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June 30, 2005

Signing Your Life Away

A young man in the Delayed Entry Program changed his mind about enlisting. The recruiter said to him that Sept. 11 changed everything –
“If you don’t report, that’s treason and you will be shot.”
I helped him to obtain a discharge.
-Bill Galvin, Counseling Coordinator, Center on Conscience and War

Like the military recruiter trying to get the youth to enlist in the military, George Bush invoked the September 11 terrorist attacks in his June 28 recruiting speech – six times. Bush ended his address with a recruiting pitch: “I thank those of you who have re-enlisted in an hour when your country needs you. And to those watching tonight who are considering a military career, there is no higher calling than service in our armed forces.”

Although there is, and never has been, any evidence of a link between the Sept. 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein’s regime, Bush desperately uses the Sept. 11 tragedy to pump up support for his increasingly unpopular misadventure in Iraq.

“The president’s frequent references to the terrorist attack of September 11 show the weakness of his arguments,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said. “He is willing to exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.”

Indeed, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis) said it’s because of the lessons of the Sept. 11 attacks that he opposes Bush’s approach to keeping the troops in Iraq without any timetable for withdrawal: “The US military presence in Iraq has become a powerful recruiting tool for terrorists, and Iraq is now the premier training ground and networking venue for the next generation of jihadists.”

Bush is in denial about the recruiting shortfall. In his speech, he intoned, “Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don’t you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job.”

Maj. Chris Kennedy of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment indicates otherwise. “We have a finite number of troops,” he said. “But if you pull out of an area and don’t leave security forces in it, all you’re going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country.”

As American troops continue to die – more than 1,730 at latest count – in Bush’s war-that-never-had-to-be, recruiters are having an increasingly tough time getting kids to sign up. Although the Army met its monthly recruiting goal in June, it still faces a nearly insurmountable battle to meet its annual quota. The active-duty Army is still 7,800 recruits short of the 80,000 enlistees it seeks to send to boot camp, with only three months left in the recruiting year. This will be the first time since 1999 that the Army will have missed its annual enlistment quota.

The Army provides 105,000 of the 139,000 US troops currently in Iraq. Recruiters for the Marines, which supplies about 22,000 troops, report spending an average of 12 hours per recruit they enlist. This is 3 hours more than they spent only a year ago.

Over $3 billion a year is spent on recruitment, or about $14,000 per recruit. So frantic are recruiters to meet their goals, many have signed up people with serious mental diseases, and have ignored medical and police records of potential recruits.

“Recruiters must meet quotas,” says Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Project. “Those who fail to do so face transfer to much less desirable duties, like combat, as well as poor performance evaluations, which can affect promotion and careers. While recruiter fraud and misconduct have been around for years,” according to Gilberd, “the recruitment problems of the war in Iraq have resulted in more lies as well as more complaints about recruiter misconduct.”

The Army reserve has upped its eligible age limit to 39, and the Army is increasingly recruiting high school dropouts and kids with lower scores. Non-citizens are being targeted. The military is now offering expedited naturalization with relaxed requirements to those on active duty status on or since September 11, 2001.

Enlistees are given a date to report within 365 days of the day they sign up. This is called the Delayed Entry Program (DEP). If, for any reason, they change their mind within that time, they don’t have to go. A counselor with the San Diego Military Counseling Project told me that recruiters lie. They do underhanded things to circumvent the DEP. A recruiter might show up at the recruit’s job and tell his boss he isn’t patriotic and get the recruit fired. On the day before the recruit is due to report, the recruiter will tell him to come down to the office to complete some paperwork. The recruit will then be kept there overnight and sent directly to boot camp the next day. This is kidnapping.

A recruiter told the New York Times recently, “The problem is that no one wants to join. We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by.”

The Pentagon has recently signed a contract with an outside marketing firm to compile an extensive database on 30 million 16- to 25-year-olds to help recruiters target potential enlistees. The data will contain detailed information about high school students ages 16 to 18, all college students, and Selective Service System registrants. Statistics collected include Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages and ethnicities of possible recruitment targets.

The No Child Left Behind Act, which Bush signed in 2002, aims to ensure that no child is left behind when the ships leave for Iraq. It allows the Pentagon to gather home addresses and telephone numbers of public-school students. Schools must provide military recruiters with this data or risk losing millions in federal education funding. The Pentagon’s new database, however, will include much more extensive information on these kids.

But the Act also contains an “opt out” clause which allows parents to sign a form preventing schools from providing information about their children to the military.

Some recruiters say the greatest single obstacle to military recruitment is parents. “The parents of the kids being sought by recruiters to fight this unpopular war,” wrote the New York Times’ Bob Herbert, “are creating a highly vocal and potentially very effective antiwar movement.” This is not surprising in light of the recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that showed 60 percent of Americans think the Iraq war has become a quagmire. A Department of Defense survey last November found that only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent the year before.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said of the recruiters, “They’re not going to all the schools. They’re going to the schools where they figure the kids will have less change to go to college. It’s an insidious kind of draft, quite frankly.” McDermott faults the military for enticing students with talk of patriotism, adventure and college funds, instead of giving them a realistic view of combat. He is among those in Congress trying to change the law so that students “opt-in” for recruitment, so the presumption would be against the schools providing the data to the Pentagon.

“There’s nothing dishonorable with serving in the military,” said McDermott, a psychiatrist who served stateside during the Vietnam War. “But it ought to be done with your eyes open.”

A woman named Kathie who posted on the Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) website tells of her 17-year-old son who joined the Marines through the DEP just after he finished his junior year in high school. But, “somehow, all the glossy brochures and videos about the Marines had failed to mention the dehumanization of military training and war,” his mother wrote. Her son has filed for conscientious objector status.

Charlie C. Carlson II, Command Sergeant-Major USA Ret., also posted on the MFSO website. He wrote: “My son recently returned from the Iraq War, his third war, and, being fed up with Bush lies and back-to-back-deployments, applied to be discharged from his ‘indefinite enlistment’ status. Six days later he was under investigation for making ‘disloyal comments’ about George Bush … which amounted to saying in general conversation with other soldiers that ‘Bush should never have started the war’ and ‘Bush is no military leader.'” Although “his 14 years of military service up to this point was flawless, he was an excellent soldier, … he was demoted and sentenced to 45 days of extra duty. His crime involved nothing more than expressing his personal political opinion as guaranteed under the Bill of Rights, the very document that he had risked his life defending.”

The Military Law Task Force’s GI Rights Hotline received 32,000 calls in 2004 from soldiers and sailors seeking information about conscientious objector claims, going AWOL, disability, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and general advice about alternatives to remaining in the military. Since the beginning of 2005, the Hotline has fielded about 3,000 calls per month. The GI Rights Hotline number is 1-800-394-9544.

June 25, 2005

Bush & Bolton: The Bully Twins

George Bush and John Bolton have a symbiotic relationship. They need each other to nail shut the coffin of the United Nations, to make the world safe for US domination.

Bolton’s record of cooking intelligence to whip up US aggression against other countries fits nicely with Bush’s modus operandi. In 2002, while Bush told Tony Blair they would invade Iraq together, Bolton orchestrated the ouster of Jose Bustani, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, to prevent him from inspecting and revealing that Saddam Hussein had no chemical weapons. Had Bustani sent chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad, that might have defused the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined the US rationale for war. All the while, Bush lied to the American people, “I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary.”

Bush’s choice for US ambassador to the UN is also famous for hyping threats posed by Cuba and Syria, and taking a dangerously combative stance toward North Korea.

It is noteworthy that the US State Department has made positive diplomatic steps since Bolton stepped down from his post as undersecretary of state. US negotiators have finally secured a breakthrough with Russia to eliminate enough plutonium to fuel 8,000 nuclear bombs. The administration abandoned its campaign to remove the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency. And, for the moment, Team Bush is talking to our European allies to achieve a peaceful solution to the problem of Iran’s nuclear program. But rest assured that Bolton is ready to do what he does best – wreak havoc – if he is confirmed as US ambassador to the UN.

If former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter is right about US designs on Iran – the way he called George W. Bush’s Iraq charade early on – Bolton as UN ambassador can be expected to pave the way for a US attack on Iran.

In his op-ed on Al Jazeera on Sunday, Ritter claimed that the US war with Iran has already begun. He cited American flights over Iran with pilotless drones, CIA-backed actions by an Iranian opposition group, and US military preparations for a base of operations in Azerbaijan to support a massive military presence from which the US could launch a land-based campaign to capture Tehran.

If Bolton becomes US ambassador to the UN, he will escalate the rhetoric and the pressure on other Security Council members against Iran, the third member of Bush’s “axis of evil.”

Despite the tenacity of Democratic senators in insisting the administration come clean about Bolton’s hit list, Bush is likely taking Cheney’s advice to hold tight and force an “up-or-down” senatorial vote on Bolton.

Bush could take the easy way out with a recess appointment come Independence Day. But that wouldn’t fly quite like Bush’s last two end-runs around the Senate, when he installed Charles Pickering and Bill Pryor, two right-wing judges, on the federal bench. (See Bush’s Judges: Right-Wing Ideologues.)

The United Nations is slated to consider Kofi Annan’s proposed UN reforms in September, and Bush is eager to have his bully on the job to push the Bush agenda of taking over the UN. If Bolton is unilaterally appointed by Bush, he would enter the job hobbled with a lack of support and a term that will end with the 2006 Congress.

Bush opposed the House of Representatives’ decision last week to cut US dues unless the UN goosesteps to the right-wing Republican program. Bush wants to maximize his chances for remaking the UN in his own image, and the dues ultimatum wouldn’t play well with his fellow permanent Security Council members. For example, Annan’s proposal to interpret “preventive war” as consistent with the UN Charter will be championed by Bush, but opposed by most other countries.

If Bush really wanted to woo his colleagues at the UN, he would attend the 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco later this month. But like Cheney during the Vietnam War, Bush has other priorities, and won’t be traveling to San Francisco to honor the world’s premier peace-building organization.

As United States ambassador to the UN, John Bolton would walk in lockstep with his twin bully, George Bush. And the promise of the United Nations in 1945, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” will be rendered even more hollow.

June 16, 2005

Bush Plays Politics with Guantánamo “Gulag”

“Absurd!” George Bush exclaimed. “Reprehensible!” Donald Rumsfeld charged. “Ridiculous!” stated Scott McClellan. “I’m offended!” declared Dick Cheney. What are they all so upset about? Is it the stripping and shackling of Guantanámo prisoners low to the ground, the forcible squeezing of their genitals, the smearing of menstrual blood on Muslim detainees, the shooting of rubber bullets at inmates, the forcing of prisoners to stand cruciform in the sun until they collapse, the desecration of the Koran, or the psychological torture documented at Gitmo by Physicians for Human Rights? Are they concerned about the treatment of Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was force-fed liquids through an IV and then forbidden from urinating, and who evidenced “behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma,” according to Time Magazine?

No, it’s Team Bush engaging in damage control after Amnesty International labeled the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, “the gulag of our time.”

Strong language indeed from one of the premier human rights organizations. This is the same Amnesty International whose accusations about Saddam Hussein’s atrocities were eagerly gobbled up and regurgitated by the Bush administration when they dovetailed nicely with Bush’s predetermined plan to oust Hussein to make Iraq safe for 14 permanent US military bases.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a rare public rebuke, observed a “worrying deterioration in the psychological health of a large number” of the Gitmo inmates in late 2003. Until the Supreme Court instructed Bush to give the prisoners access to US courts, the Red Cross called Guantánamo “a legal black hole.”

Bush & Co., which characteristically goes after anyone or any organization that challenges its policies, is now gunning for the venerable Red Cross. A new report being circulated among Republican congressional staff this week charges that the Red Cross, which receives major funding from the United States, has lost its impartiality. Why? Because it is advocating positions at odds with American policy.

But the Red Cross’s website says the organization, founded in 1863, has a “permanent mandate founded in international law, a worldwide mission to help victims of conflicts and internal violence, whoever they are.”

Nearly two years ago, the National Lawyers Guild and the American Association of Jurists called for the closure of the US prison at Guantánamo. Amnesty International and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers have recently followed suit. Since Amnesty International’s scathing accusation, former President Jimmy Carter, Senators Chuck Hagel and Joe Biden, and Rep. Mel Martinez have come out for the closure of Gitmo. Prominent liberal neo-con Thomas Friedman and the New York Times have also jumped on board.

The Senate held a hearing on Guantánamo yesterday, but the Republican majority specified that no questions could be asked about torture or mistreatment. Nevertheless, Sen. Patrick Leahy said the prison was “an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and remains a festering threat to our security.” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy felt the treatment of the Guantánamo prisoners has stained our reputation on human rights, inflamed the Muslim world and has become “a powerful recruiting tool for terrorists.”

Some Republicans, like Rep. Duncan Hunter, strive to keep Guantánamo open for business. “They’ve never eaten better. They’ve never been treated better,” according to Hunter. “We don’t beat them. We don’t touch them. We’ve been treating people well.”

But although many in the administration are in denial about the torture and abuse at Guantánamo, the high officials are stumbling over themselves as they react to the mounting furor.

Evidently before checking with Karl Rove, Bush allowed in a television interview with Fox that “we’re exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America.” Many took this to mean Bush was leaving open the possibility of closing the Guantánamo prison. Within hours of Bush’s interview, Rumsfeld categorically ruled out the prospect of shutting down the detention center. “I know of no one in the US government, in the executive branch, that is considering closing Guantánamo,” he said.

Scott McClellan, still trying to tamp down talk of closing Guantánamo this week, underscored that Rumsfeld was “talking for the administration” with his comments. The same day, Rumsfeld proclaimed that the Guantánamo operations had been more transparent than those in any military detention center. This claim is disingenuous in light of the US government’s refusal to allow UN human rights monitors, including the special rapporteur on torture, to visit the Guantánamo prisoners.

Four days after Bush’s Fox interview, Cheney reminded us, “The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantánamo are bad people.” A curious characterization for individuals who have been charged with no crime.

Although Team Bush tries to portray a united front on Guantánamo, yesterday’s New York Times reported a “widening internal debate” within the Pentagon and the State Department about whether to close the prison. Indeed, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed yesterday that Guantánamo’s fate is under active study.

Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, predicts it is just a matter of time before the Guantánamo prison is shut down.

But Rumsfeld says, “If you closed it, where would you go?” The reason the administration located that prison in Cuba in the first place was to avoid judicial review. And, although the Supreme Court ruled a year ago that Bush must give prisoners there access to US courts, none has yet had his day in court. Prisoners undergo annual reviews, which, according to attorney Joseph Margulies, “are a sham. They mock this nation’s commitment to due process, and it is past time for this mockery to end.” The Bush administration maintains the inmates can be jailed at Guantánamo “in perpetuity.”

No high-level officials have been investigated for their roles in setting the policies that lead to torture at Guantánamo and other US prisons. Congress must establish a truly independent commission to do a thorough investigation, no matter whom it may implicate. And, as the head of Amnesty International USA said, if the US continues to shirk its responsibility, other countries should prosecute senior US officials for violation of the Torture Convention, under the Pinochet principle.

Sen. Chuck Hagel told CNN’s Late Edition that Guantánamo is “identifiable with, for right or wrong, a part of America that people in the world believe is a power, an empire that pushes people around, we do it our way, we don’t live up to our commitments to multilateral institutions.”

Although it would be a good first step, shutting down Guantánamo prison will not stop the accusations that the US engages in human rights hypocrisy. It is our policies that must change.

June 1, 2005

Enforcing US Human Rights Laws

Challenging US Human Rights Violations Since 9/11
Ann Fagan Ginger, ed., Prometheus Books, 2005, 574 pp.

The Bush administration is using the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as an excuse to launch a massive assault on the human rights of people throughout the world. From the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to the torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody, and the insidious profiling and harassment of Arabs and Muslims in the US, Team Bush has engaged in unprecedented violations of US and international law, under the guise of fighting “the war on terror.”

Bush has done nothing to hide his contempt for the United Nations and our treaty commitments, which are part of US law under the Constitution. When Security Council approval for his war on Iraq was not forthcoming, Bush threatened the UN with becoming “irrelevant.” Nothing exemplifies Bush’s disdain for the United Nations better than his nomination of John Bolton, avowed UN-hater, for US ambassador to the UN. And although the 60-year anniversary of the founding of the United Nations will take place later this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former President George H.W. Bush will not attend, and George W. Bush has not announced that he plans to travel to San Francisco for this momentous occasion.

The administration’s terrorizing of people at home and abroad has been chronicled by Prof. Ann Fagan Ginger, Executive Director of Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, in her new book, Challenging US Human Rights Violations Since 9/11. For the first time, a listing of Team Bush’s breaches of our laws since Sept. 11 has been amassed in one place. Ginger presents reports of 180 alleged violations, in 30 categories, by the White House; the Pentagon; the Departments of State, Justice, and Labor; the FBI; the Attorney General; immigration officials; and state and local police against people in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere. Each report includes the sources for the allegation, and each section lists the specific US and international laws allegedly violated.

In this unique book, Ginger has collected reports on the basic rights of all peoples under US jurisdiction: the right not to be killed or disappeared; the right not to be tortured or ordered to torture; the right peaceably to assemble and petition the government; the right to equal protection regardless of race or national origin; the right to equal protection for women; the right to free exercise of religion; the right of the media to report facts and not be killed; the right to privacy vs. surveillance and registration; the right of libraries not to report on readers; the right of universities to accept foreign scholars and students; and the right to travel.

Some examples of violations include the “disappearing” of 3,000 men in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban; the use of napalm in Iraq, cluster bombs in Afghanistan, and depleted uranium in both Iraq and Afghanistan; the killing and torture of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and abuse of prisoners in US prisons; the arrest of animal rights activists, hailed by the Bush administration as a blow against terrorism; the pepper spraying of environmental and antiwar activists in Portland, OR; the firing of journalists for criticizing Bush; and the failure of the US government to comply with its duty to report human rights violations to the US Civil Rights Commission, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, and the UN Human Rights Committee. Judge Richard Margolis said he personally saw police commit 20 felonies during anti-globalization demonstrations in Miami.

The US government has corresponding duties to we-the-people, also listed in Ginger’s reports. They include the duty to count the votes accurately and report to the people honestly; the duty to obey the Constitution, the law of nations, and the laws of war; the duty to protect people’s rights; the duty to properly fund the general welfare; and the duty to report violations to Congress and the UN.

Ginger cites the specific laws violated, and documents what people are doing to challenge those violations, both in the courts and in the political arena. She provides the basic text of the US Constitution, the UN Charter, and other ratified human rights and antinuclear weapons treaties. The specific statutes at issue, including the Patriot Act, are listed in each report.

The City Council of Berkeley, CA passed a resolution to submit Ginger’s reports to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. On March 31, representatives of the National Lawyers Guild, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Gold Star Families for Peace, and Center for Constitutional Rights, whose work is memorialized in the reports, were on hand for the presentation in New York.

Ann Fagan Ginger has compiled a shocking compendium of human rights violations by the Bush administration. But, unlike prior works, she presents remedies for these transgressions in a well-organized book accessible to activists, lawyers, students, teachers, union members, government officials and judges. This gripping work is an indispensable tool for citizens and lawyers defending civil liberties in the era of the Patriot Act and the War on Terrorism. Prof. Ginger is making several presentations per week, inviting listeners to share their experiences of violations, and fight backs, following some of the new paths for action in the book. She can be contacted at MCLI@mcli.org.

May 24, 2005

The Vietnam War is Over

April 30th marked 30 years since the end of the Vietnam War. Yet, recently elected California Assemblyman Van Tran is pushing the California State Assembly to adopt the old flag of the Republic of Vietnam as the official and only flag of the Vietnamese-American community in the state, to be flown at state-sponsored Vietnamese-American events. That was the flag of the puppet regime in Saigon that consistently claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Vietnam. No government in either Saigon or Hanoi ever accepted Washington’s claim that there were two separate countries.

Many of us protested US involvement in Vietnam, and its support of the corrupt regime. The Vietnam War claimed 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American lives. Subjected to the most intense bombing and chemical warfare in human history, the land has still not recovered, and new generations suffer from damage inflicted on the Vietnamese gene pool.

Although the US government has grudgingly recognized some of the diseases caused by Agent Orange in American veterans who were briefly exposed, it still refuses to acknowledge any of the effects of Agent Orange and other chemicals on the Vietnamese people who have been exposed for decades.

US veterans of that war continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, now a part of our national vocabulary. Many struggle with the lingering effects of drug addiction, homelessness, psychological and physical wounds, and one of the highest suicide rates of any demographic in our society.

In the last 30 years, Vietnam has overcome political and economic hardships to build a new society from the ruins left by the war. Official relations between the US and Vietnam are friendly, and billions of dollars worth of aid and investment are flowing into its economy from around the world.

The flag issue may seem but a symbolic gesture, honoring the undeniable contributions of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the US. But there is a chilling undertone to this campaign, meant to silence and intimidate those in the Vietnamese community and outside of it who have actively worked towards normalization of relations between the US and Vietnam.

This sentiment was also reflected in the vicious right-wing attack on Senator John Kerry’s military service during the presidential election campaign. The “Swift Boat Veterans” succeeded in convincing millions that Kerry not only aided the Vietnamese enemy but also betrayed our POWs.

Daniel Ellsberg, in the 1974 Academy Award-winning documentary Hearts and Minds, outlines how the American people were lied to about Vietnam by Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Once again, a US president is lying to the American people about the need to fight a needless and deadly war. George W. Bush is rapidly creating a new Vietnam in Iraq, with the tragic loss of American and Iraqi life.

Enshrining the old flag of the Republic of Vietnam in California would constitute still another lie. Flying that flag is tantamount to flying the Confederate flag in state buildings.

Californians should resist the passage of SCR 17, which will be considered by the Rules Committee of the California Senate on Wednesday.

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May 23, 2005

Close Guantánamo Prison

Last month, in a little-noticed vote, the Senate rejected Democratic Senator Robert Byrd’s proposal to delete funding for the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005 would have stripped HR 1268 of $36 million earmarked for construction of a permanent, 220-person military prison at Guantánamo. Opponents of the amendment said a new prison would keep detainees from being transferred to the United States, where terrorists might seek to free them.

These folks may well see the US federal courts, which now hear the Guantánamo inmates’ habeas corpus petitions, as “terrorist.” Before the Supreme Court instructed the Bush administration it must give prisoners access to our courts to challenge their detentions (see Supreme Court: War No Blank Check for Bush), the International Committee of the Red Cross called the Guantánamo prison a “legal black hole.” Between 500 and 600 men and boys have been detained there for more than three years with no criminal charges against them, in violation of US and international law.

Many Republican opponents of Byrd’s amendment are those who strive to destroy the time-honored filibuster in order to appease their right-wing Christian base. Some, such as Pat Robertson, would put independent judges in the same category as terrorists. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Robertson affirmed that judges who don’t share his Christian values are a more serious threat to us than Al Qaeda.

It is not just Republican senators who voted against de-funding a permanent prison at Guantánamo Bay. Seventeen Democrats, including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, joined all Republicans senators except Arlen Specter in supporting the new prison construction.

Although Democratic senators are currently waging a valiant battle to preserve the independence of the judiciary, many have wilted in the face of Bush’s conflating of the war in Iraq with his “war on terror.” They are afraid to stand up to him, demand that we save thousands of lives by pulling out of Iraq, and vote to bring a halt to the disgrace that is, in the words of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Association of Jurists, a veritable “concentration camp” at Guantánamo Bay.

Desecration of the Koran

Last week, the Bush administration forced Newsweek to back off a story about the desecration of Korans at Guantánamo after it provoked demonstrations, riots and more than a dozen deaths in Afghanistan. The Pentagon refuses to release the Southern Command’s report, on which Newsweek based its article. Publicizing its content could disprove the magazine’s allegations, if they are indeed false, as the Pentagon claims. The Red Cross documented “credible information” that supports “multiple” instances of disrespecting or mishandling the Koran there. Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times reported that court records and transcripts contain “dozens of accusations involving the Koran.” Allegations include having a guard dog carry the Koran in its mouth, guards scrawling obscenities inside Korans, kicking Korans across the floor, urinating on the Koran, ridiculing the Koran, walking on the Koran, and tearing off the cover and throwing the Koran into trash or dirty water.

Hunger strikes erupted in 2002 at Guantánamo after word got around that Korans were being desecrated. On Friday, 500 British Muslims chanted “Desecrate today, die tomorrow,” in front of the United States Embassy in London.

Illegal US Occupation of Guantánamo

The real question the media should be asking is why our government continues to illegally operate its prison at Guantánamo Bay, scene of widespread of torture and abuse. The occupation of Guantánamo by the US military violates the 1903 and 1934 treaties concluded between the United States and Cuba.

Guantánamo Bay came under United States control in 1903 when Cuba was occupied by the US army after its intervention in Cuba’s war of independence against Spain. The Platt Amendment, which granted the US the right to intervene in Cuba, was incorporated into the Cuban Constitution as a prerequisite for the withdrawal of US troops from Cuba. That provision provided the basis for a treaty granting jurisdiction over Guantánamo Bay to the United States.

The 1903 Agreement on Coaling and Naval Stations gave the United States the right to use Guantánamo Bay “exclusively as coaling or naval stations, and for no other purpose.” Twenty-one years later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a new treaty with the Republic of Cuba, which abrogated the Platt Amendment and the 1903 treaty.

But this 1934 treaty, in the spirit of Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy, maintained US control over Guantánamo Bay in perpetuity until the United States abandons it or until both Cuba and the U.S. agree to modify it. The new treaty, however, specified that “the stipulations of [the 1903] agreement with regard to the naval station of Guantánamo shall continue in effect.” That is, Guantánamo Bay can be used only for coaling or naval stations. Additionally, article III of the 1934 treaty provides that the Republic of Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States “for coaling and naval stations.” Nowhere in either treaty did Cuba give the United States the right to utilize Guantánamo Bay as a prison camp.

Torture at Guantánamo Prison

US forces have used the Guantánamo prison to engage in torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Statute.

A high-level military investigation concluded last month that several prisoners at Guantánamo were mistreated or humiliated. The findings were based on FBI agents’ accounts that were never meant to be made public. The agents saw female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners’ genitals, and witnessed detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours.

Psychological torture has also been documented at the Guantánamo prison. “At least since 2002,” according to Physicians for Human Rights, “the United States has been engaged in systematic psychological torture” of Guantánamo prisoners.

Several detainees released from Guantánamo last month allege they were tortured by US military guards. Seventeen Afghans said they had been victims of “indescribable tortures.” Nasser Nijer Naser Al-Mutairi was picked up on an Afghan battlefield in 2001. His lungs and right leg were severely injured. After he was shipped to Guantánamo, he underwent several chest operations and an interrogation session that almost killed him, he said.

Mustafa Ait Idr, an Algerian citizen living in Bosnia, has been detained at Guantánamo Bay for three years. He filed a lawsuit alleging that US military guards jumped on his head, resulting in a stroke that paralyzed his face, broke several of his fingers, and nearly drowned him in a toilet.

Guantánamo: Symbol of US Hypocrisy

Instead of furthering the war on terror, the torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay has had the opposite effect. “For many Muslims, Guantánamo stands as a confirmation of the low regard in which they believe the United States holds them,” according to the New York Times. “For many non-Muslims, regardless of their feelings toward the United States, it has emerged as a symbol of American hypocrisy.”

Testimonials and photographs of atrocities emerging from Guantánamo feed anti-American sentiment. “Guantánamo provides rhetorical fodder for politicians seeking to bring down United States-allied rulers in their own countries,” the New York Times reported. “It offers a ready rallying point against American dominance, even in countries whose own police and military have been known for severe violations of human rights.”

As in US-run prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, high-ranking military and civilian officials remain unaccountable for their torturous policies at Guantánamo. (See Team Bush Goes Unpunished for Torture). The State Department disclosed that 11 soldiers have been punished for abusing detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Yet only one was court-martialed, and he was acquitted.

Human Rights Watch says the United States should allow UN human rights monitors, including the special rapporteur on torture, to visit detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. If it had nothing to hide, the US would welcome the monitors.

The National Lawyers Guild and the American Association of Jurists have called on the United States to close its concentration camp at Guantánamo, release the prisoners there or hold trials in accordance with international legal norms, and return Guantánamo Bay to Cuba.

As a January editorial in the French daily, Le Monde, said, “The simple truth is that America’s leaders have constructed at Guantánamo Bay a legal monster.”

Democrats in the Senate must find their voice, not just on the filibuster, but also to oppose the perpetuation of one of the most disgraceful situations the United States has ever created.

May 15, 2005

Navy Judge Finds War Protest Reasonable

“I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal.”
— Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant, presiding at Pablo Paredes’ court-martial

In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge gave Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail time for refusing orders to board the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000 sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship’s movement by design, but dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although Pablo faced one year in the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months’ restriction and three months of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.

“This is a huge victory,” said Jeremy Warren, Pablo’s lawyer. “A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good conscience to board a ship bound for Iraq, and receive no time in jail,” Warren added. Although Pablo is delighted he will not to go jail, he still regrets that he was convicted of a crime. He told the judge at sentencing: “I am guilty of believing this war is illegal. I am guilty of believing war in all forms is immoral and useless, and I am guilty of believing that as a service member I have a duty to refuse to participate in this War because it is illegal.”

Pablo maintained that transporting Marines to fight in an illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes, would make him complicit in those crimes. He told the judge, “I believe as a member of the armed forces, beyond having a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on Iraq.”

Pablo said he formed his views about the illegality of the war by reading truthout.org, listening to Democracy Now!, and reading articles by Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Naomi Klein, Stephen Zunes, and Marjorie Cohn, as well as Kofi Annan’s statements that the war is illegal under the UN Charter, and material on the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals.

I testified during the sentencing hearing at Pablo’s court-martial as a defense expert on the legality of the war in Iraq, and the commission of war crimes by US forces. My testimony corroborated the reasonableness of Pablo’s beliefs. I told the judge that the war violates the United Nations Charter, which forbids the use of force, unless carried out in self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council, neither of which obtained before Bush invaded Iraq. I also said that torture and inhuman treatment, which have been documented in Iraqi prisons, constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and are considered war crimes under the US War Crimes Statute. The United States has ratified both the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, making them part of the supreme law of the land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

I noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires that all military personnel obey lawful orders. Article 92 of the UCMJ says, “A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States….” Both the Nuremberg Principles and the Army Field Manual create a duty to disobey unlawful orders. Article 509 of Field Manual 27-10, codifying another Nuremberg Principle, specifies that “following superior orders” is not a defense to the commission of war crimes, unless the accused “did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful.”

I concluded that the Iraq war is illegal. US troops who participate in the war are put in a position to commit war crimes. By boarding that ship and delivering Marines to Iraq – to fight in an illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes – Pablo would have been complicit in those crimes. Therefore, orders to board that ship were illegal, and Pablo had a duty to disobey them.

On cross-examination, Navy prosecutor Lt. Jonathan Freeman elicited testimony from me that the US wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan also violated the UN Charter, as neither was conducted in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council. Upon the conclusion of my testimony, the judge said, “I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal.”

The Navy prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Pablo to nine months in the brig, forfeiture of pay and benefits, and a bad conduct discharge. Lt. Brandon Hale argued that Pablo’s conduct was “egregious,” that Pablo could have “slinked away with his privately-held beliefs quietly.” The public nature of Pablo’s protest made it more serious, according to the chief prosecuting officer.

But Pablo’s lawyer urged the judge not to punish Pablo more harshly for exercising his right of free speech. Pablo refused to board the ship not, as many others, for selfish reasons, but rather as an act of conscience, Warren said.

“Pablo’s victory is an incredible boon to the anti-war movement,” according to Warren. Since December 6th, Pablo has had a strong support network. Camilo Mejia, a former Army infantryman who spent nine months in the brig at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for refusing to return to Iraq after a military leave, was present throughout Pablo’s court-martial. Tim Goodrich, co-founder of Iraq Veterans against the War, also attended the court-martial. “We have all been to Iraq, and we support anyone who stands in nonviolent opposition,” he said. Fernando Suárez del Solar and Cindy Sheehan, both of whom lost sons in Iraq, came to defend Pablo.

The night before his sentencing, many spoke at a program in support of Pablo. Mejia thanked Pablo for bringing back the humanity and doubts about the war into people’s hearts. Sheehan, whose son, K.C., died two weeks after he arrived in Iraq, said, “I was told my son was killed in the war on terror. He was killed by George Bush’s war of terror on the world.”

Aidan Delgado, who received conscientious objector status after spending nine months in Iraq, worked in the battalion headquarters at the Abu Ghraib prison. Confirming the Red Cross’s conclusion that 70 to 90 percent of the prisoners were there by mistake, Delgado said that most were suspected only of petty theft, public drunkenness, forging documents and impersonating officials. “At Abu Ghraib, we shot prisoners for protesting their conditions; four were killed,” Delgado maintained. He has photographs of troops “scooping their brains out.”

Pablo’s application for conscientious objector status is pending. He has one year of Navy service left. If his C.O. application is granted, he could be released. Or he could receive an administrative discharge. Worst case scenario, he could be sent back to Iraq. But it is unlikely the Navy will choose to go through this again.

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

May 2, 2005

Team Bush Goes Unpunished for Torture

When the torture photographs began to emerge from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison one year ago, Bush said, “Those mistakes will be investigated, and people will be brought to justice.” As fingers began to point up the chain-of-command, some prisoners were released and commanders were reassigned. Congress held hearings, investigations were undertaken, and some low-ranking soldiers were prosecuted. But those responsible for setting the policy that led to widespread and systemic torture of prisoners in United States custody remain uninvestigated and un-indicted.

Last week, the Army inspector general cleared four of the five top Army officers who oversaw prison policies and operations in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who authorized the use of vicious dogs to exploit “Arab fear of dogs,” was exonerated, as was his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowki. Col. Marc Warren, the command’s top legal officer who failed to report abuses witnessed by the Red Cross to his boss for more than one month, escaped unscathed. And the report cleared Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, former chief intelligence officer in charge of the Abu Ghraib intelligence center, who failed to properly advise Sanchez about the management of interrogations.

Only Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was reprimanded. Although she was in charge of the prison, Karpinski was discouraged from visiting the cellblock where most of the torture occurred.

In his State of the Union address, Bush said, “Torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.” Yet former CIA Director George Tenet, who approved the illegal renditions of prisoners to Egypt and Syria where they were formally tortured, has not been charged with any crime.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the man who, according to Seymour Hersh, personally approved physical coercion and sexual humiliation of prisoners, has not been prosecuted. And Alberto Gonzales, responsible for some of the most egregious torture memos, remains the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. When asked by Senator Richard Durbin at the confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Can US personnel legally engage in torture under any circumstances?”, Gonzales refused to give a categorical “no” answer. He waffled, “I don’t believe so, but I’d want to get back to you on that.” The would-be attorney general surely knew that the Convention against Torture prohibits torture at any time, including wartime.

In fact, even if the United States had not ratified the torture treaty, which, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, is part of the supreme law of the land, US personnel would still be legally forbidden from torturing prisoners. The international prohibition against torture is on par with slavery and genocide. It is considered a preemptory norm of international law, which means that torture can never be justified in any circumstances. The first Congress of the United States decided that the law of nations could be directly enforced in US courts. It enacted the Alien Tort Claims Act in 1789, which provides victims the right to sue for a violation of the law of nations. In its recent case of Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the Supreme Court upheld the preemptory nature of the ban on torture.

On Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the release of the Abu Ghraib photos, the New York Times reported that the Army is preparing to issue a new interrogations manual that bans interrogation practices that weren’t even in the old manual. Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said, “The existing manual was clear. It was the exceptions that caused problems.”

Indeed, most of the torture did not occur during interrogations. Sodomy with foreign objects, forced masturbation, stacking of naked prisoners in pyramids, threatening prisoners with dogs, and leading crouching prisoners around with leashes like dogs were not carried out to secure information. They were designed to humiliate the Arabs in captivity.

Just as US soldiers who fought in Vietnam were trained to think of the Viet Cong as “gooks,” making it more palatable to kill and abuse them, so did the US forces objectify their Iraqi prisoners when they sexually abused and sadistically humiliated them. One US official told the Los Angeles Times, “There was a mentality that the people we’re in charge of are not humans.”

When the Abu Ghraib photos first emerged, there was a sense of outrage. But even though allegations of torture, not just in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, and in secret CIA prisons, continue to surface, the indignation has died down. When the subject of torture comes up, Bush’s war on terror is often cited to deflect attention from the disgusting images. Yet a recent Gallup Poll found 60 percent of Americans would not support torture, even against a terrorist who had information about an impending attack.

So why has the revulsion disappeared? If we were confronted with pictures of US personnel torturing Swedes, would demands that the perpetrators be brought to justice have evaporated so easily?

All three branches of our government must take responsibility for addressing these atrocities. The executive should appoint a special independent prosecutor to thoroughly investigate and prosecute those responsible, no matter how high up in the chain-of-command. Because of his role in the preparation of the torture memos, Alberto Gonzales has a conflict of interest and is thus incapable of fairly performing this function.

Congress must convene an independent commission to launch an investigation similar to that of the 9/11 commission. The military has shown it cannot impartially investigate itself.

And human rights and civil liberties organizations will continue to file litigation to bring the perpetrators to justice in the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit on behalf of eight men allegedly tortured by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The defendants are Donald Rumsfeld, Janis Karpinski, Ricardo Sanchez, and Col. Thomas Pappas, head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib. The suit is based on both the Alien Tort Claims Act and the US Constitution, which guarantees due process prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

“Brutalization doesn’t work,” said Dan Coleman, a former FBI agent who retired last year. “Besides that,” he added, “you lose your soul.” If we stand by and permit our high government officials to maintain impunity in the face of their torture, we, too, will have lost our soul.

April 26, 2005

Right to Choice under Nuclear Attack

The year before Roe v. Wade was decided, I met a poor, young woman in a rural American town who had five children, born one year apart. Sally’s husband would show up about once a year, beat her up, knock her up, and leave her to fend for herself and the kids. She was a battered woman, trapped in a disastrous marriage. A lawful abortion was not an option for Sally, and she was afraid to go the back alley route.

In 1973, the Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that a Texas law criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional. The due process clause, the Court said, protects the right to privacy, including a woman’s qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. In the late stages of pregnancy, this right was balanced out by a compelling state interest in protecting unborn children. The Roe Court established a trimester scheme that allowed some state regulation in the latter trimesters. Nineteen years later, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court rejected Roe’s trimester scheme, and held that any measure that puts an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to abortion is unconstitutional.

The Roe decision galvanized the Christian right in an unprecedented way. In right-wing Evangelical churches throughout the country, a movement was mounted to overturn Roe v. Wade. A movie that referred to abortion in America as the new “holocaust” began to circulate during worship services.

Now, 32 years after Roe was decided, this sentiment has penetrated mainstream politics. It is embodied in a massive campaign to secure the appointment of judges who oppose Roe v. Wade.

Two days ago, the right-wing Evangelical movement organized a cable and Internet virtual church service called “Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster against People of Faith,” broadcast from a mega-church in Louisville, Kentucky. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, estimated that 61 million households witnessed the event. Although cast as merely a campaign to convince senators to stop the Democratic filibuster of some of Bush’s judicial nominees, the main thrust of the 90-minute program was to re-criminalize abortion.

The names, photographs and telephone numbers of senators who have not committed to the “nuclear option” to destroy the filibuster trailed across the bottom of the computer screen. Speakers argued that by blocking judicial nominees who oppose abortion, Democrats are discriminating against them.

James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, decried “six or eight very squishy Republicans” who oppose the destruction of the filibuster. Dobson, who recently compared the Supreme Court to the KKK and held it responsible for the “biggest holocaust in world history” since Roe v. Wade was decided, called the justices “unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious and determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values – and they’re out of control.”

Another featured speaker was Judge Charles Pickering, appointed by Bush to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals during a Congressional recess to circumvent Senate opposition. Pickering, who voted for a constitutional convention to overturn Roe v. Wade, defensively cited his “civil rights” record for the crowd.

Behind the pulpit from which the faithful spoke loomed oversized photographs of nominees championed by the Christian right. The likeness of Bill Pryor, also propelled by Bush onto the US Court of Appeals during a Senate recess, was featured prominently. Pryor once called Roe v. Wade “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.”

Particularly conspicuous were huge photos of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown and Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, voting along party lines, sent the nominations of Brown and Owen to the Senate. Both were blocked by a filibuster in the last Congress.

While serving on the California Supreme Court, Brown opposed a minor’s right to obtain an abortion without parental consent. Brown’s previous nomination to the federal court was opposed by 250 law professors.

And in one case, Owen so twisted the law, that Alberto Gonzalez was moved to write, “To construe the Parental Notification Act so narrowly as to eliminate bypasses, or to create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute, would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism.”

Yet judicial activism is precisely what the right-wing Evangelicals level at the sitting judiciary, including the nine justices on the present Supreme Court, seven of whom were Republican nominees.

Right-wing Evangelicals have attacked US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy for authoring the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down an anti-sodomy law. And speakers on Sunday railed against same-sex marriage; laws against school prayer, the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments; and the refusal of judges to intervene in the Terri Schiavo matter. But their eyes were on the big prize: outlawing abortion.

For the first time since Roe v. Wade ushered in a “holocaust,” the right-wing Evangelicals can smell red meat. I think the Republican leaders have promised leaders of the Christian right that, in return for their unflinching support, Bush will replace a Supreme Court justice who supports Roe with someone who will vote to reverse it, if he gets the opportunity. The Christian right may have even presented a list of acceptable replacements. The Republicans feel they must repay their political debt to the Christian right and they can only make it happen with the nuclear option, which Senator Robert Byrd has called “a legislative bomb that threatens the rights to dissent, to unlimited debate, and to freedom of speech.” Dick Cheney, president of the Senate, has vowed to support the nuclear option in case of a 50-50 tie. The Republicans are willing to mortgage the future, if necessary, to repay this debt.

If they can stop the Democrats from using the filibuster to block Bush’s anti-abortion federal court nominees, the right-wing Evangelicals can ultimately tip the balance of the Supreme Court and get Roe v. Wade reversed. Then, the only choice left for women like Sally will be a bloody coat hanger, or a life of misery.

April 18, 2005

Bully Bolton Threatens National Security

John Bolton is the wrong man for the job of US ambassador to the United Nations. His status as an avowed UN-hater, standing alone, disqualifies him. But there are other, stronger reasons to reject his appointment to that important post.

Bolton’s performance in his current position as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security has made the American people less safe. Bolton has been charged, since 2001, with halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But on Bolton’s watch, the proliferation problem has gotten worse, not better.

Fewer weapons-grade nuclear materials were secured in the two years after September 11, 2001, than in the preceding two years.

North Korea, which had two nuclear weapons, now has eight. Bolton’s scathing insults of President Kim Jong Ill provoked a dangerous reaction from the North Koreans, who called Bolton “human scum” and a “bloodsucker” who was “not entitled to take part in the [six-nation] talks.. “We have decided,” they declared, “not to consider him as an official of the US administration any longer nor to deal with him.”

On Bolton’s watch, Iran has increased its nuclear program. Alarmingly, Bolton often blocked former Secretary of State Colin Powell from receiving “information vital to US strategies on Iran,” according to today’s Washington Post.

Bolton successfully pushed to cut funding for the Nunn-Lugar program to halt the proliferation of nuclear materials, and failed to conclude a Plutonium Disposition Agreement with Russia to eliminate 70 tons of weapons-grade plutonium.

Bolton has widely been considered responsible for the defeat of the Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention that would have created an inspection system to protect us against these deadly weapons. This is documented by Nicole Deller and John Burroughs from the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy.

In short, Bolton’s resume shows that he has earned a failing grade in arms control.

But the most important reason to reject Bolton’s appointment to the UN post is the brutal way he conducts business. His modus operandi poses a real danger to the future security of the United States. Over and over again, Bolton has bullied his inferiors and even a non-governmental employee to get his way. And his way has led repeatedly to the proliferation of false intelligence that could endanger our national security.

Had Bolton not been reined in by the CIA, his exaggerated claims that Cuba had a biological weapons program, and that Syria had chemical and biological weapons programs, could have proved disastrous for the US.

And it was Bolton who pressed for the inclusion of the lie about Iraq seeking to buy uranium from Niger in Bush’s State of the Union address, a lie that helped build the case for the unnecessary war with Iraq that has killed 1556 American troops.

Bolton retaliated against at least three intelligence officers who disagreed with him about national intelligence policy. The judgments of the analysts ultimately proved correct; Bolton was wrong on all three occasions.

Former Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research Carl W. Ford, a conservative Republican and enthusiastic supporter of Bush and Cheney, testified Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ford, who called Bolton a “kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy” who “abuses his authority with little people,” characterized Bolton as a “serial abuser.”

Most significantly, Ford told the Senators that Bolton’s treatment of intelligence analyst Christian Westermann, who rightfully disagreed with Bolton about whether Cuba had a biological weapons program, had a chilling effect on intelligence analysis in the State Department. In the present historical period, the use of false intelligence could have catastrophic consequences.

The second official incident involved Fulton Armstrong, a former national intelligence officer for Latin America. After Bolton tried, unsuccessfully, to pressure him to tailor his conclusion about Cuba’s biological weapons program, Bolton sought to have Armstrong removed from his post. John McLaughlin, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he intervened to prevent Bolton’s unorthodox request. John Gannon, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said he thought Bolton’s behavior had been “inexcusable.”

The third documented abuse of a government official by Bolton occurred in 2003, when Rexon Ryu, a State Department nonproliferation analyst, allegedly failed to produce a document for Bolton’s chief of staff. Bolton charged Ryu with insubordination and concealing information. A former senior State Department official described Ryu as having such a “sharp mind, good analytical skills, and unimpeachable integrity,” that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage later hired him as a special assistant. Ryu is currently on temporary assignment to the staff of Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Another example of Bolton’s inappropriate, and indeed, outrageous, behavior was documented in a letter Melody Townsel sent to the Senator Foreign Relations Committee. Townsel, stationed in Kyrgyzstan on a US AID project, became the object of Bolton’s wrath in 1994. After she complained about the incompetence, poor contract performance, and inadequate funding of the project by a contractor who happened to be represented by John Bolton, Townsel met Bolton. She wrote that Bolton “proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door, and generally behaving like a madman.” Townsel also claimed Bolton falsely charged that she was headed for federal prison for misuse of funds, and threatened that other key employees or contractors would also find themselves the target of federal investigations if they refused to cooperate with him. Townsel maintained that Bolton’s behavior “wasn’t just unforgivable, it was pathological.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is still considering whether to send Bolton’s name to the Senate floor for confirmation. Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, who has expressed doubts about Bolton’s suitability, will likely cast the pivotal vote. After Ford testified before the committee last week, Chafee described the Westermann affair as an isolated incident. Now that additional episodes of Bolton’s dangerous bullying have emerged, Chafee might be persuaded to vote against Bolton.

The New York Times editorialized Wednesday, “Trying to tailor intelligence is enough to disqualify Mr. Bolton from this job. With America’s credibility as low as it is, the last thing the nation needs is a United Nations envoy who tried to force intelligence into an ideological construct.”

If John Bolton is confirmed as US ambassador to the United Nations, our national security will be seriously compromised in these already perilous times.