest level. That happens at the highest level before they make a decision to make payments to the families."

Haditha is likely the tip of the iceberg in Bush's illegal war of aggression in Iraq.

"We have a Haditha every day," declared Muhanned Jasim, an Iraqi merchant. "Were [those killed in Haditha] the first ... Iraqis to be killed for no reason?" asked pharmacist Ghasan Jayih. "We're used to being killed. It's normal now to hear 25 Iraqis are killed in one day."

"We have a Fallujah and Karbala every day," Jasim added, referring to the 2004 slaughter by US forces in Fallujah and bombings by resistance fighters in the Shiite city of Karbala.

In Fallujah, US soldiers opened fire on houses, and US helicopters fired on and killed women, old men and young children, according to Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein.

"What we're seeing more of now, and these incidents will increase monthly, is the end result of fuzzy, imprecise national direction combined with situational ethics at the highest levels of this government," said retired Air Force Col. Mike Turner, a former planner at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Senator John Warner, R-Va., head of the Armed Services Committee, pledged to hold hearings on the Haditha killings at the conclusion of the military investigation. "I'll do exactly what we did with Abu Ghraib," he told ABC News.

Warner's pledge provides little solace to those who seek justice. Congress has yet to hold our leaders to account for the torture by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison. Only a few low-ranking soldiers have been prosecuted. The Bush administration has swept the scandal under the rug.

During the Vietnam War, the US military spoke of winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. But in 1968, US soldiers massacred about 400 unarmed elderly men, women and children in the small village of My Lai. A cover-up ensued, and it wasn't until Seymour Hersh broke the story that it became public.

"America in the view of many Iraqis has no credibility. We do not believe what they say is correct," said Sheik Sattar al-Aasaaf, a tribal leader in Anbar province, which includes Haditha. "US troops are very well-trained and when they shoot, it isn't random but due to an order to kill Iraqis. People say they are the killers."

Graffiti on one of the Haditha victims' houses reads, "Democracy assassinated the family that was here."

So much for winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

We must pull our troops out of Iraq immediately, and insist that our leaders be held to account for the war crimes committed there.

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The Perfect Storm

Here, a new trial was mandated by the perfect storm created when the surge of pervasive community sentiment, and extensive publicity both before and during the trial, merged with the improper prosecutorial references.
- Eleventh Circuit US Court of Appeals, three-judge panel opinion reversing the convictions of the Cuban Five, August 9, 2005

Many of our leaders seem to view Florida's Cuban conservatives, including the assassins and terrorists among them, as People Who Vote.
- Alice Walker, introduction, The Sweet Abyss

Since September 11, 2001, George W. Bush has made "the war on terror" the centerpiece of his policy. He uses this mantra to justify his wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, his warrantless surveillance of American citizens, and his escalating threats against Iran.

But Bush defines "terrorist" selectively. When it comes to Cuba, the Bush administration harbors the terrorists and punishes the anti-terrorists. The 700,000 Cuban-Americans in Miami are "people who vote," as evidenced by their critical role in both the 2000 and 2004 US elections.

On June 8, 2001, five Cuban men known as the Cuban Five were convicted of criminal charges in US district court in Miami. Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González are serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively for crimes including conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder.

In a 93-page decision, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals unanimously overturned their convictions on August 9, 2005, because the anti-Cuba atmosphere in Miami, extensive publicity, and misconduct by the prosecutor denied them the right to a fair trial.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appealed the panel's ruling. The case is now pending before the whole, or en banc, Court of Appeals. The court will decide whether the district court wrongly denied the defendants' motions to change venue and move the trial out of Miami because an impartial jury could not be selected there.

The three-judge panel said that its review of the evidence at trial was "more extensive than is typical for consideration of an appeal involving the denial of motion for change of venue ... because the trial evidence itself created safety concerns for the jury which implicate venue considerations."

For more than 40 years, anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based in Miami have engaged in countless terrorist activities against Cuba and anyone who advocates the normalization of relations between the US and Cuba.

Terrorist groups including Alpha 66, Omega 7, Comandos F4, Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), Independent and Democratic Cuba (CID) and Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), operate with impunity in the United States - with the knowledge and support of the FBI and CIA.

Ruben Dario Lopez-Castro, associated with a number of anti-Castro organizations, and Orlando Bosch, who planted a bomb on a Cubana airliner in 1976, killing all 73 persons aboard, "planned to ship weapons into Cuba for an assassination attempt on Castro," one witness testified at the trial.

The panel noted that "Bosch had a long history of terrorist acts against Cuba, and prosecutions and convictions for terrorist-related activities in the United States and in other countries."

Luis Posada Carriles, the other man responsible for downing the Cubana airliner, has never been criminally prosecuted in the United States.

Percy Francisco Alvarado Godoy and Juan Francisco Fernandez Gomez described in depositions attempts between 1993 and 1997 by affiliates of CANF to recruit them to engage in violent activities against several Cuban targets. They both said they were asked to place a bomb at the Caberet Tropicana, a popular Havana nightclub and tourist attraction.

The panel found:

Alpha-66 ran a paramilitary camp training participants for an invasion of Cuba, had been involved in terrorist attacks on Cuban hotels in 1992, 1994, and 1995, had attempted to smuggle hand grenades into Cuba in March 1993, and had issued threats against Cuban tourists and installations in November 1993. Alpha-66 members were intercepted on their way to assassinate Castro in 1997. Brigade 2506 ran a youth paramilitary camp. BTTR flew into Cuban air space from 1994 to 1996 to drop messages and leaflets promoting the overthrow of Castro's government. CID was suspected of involvement with an assassination attempt against Castro. Comandos F4 was involved in an assassination attempt against Castro. Commandos L claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack in 1992 at a hotel in Havana. CANF planned to bomb a nightclub in Cuba. The Ex Club planned to bomb tourist hotels and a memorial. PUND planned to ship weapons for an assassination attempt on Castro.
Several terrorist acts in Havana were documented in the panel's decision, including explosions at eight hotels and the Cuban airport. An Italian tourist was killed, people were injured and all locations sustained property damage. Posada has twice publicly admitted responsibility for these bombings.

The panel characterized Posada as "a Cuban exile with a long history of violent acts against Cuba."

In the face of this terrorism, the Cuban Five were gathering intelligence in Miami in order to prevent future terrorist acts against Cuba. Former high-ranking US military and security officials testified that Cuba posed no military threat to the United States. Although none of the five men had any classified material in their possession or engaged in any acts to injure the United States, and there was no evidence linking any of them to Cuba's shooting down of two small aircraft flown by Cuban exiles, the Cuban Five were nonetheless convicted of all charges.

A survey conducted before trial showed that 69 percent of all respondents and 74 percent of Hispanic respondents were prejudiced against persons charged with engaging in the activities alleged in the indictment.

Legal psychologist Dr. Kendra Brennan characterized the results of a poll of Miami Cuban-Americans as reflecting "an attitude of a state of war ... against Cuba" which had a "substantial impact on the rest of the Miami-Dade community." She found that 49.7 percent of the local Cuban population strongly favored direct US military action to overthrow the Castro regime.

Dr. Lisandro Pérez, Director of the Cuban Research Institute, concluded that "the possibility of selecting twelve citizens of Miami-Dade County who can be impartial in a case involving acknowledged agents of the Cuban government is virtually zero ... even if the jury were composed entirely of non-Cubans, as it was in this case."

One prospective juror stated that he "would feel a little bit intimidated and maybe a little fearful for my own safety if I didn't come back with a verdict that was in agreement with what the Cuban community [in Miami] feels, how they think the verdict should be."

A banker and senior vice president in charge of housing loans was "concern[ed] how ... public opinion might affect [his] ability to do his job" which could "affect his ability to generate loans."

David Buker stated he believed that "Castro is a communist dictator and I am opposed to communism so I would like to see him gone and a democracy established in Cuba." Buker became the foreperson of the jury.

During deliberations, "some of the jurors indicated that they felt pressured." They "expressed concern that they were filmed 'all the way to their cars and [that] their license plates had been filmed,'" according to the panel's opinion.

The change of venue motion occurred during the Elian Gonzalez matter. "It is uncontested," wrote the panel, "that the publicity concerning Elian Gonzalez continued during the trial, 'arousing and inflaming' passions within the Miami-Dade community." The panel noted "the various Cuban exile groups and their paramilitary camps that continue to operate within the Miami area." It concluded, "The perception that these groups could harm jurors that rendered a verdict unfavorable to their views was palpable."

The panel found: "Despite the district court's numerous efforts to ensure an impartial jury in this case, we find that empaneling such a jury in this community was an unreasonable probability because of pervasive community prejudice."

Noted criminal defense attorney and long-time National Lawyers Guild member Leonard Weinglass represents Antonio Guerrero. Weinglass told me, "In seeking a review of the panel decision, the government has asked the en banc court to convert the finding of a 'perfect storm' of prejudice (reached unanimously after a 16-month scrupulous review of the record on venue) into a 'sunny day' of placid tolerance."

The US government's 47-year economic blockade of Cuba was mirrored by the US media's blockade of press coverage of the trial. In spite of the avalanche of coverage in Miami, it was hardly mentioned in the national media.

"It is inexplicable that the longest trial in the United States at the time it occurred, hearing scores of witnesses, including three retired generals and a retired admiral, as well as the President's Advisor on Cuban Affairs (all called by the defense) and a leading military expert from Cuba, all the while considering the dramatic and explosive 40-year history of US-Cuba relations, did not qualify for any media attention outside of Miami," Weinglass said.

The Cuban Five were placed in solitary confinement for 17 months, in tiny cells where they could barely stand, until the start of their trial. Two have been denied visits from their wives for the last seven years in violation of US laws and international norms.

Hopefully, the Court of Appeals will agree with its three-judge panel that the poisonous atmosphere surrounding the trial of the Cuban Five in Miami warrants a new trial.

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Bushies in Wonderland

Curiouser and Curiouser

On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush swaggered across an aircraft carrier deck and declared "Mission Accomplished." Yesterday, his proclamation was a little more understated. He said it marked "the third anniversary of the beginning of the liberation of Iraq," and claimed to be "implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq." So far, that victory appears as elusive as a greased pig.

While Bush talks victory, the rest of us are debating whether civil war in Iraq is inevitable or whether it has already begun.

Iraq's former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, noted that 50 to 60 people, "if not more," had been killed daily in Iraq since the attack on the Samarra shrine last month. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is," Allawi told the BBC.

Dick Cheney, appearing yesterday on CBS News's "Face the Nation," disagreed. He said that "what we've seen is a serious effort by them to foment civil war, but I don't think they've been successful."

Meanwhile, the US military announced plans to continue paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-US articles - called "storyboards" - in order to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

First the Sentence, Then the Verdict

At the same time, Bush is preparing for war on Iran. He is following the same pattern that preceded his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2002, six months before he invaded Iraq, Bush released a National Security Strategy that purported to justify preemptive war: "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

Last week, in his 2006 National Security Strategy, Bush reiterated his preemptive war doctrine: "If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self-defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack ... The place of preemption in our national security strategy remains the same."

Bush's 2002 document previewed his impending attack on Iraq: "At the time of the Gulf War, we acquired irrefutable proof that Iraq's designs were not limited to the chemical weapons it had used against Iran and its own people, but also extended to the acquisition of nuclear weapons and biological agents ... We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends."

In the new document, Bush lays out his case against Iran. "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," the document reads. "The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism; threatens Israel; seeks to thwart Middle East peace; disrupts democracy in Iraq; and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom."

The Pentagon created an Office of Special Plans to plan its attack on Iraq. Bush has recently created a new Office of Iranian Affairs at the State Department.

Before Bush attacked Iraq, his administration made several statements accusing Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction that threatened our security.

Now the Bushies are rattling their sabers toward Iran.

Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of US Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran is conducting intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He and Bush claim that improvised explosive device components manufactured in Iran are being used in Iraq. But Abizaid admitted there's no evidence that the Iranian government is directly providing IED components to terrorists in Iraq.

"I can't tell you whether or not that happened with the orders of the Iranian government," Abizaid said. "But I can tell you that terrorists in northeastern Iraq used the Iranian northwestern border to move back and forth across the border." If there is proof of an Iran-IED connection, he said, that would constitute "a very serious concern."

Recall that we were fed a pack of lies about Saddam's WMDs and a Saddam-al Qaeda connection. Don't be surprised if an Iran-IED connection surfaces soon.

In January, Bush said that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it would pose a "grave threat to the security of the world."

Last week, Iran offered to open a dialogue with the United States. But Condoleezza Rice made clear that the talks would be limited. "This isn't a negotiation of some kind," she said.

US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton told British MPs that military action could be used if all diplomatic efforts fail. Bolton also said, "I don't think we have anything to say to the Iranians."

When Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the US push for sanctions on Iran a déjà vu, Bolton retorted, "If that is déjà vu, then so be it, but that is the course we are on in an effort to get Iran to reverse its decision to acquire nuclear weapons."

According to Nasser Hadian, professor of international law at Tehran University, however, the Iranians would like security guarantees and a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. That is what the Security Council resolution that ended the Gulf War mandates. But Israel would also have to give up its nukes, and that would never happen.

Feed Your Head

The majority of Americans oppose continued US involvement in Iraq. Thousands of people around the world protested the war on its third anniversary last weekend.

Bush administration defender-in-chief Donald Rumsfeld tried to head off the antiwar critics with a column in Sunday's Washington Post. "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today," he wrote, "would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis." A curious analogy.

In an unexpected development, the House of Representatives voted in favor of an amendment to an emergency war appropriations bill that will prohibit the use of funds to enter into basing agreements that would lead to a permanent military presence in Iraq. The amendment could disappear in committee, or be applied only to future agreements. The US has already built several huge military bases in Iraq. (See Dahr Jamail, Iraq: Permanent US Colony). But the measure shows that representatives from both parties are tiring of the war.

Besides the cost in human life and suffering, expenditures for the war continue to rise. Spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will increase from $6.9 billion a month to $9.8 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

If the midterm elections become a referendum on the war, the Democrats could recapture one or both houses of Congress. The only way to stop this war is for Congress to cut its funding. So far, there appears to be little appetite on either side of the aisle to do anything other than to give Bush everything he wants.

Don't be surprised if Bush doesn't bother to ask Congress for permission to invade Iran. Remember, he justifies his illegal warrantless spying on Americans by citing the authorization for the use of military force Congress passed shortly after September 11, 2001, a theory roundly rejected by all reputable legal scholars. His invasion will come after a concerted campaign of spinning Iran into New Public Enemy No. 1 in his "Global War on Terror."

Fool us once, shame on Bush. Fool us twice, shame on us.

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Human Rights Hypocrisy

Last week, the President of the United Nations General Assembly announced a new proposal to revamp the UN Human Rights Commission and rename it the UN Human Rights Council. The product of months of negotiations between the 53 member nations of the Commission, the proposal will be voted on by the General Assembly next month. The United States, however, immediately denounced the compromise. John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations, said it has too many "deficiencies" and should be renegotiated.

Bolton stated last month, "Membership on the Commission by some of the world's most notorious human rights abusers mocks the legitimacy of the Commission and the United Nations itself." But Bolton was not referring to the United States, which invaded Iraq in violation of the UN Charter, killed thousands of innocent Iraqis, and tortured and abused prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

The United States and Western European countries have criticized the Human Rights Commission because it has elected countries such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya and Cuba, whom the Western nations have accused of human rights violations.

In a press release issued last week, the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations said, "If any government does not deserve to be part of the Council, it is the one who represents a State that benefited from the slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, that kept a 'constructive commitment' to extend the existence of the apartheid regime, that protects and bestows impunity to the human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli occupation of Palestine and other Arab territories, that supported the bloody military dictatorships of Latin America, that today tortures and murders in the name of liberty which the majority of its own citizens do not benefit from, that fails to meet its commitments and obligations of official development assistance to the Third World, and that threatens and attacks the Southern countries."

The United States objects to the new proposal's commitment to the protection of economic, social and cultural rights. The refusal to enshrine rights such as employment, education, food, housing, and health care in US law is the reason the United States has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Since the Reagan administration, there has been a policy to define human rights in terms of civil and political rights, but to dismiss economic, social and cultural rights as akin to social welfare, or socialism.

Indeed, the United States' inhumane policy toward Cuba exemplifies this dichotomy. The US government criticizes civil and political rights in Cuba while disregarding Cubans' superior access to universal housing, health care, education and public accommodations and its guarantee of paid maternity leave and equal pay rates.

The US also opposes the new proposal's affirmation that the right to development is on par with the rights to peace and security, and human rights, as the three pillars of the United Nations system. Last year, the United States and Australia were the only nations to vote against a General Assembly resolution on the Right to Development, which was passed by a vote of 48 to 2, with 2 abstentions. It reaffirmed the principle that the right to development is an "inalienable human right."

A member of the Commission since it was formed in 1947, the US was furious when it was voted off the Commission in 2001. Many countries were angry with the United States for its policies in the Middle East, and its opposition to the International Criminal Court, the treaty to ban land mines, the Kyoto Protocol, and making AIDS drugs available to everyone.

It was only after behind the scenes negotiations among Western nations that the US was able to manipulate its way back onto the Commission one year later.

The new proposal provides that members of the Council will serve for a period of three years and shall not be eligible for immediate re-election after two consecutive terms. This is objectionable to the United States, which wants to guarantee a spot on the Council for the five permanent members of the Security Council - France, Britain, Russia, China and the US.

The United States also wants open voting on Council membership instead of the secret ballot elections that the proposal calls for. The US would like to make it easier to blackmail smaller nations for their votes.

In his statement last week, Bolton also said, "We consider the United States a champion of human rights. It is a fundamental and bedrock tenet upon which our country was founded. Thus, when the United States falls short of the high standards we set for ourselves, we move swiftly and decisively to vigorously prosecute offenders who are US citizens in our courts." Yet only a few low-ranking soldiers and a chief warrant officer have been prosecuted for the widespread and systematic torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody.

Ironically, two weeks ago, the UN Human Rights Commission issued a report decrying the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners by United States forces at Guantánamo. It called on the US government to ensure that "all persons found to have perpetrated, ordered, tolerated or condoned such practices, up to the highest level of military and political command, are brought to justice." The United States, which has refused to allow UN or other human rights experts to speak directly with the Guantánamo prisoners, rejected the Commission's report.

The US has a history of scuttling Commission investigations when they focus on the United States as a human rights violator.

Last spring, the United States refused a request by Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, to meet with State Department officials to discuss the impact the US embargo on Cuba was having on the Cuban people's right to food. Last fall, Ziegler reported that both Coalition Forces and the insurgents in Iraq "have adopted the cutting of food and water supplies to cities under attack." Ziegler noted that "the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited in both international and non-international armed conflict," citing the Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.

The United States likewise pressured the Commission to withdraw Professor Cherif Bassiouni, the Commission's Independent Expert on Human Rights in Afghanistan, from his mission after he issued a report critical of the US. Professor Bassiouni accused United States troops of breaking into homes, arbitrarily arresting residents and torturing detainees. He also alleged that US-led forces had committed "sexual abuse, beatings, torture and use of force resulting in death." He wrote, "When these forces directly engage in practices that violate ... international human rights and international humanitarian law, they undermine the national project of establishing a legal basis for the use of force."

"The United States and the coalition forces consider themselves above and beyond the reach of the law," Professor Bassiouni told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! "They feel that human rights don't apply to them, the international conventions don't apply to them, nobody can ask them what they're doing, and nobody can hold them accountable."

Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh concurs. He wrote, "In the cathedral of human rights, the US is more like a flying buttress than a pillar - choosing to stand outside the international structure supporting the international human rights system but without being willing to subject its own conduct to the scrutiny of the system."

The composition of the new Council will not likely differ significantly from the old Commission. "That reality," according to Phyllis Bennis, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, "reflects the failure of the John Bolton-led US effort to impose an entirely new human rights infrastructure on the United Nations, one that would privilege those countries given a seal of approval by Washington to serve on the Council, with others, especially those in bad graces in Washington, prohibited from serving."

In the next few weeks, we can expect some strong arm-twisting by the United States to scuttle the new proposal.

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Graham Amendment Invokes Constitutional Crisis

The "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
--James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 47

In blatant defiance of the Constitution's guarantees of Habeas Corpus and separation of powers, the Senate on Thursday approved the Graham Amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 49 to 42. Five Democrats joined all but 4 Republican Senators in giving the President unfettered power to hold prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the rest of their lives, with no criminal charges, and no right to challenge their confinement by Habeas Corpus.

Last year, the Supreme Court held in Rasul v. Bush that the Guantánamo detainees are entitled to file habeas petitions in US courts to contest their detentions. The high court determined that non-US citizens held at Guantánamo, "no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts' authority" to hear their petitions under 28 USC § 2241, the US Habeas Corpus statute.

The Supreme Court stated firmly in Rasul, "Consistent with the historic purpose of the writ, this Court has recognized the federal courts' power to review applications for habeas relief in a wide variety of cases involving Executive detention, in wartime as well as in times of peace."

The Graham Amendment is crafted to render Rasul a nullity by cutting off the rights of Guantánamo prisoners to have their habeas petitions considered by the federal courts. The Amendment limits federal court review to the narrow issue of the validity of decisions rendered by Combatant Status Review Tribunals. These kangaroo courts were set up to determine whether the Guantánamo prisoners are "enemy combatants." They are not independent judicial tribunals, but rather administrative proceedings stacked with military officials who can use secret or even fabricated evidence. The prisoner is not entitled to be represented by an attorney.

Only a handful of prisoners at Guantánamo have been charged with crimes. Their cases will be heard in military commissions that George W. Bush established to impose long sentences and even execute detainees with virtually no judicial oversight. Without habeas access to federal courts, Bush and Donald Rumsfeld will ostensibly serve as prosecutor, judge and executioner in the military commissions. This flies in the face of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. Three days before the Graham Amendment was passed, the Supreme Court announced it would review the legality of those military commissions in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Even though the majority of prisoners detained at Guantánamo admittedly pose no threat to the United States, they continue to languish in virtual isolation under torturous conditions. Two hundred of them, who have decided death is preferable to life, are trying to starve themselves in a hunger strike.

Last month, the Senate passed the McCain Amendment, which makes it unlawful for any "individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location [to be] subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." Bush and Cheney have fought this measure tooth-and-nail because it would interfere with their ability to torture prisoners with impunity. The Graham Amendment will undermine the ability of tortured prisoners to enforce the McCain Amendment in federal courts.

By foreclosing judicial review of sentences imposed by the military commissions, the Graham Amendment also violates Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a ratified treaty and therefore part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. That article prohibits "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." Unlawful combatants are protected by Common Article 3.

Violations of Common Article 3 constitute war crimes under the federal War Crimes Act. Violators can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

Sen. Lindsey Graham's pernicious Amendment was proposed and passed with no debate about its far-ranging implications and without any hearings. The senators who voted for it bought into Bush's "war on terror" mantra, ignoring the basic constitutional principles that inform our system of government.

These senators will have the opportunity to rectify this grave threat to the Constitution. As early as today, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) will attempt to strike from the Graham Amendment the language barring Guantánamo prisoners from habeas relief. Senator John McCain may support a compromise. He said, "Based on ongoing discussions, it is entirely possible that the current version of the amendment will be modified to address concerns about lawful treatment and the scope of independent appeals."

More than 100 legal scholars, including this writer, have signed a letter urging senators to adopt an amendment of the kind proposed by Senator Bingaman. The Center for Constitutional Rights concurs: "Habeas Corpus is a fundamental right that our entire legal tradition is founded on. Unfettered Executive power jeopardizes our free and democratic society. Creating 'no law zones' of unreviewable Executive power at Guantánamo undermines the moral standing of the United State in the eyes of the world and endangers the lives of US soldiers abroad."

The Graham Amendment has also drawn opposition from Judge John Gibbons, who argued Rasul v. Bush before the Supreme Court; John Hutson, Dean of Franklin Pearce Law Center and former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy; and the National Institute for Military Justice. NIMJ President Eugene R. Fidell wrote, "We disable ourselves from objecting to flagrant lawlessness elsewhere when we shut the doors to our courts, which are the jewel in the crown of our democracy."

Habeas Corpus, known as The Great Writ, is the final bastion of liberty for those unjustly held. There was an attempt to suspend Habeas Corpus during the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. That travesty is now universally recognized as a shameful chapter in our nation's history. To suspend The Great Writ while allegations of systematic torture continue to emerge from US prisons, will threaten our Constitution and render "quaint" our democracy.

The Democrats who voted in favor of the Graham Amendment were Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Ben Nelson (Neb), Mary L. Landrieu (La), and Ron Wyden (Or).

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US Pulls the Strings in Haiti

Laden with heavy security, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a quick visit to Haiti on Tuesday. Her mission: to reassure Haiti's interim government that the United States wants the elections to go forward in November, and to see to it that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide does not return to Haiti.

Once again, the US is manipulating Haiti.

On February 29, 2004, the United States had forcibly removed President Aristide from Haiti, then maintained that he voluntarily resigned. President Aristide had been elected with 80 percent of the vote. True to form, the Bush administration, which claims to love democracy, engineered a coup d'etat and removed a democratically-elected leader of another country.

The Aristides are now in South Africa, which granted them asylum. On August 31, President Aristide issued a statement, cautioning that free and fair elections could not take place in Haiti until the thousands of Lavalas [the pro-Aristide party comprised mostly of Haiti's poor] who are in jail and in exile are free to return home, the repression that has already killed over 10,000 people ends immediately, and national dialogue begins.

President Aristide asked, "In 1994, who could have expected free, fair and democratic elections in South Africa with Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Oliver Tambo and other leaders and members of the African National Congress in jail, exile or in hiding?"

Two prominent Lavalas leaders are in jail. Rev. Fr. Gérard Jean Juste, who has been in custody for two months, was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. More than 400 interfaith religious leaders have signed a letter asking for Fr. Jean Juste's release. Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune has been jailed for 16 months, with no charges against him. Both men are in frail health.

The United Nations maintains a peacekeeping force of 8,000 in Haiti. I asked Mildred Aristide, the President's wife, what role the UN has played in Haiti's problems. She told me: "Before the coup in February 2004 - up until that very day - the constitutional government requested assistance from the UN to help defend Haitians from the murderous band of former soldiers, drug dealers, and thugs who were set on destabilizing the country and killing innocent people."

How did the UN respond? It "stood by and allowed a democratically elected President, along with nearly 7,000 elected officials, to be removed from office," Mrs. Aristide said. Only then, she added, did the UN vote to send an intervention force to Haiti.

"Credible reports of UN complicity in human rights abuses have surfaced," Mrs. Aristide noted. "The UN has been forced to investigate allegations. The Haitian Police distribute machetes to hooded attachés, gun down innocent demonstrators, systematically raid poor slums, disappear prisoners turned over to them by the UN - all under the official sanction of the UN which voted to exercise control over the police."

Referring to the police and the UN, Mrs. Aristide said, "The people of Haiti who are under siege are hard pressed to see any distinction among their repressors." Both Haiti's police and the UN force are enabled by United States political and economic clout.

When Rice was in Haiti Tuesday, she made clear the US does not want President Aristide to return to Haiti. "The Haitian people are moving on," Rice said.

But things in Haiti are not going according to "script," says Mrs. Aristide. Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs in the State Department, resigned. In August, Haiti's interim government released the imprisoned Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a leader of the vicious Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), a paramilitary group blamed for thousands of killings during the military dictatorship that ruled Haiti after forcing President Aristide from power in 1991. James B. Foley, the US Ambassador to Haiti, left his post in August for unknown reasons. Foley called Chamblain's release a "sham," especially in light of Neptune's continued incarceration with no evidence against him. Foley characterized Neptune's detention as "a violation of human rights, an injustice and an abuse of power."

"Kidnappings, murder and other crimes have become widespread in Haiti since the interim government came to power a year-and-a-half ago," Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) said in an August statement.

On August 20, police accompanied by machete-wielding civilians attacked a soccer crowd of thousands, shooting or hacking to death at least six and as many as 30 spectators. "Our tax dollars were at both ends of the killing," Brian Concannon, Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, told the Congressional Black Caucus last week. "The soccer game was sponsored by a USAID program, to promote peace in the neighborhood. The US also sponsors the killers, the Haitian National Police, by providing guns and weapons despite a consistent history of police killing over the last 18 months."

"Roads and infrastructure have fallen into disrepair, and public services have virtually disappeared. The interim government has done nothing to stem the growing violence in the country, and it has done nothing to make millions of dollars in promised aid from international donors available to the Haitian people," said Rep. Waters. "Just about the only thing the interim government has done is jail hundreds of political prisoners."

Since President Aristide's ouster, thousands of people have demonstrated to protest the horrific conditions, and the interim government has responded with violence against the people. Spurred by the US to take a more "proactive role" in going after armed pro-Aristide gangs, UN troops have engaged in "a wave of Fallujah-like collective punishment inflicted on neighborhoods known for supporting Aristide," according to Naomi Klein.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has documented that 18 months after President Aristide was forced out of the country, Haiti remains insecure and volatile. Much of the population displays "disenchantment, apathy and ignorance about the electoral process," the ICG found.

The IGC reported that "a week before the scheduled close of registration, only 870,000 [of 4 million] potential voters had registered, and none had yet received the new national identity card required to vote."

Although Rice tried to put a positive gloss on Haiti's prospects for fair and free elections, "Haiti is in the midst of a comprehensive program of electoral cleansing," said Concannon. "Its ballots are being cleansed of political dissidents, its voting rolls cleansed of the urban and rural poor. The streets are being cleansed of anti-government political activity," he said.

Lavalas supporters have said they will not participate in the elections unless political prisoners are released, political persecutions are ended, and President Aristide is returned to Haiti. Senior officials at Canada's Foreign Affairs Department admit that Lavalas remains Haiti's most popular party. Thus, an election without Lavalas would be sham.

On June 28, the House of Representatives passed Rep. Barbara Lee's resolution to block arms transfers to Haiti. The State Department responded by announcing on August 9 that it would send $1.9 million worth of guns and other equipment to the police before the elections and presumably before the Senate could vote on the resolution, according to Concannon.

Rep. Waters' proposed amendment to H.R. 2601 provides good standards for evaluating conditions in Haiti as the elections approach, in Concannon's opinion. It requests adequate security, disarmament of paramilitary groups, and trials or release for the political prisoners. Concannon stresses the importance of the opportunity to vote, to organize, and to campaign.

Haitians are still demonstrating in spite of the repression. Haitian democracy supporters are planning a demonstration in Port-au-Prince tomorrow to commemorate the anniversary of the 1991 coup against President Aristide, which they have done every September 30 since 1996. The interim government has outlawed all demonstrations until October 2. That decree "is as unconstitutional in Haiti as it would be in the US and most other countries," said Concannon.

Demonstrations and other Haiti solidarity events will be held in 38 cities in 14 countries on or around September 30.

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Why Bush Can't Answer Cindy

Cindy Sheehan is still in Crawford, Texas, waiting for Bush to answer her question: What noble cause did my son die for? Her protest started as a small gathering 13 days ago. It has mushroomed into a demonstration of 100s in Crawford and tens of thousands more at 1,627 solidarity vigils throughout the country.

Why didn't Bush simply invite Cindy in for tea when she arrived in Crawford? In a brief, personal meeting with Cindy, Bush could have defused a situation that has become a profound embarrassment for him, and could derail his political agenda.

Bush didn't talk with Cindy because he can't answer her question. There is no answer to Cindy's question. There is no noble cause that Cindy's son died fighting for. And Bush knows it.

The goals of this war are not hard to find. They were laid out in Paul Wolfowitz's Defense Policy Guidance in 1992, and again in the neoconservative manifesto - The Project for a New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses - in September 2000.

Long before 9/11, the neocons proclaimed that the United States should exercise its role as the world's only superpower by ensuring access to the massive Middle East petroleum reserves. To accomplish this goal, the US would need to invade Iraq and establish permanent military bases there.

If Bush were to give an honest answer to Cindy Sheehan's question, it would be that her son died to help his country spread US hegemony throughout the Middle East.

But that answer, while true, does not sound very noble. It would not satisfy Cindy Sheehan, nor would it satisfy the vast majority of American people. So, for the past several years, Bush and his minions have concocted an ever-changing story line.

First, it was weapons-of-mass-destruction and the mushroom cloud. In spite of the weapons inspectors' admonitions that Iraq had no such weapons, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and Bolton lied about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Bush even included the smoking gun claim in his state of the union address: that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger. It was a lie, because people like Ambassador Joe Wilson, who traveled to Niger to investigate the allegation, had reported back to Cheney that it never happened.

The Security Council didn't think Iraq was an imminent threat to international peace and security. In spite of Bush's badgering and threats, the Council held firm and refused to sanction a war on Iraq. The UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to conduct their inspections. But Bush was impatient.

He thumbed his nose at the United Nations and invaded anyway. After the "coalition forces" took over Iraq, they combed the country for the prohibited weapons. But they were nowhere to be found.

Faced with the need to explain to the American people why our sons and daughters were dying in Iraq, Bush changed the subject to saving the Iraqis from Saddam's torture chambers.

Then the grotesque photographs emerged from Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. They contained images of US military personnel torturing Iraqis. Bush stopped talking about Saddam's torture.

Most recently, Bush's excuse has been "bringing democracy to the Iraqi people." On June 28, 2004, he ceremoniously hailed the "transfer of sovereignty" back to the Iraqi people. Yet 138,000 US troops remained in Iraq to protect US "interests."

And Iraq's economy is still controlled by laws put in place before the "transfer of sovereignty." The US maintains a stranglehold on foreign access to Iraqi oil, private ownership of Iraq's resources, and control over the reconstruction of this decimated country.

The Bush administration, for months, hyped the August 15, 2005 deadline for Iraqis to agree on a new constitution. But as the deadline came and went, the contradictions between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds over federalism came into sharp focus. The Bush administration admitted that "we will have some form of Islamic republic," according to Sunday's Washington Post.

So much for Bush's promise of a democratic Iraq.

The constitutional negotiations are far removed from their lives of most Iraqis. When journalist Robert Fisk asked an Iraqi friend about the constitution, he replied, "Sure, it's important. But my family lives in fear of kidnapping, I'm too afraid to tell my father I work for journalists, and we only have one hour in six of electricity and we can't even keep our food from going bad in the fridge. Federalism? You can't eat federalism and you can't use it to fuel your car and it doesn't make my fridge work."

Fisk reports that 1,100 civilian bodies were brought into the Baghdad morgue in July. The medical journal The Lancet concluded in October 2004 that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the first 18 months after Bush invaded Iraq.

Unfortunately, the picture in Iraq is not a pretty one.

Bush knows that if he talked to Cindy Sheehan, she would demand that he withdraw from Iraq now.

But Bush has no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq. The US is building the largest CIA station in the world in Baghdad. And Halliburton is busily constructing 14 permanent US military bases in Iraq.

George Bush knows that he cannot answer Cindy Sheehan's question. There is no noble cause for the US war on Iraq.

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The Murder of Casey Sheehan

For seven days, Cindy Sheehan has been camped down the road from George Bush's Crawford ranch where the President is on a five-week vacation. Cindy says she will never enjoy a vacation again. Her heart is broken. Her precious son Casey was murdered in George Bush's war on Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan is a patient woman. She will wait until Bush comes out and talks to her. She will wait until the man who ordered the invasion of a country that posed no threat to us explains why Casey did not die in vain.

Her skin parched by the blazing sun, her throat inflamed from the intermittent rains and the 200 interviews she has given, Cindy will wait.

I first met Cindy at a support rally in San Diego for Pablo Paredes, who was on trial for refusing to deploy with a ship that was loaded with 300 Marines and bound for Iraq. "I was told my son was killed in the war on terror," Cindy told the crowd. "He was killed by George Bush's war of terror on the world." People wept quietly as they viewed Casey's baby picture. Cindy always carries it with her.

Camilo Mejia also came to support Pablo at his court-martial. The son of the famed Sandinista troubadour Carlos Mejia Godoy, Camilo had lived in three countries in two years before coming to the United States. He joined the US Army because he was promised an education, a community, camaraderie, and friendship. But after five months in Iraq, where he witnessed the killing of innocent civilians as well as his own comrades, in a war he came to believe was illegal, Camilo refused to return to Iraq. He was court-martialed, convicted of desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty, and served nine months in prison.

Camilo accompanied Cindy and nine other veterans to Crawford on the Veterans fo Peace Impeachment Tour bus. The harassment started as soon as they arrived, Camilo told me. The sheriffs warned Cindy she would be arrested if she didn't walk in the 3-foot ditch on the side of the road. "It was horrible," Camilo said. "It was right next to a barbed wire fence; the terrain was uneven." The cops and the reporters walked on the road, but Cindy and her supporters had to walk in the ditch.

Some of the vets gave speeches. They talked about conscientious objection and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). "It was very emotional because the war is still going on," said Camilo. "We are still dealing with our demons." One-quarter of American soldiers who return from Iraq will likely develop PTSD. Some experts believe 100,000 will suffer from mental problems.

Camilo was moved by Cindy's courage. "She is an ordinary person who did something really extraordinary."

Bill Mitchell's son Mike was killed in Iraq in the same battle with Casey Sheehan. Bill is in Crawford with Cindy. "My life's been devastated," Bill told the editor of the Iconoclast. "It's been turned upside down. Very few aspects of my life have a similarity to the past. It just kind of churns you up, shakes you out, and drops you off. I'm doing much better than I have been."

"The death of any child is a devastating event for a parent," Bill said. "A piece of your heart dies when your child dies. So I just want to stop this. I don't want to hear about anybody else dying, American or Iraqi."

It is coming together with other families of the slain that empowers Bill. "I met Cindy shortly after our sons' deaths," he said. "We did some military speak-out events together. I realized there was a power in her speaking and in her stories."

Cindy Sheehan wants to ask Bush, "Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for? Last week, he said my son died for a 'noble cause' and I want to ask him what that noble cause is."

Cindy's grief is still raw. She visits the Defense Department web site each morning to see who else died in Bush's war while she was sleeping. "And that rips my heart open, because I know there is another mother whose life is going to be ruined that day. So we can't even begin to heal."

Bush claims we must stay in Iraq to honor the sacrifices of those who have fallen. Cindy says, "Why should I want one more mother to go through what I've gone through, because my son is dead ... the only way he can honor my son's sacrifice is to bring the rest of the troops home - to make my son's death count for peace and love, and not war and hatred like he stands for."

Cindy challenges Bush to level with her: "You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that, you don't tell me my son died for freedom and democracy."

When questioned about the war, Bush invokes his mantra of September 11. "Yeah, but were any of those people in Iraq?" Cindy asks. "And the people who flew those planes into the Trade Center, were they from Iraq?"

"I don't believe [Bush's] phony excuses for the war," Cindy told a CBS reporter. "I want him to tell me why my son died." She said, "If he gave the real answer, people in this country would be outraged - if he told people it was to make his buddies rich, that it was about oil."

Many members of Gold Star Families for Peace, a group Cindy co-founded, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) are in Crawford with Cindy. Both IVAW and MFSO are calling for the United States to immediately and unilaterally withdraw from Iraq.

Only 38 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, according to a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll. That number could decrease as Cindy's patient protest continues.

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U.S. Elections in Iraq & Afghanistan:

Officials in the Bush administration are singing in unison that the way to neutralize the terrorists is to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. They cite the election set for January 30 in Iraq, and yesterday's election in Afghanistan, as Exhibits A and B.

At the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Friday night, George W. Bush hailed the Afghan election as a "marvelous thing," claiming his rout of the Taliban set the table for the milestone in Afghanistan.

During the vice presidential debate, Dick Cheney tried to demonstrate his superior foreign policy acumen by drawing an analogy between the upcoming Afghan elections and those in El Salvador twenty years ago. Cheney claimed a "guerrilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead, and we held free elections."

It is noteworthy that Cheney said "we" held those elections, not the Salvadorans. The Salvadoran elections were as phony as a Yankee three-dollar bill. In fact, the United States - and Cheney as a Congressional election observer - was not supporting freedom in El Salvador at that time. Most of those killed were civilians murdered by the U.S.-backed junta and paramilitary "death squads." The Salvadoran elections were not free elections. Only conservatives and right-wing parties fielded candidates; the leftist politicians had been assassinated or driven underground.

The Afghan elections are looking as bogus as the Salvadoran elections that Cheney touted. The day after the second presidential debate, all 15 presidential candidates running against U.S.-backed interim president Hami Karzai boycotted the race, alleging fraud. The Associated Press now reports that two of those candidates have withdrawn from the boycott. They want a commission to determine whether the voting was fair and will accept its decision. Their demands appear to have been met.

The only woman running refused to cast a ballot in protest. "In the morning I was prepared to vote," she said, "but within the past three hours I've received calls from voters that this is not a free and fair election. The ink that is being used can be rubbed off in a minute. Voters can vote 10 times!" The day after the election, the Los Angeles Times reported that Major General Eric Olson, the operations commander for U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, calls this problem, "Afghanistan's hanging chad."

"Today's election is not a legitimate election," said another candidate. "It should be stopped and we don't recognize the results," he added. An Islamic poet, also a candidate, complained, "Today was a very black day. Today was the occupation of Afghanistan by America through elections."

His sentiment was echoed by Sonali Kolhatkar, President of the Afghan Women's Mission. She told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, "This whole election has been organized by the United States. The Afghan people have not had any hand in organizing their own election, the timeline of the election."

Voter registration numbers were inaccurate or fabricated, according to Christian Parenti, journalist from The Nation. He was able to secure two valid voter registration cards and he's not Afghan. Human rights organizations said some people received four or five cards; they thought they could use them to receive humanitarian aid.

Weeks before the election, several candidates charged that U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad, known to many as "the Viceroy" or a "puppet-master," pressured them not to run against Bush's sweetheart Karzai. The New York Times reported Friday that Karzai's close relationship with his "American overseers" has proved tricky. The interim prez controls nothing outside of Kabul, and only leaves his home under heavy American guard, due to attempts on his life.

Both Khalizad and Karzai happen to be former consultants to oil giant Unocal, which, backed by the Bush administration, negotiated with the Taliban for an oil pipeline to run through Afghanistan. It was when those talks broke down, long before September 11, that Bush set his sights on regime change in Afghanistan.

Sound familiar? That brings us to Iraq. There, also, the tactic of invasion followed by election is critical to Bush's campaign for a second term in the White House. Bush paints a rosy picture for an American electorate nervous about the steady carnage in Iraq. The Bushies ceremoniously "transferred full sovereignty" to the Iraqis just before the end of June. They hand-picked Iyad Allawi, with close ties to the CIA, as interim prime minister. The Bush administration solemnly promises to hold elections in Iraq on January 30.

Allawi, recently on the campaign trail with Bush in New York, said that holding the elections on time was "the most important task entrusted to us." Most likely, those elections will install Allawi as chief U.S. puppet in Iraq. Given the situation on the ground there, it is counter-intuitive to believe free and fair elections could take place on January 30. Fighting is fierce throughout Iraq. Jordan's King Abdullah II said last week it would be "impossible to organize indisputable elections" in the midst of the current chaos in Iraq.

The Associated Press reports that when Donald Rumsfeld had a brief exchange with journalists in Baghdad yesterday, he grew agitated by questions about the possibility of needing extra U.S. troops before the Iraqi elections. "There's a fixation on that subject!" he said, exasperated. "It's fascinating how everyone is locked in on that."

Why do reporters in Baghdad have that fixation? "Half of the country remains a 'no go zone' - out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists," Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote in an email to friends last week from Baghdad. "In the other half," she said, "the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war."

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan cautions there can be no "credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now." Indeed, last week, two organizations representing more than 60,000 United Nations staffers urged Annan to pull all U.N. staff out of Iraq because of the "unprecedented" risk to their safety and security.

The Chicago Tribune reports that diplomats and military officials admit conducting elections in communities in at least six provinces would be extremely risky if not impossible. But Allawi advocates holding the election even if 300,000 people out of Iraq's 27 million weren't able to vote.

Donald Rumsfeld has suggested that communities like Fallujah can simply be skipped, so the election can proceed apace: "And let's say you tried to have an election, and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country, but some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," Rumsfeld said recently. "Well, that's - so be it. Nothing's perfect in life. So you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet," he affirmed. Kinda like Florida in 2000 - close enough for government work.

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The Preemptive President

Under the guise of preempting - or preventing - threats to the American people, George W. Bush has acted aggressively to "jump the gun" throughout his presidency. By the use of extreme rhetoric and scare tactics, Team Bush convinced Congress - and nearly half the electorate - that the guns he was jumping were real. The guns, however, proved illusory, and indeed, backfired, making us less safe.

"The pool of people who really hate us is so much greater than it was on 9/11 because of this needless and counterproductive war in Iraq," Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, told a crowd of nearly 2,000 in Berkeley earlier this week.

Moreover, following our role model, Russia has just announced that it, too, will engage in preemptive strikes against terrorist bases in "any region of the world." This announcement comes as the United States is issuing statements favoring a political settlement with Chechen separatists. The chickens have, in the prescient words of Malcolm X, come home to roost.

Preempting Saddam's Continuing Presidency

Since the day Bush took office, his administration planned assiduously for the execution of regime change in Iraq. The September 11 attacks played right into Bush's hands. From that day on, his masterful spinners spun - and continue to spin - a massive web of lies and deception to link Saddam Hussein with those attacks.

Declaring over and over again that we have to get the terrorists in Iraq so they don't get us here, Bush secured Congressional authority to invade Iraq.

Never mind that there were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam having been neutered by the Gulf War and 12 years of punishing sanctions.

Never mind that, vicious as Saddam was to his own people, al Qaeda never operated in Iraq until "Iraqi Freedom" became the Operation-du-jour.

Never mind that B