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April 27, 2006

Taking Reparations Seriously

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego says that although reparations for African-American slavery remain an elusive goal due largely to misconceptions about what they might entail, meaningful reparations could in practice come in different forms in different contexts…

The reparations movement is grounded in the civil rights movement and the social justice movements of the 1960s – 1980s.
– Congressman John Conyers, keynote address, March 18, 2006

One hundred and forty years after the end of legalized slavery and 40 years after the passage of civil rights legislation, the legacy of slavery persists. In employment, education, healthcare, and criminal justice, African-Americans suffer from institutionalized racism. The movement to secure reparations for slavery has gained new traction with recent successes of Holocaust litigants. But it remains an elusive goal, due, in large part, to common misconceptions about what reparations would really mean.

Last month, Congressman John Conyers and scholars from around the country participated in an historic gathering to address the myriad issues arising from the debate over reparations. Held at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, the two-day conference focused on slavery and reparations as well as other instances of mass injustice in relation to the themes of justice, causation, group responsibility, moral culpability, racism and forgiveness.

Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor Kaimipono Wenger described reparations as “an acknowledgement of the displacement of the rule of law under slavery.” He noted that Blacks were denied civil and political rights even after slavery ended. “Not only are reparations consistent with the rule of law,” he said. “They are in fact a product of the rule of law.”

Conyers told the conference, “After slavery ended, a new form of subjugation kicked in. There is a continuing, traceable, uninterrupted connection of racial subjugation that explains why there are ghettos today.”

The first reparations for slavery came in the form of land. Titles to 40-acre tracts were distributed to the head of each family of freedmen. Animals that were no longer useful to the military – mules and horses – were given to each household.

In 1989, Conyers introduced a bill which would establish a federal commission to study reparations. It was named HR 40, in honor of the now-famous phrase “40 acres and a mule.” But Congress has still not passed HR 40.

Conyers noted that on February 13, 2006, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution urging the US Congress to 1) create and appropriate funds for a commission to study and make findings relating to the present day social, political and economic consequences of both slavery and the denial thereafter of equal justice under law for persons of African descent living in the United States; and 2) authorize the commission to propose public policies or governmental actions, if any, that may be appropriate to address such consequences.

In adopting this resolution, the ABA cited Congress’s establishment in 1980 of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Congress directed the commission to review the facts and circumstances surrounding the impact of the internment during World War II on American citizens and permanent resident aliens.

Margaret Chon, a professor at Seattle University School of Law, told the audience that “the Japanese American reparations experience teaches us about the capacity as well as the limits of law to address injustice, not only for this particular group, but also for all groups that have and continue to be harmed by group discrimination.” She said, “If the primary purpose of reparations is to repair past harm, then reparations should include mechanisms to correct past harm that has ‘hardened’ into present everyday practices. That is, reparations requests should anticipate ways to effect long-term structural change.”

Chon cited the 2000 Civil Liberties Public Education Act. Its purpose is to provide competitive grants for public educational activities and the development of educational materials to ensure that the events surrounding the exclusion, forced removal and incarceration of civilians and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry will be remembered and so that causes and circumstances of this and similar events may be illuminated and understood.

Rebecca Tsosie, a professor at Arizona State University College of Law, spoke about reparations for Native Americans. “There is no ‘uniform’ theory of reparations that fits all cultures, all nations, all people. Part of the process is telling the truth,” she said. “That’s why apology is so important.” Tsosie maintained that “’reconciliation’ constitutes a process of ‘healing’ between groups who have experienced bitter and painful relations.”

Professor KJ Greene, from Thomas Jefferson, cited the mass appropriation of Black cultural production as unjust enrichment. He advocated atonement as reparations, not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators of cultural theft and distortion.

Linda Keller, another Thomas Jefferson professor, discussed reparations for victims of massive human rights violations, with particular emphasis on the compensation system in the new International Criminal Court. “It has the potential to be a comprehensive reparations regime with truly global reach, covering victims of the international crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” she said.

In the United States, “reparations advocacy has recently shifted from legislative efforts to the courtroom,” Theodore Kornweibel, a professor at San Diego State University, explained. He detailed the way in which the railroads “employed” over 10,000 slaves yearly, making them the largest example of industrial slavery. Kornweibel said that corporate defendants in recent suits seeking reparations include banks, insurance companies and railroads.

The week before the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States delegation walked out of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durbin, South Africa. Although framed as opposition to resolutions condemning Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, the Bush administration opposed the demand that the US pay reparations to African-Americans for the damage they suffered from slavery. Conyers reported at the time that other delegates from the Congressional Black Caucus alleged the US was using the Middle East issue as a smoke screen to avoid discussion of reparations.

But this unique conference at Thomas Jefferson took the issue of reparations head-on. The thread that wove the broad range of scholarly views together was the notion that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to reparations. “Different types of injury proclaim different relationships with disparate national, local, and private entities,” St. Louis University School of Law professor Eric Miller told the gathering. “Each requires a different form of reparations and permits a different critique of structural and individual discrimination. Some forms of reparations are appropriate as between nations; others as between discrete groups within a particular society. Some are directed towards government entities, some towards private actors. Some require monetary damages and some require other forms of remediation.”

Whether apology, atonement, education, or 40 acres and a mule, the solution must fit the problem. And the problem is racism, which, unfortunately, is still very much with us today.

April 26, 2006

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.

April 1, 2006

The New Civil Rights Movement

In a wave of mass protest not seen since the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand justice for the undocumented. An unprecedented alliance between labor unions, immigrant support groups, churches, and Spanish-language radio and television has fueled the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The demonstrations were triggered by the confluence of a draconian House bill that would make felons out of undocumented immigrants and HBO’s broadcast of Edward James Olmos’s film, “Walkout.” But the depth of discontent reflects a history of discrimination against those who are branded “illegal aliens.”

Since September 11, 2001, immigrants have become the whipping boys for the “war on terror.” Calls for enhanced militarization of the southern US border – including a 700-mile-long Sisyphean fence – reached a crescendo in the bill passed by the House of Representatives.

Under its terms, three million US-citizen children could be separated from their parents, who would be declared felons and be subject to immediate detention and deportation. Those who employ them, and churches and nonprofits that support them, could face fines or even prison.

Cardinal Roger Mahony called it a “blameful, vicious” bill, and vowed to continue serving the undocumented even if it were outlawed.

Immigrants comprise one-third of California’s labor force. But claims that immigrants take jobs away from Americans are overblown. Last summer, California suffered from labor shortages in spite of the high percentage of undocumented workers who labor in the fields.

As a likely result of pressure from business dependent on cheap labor and the escalating protests around the country, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that strikes a more reasonable balance. It would legalize the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, and provide them with the opportunity to become citizens. They would have to remain employed, pass criminal background checks, learn English and civics, and pay fines and back taxes. A temporary worker program would allow about 400,000 foreign nationals to enter the United States each year; they too could be granted citizenship.

The current debate in the full Senate has focused on accusations and denials of “amnesty” and threats to national security. But the “immigration problem” is more complex than the sound bytes that proliferate. Seventy-eight percent of the 11 million undocumented immigrants are from Mexico or other Latin American countries.

According to Michael Lettieri, a Research Fellow with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “The free trade accords that the Bush administration so tirelessly promotes do little to remedy such maladies, as both NAFTA and CAFTA-DR leave regional agricultural sectors profoundly vulnerable, as well as disadvantaged, in the face of robustly subsidized US agribusiness that enables Iowa to undersell Mexico when it comes to corn.”

The US was instrumental in the passage of NAFTA, which protects the rights of employers and investors but not workers. As a result of NAFTA, wages in Mexico, Canada and the United States have fallen. US food exports have driven millions of poor Mexican peasants from their communities. They come north to find work.

Seventeen-year-old Carlos Moreno was among the thousands of students in Los Angeles who walked out of their high schools to protest the attack on immigrants. “I was born here,” he said, “but I’m doing it for my parents, and for my family, and for all the Latinos, because I know what the struggle is.”

Sergio, an undocumented tenth grader from San Diego High School, attended a rally in San Diego’s historic Chicano Park. “My parents are proud of me,” he said. “They told me that I should help every time I can.”

A few years ago, San Diego filmmakers Issac and Judith Artenstein released “A Day Without a Mexican.” In the film, all of the Mexicans in California disappeared one day. Gone were the cooks, gardeners, nannies, policemen, doctors, farm and construction workers, entertainers, athletes, as well as the largest growing market of consumers. The world’s fifth largest economy was paralyzed.

Today we celebrate the birthday of César Chávez, one of the most influential labor leaders this country has ever known. In the 1970s, when undocumented workers crossed the border and went to work in California’s fields for lower wages than employers had to pay union members, the United Farm Workers began to call the migra to have them deported. Eventually, César realized that a much better solution was to organize those immigrants into the union.

The answer is not to shut out those who work for less than minimum wage, without workers’ compensation, occupational safety protections, and overtime pay. “It is a common-sense solution to bring an underground economy above ground,” Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, “with strong labor protections to improve working conditions for all.”

March 27, 2006

Supremes Consider Kangaroo Courts

Today the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the most significant case to date on the limits of George W. Bush’s authority in his “war on terror.” In the first two cases it heard, the high court reined in Bush for his unprecedented assertion of executive power. It held in Rasul v. Bush that the Guantánamo prisoners could challenge their confinement in US federal courts. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Court said that “a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to rights of the Nation’s citizens.”

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur, is facing trial in one of the military commissions that Bush created on November 13, 2001. The case pending in the high court will determine the legality of those military commissions, and will decide whether Hamdan and other Guantánamo detainees can challenge their detention in US federal courts.

The importance of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is evident from the sheer number of amicus briefs it has garnered. Of the 42 amici in this case, 37 – including one filed by 280 law professors, this writer among them – support Hamdan’s position.

Afghani militia forces captured Hamdan in Afghanistan in November 2001. They turned him over to the United States military, which transported him to the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba, where he continues to be detained.

In 2004, the US government designated Hamdan an “enemy combatant” and charged him with conspiracy to commit the following crimes: attacks on civilians and civilian objects, murder and destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent, and terrorism. Hamdan has not been charged with committing the underlying substantive crimes. The military commissions only have jurisdiction to try war crimes. Conspiracy is not a war crime.

In November 2004, the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted Hamdan’s petition for habeas corpus. That court held that Hamdan could not be tried by a military commission unless a competent tribunal first determined that he was not a prisoner of war under the Third Geneva Convention. The district court also forbade the military commission from trying Hamdan unless the rules for those commissions are amended to be consistent with and not contrary to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

The Third Geneva Convention requires that if there is a doubt about whether someone is a POW, a “competent tribunal” shall make the determination; meanwhile, the prisoner must be treated as a POW.

Geneva III also provides that prisoners of war shall be tried in the same types of courts as members of the armed forces of the detaining power. It says, “In no circumstances whatever shall a prisoner of war be tried by a court of any kind which does not offer the essential guarantees of independence and impartiality as generally recognized.”

Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions 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.”

Bush crafted the military commissions to deny the accused due process protections the UCMJ guarantees. The accused can be convicted and sentenced to death based on evidence he never sees, in proceedings where he cannot be present. Hearsay is admissible and the standard for admissibility of evidence falls below that required by US military and civilian courts.

In July 2005, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit overturned the district court’s ruling. The appellate court held that the Geneva Convention is unenforceable in court, and that Geneva does not apply to al Qaeda. Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted against Hamdan in the Court of Appeals, will not take part in the Supreme Court decision.

Meanwhile, on December 30, 2005, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which codifies US law against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. But the act also purports to strip our federal courts of jurisdiction to hear the Guantánamo detainees’ habeas corpus petitions, including those that complain of mistreatment.

The Bush administration then moved to dismiss Hamdan’s petition, but the Supreme Court kept the case alive and will hear it today.

Hamdan’s brief challenges the Supreme Court to stop “this unprecedented arrogation of power.” It warns that “if in the interest of ‘national security,’ this Court concludes that the President has such authority, it will be hard pressed to limit, in any principled manner, the President’s assertion of similarly unprecedented powers in other areas of civil society, so long as they purport to serve the same objective. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine a future President invoking this case as precedent, and asserting the need to subject American citizens to military commissions for any offense somehow connected to the ‘war on terror.'”

“In the end,” the Hamdan brief says, “the President cannot claim that the criminal offenses of the laws of war apply to the war on terror, and at the same time deny the accused the right to invoke any of the protections of the laws of war [the Geneva Conventions].”

Steve Clemons, of The Washington Note, recently quoted Sonia Picado, former Costa Rican ambassador to the US, and the first and only woman judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Picado said that Bush’s military commissions sent “a cold chill” through democracies around the world, which had suffered historically from oppressive secret military tribunals.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who has already pre-judged this case, should recuse himself. In a March 8 talk at the University of Freiberg in Switzerland, Scalia denied that the detainees have legal rights. “War is war,” he declared, “and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts.” Scalia, who flipped his middle finger at reporters in Boston on Sunday, will give the finger to Salim Ahmed Hamdan and the rule of law if he remains on the case.

March 24, 2006

Israel, al Qaeda and Iran

Since George W. Bush gave his “axis of evil” speech, he invaded Iraq, changed its regime, and created a quagmire reminiscent of Vietnam. His administration is now sending clear signals that Iran is next in line for regime change. The raison d’être: Iran’s nuclear program, an al Qaeda connection, and protecting Israel.

First, for months, Bush has been pressuring the Security Council to sanction Iran for its nuclear development, but the council is moving slowly. According to Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nobel Peace Prize winner, we must “stop thinking that it’s morally unacceptable for certain countries to want nuclear weapons and morally acceptable for others to lean on them for their defense.”

Second, Bush’s men are now floating an Iran-al Qaeda linkage, much the way they tried to connect Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. As journalist Jeremy Scahill testified at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in January, “There is a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. It’s called Washington.”

An article in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times quoted several administration officials, who laid out the case for the link between Iran and al Qaeda. Under Secretary R. Nicholas Burns, the third-ranking official in the State Department, said “some al Qaeda members and those from like-minded extremist groups continue to use Iran as a safe haven and as a hub to facilitate their operations.”

Problem is, Shiites run the Iranian government. Al Qaeda’s Sunni leadership has denounced the Shiites as infidels.

Finally, Israel’s “stranglehold” on US foreign policy is detailed by two of America’s leading scholars in a new article in the London Review of Books. Professor John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, and Professor Stephen Walt, of Harvard’s Kennedy School, maintain that Washington’s pro-Israel lobby played a “decisive” role in fomenting the war in Iraq, and it is now being repeated with the threat of war on Iran. (See also http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011).

The article focuses largely on the role of the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, who were determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president.

“Saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards,” they write. “The US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around.” The scholars add, “Support for Israel is not the only source of the anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.”

Bush himself corroborated the central role Israel plays in US policy. Speaking in Cleveland Monday, Bush linked Israel and Iran. “The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally of Israel,” he said. “I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.”

On Tuesday, Bush revealed the lock the neocons have on him. Admitting that the Iraq war is a political liability, Bush nevertheless stated he would never leave Iraq. He left it to future administrations to decide when to pull out. That is consistent with the permanent military bases the US is building in Iraq.

Impervious to his low poll rankings due to his failed Iraq war, Bush is leading the charge into Iran. Such a course spells certain disaster – for the Iranians, for the American people, and for the entire world.

March 21, 2006

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.

March 14, 2006

War Crimes: Goose and Gander

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his jail cell at The Hague Saturday. Since 2001, he had been on trial for genocide in Bosnia, and war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Although many have already adjudged him guilty, we will never hear the official verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

We will also never see a trial in the ICTY for Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright or Wesley Clark for the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Nor will George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld be prosecuted by an international tribunal for their war crimes in Iraq.

NATO’s invasion of Yugoslavia was a war of aggression that violated the United Nations Charter. It was not undertaken in self-defense nor did it carry the approval of the Security Council. Between 1500 and 2000 civilians were killed and many thousands injured. When I visited Belgrade a year after the NATO bombing, I saw schools, hospitals, bridges, libraries and homes reduced to rubble. The ICTY statute prohibits the targeting of civilians. And even though it also forbids the use of poisonous weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering, NATO used depleted uranium and cluster bombs, whose devastating character is widely known. NATO also targeted a petrochemical complex, releasing carcinogens into the air that reached 10,600 times the acceptable safety level.

The American Association of Jurists and a group of Canadian lawyers and law professors filed a war crimes complaint against NATO leaders in the ICTY. Yet that tribunal conducted only a perfunctory investigation of the serious charges. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the ICTY for failing to thoroughly investigate.

By denouncing the International Criminal Court, Team Bush has ensured that US leaders will never be held to account for war crimes. Although virtually every Western democracy has ratified the statute under which the Court operates, the United States has thumbed its nose at this monumental international justice system.

Bush has reason to fear prosecution. He has used cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and napalm. And the torture of prisoners in US custody also constitutes a war crime. His war on Iraq is a war of aggression.

After the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war “essentially an evil thing … to initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal, labeled the crime of aggression “the greatest menace of our times.”

For the first time, at Nuremberg, individuals were held criminally accountable for war crimes and waging a war of aggression. Japanese leaders were also tried for atrocities committed during World War II, in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

Yet US leaders who were responsible for some of the most heinous war crimes ever committed – the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo and 66 other Japanese cities – were never brought to justice.

Only the vanquished Germans and Japanese were put on trial. Justice Radhabinod Pal of India, dissenting at the Tokyo Tribunal, called this “victor’s justice.”

Indeed, Robert McNamara, who participated in the bombing of Japan during World War II, admitted in the film Fog of War that he and General Curtis LeMay would have been tried for war crimes if the US had lost the war. He said, “LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he’s right. He … and I’d say I … were behaving as war criminals.”

It is no accident that the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein is currently on trial only has jurisdiction over Iraqi citizens for acts committed prior to May 1, 2003, the day the US-UK occupation of Iraq began. The United States opposed sending Hussein to an international tribunal, and manipulated the Iraqi tribunal to prevent any US leaders from being tried for their war crimes in Iraq.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. But the leaders of the world’s most powerful country continue to enjoy “victor’s justice.”

February 28, 2006

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.

February 20, 2006

US Force-feeding Prisoners in Torture Camp

Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantánamo prison camp amounts to torture.

More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that death could not be worse than the living hell they are enduring. Attorney Julia Tarver’s client Abdul-Rahman told her “of his determination to die and said that, ‘now, after four years in captivity, life and death are the same,'” Tarver wrote in a sworn declaration filed in federal district court.

Yousef Al Shehri, another of Tarver’s clients, was taken prisoner by the US military while he was still a juvenile. Both clients described being force-fed by the guards. Tarver wrote in her declaration: “Yousef was the second detainee to have an NG [nasal gastric] tube inserted into his nose and pushed all the way down his throat and into his stomach, a procedure which caused him great pain. Yousef was given no anesthesia or sedative for the procedure; instead, two soldiers restrained him – one holding his chin while the other held him back by his hair, and a medical staff member forcefully inserted the tube in his nose and down his throat. Much blood came out of his nose. Yousef said he could not speak for two days after the procedure; he said he felt like a piece of metal was inside of him. He said he could not sleep because of the severe pain.”

When Yousef and others “vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like ‘look what your religion has brought you,'” Tarver wrote.

After two weeks of this treatment, the forced feeding stopped for five days. Then, guards began to insert larger, thicker tubes into the detainees’ noses. “These large tubes,” Tarver wrote, “the thickness of a finger, [Yousef] estimated – were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture. They were forcibly shoved up the detainees’ noses and down into their stomachs. Again, no anesthesia or sedative was provided to alleviate the obvious trauma of the procedure. When the tube was removed, it was even more painful, and blood came gushing out of him. He fainted, and several of the other detainees also lost consciousness . They were told that this tube would be inserted and removed twice a day every day until the hunger strike ended. Yousef described the pain as ‘unbearable.'”

Both of Tarver’s clients independently identified physicians as participants in this procedure. “The guards took NG tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, re-inserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were re-inserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from other detainees remaining on the tubes,” Tarver wrote in her declaration.

The UN commission confirmed that “doctors and other health professionals are participating in force-feeding detainees.” It cites the Declarations of Tokyo and Malta, the World Medical Association, and the American Medical Association, which prohibit doctors from participating in force-feeding a detainee, provided the detainee is capable of understanding the consequences of refusing food.

International Committee of the Red Cross guidelines state: “Doctors should never be party to actual coercive feeding. Such actions can be considered a form of torture and under no circumstances should doctors participate in them on the pretext of saving the hunger striker’s life.”

The Bush administration is force-feeding the hunger strikers for political reasons. If any of the Guantánamo prisoners dies as a result of the hunger strike, it would be embarrassing to the Bush administration, which claims it treats the detainees “humanely.”

The Human Rights Commission called on the US government to ensure that the authorities at Guantánamo Bay do not force-feed any detainee who is capable of forming a rational judgement and is aware of the consequences of refusing food. “The United States Government should invite independent health professionals to monitor hunger strikers, in a manner consistent with international ethical standards, throughout the hunger strike,” the commission recommended.

In its report, the commission also recommended that the US government “close the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities without further delay. Until the closure, and possible transfer of detainees to pre-trial detention facilities on United States territory, the Government should refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment .”

The commission further said that “the United States Government should ensure that all allegations of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are thoroughly investigated by an independent authority, and 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.”

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration rejected the commission’s report, saying that the rapporteurs who prepared it did not interview people at the prison camp. The commission relied on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media repots, lawyers and questions answered by the US government. The Bush administration invited the rapporteurs to visit the Guantánamo camp, but refused to allow them to speak with the prisoners.

The overwhelming majority of the prisoners our government is holding at Guantánamo are not terrorists or jihadists. Many were picked up in Afghanistan and other countries and sold to the US military by bounty hunters. Of the roughly 500 men there, only 9 have been designated for trial on criminal charges.

The US government’s treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo is an international travesty and a national disgrace.

February 14, 2006

Spinning Fear

The terror’s in the room.
– CBS Journalist Edward R. Murrow, 1954 (Good Night and Good Luck)

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
– Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1933

During the 1950’s, our government succumbed to the fear of Communism hyped by Senator Joseph McCarthy. People lost their jobs, lives were ruined, and many committed suicide in response to the “red scare.” Fear pervaded every facet of life, leading neighbors to inform on one another. CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow was one of the few journalists who had the courage to stand up to the fear-mongering and bring the truth to the American people. Describing the omnipresent fear that the government was fostering, Murrow told his colleagues, “The terror’s in the room.”

It’s dejá vu with the Bush administration ensuring that terror is always in the room. Since Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush has successfully manipulated the memory of the terrorist attacks to maintain power and mute effective criticism of his dangerous and illegal policies.

Bush continues to exploit 9/11, and the media is complicit in the hype. Cable news stations keep us informed of an “elevated” terror alert level.

The month after the 9/11 attacks, former Attorney General John Ashcroft rammed The USA Patriot Act through a Congress terrified of looking soft on terror. That same Congress had rejected many of the act’s provisions months earlier because they threatened civil liberties.

Ashcroft warned that criticism of the government’s policies “only aids terrorists.” His successor, Alberto Gonzales, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, “We remain a nation at war.”

The war is in Iraq, created from whole cloth by George W. Bush. There were no terrorists in Iraq before Bush invaded that country, changed its regime and occupied its land. Now it is a breeding ground for terrorism.

Hundreds of men are being held like animals, tortured and abused in the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Only a handful of them have been charged with crimes. The despicable conditions there have caused many to participate in a hunger strike. Rather than suffer the embarrassment of dying prisoners, jailers have been force-feeding them. They tie the prisoners down and insert large, unsterilized tubes down their noses with no anesthesia. Some call it a form of torture.

Reports from Guantánamo and pictures of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison have also fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment.

Bush calls his illegal domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Dick Cheney told PBS’ Jim Lehrer that “this program has saved thousands of American lives.” Yet there’s no way to prove – or disprove – Cheney’s claim.

The Washington Post reported that, of the thousands of calls Bush’s NSA program has intercepted, almost none relate to anything approximating terrorism.

The hallmark of the Bush administration is secrecy. CIA Director Porter Goss wrote in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, “Disclosure of classified intelligence inhibits our ability to carry out our mission and protect the nation.”

Yet, as whistleblower Sibel Edmonds pointed out recently, the 9/11 Commission concluded that only “publicity” could have prevented the attacks. Had Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed known the so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had been arrested, they would have called off the attacks. The 9/11 Commission sharply criticized the government for classifying too much information.

In 2003, the Bush administration rescinded Clinton’s rule that information should not be classified “if there is significant doubt” that releasing it would harm national security.

The deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security testified at a March 2005 congressional hearing that 50 percent of the Pentagon’s information was over-classified; the head of the Information Security Oversight Office said it was “even beyond 50 percent.”

When whistleblowers and leakers reveal information critical of Bush policies, the administration mounts an attack on the messenger. In response to the New York Times report on the NSA spying program, the government launched an investigation to determine who leaked the information to the Times. When Gonzales tried to turn criticism of the program into an assault on the leakers, Senator Patrick Leahy declared, “Thank god we have press that tell us what you’re doing because you’re not telling us.”

After the Times carried its report of the NSA program, some senators refused to vote to renew provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to expire on December 31, 2005. A last-minute compromise was cobbled together to extend those provisions for five weeks.

Just as the five week period was about to run out, Bush announced with great fanfare that an October 2001 al Qaeda plan to attack the tallest building on the West Coast had been thwarted by an unnamed Southeast Asian country. Once again, we have no corroboration of the accuracy of Bush’s claim. His past lies lead many to question the truthfulness of his report.

Bush gave no credit to the NSA spying program. He most certainly would have if it had foiled the plot. The day after Bush’s “revelation,” Congress announced it had reached an agreement to make the Patriot Act permanent. Once again, the manipulation of fear succeeded in neutering the Congress.

Another example of the Bush administration’s selective revelations of its own secret information is the leaking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to journalists. The leak was strategically designed to punish Plame’s husband Joseph Wilson for blowing the whistle on Bush’s lies used to bolster support for his impending invasion of Iraq.

The most famous leaker in United States history is Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Those documents revealed the lies and hypocrisy of US policy in Southeast Asia. In 2003, Ellsberg told Salon.com writer Michelle Goldberg, “We’re now in an aggressive, costly war. The While House had to lie about those policies to make them viable, and when you lie you have to keep the lies secret, you have to intimidate people who might be inclined to tell the truth, all that goes together. Why do they do it?,” he asked rhetorically. “Wilson and I have no trouble knowing why they did it. They don’t want people to act the way we do.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the mantle of President at the height of the Great Depression. People were broke, out of work, and afraid there might not be a next meal. Roosevelt told them, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” The people jumped on board with his New Deal, and pulled themselves out of the depression. FDR didn’t exploit people’s real fears. He courageously challenged them to face their fears and overcome them.

The Bush administration continues to perfect the art of terrifying. Many in Congress live in fear of losing their seats if they appear soft on terrorism.

But most Americans oppose Bush’s illegal Iraq war and his secret spying program. The power to stop this war and the assault on our civil liberties rests in the hands of the people. Congress is reactive. It reacts to Bush’s tactics of manipulation. But it will not be able to avoid reacting to an overwhelming call by the people to check the imperial executive.