THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
December 2001, Week One
Page Two
- December 2: GOP congressman Ray LaHood says,
Iraq war and occupation
"We're this close" to catching Saddam Hussein. LaHood predicts that once Hussein is captured, Iraqi resistance will collapse. When asked by a Pantagraph editor, "Do you know something we don't?" LaHood replies, "Yes I do." Interesting in light of the ballyhooed, and misrepresented, December 14 capture of Saddam Hussein by US troops. (Pantagraph) - December 2: The US government reverses course and allows "enemy combatant" Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American allegedly caught fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001, access to a lawyer.
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
Attorney Frank Dunham, who will represent Hamdi, has filed a motion with the Supreme Court challenging the Bush administration's policy of holding designated "enemy combatants" such as Hamdi, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, and Jose Padilla without charge or representation. The Pentagon says that its decision to allow Hamdi to meet with a lawyer does not mean that the policy is changed; allowing Hamdi access to a lawyer "is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent," according to a Pentagon statement. It insists it made the decision only because its officials have finished interrogating Hamdi, and that the president still has the authority to detain American citizens without charge or legal representation. Under guidelines drafted by military lawyers, the meetings between Dunham and Hamdi are attended by, and recorded by, military observers (violating the lawyer-client privilege), and Dunham is not allowed to ask Hamdi about the conditions of his confinement. (MSNBC [cached Google copy], Wikipedia, Peter Singer) - December 2: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton says that the Bush administration's drive to turn power over to Iraqis by mid-2004 is a political ploy driven by the November 2004 elections.
Iraq war and occupation
She says Bush's plan, reached two weeks ago to create a transitional Iraqi government by June 30, "suggests there is some kind of political imperative to declare victory or to point to some kind of interim victory. ...We face the danger of raising false expectations that next summer, Iraq will be sovereign. That seems hard to imagine." Clinton calls the June 30 transfer-of-power date "an artificial deadline," and says, "We have to be prepared for a much longer run to accomplish our goals than we've been discussing. ...We cannot let our own elections or other priorities interfere with doing it right." (Newsday) - December 2: Senate and House leaders refuse to place a provision in the omnibus spending bill coming up before both houses that would strike down the "sneak-and-peek" provision of the USA Patriot Act.
Attack on civil liberties
Author C.L. Otter, a Republican congressman, says, "I'm disappointed that it's not in there, obviously. ...But we've come a really long way in the last two years and we've really brought an awareness to the Patriot Act and some of its overreaches." The Justice Department lobbied intensively to ensure that the Congressional leadership would not include the provision in the spending bill; a DoJ spokesman calls it a "bad amendment." Otter's measure would have prevented federal dollars from being spent to implement warrants that delay notification that a covert search is being conducted. The Patriot Act established uniform national standards for what are called "black bag" or "sneak and peek" searches. The law permits agents to search homes, plant listening devices, or copy computer data of suspected criminals without informing the suspects until later. The rationale is that such measures help preserve evidence that otherwise would be destroyed. Otter is planning to introduce a legislative measure called SAFE -- the Security and Freedom Ensured Act -- to roll back the USA Patriot act even further. (Los Angeles Times) - December 2: The USA Patriot Act is the first step towards the establishment of a true American police state, claims an article in Truthout that closely examines the Act and its ramifications.
Attack on civil liberties
Both the USA Patriot Act and its companion piece the Homeland Security Act were deep into the planning stages long before the 9/11 attacks. The Act is one of the legistlative linchpins in the creation of what one senator calls "a global security system" controlled by the US, as well as the creation of an embryonic police state. As the article states, "This agenda falls neatly in line with the plan for American global dominance endorsed by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Rumsfeld." The HSA was structured on the recommendations of a special commission that was closely connected to, if not derived from, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which has been intimately involved in directing US and other countries' responses to every major global conflict of the last 50 years. Ironically enough, the HSA has its seeds in the Clinton-commissioned Hart-Rudman report on terrorism that was issued in 1998. Its summary declares, "In the new era, sharp distinctions between 'foreign' and 'domestic' no longer apply." While the report's authors do "not equate security with 'defense,'" they "do believe in the centrality of strategy, and of seizing opportunities as well as confronting dangers." - The Commission recommended "the creation of a new independent National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security. NHSA would be built upon the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the three organizations currently on the front line of border security -- the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Border Patrol -- transferred to it. NHSA would not only protect American lives, but also assume responsibility for overseeing the protection of the nation's critical infrastructure, including information technology." This provided the basic structure of Bush's Homeland Security Act. The commission, created by Clinton and GOP House leader Newt Gingrich, was put together to make recommendations for ensuring US security in the 21st century. Nine of the commission's 14 members were members of the Council of Foreign Relations, as are many of the most conservative members of the Bush administration and the Democratic opposition: Dick Cheney (the administration's prime architect of the plan for global hegemony), Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Robert Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Gephardt, and Joseph Lieberman, among others. Lieberman led the effort by conservative Democrats to pass both the HSA and the USA Patriot Act. Almost every director of the CIA since its inception have been CFR members: Richard Helms, William Colby, George Bush, William Webster, James Woolsey, John Deutsch, William Casey, and current director George Tenet. The HSA is part of the Bush administration's extended attempts to centralize military and law enforcement powers within the executive branch, and to curtail or eliminate oversight and control from any other branches of the federal government or from the states.
- Journalist David Armstrong writes simply, "The plan is to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful." Armstrong says that the plan was originally "sold" as a response to the Cold War against Communist "domination;" after the collapse of world communism, the plan was reworked to be an answer to "global terrorism." The 9/11 attacks were all the impetus the administration needed to begin implementation. One of the prime motivators behind this planning is Vice President Dick Cheney. Armstrong tracks Cheney's evolving ideology from the initial idea of America's need to project a military "forward presence" around the world, shifting from the policy of global containment in order to manage "less-well-defined regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies" to the doctrine of preemptive military force with nuclear weapons. He notes that Cheney's thinking has shifted from merely a threat-based defense strategy to a capability-based assessment: from a question of what the US needs to do into a question of what the US can do.
- Armstrong notes that the thinking has brought the goals of this overarching plan away from national unity and towards centralized, Soviet-style state control. It attempts to do away with the clear and necessary separations between domestic and foreign intelligence activities as mandated in the CIA's original charter of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, as well as the Bill of Rights' 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments. It has shifted military thinking from "base force" and a tentative "forward presence" to "preemptive strikes" and "unwarned attacks." Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, says, "It's truly astonishing. It seems that we're forgetting everything we learned in the 1970's. ...This country once rejected 'unwarned' attacks such as Pearl Harbor as barbarous and unworthy of a civilized nation." He goes on to state that the US "also once denounced those who tried to rule the world." Finally, the plan states that the US can and will go its own way, unilaterally, only making coalitions of convenience: "ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted." Coalitions "must not determine the mission." American interests, according to the Plan, include "access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to US citizens from terrorism."
- Domestically, the HSA mandates federal control of all "first responders" to emergency situations, including fire, medical, and police; though the legislation doesn't directly mandate federal control of the nation's police, it does provide for the centralization of federal authority over local and state police forces, which is a necessary first step towards centralized federal control. The US Northern Command has noted several methods of sidestepping the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the US military from exerting control over US civilians; two of those exceptions, "crimes using nuclear materials" and "chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction," are being held up as "end-arounds" for federal military control of local and state police, National Guard forces, and other "first responders." Another provision of the HSA states that personnel from the CIA, FBI, DOS, NSA, DIA, and any other agency the President considers appropriate "may be detailed to the Department for the performance of analytic functions and related duties," in a manner very similar to the functioning of the Soviet domestic intelligence agency the KGB (whose name translates to "Committee of State Security"). Other provisions give the opportunity to, in the case of a national emergency or even a potential emergency, force mandatory quarantines of US citizens, impose mandatory vaccinations, force university researchers to cooperate and work for government agencies (remember, the notorious MK-Ultra, Bluebird, and Monarch projects of the 1940s through 1970s were CIA-directed but implemented by academics), close down oversight of almost all executive branch functions, and more. Clearly, the combination of the USA Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act is one of the most frightening legislative attacks on US liberties and freedoms that this country has ever faced. (Truthout, Truthout, Truthout)
Misuse of USA Patriot Act by federal officials
- December 2: The USA Patriot act is being used by zealous Republicans to persecute and harass Democratic politicians and election officials.
Attack on civil liberties
In Pennsylvania and Georgia, private computers and personal records have been confiscated from Democratic elected officials before charges have been issued. In two of the cases, the timing has been suspiciously close to important elections with national implications. And the refusal of FBI officials to publicly comment on the nature of these investigations has only fueled the fire of those who claim that political character assassination is the only motive. John Street, the recently re-elected mayor of Philadelphia who was the target of a mysterious FBI probe just before the election, notes that the US attorney conducting the investigation, Patrick Meehan, managed Senate campaigns for Republican stalwarts Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum, in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and owes his position to their influence. Street spokesman Frank Keel says that "Patrick Meehan has a reputation as the most partisan prosecutor in the country." An anoymous political consultant says, "This prosecutor [Meehan] is the ultimate uber-Republican. He managed the Specter and Santorum races, and wants to help win this state for Bush." - In Georgia, US attorney Richard Thompson, who has investigated numerous high-profile Democrats, has some very strong attachments to the local GOP. He has run twice as a GOP candidate for the State House, was a former campaign manager for Republican Congressman Jack Kingston, donated $12,000 to various Republican office seekers since 1997, and received his appointment due to the influence of Congressman Kingston. In the fall of 2002, less than a year into his tenure, and in the height of a political season, Thompson requested records to look into a closed state investigation into then-Gov. Roy Barnes and state Sen. Van Streat, both Democrats. Thompson's investigations were later dropped due to a lack of sufficient evidence, but this did not satisfy Democrats, who pointed out that this was a blatant conflict of interest, as Thompson had given campaign contributions to both Van Streat and Barnes' opponents, Tommie Williams and Sonny Perdue. Perdue used the investigation as the basis for a direct mail attack piece against Barnes, leading the Georgia Democratic Party to put out a release stating that, "the sole purpose of this 'investigation' appears to have been to get headlines for the Perdue Campaign."
- Thompson has also been conducting a high profile investigation of State House Speaker Terry Coleman. Thompson pursued Speaker Coleman for "inaccurate disclosure reports." But when confronted with a similar kind of campaign finance violation involving whether state Senatpr Bill Stephens, a Republican, repaid himself too much money from his campaign fund for personal loans, no similar inquiry has been forthcoming. Stephens was also the recipient of a financial contribution from US attorney Thompson. Former state Senator Charles Walker, a Democrat who lost his seat in 2002 by 85 votes, intends to run again in 2004, but has found this effort complicated by a Thompson-led investigation into his business. The US attorney raided Walker's newspaper, the Augusta Focus, confiscating privileged records, such as sources, without publicly charging Walker with a crime. Thompson has also subpoenaed over 300 of Walker's advertisers, business associates and clients and has shown up at his children's places of business demanding private documents. Walker offers a damning assessment of this investigation as an affront to our basic liberties in this country: "In America we don't use the criminal justice system to prosecute political objectives." He points to statements made by his former Republican colleagues as further proof that these investigations are politically motivated. Current Georgia Senate President Pro Tem, Eric Johnson, proclaimed, while holding up a newspaper and smirking, that the GOP would "let the media investigate the backgrounds" of prominent state Democrats, and "we'll prosecute them." Meanwhile, Republican State Senator Don Cheeks, framed the whole prosecution politically, saying, "If he's [Walker] not indicted and doesn't serve time after all of this, he will be the king." An anonymous Republican operative confirms that Thompson has "known partisan interests," and that it is the "worst kept secret in town that he wants to run for attorney general as a Republican." (Tom Paine/Progressive Trail)
Profiteering in Iraq by Bechtel
- December 2: Contrary to the rosy descriptions of happy Iraqi children enjoying their new schools, it comes to light that the Bechtel Corporation, winner of a no-bid $1.03 billion contract to renovate and rebuild most of Iraq's public schools, has badly botched the job.
Iraq war and occupation
One Iraqi school headmaster, who after Bechtel's "renovations" were completed, is dealing with his school's bathrooms being awash in sewage, stair bannisters being broken, and water cisterns broken, observes, "Why do we need Bechtel? They have done absolutely nothing." In many cases, Bechtel subcontracts the actual work to Iraqi workers, and never bothers to oversee or even check into the quality of work being done, or not being done. In one case, the subcontractors thoroughly botched the job. One report documents a paint and repair job done on one school, according to a news article: "The subcontractors Bechtel hired left paint everywhere -- on the floors, on desks, all over windows. The classrooms were filthy, the school's desks and chairs were thrown out into the playground and left, broken. Windows were left damaged, and bathrooms that were reportedly fixed were left in broken, unsanitary condition. 'Would you allow your child to use that bathroom? I wouldn't,' [422nd Civil Affairs Battalion Major Linda] Scharf said, pointing to a photograph of a stained, broken hole in a dirty, tiled stall." - Iraqi Education Ministry city planner Israa Mohammed has received complaints from the schools, and tried to get Bechtel officials to address them before classes started. But, she says, Bechtel officials would not attend regular education ministry meetings, or answer her questions. "Because it is an American company, they didn't allow anyone to control them," she says. She says she has no idea what Bechtel spent its money on. "When we see the work, it's not like that [expensive renovations] - it's just very simple repairs," she says. For the soldiers who've been here since the war trying to build trust with the Iraqis, the work was insulting. "Right now we are looking at a company who is representing the United States, doing poor work in Iraq and allowed to get away with it," Scharf says. "You see the kind of work we're leaving behind, and then of course the question comes up: Who is going to come back and fix all this?" "Bechtel was working just for its image, not for the benefit of the students," Mohammed claims. Beyond the paint everywhere, Mohammed said students had to pick up their broken desks from the courtyard before classes could begin. "It's the same injustice as before [during Saddam Hussein's reign]," Mohammed says. "students had to clean and work in the schools then, and it is the same now." Scharf says that, "because of the work in the schools, I have come out very vocal that I will do everything in my power to keep Bechtel out of my area."
- Dr. Nabil Khudair Abbas, of the planning center at the Ministry for Education, confirms the headmaster's sentiments. Abbas meets weekly with representatives of the Bechtel Corporation, and presents his complaints with regard to its school reconstruction program. The program is anything but transparent, he says, and none of the work is checked. Nobody in the Ministry of Education knows exactly how much the US has given Bechtel to implement the program, nor the details of the work to be carried out in individual schools. "The impression we often get at the meetings is that Bechtel is more powerful than the army," he said. Bechtel representatives, however, want no more complaints from Abbas. The program is a gift from the US taxpayers, and has been approved by Congress, they say. "No matter what we do, the Iraqis will never be on the losing end," a Bechtel representative told him. According to Abbas, Bechtel has no time for his complaints or requests. Another school headmaster says her children and staff don't know which to feel more threatened by: guerrillas who have struck at several Baghdad-area schools, the criminals who routinely kidnap the children of wealthy families from schools for ransom, or the US soldiers who burst into schools unannounced to sweep the school for "intelligence gathering" purposes. Meanwhile, Bechtel profits handsomely from their "renovations" of Iraqi schools -- the schools themselves, however, see little benefit. (CorpWatch, Scripps Howard/Knox Studio)
- December 2: Veteran Canadian political commentator Anthony Westell warns that the Progressive Conservative party is on the verge of being taken over by the neoconservative Canadian Alliance,
Spread of American conservatism
much as the US Republican Party was taken over years ago. The Alliance, like its US counterparts, is fueled by neoconservative economics and fundamentalist Christianity; like its US counterparts, the Alliance is funded largely by shadowy right-wing billionaires. (CBC) - December 2: In a frank interview with Rolling Stone, Democratic presidential candidate and Senator John Kerry lambasts the Bush administration and tries to explain his vote in support of the invasion of Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
"What I regret most of all is the way the administration dealt with it -- the extraordinary failure of the administration to keep its promises, to be mature and thoughtful about how you take a nation to war," he says of his vote. "They misled us; they presented false intelligence to us. The president made a series of promises to us -- number one, that he was gonna make every effort possible to build a legitimate coalition. He did not -- he built a fraudulent coalition. Second, he was gonna exhaust the remedies of the United Nations and the inspection process. He did not. And third, that he would go to war as a last resort. He did not. I voted to protect the security of our country, based on the notion that the only way to get inspectors back in was to have a legitimate threat of force and the potential of using it. They took that legitimacy and bastardized it. If I were president, we would not be in Iraq today -- we would not be at war. This president abused the process. ...It seems to me that we had a right to expect the president of the United States to live up to his word. It was disgraceful, one of the most egregious, fundamentally flawed moments of foreign policy that I can think of in my lifetime." When asked if Bush's handling of the invasion and of affairs in the Middle East can be characterized as "incompetent," he replies, "Oh, absolutely. Worse than incompetent. Clouded by ideological excess, a misinterpretation of history, a willful denial of facts." When asked if he was "blindsided by [frontrunner Howard] Dean's success, he says, "Well, not blindsided. I mean, when I voted for the war, I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything?' Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f*ck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." He concludes, "I'm gonna lift this country up to a greater engagement in the world. I mean, think of what we could do to reach out and begin to present a different face of our country. Think of what we could do to advance the interests of the developing world, so people would see the United States as not just this aggressive, arrogant force that only thinks of itself and doesn't really have a greater sense of humanity and concern. We're just not embracing any of that stuff today, and it drives me crazy." (Rolling Stone) - December 2: New York Daily News columnist Richard Schwartz complains that both New York City and the state of New York have been treated like an "ugly stepchild" by the Department of Homeland Security.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
The state is 49th on the list of 50 states for funding to prepare for terror attacks; on a list of 50 cities targeted by the federal High Threat, High Density program that allots $725 million in extra funds for cities, taking into consideration "credible threat, presence of critical infrastructure, population [and] vulnerability," New York City is 49th on that list as well. Schwartz says, "That's more than ludicrous. That's obscene." He goes on to note: "The allocation for the five boroughs is $5.87 per person. Compare that to $15.21 per person for Philadelphia and a whopping $35.80 for Pittsburgh. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge doles out the money, the same Tom Ridge who used to be governor of Pennsylvania. Florida, where the President's brother Jeb Bush is governor, is another big winner: Miami rakes in $52.82 per person; Orlando, $47.14, and Tampa, a not-too-shabby $30.57. And what's the No.1 city on the list? New Haven, at $77.92 per. The Bush family alma mater, Yale, must be considered very vulnerable. New York City asked Homeland Security for $900 million to combat terror. It's getting $84 million. Yes, New York gets the most in gross dollars, but its proportionate share of the federal pie is a pittance. 'The formula is loopy,' said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens), noting that Ridge's method for doling out the cash assigns little importance to what the Department of Homeland Security terms 'credible threat.' Meaning that New York's history as a terror target doesn't necessarily qualify it for additional counterterror aid in the future." (New York Daily News) - December 2: Veteran Texas political commentator Molly Ivins writes of President Bush:
George W. Bush
"It's not that he's mean. It's just that when it comes to seeing how his policies affect people, George W. Bush doesn't have a clue." Ivins collects three years of examples of how Bush fails to understand, or doesn't try to understand, how his policies injure average Americans. "...[I]n what is becoming a recurring, almost nightmare-type scenario, the minute he visits some constructive program and praises it (AmeriCorps, the Boys and Girls Club, job training), he turns around and cuts the budget for it. It's the kiss of death if the president comes to praise your program. During the presidential debate in Boston in 2000, Bush said, 'First and foremost, we've got to make sure we fully fund LIHEAP [the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program], which is a way to help low-income folks, particularly here in the East, pay their high fuel bills.' He then sliced $300 million out of that sucker, even as people were dying of hypothermia, or, to put it bluntly, freezing to death. Sometimes he even cuts your program before he comes to praise it. In August 2002, Bush held a photo op with the Quecreek coal miners, the nine men whose rescue had thrilled the country. By then he had already cut the coal-safety budget at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which engineered the rescue, by 6 percent, and had named a coal-industry executive to run the agency." - Ivins quotes Reverend Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal, a network of churches that fight poverty, as being told by Bush, "I don't understand how poor people think.," Bush went on to describe himself as a "white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." It's obvious he still doesn't get it. In 1999, the Texas Department of Agriculture came out with its annual statistics on hunger; Texas is perennially near the top because of its dozens of counties that, in Ivins' words, are "like Third World countries." After the statistics were released, "Bush threw a tantrum. He thought it was some malign Clinton plot to make his state look bad because he was running for president. 'I saw the report that children in Texas are going hungry. Where?' he demanded. 'No children are going to go hungry in this state. You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas.' You would, wouldn't you? That is the point at which ignorance becomes inexcusable. In five years, Bush had never spent time with people in the colonias, South Texas' shantytowns; he had never been to a session with Valley Interfaith, a consortium of border churches and schools and the best community organization in the state. There is no excuse for a governor to be unaware of this huge reality of Texas."
- Ivins blames part of it on Bush's upbringing in Midland, Texas, an enclave of white, upper-class Republican values that are often wildly out of touch with the realities of the world. "...[T]hey're way isolated out there and way limited too. You can have dinner at the Petroleum Club anytime with a bunch of them and you'll come away saying, 'Damn, those are nice people. Sure glad they don't run the world.' It is still such a closed, narrow place, where everybody is white, Protestant, and agrees with everybody else. It's not unusual to find people who think, as George W. did when he lived there, that Jimmy Carter was leading the country toward 'European-style socialism.' A board member of the ACLU of Texas was asked recently if there had been any trouble with gay bashing in Midland. 'Oh, hell, honey,' she drawled, 'there's not a gay in Midland who will come out of the closet for fear people will think they're Democrats.'" Ivins says, "Jim Hightower's great line about Bush, 'Born on third and thinks he hit a triple,' is still painfully true. Bush has simply never acknowledged that not only was he born with a silver spoon in his mouth -- he's been eating off it ever since. The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn't admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn't just get a head start by being his father's son -- it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life."
- She concludes, "What is the disconnect? One can see it from the other side -- people's lives are being horribly affected by the Bush administration's policies, but they make no connection between what happens to them and the decisions made in Washington. I think I understand why so many people who are getting screwed do not know who is screwing them. What I don't get is the disconnect at the top. Is it that Bush doesn't want to see? No one brought it to his attention? He doesn't care? Okay, we cut taxes for the rich and so we have to cut services for the poor. Presumably there is some right-wing justification along the lines that helping poor people just makes them more dependent or something. If there were a rationale Bush could express, it would be one thing, but to watch him not see, not make the connection, is another thing entirely. Welfare, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps -- horrors, they breed dependency. Whereas inheriting millions of dollars and having your whole life handed to you on a platter is good for the grit in your immortal soul? What we're dealing with here is a man in such serious denial it would be pathetic if it weren't damaging so many lives. Bush's lies now fill volumes. He lied us into two hideously unfair tax cuts; he lied us into an unnecessary war with disastrous consequences; he lied us into the Patriot Act, eviscerating our freedoms. But when it comes to dealing with those less privileged, Bush's real problem is not deception, but self-deception." (Mother Jones/Truthout)
- December 2: President Bush participates in a highly choreographed meeting with blue-collar workers in a Detroit auto supply factory.
George W. Bush
Six workers chosen by the Bush campaign participate in the "discussion" after spending hours rehearsing their lines; they were prompted by Bush during the "conversation" to mention talking points that had been brought out in rehearsal, including one worker's story of refinancing his home at low interest rates and another worker's recollection of saving $2,700 because of Bush tax cuts. (Detroit News)
"When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war -- this [Iraq] is much worse." -- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, December 3
- December 3: In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, Secretary of State Colin Powell admits he has made mistakes in foreign policy,
Bush's foreign policies
and attempts to reassure the world that despite all evidence to the contrary, the Bush administration's approach "is not defined by preemption." Powell tries to placate angry US allies in Europe, encourages a broader international role for China, and expresses his optimism for a peaceful solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. Powell refuses to discuss the Iraq situation, but, as News.com writes, "implicitly took issue with his presumed chief rival inside the administration, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who last September dismissed the decades-old concept of military deterrence as a theory that 'has been overtaken by events'." Instead, Powell says, "As to pre-emption's scope, it applies only to the undeterrable threats that come from non-state actors such as terrorist groups. It was never meant to displace deterrence, only to supplement it." Powell's statement is in direct contradiction of the Bush doctrine as stated in a policy paper of September 2002, which made it quite clear the United States would consider it justified to use force pre-emptively to eliminate threats to its national security. The invasion of Iraq undertaken last March with the stated goal of ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction that still remain unfound is seen as the first instance of the doctrine's practical implementation. But in his article, Powell argues that "our strategy is not defined by pre-emption." He writes, "Above all, the President's strategy is one of partnerships that strongly affirms the vital role of NATO and other US alliances -- including the UN." Powell also admits unspecified mistakes committed during Bush's first three years in office. "It would be churlish to claim that the Bush administration's foreign policy has been error-free from the start," he points out. "But we have always pursued the enlightened self-interest of the American people, and in our purposes and our principles there are no mistakes." (Agence France-Press/News.com [Australia]) - December 3: Time magazine profiles a number of Iraqis who illustrate the erosion of trust and acceptance initially experienced by the US after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Iraq war and occupation
"Mohammed Ali Karam wants to kill a US soldier," the article opens. "He doesn't love Saddam Hussein, and he was happy in April when US Marines rolled through his Baghdad neighborhood on their way to liberate the capital. But he turned against the Americans the night he saw his brother Hussein, 27, take two bullets in the neck. At 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 17, Karam says, he and three of his brothers were driving to a neighborhood where the pumps were working in order to get water for their home. Hussein, in the passenger seat, talked excitedly about having his new suit tailored for his upcoming wedding. That's when 82nd Airborne paratroopers, crouched in an observation post across the street, opened fire — after rounds struck their position, they say. Three of the brothers ran to the safety of a creek bed, but Hussein didn't make it. In the car, said Karam, the soldiers found Hussein —- gurgling blood through his throat -— but no weapons. Hussein died on the way to the hospital — three days before his wedding." The article continues, "Americans are frequently guilty of excesses that are turning ordinary Iraqis into foes. Bush's Thanksgiving visit meant little to Iraqis, who cite three areas of concern: the killing of innocents, the 'disappearance' of countrymen detained by US forces, and the destruction of buildings, including family homes. The last tactic, justified by US commanders as legitimate demolition of military targets, is criticized by human-rights groups like Amnesty International as smacking of collective punishment. As US forces employ more aggressive tactics to take on the resistance, these grievances are only getting worse, setting back the effort to win over local hearts and minds. 'Before the Americans came, we heard a lot about their respect for human rights,' says Khalid Mustafa Akbar, at a mourning tent for his three brothers who were shot dead while driving their pickup by a US patrol outside Tikrit last week. 'But then we found it is only talk.'" - The widespread detention of Iraqis -- over 5,000 at last count -- without charges or even records being kept by the Americans, is highly disturbing for Iraqi families, who fruitlessly attempt to find out if their particular loved one is being held and under what charges. US officials usually can't help them; many of the detainees are held without records, so that even the officials holding them don't know who they are or why they are being held. "At least in Saddam's days, the police would tell families they had arrested their people," says the mother of one of the "disappeared." A US intelligence official in Iraq says even he has trouble locating detainees he wants to talk to or get released. "There's no accurate list," he says. "It's a big problem." It is also a violation of the Geneva Conventions. "There is a responsibility to at least notify families that someone is arrested," says Florian Westphal, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, which monitors the conventions worldwide. The Geneva accords also prohibit occupying powers from destroying property, unless it "is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations." Around Tikrit this month, US forces demolished more than a dozen facilities, most of which were private homes. Colonel James Hickey, 1st Brigade commander in charge of the area, told TIME that every targeted house had been either a source of direct fire on coalition troops or had been used to store weapons. Some homeowners dispute that claim, including 22-year old Laith Klabos, who grows apricots in the village of Boasil. On the night of Nov. 19, US soldiers wrecked his family's house and flattened their grove of fruit trees. Klabos insists his family had no weapons and was not helping the resistance. "Is this the democracy they promised us?" he asks. "They come and blow up our houses?" (Time)
- December 3: The team of lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo is dismissed by the Pentagon after some of its members rebelled against the unfair way the trials have been designed.
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
Some members of the new legal defense team are deeply unhappy with the trials, known as "military commissions," believing them to be slanted towards the prosecution and an affront to modern US military justice. Over 600 detainees are currently being held at the Guantanamo detention facility; none have been charged with a crime, and none are allowed to contact lawyers or family members. The US has promised that some will be tried by "military tribunals," an archaic form of American jurisprudence last employed during World War II. Reporter James Meek writes of these commissions, which were formed under practices drawn up before the Geneva Convention was adopted, "[T]here is more in the detail of how the commissions are supposed to work that reads like pages from Franz Kafka's workbook. The first thing that strikes the lay student of military commissions is the enormous power vested in the US deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who is the commissions' 'appointing authority'. The judges -- seven in a capital case -- are appointed by Wolfowitz. Any judge can be substituted up to the moment of verdict, by Wolfowitz. The military prosecutors are chosen by Wolfowitz. The suspects they charge, and the charges they make, are determined by Wolfowitz. All defendants are entitled to a military defense lawyer, from a pool chosen by Wolfowitz. The defendants are entitled to hire a civilian lawyer, but they have to pay out of their own funds, and by revealing where the funds are, they risk having them seized on suspicion of their being used for terrorist purposes, on the order of Wolfowitz. Defendants need not lose heart completely if convicted. They can appeal, to a panel of three people, appointed by Wolfowitz. When it has made its recommendation, the panel sends it for a final decision to Wolfowitz. 'That's the system,' says Clive Stafford-Smith, a British-American lawyer known for representing death-row clients and who now represents some of the Britons on Guantanamo, although he has never been allowed to meet them. 'It's a multi-headed Hydra with Paul Wolfowitz's face on every head.'" - "What the Bush administration did was literally use as a model a set of rules Roosevelt signed for dealing with German saboteurs in the second world war, seven years before the Geneva Conventions," says legal expert Eugene Fidell. "It baffles me how the government got into this position. We have an [appeals] court that's been around for 53 years and which has built up a huge body of law. To rely on this review panel instead of using that court, it's indefensible." Of Wolfowitz's role, Fidell says, "It's right out of the Mikado, isn't it? ...[T]he government has created something as close to being hermetically sealed as the human mind is capable of creating. ...I think Americans are very uncomfortable with all this. I mean, prison islands in tropical regions give us a real bad feeling, whether it's Devil's Island, or Robben Island, or Norfolk Island. This is not a role that comes to us naturally." A former military lawyer with contacts in the US military legal community says that the first group of defense lawyers recruited by the Pentagon balked at commission rules, which mandate, among other restrictions, that the government be allowed to listen in to any conversations between attorney and client. "There was a circular that went out to military lawyers in the early spring of 2003 which said 'we are looking for volunteers' for defense counsel," says the ex-military lawyer. "There was a selection process, and the people they selected were the right people, they had the right credentials, they were good lawyers. The first day, when they were being briefed on the dos and don'ts, at least a couple said: 'You can't impose these restrictions on us because we can't properly represent our clients.' When the group decided they weren't going to go along, they were relieved. They reported in the morning and got fired that afternoon." The Pentagon denies the claim. "That is not true, never happened," says spokesman Major John Smith. "The military commission is a tool of justice. I expect some of these individuals [on Guantanamo] will plead not guilty, and will be represented zealously by their lawyers."
- However, the current defense team of six lawyers is "deeply unhappy" about the way the commissions are set up. "It's like you took military justice, gave it to a prosecutor and said, 'modify it any way you want'," says one source said. "The government would like to say we have done these commissions before. But what happened after [the Nazi cases] was the military justice system changed. What we have done is stupid. It is, I would say, an insult to the military, to the evolution of the military justice system. They want to take us back to 1942." (Guardian, Guardian)
Judicial challenges to legality of Guantanamo Bay detentions and to concept of "enemy combatants"
- December 3: An investigation by Guardian reporter James Meek reveals some of the horrendous conditions at Guantanamo Bay's detention center.
Terrorism detainees and "enemy combatants"
Unable to talk to current detainees, Meek interviewed a number of those released, and was given a barrage of chilling anecdotes and stories. One former detainee, Shah Mohammed, tried to commit suicide four times while being held at Camp Delta. He was placed in a sealed detention cell without windows for a month, not for breaking camp rules, but because there was nowhere else to hold him, according to guards. In India Block, as the block of punishment cells where Mohammed was imprisoned is known, "there were no windows," he says. "There were four walls and a roof made of tin, a light bulb and an air conditioner. They put the air conditioning on and it was extremely cold. They would take away the blanket in the morning and bring it back in the evening. I was kept in this room for one month. We'd ask them: 'Is this a sort of a punishment?' And the translator would say, 'No, this is being done on orders from the general.'" As "treatment" for Mohammed's suicidal state of mind, US doctors injected him with an unknown drug, over his objections. "I refused and they brought seven or eight people and held me and injected me," he says. "I couldn't see down, I couldn't see up. I felt paralyzed for one month -- this injection, the effect, I couldn't think or do anything. They gave me tranquilizing tablets. They just told me: 'Your brain is not working properly.' They were forcing me to take these injections and tablets and I didn't want to do that. Some people were being injected every month." Mohammed was released without being charged in May 2003; he says he still suffers severe physical and psychological effects from his captivity. Meek writes that the camp "has settled from a rough and ready, occasionally brutal place of confinement into a full-grown mongrel of international law, where all the harshness of the punitive US prison system is visited on foreigners, unmitigated by any of the legal rights US prisoners enjoy. To this is added the mentally corrosive threat, alien to the US constitution, of infinite confinement, without court or appeal, on the whim of a single man -- the president of the US." - One French prisoner still being held, Nizar Sassi, wrote a postcard to his family in August 2002 that read in part, "If you want a definition of this place, you don't have the right to have rights." Meek accuses the Bush administration of building its own terrorist resistance camp: "[T]he US set about constructing, behind razor wire on a secure Caribbean island, an incarcerated model of what its 'war on terror' rhetoric implies. It has gathered terrorism suspects from all over the world, imposed discipline and order on them, encouraged them to hate the US and kept them together for years. It was as if the Bush administration so wanted the Hollywood fantasy of a central terrorist campus to be true that they built it themselves." Many detainees have no idea why they are being held. One, a Russian, had been held for seven months in a Taliban prison; when he was finally released, he was immediately taken prisoner by US forces and taken to the detention camp. Mohammed was a baker for the Taliban, and did not fight. Another, a Pakistani teacher of English named Abdul Razaq, was a missionary in Afghanistan. He was sent to Cuba after being interrogated for ten minutes by a US official, who asked him nothing else than his name and whether he spoke English. He was then hooded, shackled, and transported to the camp. Razaq says he was bound so tightly that for two months he couldn't use his right hand. Pakistani sawmill owner Mohammed Saghir says he was thrown off the transport plane to the ground while bound, as were many of the prisoners. "They would just pick us up and throw us out [of the plane]," says Saghir. "some people were hurt, some quite badly." Razaq says, "I got a bruise under my left eye where my face hit the ground."
- In the early days of the original Camp X-Ray, prisoners were not allowed to speak or practice their religion. (In April 2002, Camp X-Ray was closed, and the detainees were moved to more permanent facilities, called Camp Delta.) Many went on hunger strikes in response. While some were force-fed, some of the prisoners believe that the hunger strikes won them their right to speak to each other, and to worship. Daryl Matthews, a psychiatrist with extensive court experience, points out that the biggest problem with the detention camp is not the physical conditions, but the denial of the prisoners' basic human rights: "I don't think the issue for the Guantanamo folks is their conditions of confinement. It's easy to be fascinated by a place you can't get to but that's not the issue. The issue is human rights."
- Meek writes: "Practical templates were available in international law that, on the face of it, would have allowed Washington to satisfy its aims. It remains a mystery as to why the Bush administration chose not to follow international law, but to make up its own. Its first step away from international norms was to refuse to categorise the Afghanistan captives as prisoners of war. One source told me of a -- possibly apocryphal -- story that Bush and his aides were going through the Geneva convention when the president came to the part that declares PoWs must be paid between eight and 75 Swiss francs a day. At this point, the story goes, Bush lost his temper and ordered his people to find a way for the captives not to be PoWs. Officially, the US hides behind the fact that the resistance in Afghanistan didn't dress like soldiers. It is true that, like CIA operatives in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq, and like many of the Northern Alliance allies of the US, the Taliban and non-Afghan fighters didn't wear uniforms, but that does not prevent them being declared prisoners of war. Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention is clear: any captured belligerent whose status is uncertain should be considered a PoW until their status is settled by a 'competent tribunal'. The US carried out hundreds of these tribunals during the 1991 Gulf war and in the recent Iraq war. In Afghanistan, it didn't. Asked why there hadn't been any tribunals for the Afghan captives, Major John Smith, a military attorney in the Pentagon department organizing the forthcoming trials of Guantanamo detainees, says it is because the president decided there was no need. 'The president's decision was that there was no doubt these individuals did not qualify for PoW status and a tribunal wasn't required,' he says.
- Meek continues, "The strangeness of the US position is that although it does not consider the Guantanamo captives prisoners of war in the formal, Geneva Convention sense, it considers them prisoners of war in one very specific sense -- that they can be held until the war is over. It calls them 'enemy combatants', a term not recognized in international law. To the question 'What war?', the Bush administration responds: 'The war on terror.' I n other words, the captives can be held for as long as the US president likes; until forever, in fact, since, unlike normal wars, where a particular territory and a particular military entity is involved, this one exists only as a concept. ...'Detention as an enemy combatant is not criminal, it's to take them off the battlefield,' says Smith. 'We are at war with al-Qaida. It's not a metaphorical war, it's a real war.' At one point in our conversation he compares the US in 2003 to Britain in 1941. 'I believe we will be able to defeat al-Qaida. It's a political situation, and it's a tough decision, but I think at some point we will be able to say that al-Qaida is no longer a threat to the US...at some point, al-Qaida and terrorism will be defeated.' ...Yet enemy combatant status, combined with the lack of Article 5 tribunals, means that the Guantanamo detainees are kept captive until the end of a potentially endless 'war', without the opportunity to plead before a court that they had nothing to do with that 'war.' The US does not consider itself obliged to put them on trial, so has no obligation to give them lawyers; even if they are put on trial, and are acquitted, under its own rules, the US might simply lock them up again. 'It seems to me that our government's talking out of both sides of its mouth,' says James Harrington, a lawyer from upstate New York who represents a US citizen, not in Guantanamo, awaiting sentencing on terrorism charges. 'We say they're not PoWs and won't be treated as PoWs but at the same time we say we are at war. It either should be one or the other. If we are trying to say to the rest of the world we have due process and best practice in our country...we shouldn't be treating other people in ways that are unfair. These guys get picked up, shipped to somebody else's country, held there so they aren't in the US so they don't get the same rights as in the US, and then get treated by rules made up by the government to suit the government's interests.'
- "Having hurriedly come up with the 'enemy combatant' notion to deal with the hoped-for capture of Bin Laden, and having applied it to the ragbag of captives picked from Northern Alliance jails in Afghanistan, the US government has become so comfortable with it that it has begun to wield it around the world, and at home, in ways that frighten rights activists and lawyers. Now, it appears, anyone, US citizen or not, can be declared an 'enemy combatant', at any time, and thus be detained indefinitely at Bush's discretion. Enemy combatant status is leaking out of Guantanamo and into the mainland US. There are now three 'enemy combatants' held in US military jails. One is a Qatari computer student living in Illinois, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. He was awaiting trial on low-grade criminal charges indirectly linked to terrorism when, immediately after the government's case against him looked to be in trouble, the Bush administration declared him an 'enemy combatant' and moved him to a high-security naval prison, allowing a trial to be avoided, and the accused to be held for as long as the president likes. Bush's November 13 order refers to 'enemy combatants' being 'treated humanely, without any adverse distinction based on race, colour, religion, gender, birth, wealth, or any similar criteria'. Yet it is hard to equate the starkly differing treatment of three men allegedly found fighting alongside the Taliban with this creed. The only white American in that category, John Walker Lindh, was given a criminal trial, the full panoply of legal rights, and swiftly sentenced. Another American citizen, but of Saudi descent, Yasser Hamdi, was moved from Guantanamo to a naval prison on the mainland US, and is still held there incommunicado as an 'enemy combatant'. Compare that to Mohamed Tariq, an ordinary Pakistani from Shah Mohammed's village, not yet released. There is no reason to think he did anything that Lindh or Hamdi did not do. But he remains on Guantanamo. Speculation that a mass release of European prisoners is imminent, welcome as it is, only highlights the arbitrary nature of the detentions."
- "One of the prosecutors told me that they think 30% of the people in Guantanamo Bay were nothing to do with anything. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Stafford-Smith. "When the prosecutor tells you 30%, I tend to think it's more like 70%. But the bottom line is we're not talking about 600 of the worst people in the world. We're talking about at least a couple of hundred who didn't do anything. You kidnap people who may be totally innocent, you take them all the way around the world in hoods and shackles, you hold them incommunicado for two years, you don't give them a lawyer and you don't tell them what they're charged with. It's not a matter of what's wrong with it, it's a question of what's right with it. And it achieves nothing." Even Mohammed's release is instructive of the mindset behind Guantanamo. He was due to be released, without charges, in March 2003; he was kept for two more months without reason. He was given no apology or even an explanation for his detention. And when he was being transported back to his home in Pakistan, he was transported in chains. (Guardian)
- December 3: Ohio's attempt to conduct a completely electronic vote in the March 2004 primary elections has been halted due to massive, systemwide security flaws and problems in the voting machines.
Election fraud
Ohio would not have been able to guarantee the validity of the results. The machines were provided by Diebold Electronics, which has come under heavy criticism for providing voting machines with easily defeated security protocols. The Cleveland Plain Dealer writes, "The detailed findings confirmed what academics, computer scientists and voter advocates across the country have said for months: Electronic voting systems are prime targets for manipulation by anyone from expert computer hackers to poll workers to individual voters. ...Among the findings: Voter 'smart cards' inserted in the machines could be deciphered or counterfeited and used to cast illegal votes. Poll supervisors' passwords could be easily guessed and used to manipulate election results or end polling early. Diebold, for example, has the same password - 1111 - nationwide, and investigators were able to guess it in two minutes. Election results could be unencrypted and intercepted during transmission. Many scenarios exist in which someone without the proper authority could enter the systems -- with the flick of a switch or the use of a laptop PC -- and change results." (Cleveland Plain Dealer) - December 3: The White House lied about a chance and potentially dramatic encounter with a British plane during Bush's clandestine flight to Baghdad on Thanksgiving.
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
Bush aides initially told the press that a British Airways pilot wondered over his radio if he had just seen Air Force One in the skies near his plane, and the presidential plane radioed back, identifying itself as a Gulfstream One, a much smaller private plane. According to the story, the British pilot seemed to "catch on" that something unusual was in the offing, and played along, saying "Ohh-kay" and signing off. It was quickly determined that no such radio exchange occurred between Air Force One and anyone from a British flight -- "I don't think everybody was clear on exactly how that conversation happened," says White House press secretary Scott McClellan -- and the White House quickly changed its story to put the radio exchange between the British pilot and an air traffic controller in London. British Airways has confirmed that this story, too, is a lie. "We've looked into it," a spokeswoman says. "It didn't happen." - The story, while minor, is perceived as yet another effort to dramatize and embellish ordinary events to cast Bush in a more positive light than may be warranted. Some media professionals are irritated at the skein of lies and misinformation that surrounded the visit. CBS correspondent Mark Knoller says that the misleading information and deception were understandable, but that he had been "filing radio reports that amounted to fiction. ...Even as President Bush was addressing US personnel in Baghdad, I was on the air saying he was at his ranch making holiday phone calls to American troops overseas. I got that information from a White House official that very morning." The latest version seems to be that the contact was made with a "non-UK operator;" in this version, the Air Force One radio communicator assumed he was talking with a British Airways controller because the person he was talking with had a British accent. British Airways has agreed to confirm this third version with a statement that a BA plane called its control center with a query about a plane in its airspace being Air Force One, but questions remain: who exactly did Air Force One speak to, and how did the unidentified plane remain so long in Air Force One's radio space if, as stated, the Presidential plane was flying 655 mph, far faster than most commercial jets.
- Prospect, the controllers union in the United Kingdom, says the flight broke international regulations, posed a potential safety threat and exposed a weakness in the air defense system that could be exploited by terrorists. "The overriding concern is if the president's men who did this can dupe air traffic control, what's to stop a highly organized terrorist group from duping air traffic control?" asks David Luxton, Prospect's national secretary. Luxton said the flight was in "breach" of regulations against filing false flight plans set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which he said should apply to a military aircraft using civilian airspace. Luxton said that by identifying itself as a Gulfstream V instead of the much larger 747, Air Force One could have put itself and other airplanes in danger. The Gulfstream can climb faster and maneuver more nimbly than a 747, which means controllers could have assumed the president's plane was capable of a collision-avoiding maneuver that it couldn't actually do. And the "wake vortex" of a 747, much larger than a Gulfstream's, could jeopardize smaller planes that were told by unsuspecting controllers to follow in the mislabeled plane's wake. While Air Force One passed without incident, Luxton said that's beside the point: "It's important air traffic control have an accurate picture of what's up there in the sky they're controlling." (Washington Post, Daily Misleader, Reuters, Washington Post, Washington Post)
- December 3: General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander in Kosovo and a Democratic candidate for president, will testify in the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, but the Bush administration intends to keep most of Clark's testimony secret.
2004 presidential elections
It also intends to heavily censor what little of Clark's testimony might make it into the public eye. At the insistence of State Department's legal office, the courtroom's public gallery will be cleared when Clark is called to testify Dec. 15 and 16 in The Hague. Cameras that normally broadcast the proceedings on closed circuit television and the Internet will be blacked out. There also will be a 48-hour delay on the release of the trial transcript that will enable State Department lawyers to examine Clark's testimony and request the deletion of portions that they deem harmful to national interests. UN prosecutors are unhappy with the arrangement, but said they had little choice but to accept if they wanted Clark's testimony. It is widely believed that the decision was primarily made, not to protect national security, but to keep Clark from making a powerful public impact with his testimony that might assist his presidential campaign. - When high-ranking officials such as Clark are called as witnesses, the procedure for dealing with sensitive testimony is to allow representatives of their government to be present in the courtroom and to intervene if they believe the official's testimony might harm national interests. The tribunal then goes into a temporary closed session to deal with that portion of the testimony. "Closed sessions are for victims who might be harmed, not governments who might be embarrassed," says a tribunal source. While the Bush administration insists that the war crimes tribunal bring all of the alleged criminals to justice, it has consistently refused to share information with the tribunal that might help prove their guilt, citing reasons of "national security" and has thwarted attempts to call senior US officials as witnesses. Clark has written a book about his experiences in Kosovo and has freely discussed the entire situation many times before. Veteran political observer Joe Conason calls the decision to hide Clark's testimony a "a gross abuse of diplomatic authority for domestic political advantage." He notes that the possibility of Clark revealing anything damaging to national security is remote at best: "[a]ctually, US security and prestige would more likely be enhanced by worldwide coverage of a former American general testifying about his country's defense of the oppressed Balkan Muslims." (Knight Ridder/Oklahoma Daily, Salon)
- December 3: The FBI is fighting a lawsuit filed by Dr. Steven Hatfill which seeks to force it to disclose what it knows about the anthrax mailings of 2001.
Domestic terrorism
Hatfill claims that the FBI has illegally persecuted him and destroyed his reputation in its efforts to pin the anthrax mailings on him. The FBI says that it cannot disclose any information about the anthrax mailings because to do so would enable others to mount similar attacks against US citizens. Hatfill has denied any role in the attacks and his lawsuit seeks to clear his name and recover unspecified monetary damages. FBI inspector Richard Lambert, the head of what is being called the "Amerithrax" investigation, says in a court document that Hatfill's lawsuit could jeopardize the probe and expose secrets related to U.S. bioweapons defense measures. In the hands of those hostile to the US, this valuable intelligence could aid state sponsors of terrorism or terrorist organizations in their efforts to genetically engineer or alter their anthrax bioweapons to 'spoof' or escape detection," Lambert wrote. He added that disclosure also would make public the vulnerabilities and capabilities of U.S. government installations to bioweapons attacks and expose sensitive intelligence collection sources and methods. No link between terrorist groups and the October 2001 anthrax attacks has been established, though the Bush administration has repeatedly warned, without giving any proof, that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups were ready to mount anthrax-based attacks against US targets. (CNN)
Corporate protectionist racket in Iraq
- December 3-4: A business conference, "ReBuilding Iraq II," takes place at the Sheraton Hotel in Arlington, Virginia.
Iraq war and occupation
400 businesspeople are there to meet, and hopefully sign contracts with, officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), its new Program Management Office, the Army Corps of Engineers, the US Agency for International Development, Halliburton, Bechtel and members of Iraq's interim Governing Council. Writer Naomi Klein notes that the mood is substantially grimmer than at earlier conferences. She writes, "Giddy talk of 'greenfield' market opportunities has been supplanted by sober discussion of sudden-death insurance; excitement about easy government money has given way to controversy about foreign firms being shut out of the bidding process; exuberance about CPA chief Paul Bremer's ultraliberal investment laws has been tempered by fears that those laws could be overturned by a directly elected Iraqi government. ...[I]t seems finally to have dawned on the investment community that Iraq is not only an 'exciting emerging market;' it's also a country on the verge of civil war." One delegate tells Klein, "The best time to invest is when there is still blood on the ground." "Will you be going to Iraq?" she asks. "Me? No, I couldn't do that to my family," he replies. - Youssef Sleiman, managing director of Iraq Initiatives for the Harris Corporation, is sanguine about the continuing violence. Yes, helicopters are falling, but "for every helicopter that falls there is going to be replenishment." One huge stumbling block is the blanket refusal of private insurance companies to issue "political risk" policies against companies losing their investments due to nationalization, guerrilla violence, or any of the myriad other risks involved in dealing in Iraq. Not to worry; the Bush administration sends Michael Lempres, vice president of insurance at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), to reassure the investors that the US government will handle all of the insuring that needs to be done. "OPIC is different," says Lempres. "We do not exist primarily to generate profit." Instead, OPIC exists to "support US foreign policy." So if the corporate investments in Iraq are lost, the corporations themselves won't suffer the multi-billion dollar losses; the US taxpayers will. Klein asks Lempres, "Who bails out OPIC?" He replies, "In theory, the US Treasury stands behind us." Klein writes, "That means the US taxpayer. Yes, them again: The same people who have already paid Halliburton, Bechtel et al. to make a killing on Iraq's reconstruction would have to pay these companies again, this time in compensation for their losses. While the enormous profits being made in Iraq are strictly private, it turns out that the entire risk is being shouldered by the public."
- Of course, since OPIC will only ensure US companies, this leaves foreign companies in the cold. Klein observes, "The reconstruction of Iraq has emerged as a vast protectionist racket, a neocon New Deal that transfers limitless public funds -- in contracts, loans and insurance -- to private firms, and even gets rid of the foreign competition to boot, under the guise of 'national security.' Ironically, these firms are being handed this corporate welfare so they can take full advantage of CPA-imposed laws that systematically strip Iraqi industry of all its protections, from import tariffs to limits on foreign ownership. Michael Fleisher, head of private-sector development for the CPA, recently explained to a group of Iraqi businesspeople why these protections had to be removed. 'Protected businesses never, never become competitive,' he said. Quick, somebody tell OPIC and Paul Wolfowitz." "To be honest," says Ed Kubba, a consultant and board member of the American Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, "I don't know where the line is between business and corruption." He points to US companies subcontracting huge taxpayer-funded reconstruction jobs for a fraction of what they are getting paid, then pocketing the difference. "If you take $10 million from the US government and sub the job out to Iraqi businesses for a quarter-million, is that business, or is that corruption?" (The Nation)
- December 3: The Reverend Richard Lee discusses Bush's Christianity and his apparent outreach to Muslims and other non-Christians.
Religious conservatives
Lee runs an enormous "megachurch" outside Atlanta, Georgia, and considers himself a key ally of the Republicans and of the Bush administration, and displays photos of himself with Bush, John Ashcroft, and Dan Quayle in his office. Lee disagrees with Bush's statements that Islam is a religion of peace and that Muslims pray to the same God as Christians, saying, "That's not true. There's only one God, and as a Christian, that is the God that we reach through Jesus Christ." Asked to explain Bush's statement, Lee says knowingly, "He had to do that." It was merely politics, Lee explains, and he doesn't hold the statement against Bush. Bush needs allies in the Arab world, Lee says, and therefore cannot be totally honest about his own theocratic Christian beliefs. He cannot come right out and say that America is involved in an End Times-struggle to prepare the world for Armageddon. Many evangelical leaders agree with Lee's views. (James Moore and Wayne Slater)
