The Bush team in one sentence. Rivers, Truthout.

The Bush Administration in One Sentence
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Wednesday 28 February 2007

History is bunk.
- Henry Ford

Just because the Supreme Court set that poison precedent and anointed Bush, who brought in a crowd of neocon yahoos which earned no attention before the 2000 campaign, just because we 'Muricans vote for the man and not the mob, which in this case turned into the mob that ruined the country, you know, Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Pearl and Feith and Ledeen and Negroponte...

...just because unreasonably massive tax cuts were combined in 2001 with the economic depth-charge that was the Enron/Arthur Andersen/inflated revenues/overstated tax earnings scandal, which was umbilically connected to the White House, just because the economy (not to mention our whole psyche) absorbed another blow when four commercial airplanes somehow managed to pierce the most impenetrable air defense system in the history of the universe, fooling the entire intelligence community as well, if you believe what you hear...

...just because this happened despite a blizzard of warnings delivered in the weeks and months beforehand, along with a raft of information gathered by the previous administration, just because a bunch of anthrax got mailed to Democrats by the Ashcroft wing of the Republican Party in what were obvious assassination attempts and yet nothing but nothing has been done about it, just because the 9/11 attack was immediately - and I mean the day after immediately - grasped as an excuse to invade Iraq, just because virtually everyone in the administration lied with their bare faces hanging out about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, terrorism ties in Iraq, so break out the plastic sheeting and duct tape because we're all gonna die...

...just because they did this in no small part to win the 2002 midterms by any means necessary, just because they have used that day against us with deliberation and intent, just because 3,160 American soldiers have been killed looking for 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons (which is one million pounds) of sarin and mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, aerial drones to spray the aforementioned stuff, and let's not forget the uranium from Niger for use in Iraq's robust "nukular" program, all of which was described to the letter by Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address, claims that still remain today on the White House web site, on a page titled 'Disarm Saddam Hussein'...

...just because the medical journal Lancet estimated that as many as 198,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed as well in the war to get at this stuff, and that was a while ago and a whole slew of bombings ago, just because none of the stuff was there, and by the way none of the stuff was there, and did I mention that none of the stuff was there, just because the idea that Hussein was allied with bin Laden was laughable because Osama has wanted Saddam's head on his battle standard for decades, just because the true source of world terrorism, which is Sunni Wahabbist extremism out of Saudi Arabia, goes completely unaddressed because the Houses of Bush and Saud have been partnered for decades...

...just because the lie that says the GOP is strong on national defense still permeates everything, though the loss of those 3,160 soldiers combined with the grievous wounding of between 47,000 and 53,000 other soldiers amounts to the evisceration of between a fourth and a third of our entire active fighting force, which makes us safer in no way that can be fathomed, and never mind the soldiers living in filth and among rats and roaches because they have been deliberately shafted so the Bush boys can squeeze a few more pennies into the coffers of folks like Halliburton and Exxon...

...just because so much of 9/11 and this 'War on Terra' has to do with business arrangements going awry between these two Houses, just because a deep-cover CIA agent who was working to track any person or nation or group that would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists got her cover and her network blown by administration officials who wanted to shut her husband and any other potential whistleblowers the hell up, just because the front company she was working out of called Brewster Jennings and Associates was likewise blown, thus torpedoing other agents and their networks, just because absolutely all of this went virtually unreported by the mainstream media until it was too late, if it was reported at all...

...just because dangerous spies like Ahmad Chalabi used Judy Miller and the New York Times to disseminate the lie that Iraq was riddled with weapons, thus opening the floodgates for the rest of the media to repeat the lie, because once the Times says it, it must be true, just because this lack of reporting combined with an astounding level of cheerleading from the aforementioned media combined with some good old-fashioned vote fraud in places like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico gave the aforementioned group of yahoos four more years in 2004...

...just because this means the Iraq war will continue and Iran will probably be next, despite the fact that we basically gave the Iraqi government to Iran when we invaded and handed the Shi'ite majority control over the place, a majority that is ideologically and religiously allied with Iran, a majority controlled by two Shi'ite factions called Dawa and SCIRI, which have been creatures of Iran since the early 1980s, which were centrally involved in the 1983 Beirut bombing that killed more than 200 American Marines, just because we knew this going in but it happened anyway, and even though we know Iran is running Iraq, we still have to hear all this blather about Iran "interfering" in Iraq...

...just because our phones are tapped and our homes are no longer protected from unreasonable searches, just because we torture at will, just because we detain forever and use habeas corpus like so much toilet paper, just because signing statements have dismantled the separation of powers one brick at a time, just because no page is safe in a Republican Congress, just because no bribe is too small in a Republican Congress, just because a Democratic resurgence in 2006 is only a tiny beginning and not any kind of an end, because these Bush boys have no intention of slowing down or backing off...

...just because our national reputation is ravaged and our future has been sold out from under us, just because Truman's wartime economic footing has morphed into a machine that Eisenhower would recognize in horror as the very thing he warned us about before he left, just because the whole system now requires us to manufacture wars if none are available because the system itself has been wired to feed the beast no matter the consequences, just because television tells you not to worry, look at these breasts or this shaved starlet's head, or this shiny thing, look here, shhh, be silent, be still, sleep...

...doesn't mean We The People are finished, because all of this is why "We The People" was written down in the first place, and though the day is late and the road is long and the chances for success are slim, We The People are here to stay, so strap in and look out, because we are just getting started, and the next sentence will be ours to write.

Substance next time, not image,

Substance Over Image
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 26 February 2007

Six years ago a man unsuited both by intellect and by temperament for high office somehow ended up running the country.

How did that happen? First, he got the Republican nomination by locking up the big money early.

Then, he got within chad-and-butterfly range of the White House because the public, enthusiastically encouraged by many in the news media, treated the presidential election like a high school popularity contest. The successful candidate received kid-gloves treatment - and a free pass on the fuzzy math of his policy proposals - because he seemed like a fun guy to hang out with, while the unsuccessful candidate was subjected to sniggering mockery over his clothing and his mannerisms.

Today, with thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead thanks to presidential folly, with Al Qaeda resurgent and Afghanistan on the brink, you'd think we would have learned a lesson. But the early signs aren't encouraging.

"Presidential elections are high school writ large, of course," declared Newsweek's Howard Fineman last month. Oh, my goodness. But in fairness to Mr. Fineman, he was talking about the almost content-free rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - a rivalry that, at this point, is mainly a struggle over who's the bigger celebrity and gets to lock up the big donors.

Enough already. Let's make this election about the issues. Let's demand that presidential candidates explain what they propose doing about the real problems facing the nation, and judge them by how they respond.

I know the counterargument: you can't tell in advance what challenges a president may face, so you should vote for the person, not the policy details. But how do you judge the person? Public images can be deeply misleading: remember when Dick Cheney had gravitas? The best way to judge politicians is by how they respond to hard policy questions.

So here are some questions for the Democratic hopefuls. (I'll talk about the Republicans another time.)

First, what do they propose doing about the health care crisis? All the leading Democratic candidates say they're for universal care, but only John Edwards has come out with a specific proposal. The others have offered only vague generalities - wonderfully uplifting generalities, in Mr. Obama's case - with no real substance.

Second, what do they propose doing about the budget deficit? There's a serious debate within the Democratic Party between deficit hawks, who point out how well the economy did in the Clinton years, and those who, having watched Republicans squander Bill Clinton's hard-won surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy and a feckless war, would give other things - such as universal health care - higher priority than deficit reduction.

Mr. Edwards has come down on the anti-hawk side. But which side are Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama on? I have no idea.

Third, what will candidates do about taxes? Many of the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. Should they be extended, in whole or in part? And what do candidates propose doing about the alternative minimum tax, which will hit tens of millions of middle-class Americans unless something is done?

Fourth, how do the candidates propose getting America's position in the world out of the hole the Bush administration has dug? All the Democrats seem to be more or less in favor of withdrawing from Iraq. But what do they think we should do about Al Qaeda's sanctuary in Pakistan? And what will they do if the lame-duck administration starts bombing Iran?

The point of these questions isn't to pose an ideological litmus test. The point is, instead, to gauge candidates' judgment, seriousness and courage. How they answer is as important as what they answer.

I should also say that although today's column focuses on the Democrats, Republican candidates shouldn't be let off the hook. In particular, someone needs to make Rudy Giuliani, who seems to have become the Republican front-runner, stop running exclusively on what he did on 9/11.

Over the last six years we've witnessed the damage done by a president nominated because he had the big bucks behind him, and elected (sort of) because he came across well on camera. We need to pick the next president on the basis of substance, not image.

Raise the Minimum Wage, Nancy Jo Kemper

Raise the minimum wage
STATE SHOULD NOT WAIT FOR FEDERAL LAW TO DO RIGHT
By Nancy J. Kemper

In the State of the Commonwealth address, Gov. Ernie Fletcher closed by praising legislators for hanging the banner that reads "In God We Trust" in each chamber.

Then he noted that "... here in Frankfort, the well-heeled voices are easy to hear, hard to ignore and inviting to heed. But if we listen carefully," he said, "we will hear the soft and timid voices of the poor, the fatherless and the downtrodden that without our special efforts will go unnoticed. It is often in the still small voice that truth resounds."

His final sentence implored: "Let us listen more carefully to do justice to those that our creator called the least of these my brethren as we have done these three years."

Not to put too fine a point on it, there is a certain moral irony here, for both the governor and the legislature. The God in whom they say they trust is a God who is always on the side of the poor, the disadvantaged and the vulnerable.

The God in whom they say they trust is a God who has been scandalized throughout history by lip service that does not follow through with actions on behalf of the poor, who are God's beloved.

In a speech laden with ideas about how to spread moneys from the so-called surplus, there was very little for anyone who might qualify as poor.

Supplementing financial aid while raising tuitions will not help our college students. Many of them earn the tip wage ($2.13 per hour) as they work to put themselves through college, laboring 40-plus hours a week at jobs whose schedule allows them to also go to school. This delays their graduation from college and slows their entry into a skilled knowledge-based economy.

A tax exemption for those in active military service is a temporary measure that will surely help their families here at home, but doesn't address their need for more income.

What would really help both these groups of deserving people, and the nearly 117,000 children who live in poverty in Kentucky, is the swift passage of HB 305, which would raise the minimum wage to $7 an hour in July.

Increasing the minimum wage would benefit as many as 275,000 of our neighbors, especially the 126,000 whose wages now fall below $7 an hour.

When 83 percent of Kentuckians who would see wage increases with the passage of HB 305 are over age 20, we are reminded that this isn't just about first-time workers. The legislation would also allow businesses to plan for future such increases by having a built-in cost of living adjustment to the minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage is not simply an issue to be debated about whether it should be passed in Washington or in Frankfort.

We have been waiting for Washington to act for three years; and once again, it has stalled. The minimum wage issue is not just a matter of economics, but it is a values issue. It is a religious issue about how to treat our neighbor.

There are over 2,000 references to the poor in the First Testament. It is the second-most prominent biblical theme, following after idolatry, with which it is often connected.

The Hebrew prophets were clear: It is idolatry to give allegiance to God and then ignore the claims of the poor for justice.

One of every 16 verses in Christian Scriptures has to do with the poor; in the first three Gospels, one out of every 10 verses; and in the Gospel of Luke, one of every 7 verses is concerned about the poor.

There is a floor below which it is unjust and immoral to pay someone for their labor -- whether they are young first-time workers or adults with minimal skills.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have led the way by raising their minimum wages higher than the federal wage. They knew that it was immoral to wait any longer for Washington to act. Must Kentucky be perpetually in last place?

Let's join the other 29 states, and do what the people clearly support, and raise our minimum wage. Let's quit scandalizing the God we say we trust.

---

© 2007 Lexington Herald-Leader and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.kentucky.com

Can the Religious gap in our culture wars be bridged?

Narrowing the Religion Gap?

By GARY ROSEN

Try a quick political thought experiment. First, form a mental picture of the Democratic front-runners for president — Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Now do the same for the leading Republican contenders — John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Next (and this is the key step), imagine each of them in church, sitting in a pew, head bowed, or better still, at the pulpit, delivering a homily or leading the congregation in worship.

Strange, no? It’s not hard to envision Clinton and Obama among the faithful. She is a lifelong Methodist and self-described “praying person,” and he belongs to a church where some years ago he found himself (in his own words) “kneeling beneath that cross” in submission “to His will.” Both slip easily into the earnest, humble-of-the-earth mode of liberal God talk.

But McCain and Giuliani? You somehow imagine them fidgeting during the hymns and checking their watches. The senator is an Episcopalian, the former mayor a Catholic, but neither man, you have to think, would be caught dead in a Bible-study group or could possibly declare, à la George W. Bush, that his favorite philosopher is “Christ, because he changed my heart.” In the piety primary, the Democrats win hands down.

None of this is likely to reverse the “religion gap” in our politics — that is, the fact that regular churchgoers identify by a wide margin with the G.O.P. Come election time, the personal religiosity of the Democratic candidates won’t matter nearly as much as the positions they take in all the drearily familiar theaters of the culture war. What a matchup between churchgoing Democrats and secular-minded Republicans may supply, though, is welcome moderation in our debates over issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research. God knows, both sides of the ideological divide have fundamentalists in need of taming.

On the right, the culprits are familiar, having become stock characters in our politics. In his unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination in 2000, McCain called them “the agents of intolerance,” singling out Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. For a taste of their views, you can visit the Web site of Concerned Women for America (C.W.A.), which bills itself as the “nation’s largest public-policy women’s organization.” Its mission is “to protect and promote biblical values among all citizens,” the Bible being “the inerrant Word of God and the final authority on faith and practice.” As for dissenters from C.W.A.’s stand on issues like the “sanctity of human life,” a handy link to Bible passages explains “why you are a sinner and deserve punishment in Hell.”

A number of observers on the right, including Jeffrey Hart of National Review, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute and the blogger Andrew Sullivan, have performed a service lately by denouncing the G.O.P.’s pact with such authoritarian bullies. But the problem can be exaggerated. Whatever their private views, most of today’s big-time social conservatives speak in public as faith-based policy wonks, not as preachers of fire and brimstone. Consider James C. Dobson, the controversial founder of Focus on the Family. In a recent article titled “Two Mommies Is One Too Many,” he objected to the impending parenthood of Mary Cheney and her partner. The core of his argument? What he trumpets as “more than 30 years of social-science evidence” showing that children do best with a married mother and father.

Is Dobson persuasive about the supposed evils of gay parenthood? Not to me. But the case he makes is based on an asserted set of facts — facts that are open to challenge and dependent on neither revelation nor church writ. Yes, he also avers in passing that traditional marriage is “God’s design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth,” and this is probably what motivates him. But is there anything wrong with so frankly religious a premise? Does it somehow disqualify his arguments?

Here is where the dogmatists of the secular left come in. Looking to fend off Bible-toting conservatives, the philosopher Richard Rorty argued more than a decade ago that in a modern democracy, faith should be a strictly private matter and has no place in public discussion. Traditional religion, he wrote, is a “conversation stopper,” a source of values before which nonbelievers can be only mum. The same rigid divide informs a recent manifesto “in defense of science and secularism” signed by such academic luminaries as Daniel C. Dennett, Steven Pinker, Peter Singer and Edward O. Wilson. They urge the country’s political leaders “not to permit legislation or executive action to be influenced by religious beliefs.”

So categorical a rejection of faith in the public square is impossible to reconcile with our political traditions, of course. It sweeps away not just today’s social conservatives but also abolitionism, women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement. Dr. King without the almighty? Unthinkable. Conceding the extremism of his earlier view, Rorty himself has backtracked. Citizens should feel free to speak as believers, he now suggests, so long as they don’t simply “cite authority, scriptural or otherwise.”

It’s a reasonable standard. After all, very few of us, whether religious or secular, can easily articulate our views about fundamental things. On questions of human dignity and human ends, we tend to sputter and assert, setting out propositions that are difficult to justify to those who don’t share them. Invoking secular values like “autonomy” or “self-realization” can be just as much of a “conversation stopper” as appealing to the Bible. What we owe one another are concrete explanations, grounded in terms we might hope to share.

Can the rising field of presidential hopefuls move beyond the collision of orthodoxies to which we have grown accustomed? Maybe in some small way, if only because of the peculiarities of the personalities involved, but even that would be progress. At our present cultural moment, it is hard to think of a more edifying prospect than a campaign that will feature a running debate between churchgoing Democrats and vaguely impious Republicans.

Gary Rosen is the managing editor of Commentary.

from The Sunday Magazine, NY Times, Feb. 18, 2007

Killers in my classroom: proud Iraqi war veterans.

During a heated debate in a class I teach on social justice, several US Marines who had done tours in Iraq told me that they had "sacrificed" by "serving" in Iraq so that I could enjoy the freedom to teach in the USA. Parroting their master's slogan about
"fighting over there so we don't have to fight over here", these students proudly proclaimed that they terrorized and killed defenseless Iraqis. They intimated that their Arab victims are nothing more to them than collateral damage, incidental to their receipt of some money and an education.

A room full of students listened as a US Marine told of the invasion of Baghdad and Falluja and how he killed innocent Iraqis at a check point. He called them "collateral damage" and said he had followed the "rules". A Muslim-American student in front of him said "I could slap you but then you would kill me". A young female Muslim student gasped "I am a freshman; I never thought to hear of this in a class. I feel sick, like I will pass out."

I knew in that moment that this was what the future of teaching about justice would include: teaching war criminals who sit glaring at me with hatred for daring to speak the truth of their atrocities and who, if paid to, would disappear, torture and kill me. I wondered that night how long I really have in this so called "free" country to teach my students and to be with my children and grandchildren.

The American military and mercenary soldiers who "sacrificed" their lives did not do so for the teacher's freedom to teach the truth about the so-called war on terror, or any of US history for that matter. They sacrificed their lives, limbs and sanity for money, some education and the thrills of the violence for which they are socially bred. Sacrificing for the "bling and booty" in Iraq or Afghanistan, The Philippines, Grenada, Central America, Mexico, Somalia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the other numerous wars and invasions spanning US history as an entity and beginning with their foundational practice of killing the Indians and stealing their land.

Many of the classes that I teach now include students who "served" in the US military and security corporations. There are also many students who intend to join the US military upon completion of a degree because with the degree they get a bigger "sign on" bonus of ten to fifty thousand dollars. Their position is supported by many of the student body, who, vegetating according to the American Plan, believe they should "support their troops". The excuses that they give for joining or intending to join the US military terrorist training camps are first and foremost motivated by a desire for money. One student proudly said that he is willing to kill for money, a better standard of living and an education. Another student, who had done two tours of duty to the Empire in Iraq, justified killing and torture, citing the importance of staying on top as the world's number one super power so that his family could have the highest standard of living and unlimited access to the world's oil supplies.
KEEP READING, IT GETS BETTER >> http://snipurl.com/1agom
_________________________________

Excerpted from: http://www.inthesetimes.com

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February 17, 2007 Permalink

KILLERS IN THE CLASSROOM

Diary Entry by Diane's News Clips

Comparing Nixon and Bush, by Carl Bernstein of Watergate history

Carl Bernstein on Nixon vs. Bush
Editor & Publisher

Wednesday 14 February 2007

New York - Part one of the new PBS "Frontline" four-page series on the media debuted last night, mainly looking at the Plame affair. As usual, only snippets from dozens of interviews will make it on the air, but PBS.org is helpfully putting complete transcripts of many of the interviews up on its Web site (as we note in a separate article).

Here is a brief excerpt from the interview with Watergate sleuth Carl Bernstein. The interviewer is Lowell Bergman.

Q: Finally, I just want to get your reflections on the [famously contentious] relationship of Richard Nixon and the press.... How does that compare to George W. Bush and the press?

Bernstein: First, Nixon's relationship to the press was consistent with his relationship to many institutions and people. He saw himself as a victim. We now understand the psyche of Richard Nixon, that his was a self-destructive act and presidency.

I think what we're talking about with the Bush administration is a far different matter in which disinformation, misinformation and unwillingness to tell the truth - a willingness to lie both in the Oval Office, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, in the office of the vice president, the vice president himself - is something that I have never witnessed before on this scale.

The lying in the Nixon White House had most often to do with covering up Watergate, with the Nixon administration's illegal activities. Here, in this presidency, there is an unwillingness to be truthful, both contextually and in terms of basic facts that ought to be of great concern to people of all ideologies....

This president has a record of dishonesty and obfuscation that is Nixonian in character in its willingness to manipulate the press, to manipulate the truth. We have gone to war on the basis of misinformation, disinformation and knowing lies from top to bottom.

That is an astonishing fact. That's what this story is about: the willingness of the president and the vice president and the people around them to try to undermine people who have effectively opposed them by telling the truth. It happened with [Sen.] John McCain in South Carolina. It happened with [Sen.] John Kerry. It's happened with [Sen.] Max Cleland in Georgia. It's happened with many other people. That's the real story, and that's the story that [the press] should have been writing....

It's very difficult, as a reporter, to get across that when you say, "This is a presidency of great dishonesty," that this is not a matter of opinion. This is demonstrable fact. If you go back and look at the president's statements, you look at the statements of the vice president, you look at the statements of Condoleezza Rice, you go through the record, you look at what [counterterrorism expert] Richard Clarke has written, you look at what we know - it's demonstrable.

It's fact. Now, how do you quantify it? That's a different question.

But to me, if there is a great failure by the so-called mainstream press in this presidency, it's the unwillingness to look at the lies and disinformation and misinformation and add them up and say clearly, "Here's what they said; here's what the known facts were," because when that is done, you then see this isn't a partisan matter. This is a matter of the truth, particularly about this war. This is a presidency that is not willing to tell the truth very often if it is contrary to its interests. It's not about ideology from whence I say this.

It's about being a reporter and saying: "That's what the story is. Let's see what they said; let's see what the facts are." ...

---

Go to Original

Frontline: Full Interview With Carl Bernstein
Frontline

Wednesday 14 February 2007

How important was protecting sources for the Watergate story?

Absolutely essential. We did not name a single significant source in the first 150 stories that we did in the first year of Watergate. In fact, we never did. The only people who were identified by name more often than not were telling lies, because they were spokesmen for the Nixon White House. In terms of real sources of information, they were all confidential, every one. It would have been totally impossible to have done the Watergate reporting and identified our sources.

When we wrote All the President's Men, we went back to all of our sources, and we asked them, could we identify them? Some of them said yes. Hugh Sloan, the bookkeeper for the Committee [for the Re-election of] the President [CRP], said yes. The treasurer for the Nixon re-election committee, some others - Mark Felt, the individual known as Deep Throat - said no. We kept that secret for 33 years because we believe in the confidentiality of sources.

I know of very little important reporting of the last 30 to 40 years that has been done without use of confidential sources, particularly in the national security area.... What we know about the last five, six, seven presidencies, we know through the use of confidential sources. If we had relied on the information from this president, from this secretary of state, from this secretary of defense, from this vice president, we would know almost nothing of the truth of [the Iraq war]....

But with the use of confidential sources, certain things are incumbent on the reporter: to represent a kind of responsibility and refuse to be whipped around by a source, to be led astray by a source. There's a responsibility, if possible, to identify the particular orientation of a source. For instance, if it's a story involving fund raising in the Republican National Committee, and the source is a Republican fund-raiser, it would be very significant to identify that person as a Republican fund-raiser. If it were a Democrat off on the sidelines, it would seem to me you would have to say that the source is a Democrat and then explain how he's come into information and why it's credible. So it's a tricky question how you present it.

Weren't you subpoenaed during Watergate for your sources?

Yes.... There was a civil suit brought by the Nixon re-election committee against the Democratic National Committee for the purpose of trying to find out how they were getting their information to us, among other things....

[When we] knew that the subpoena had reached the building, I went to [then-executive editor of The Washington Post Ben] Bradlee, and I said, "Look, I just got a call from the guard downstairs that there's a subpoena with a piece of paper with my name on it." And he said, "Look, go see a movie while we figure out what to do."

So I went to see a movie; in fact, the movie I saw was Deep Throat. I came back to the office, and by then the strategy had been gone over with the lawyers. Our notes, my notes, were transferred to the custody of Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post. Therefore, if anybody was going to go to jail, she was going to go also. As Bradlee said: "Wouldn't that be something? Every photographer in town would be down at the courthouse to look at our girl going off to the slam." And Mrs. Graham was ready to go to jail because she understood the principle. I accepted the subpoena, because by then, the custody of my notes had been transferred to Katharine Graham.

And so what happened? You didn't go to jail, did you?

They backed off.... They didn't want to take on Katharine Graham. They took on Katharine Graham by trying to take the licenses of The Washington Post television stations away, which was the real money-making ability of The Washington Post Company at the time.... It paid a lot of the bills....

"I know of very little important reporting of the last 30 to 40 years that has been done without use of confidential sources, particularly in the national security area."

Today we see the further economic pressure through subpoenas because stockholders don't want to see their companies embroiled with the federal government in a big suit that might hurt the value of their stock. So that now has become a consideration, as it was I believe in the case of Time Inc. in the Valerie Plame case.

But unlike Katharine Graham, [then-Time editor] Norm Pearlstine gave up [reporter] Matt Cooper's notes.

He did. And I think it was a very difficult call. I think that it's still being sorted out, whether it was the right thing to do and whether they really gave up anything....

, , , , , ,More on Writer and Publisher website.

Many lies now known used to justify Iraqi war: details:

Feith-Libby Lies Exposed

by Robert Dreyfuss

If fool-me-once was the Bush Administration's reams of faked intelligence about Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent ties to Al Qaeda, then fool-me-twice is the Administration's shameless effort to shift the blame for American casualties in Iraq from the Sunni-led resistance, where it belongs, to a make-believe threat from Iran and allied Shiite militias. It's Iran in the headlines today, but happily on February 9 we got a timely reminder of how brazenly the Bush Administration--along with its neoconservative allies at The Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute--trumped up the case for war against Iraq five years ago. In a stunning indictment of the Administration's chicanery, Pentagon Inspector General Thomas Gimble slammed the super-secret predecessor organizations to the Office of Special Plans for "disseminating alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and Al Qaeda relationship." Its actions, Gimble concluded, were "inappropriate," and its conclusions "were not supported by the available intelligence." Among the absurdly wrong conclusions reached by the OSP and its earlier incarnations--the equally Orwellian-sounding Policy Support Office and the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group--were that a "mature symbiotic relationship" existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda and that Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terrorists displayed "cooperation in all categories." Vice President Cheney used this nonsense to bolster his dark muttering about "possible Iraq coordination" with Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. Make no mistake: The phrase "not supported by the available intelligence" is merely bureaucratese for a "lie-filled pile of crap," and that's the most straightforward way to describe the intelligence product produced by the OSP, which was run directly out of the office of then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Feith, who was called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" by Gen. Tommy Franks, is a hard-core neoconservative with intimate ties to the Israeli far right. The Inspector General's report chips away at merely the tip of a gigantic iceberg, a virtual empire of lies that was owned and operated by the Defense Department from 9/11 though the start of the Iraq War in March 2003. (For a complete account of the inner workings of the OSP, see "The Lie Factory," by me and Jason Vest, in the January 2004 edition of Mother Jones.) At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin invited Gimble in to air Feith's dirty laundry. "The Inspector General's report is a devastating condemnation," said Levin. "These issues are as critical as any I have ever seen." After drawing out Gimble on his careful inquiry into Feith's mischief, Levin noted that despite having interviewed some seventy-five people for the report, there were still many--including at the White House, the National Security Council and the Vice President's office--who had somehow avoided talking to Gimble. "We're gonna be interviewing a lot of folks, including people who have refused to talk to you...including the Chief of Staff of the Vice President." That "Chief of Staff" would be none other than Feith comrade-in-arms I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the now-disgraced neocon who is standing trial for perjury for trying to cover up information about the Administration's lies and deception over Iraqi WMD four years ago. Thus, very neatly, the Inspector General's inquiry dovetails with US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's long-running effort to pull on yet another thread in the Feith-Libby spider web. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Feith was shockingly unrepentant, denying any and all evidence that he stacked the deck for war. It was too much even for Chris Wallace, the show's host, who seemed incredulous that Feith would deny the obvious. (You can read the whole transcript here.) An excerpt: WALLACE: Okay. Let's talk about it, because the briefing was titled "Iraq and Al Qaeda Making the Case," and here are some of the highlights from your PowerPoint presentation. "Intelligence indicates cooperation in all categories, mature symbiotic relationship." "Some indications of possible Iraq coordination with Al Qaeda specifically related to 9/11." And you said an alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001 was a known contact. Mr. Feith, all of that--all of that was wrong, wasn't it? FEITH: No, not at all. There was substantial intelligence. I mean, evidence is a legal term not really appropriate here. There was a lot of information out there. Intelligence is very sketchy, and it's always open to interpretation. On this issue, there were people who disagreed about the intelligence and the people in the Pentagon were giving a critical review. They were not presenting alternative conclusions. They were presenting a challenge to the way the CIA was looking at things and filtering its own information. WALLACE: I have to tell you, I mean, when I--I mean, I read these as "mature symbiotic relationship," "known contact"--that sure sounds like conclusions. FEITH: You're plucking language out of a briefing, the thrust of which was why is the CIA accounting for information that it had that suggested an Iraq-Al Qaeda relationship when the CIA was excluding that information from its own finished intelligence at the time. It was a criticism. It's healthy to criticize the CIA's intelligence. What the people in the Pentagon were doing was right. It was good government. The New York Times, in a scathing editorial ridiculing Feith, also pointed the finger at Feith's boss, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: "Wolfowitz would feverishly sketch out charts showing how this Iraqi knew that Iraqi, who was connected through six more degrees of separation to terrorist attacks, all the way back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing." After Feith's OSP concocted its cock-and-bull story about Iraq, they had the temerity to take it over to the CIA and present it to a team of professional analysts there. George Tenet, after listening politely to Feith's team on August 15, 2002, quietly asked his staff to stick around after the OSP briefers departed. The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency reviewed Feith's conclusions (apparently there were some two dozen or more pieces of "evidence") and promptly disagreed with more than 50 percent of it, Gimble said. Five days later, they all met once again, and the CIA pointedly offered to footnote Feith's report with strident objections of its own. Feith's team said thanks--and then promptly set up an appointment to brief the White House, without so much as adding a single CIA footnote. Needless to say, that briefing was widely cited by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others--and it was helpfully leaked to The Weekly Standard, which printed it nearly verbatim. Later, when asked why he kept insisting that Iraq and Al Qaeda were allies, Cheney pointed to the Weekly Standard article to support his charges! Bizarre as all this is, it is important to remember that because of these lies, America went to war against a country that had never attacked the United States, that had no weapons of mass destruction and that had no ties to Al Qaeda or 9/11. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, along with 3,109 Americans. Not only that, but there is every reason to believe that the Administration is once again involved in fabricating intelligence to justify its increasingly belligerent stance toward Iran. While Senator Levin keeps one eye on the Feith-Libby lies of 2003, let's hope he and the rest of Congress keep the other on what looks like additional baloney about Iran. As President Bush himself so eloquently put it: "Fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again." Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Metropolitan).

Democracy in Iraq a smokescreen motive?

The US Says it is Fighting For Democracy - But is Deaf to the Cries of the Iraqis They are not building a palatial embassy with the intention of going

by Noam Chomsky

There was unprecedented élite condemnation of the plans to invade Iraq. Sensible analysts were able to perceive that the enterprise carried significant risks for US interests, however conceived. Phrases thrown in by the official Presidential Directive from the standard boilerplate about freedom that accompany every action, and are close to a historical universal, were dismissed as meaningless by reasonable people. Global opposition was utterly overwhelming, and the likely costs to the US were apparent, though the catastrophe created by the invasion went far beyond anyone's worst expectations. It's amusing to watch the lying as the strongest supporters of the war try to deny what they very clearly said. On the US motives for staying in Iraq, I can only repeat what I've been saying for years. A sovereign Iraq, partially democratic, could well be a disaster for US planners. With a Shia majority, it is likely to continue improving relations with Iran. There is a Shia population right across the border in Saudi Arabia, bitterly oppressed by the US-backed tyranny. Any step towards sovereignty in Iraq encourages activism there for human rights and a degree of autonomy - and that happens to be where most of Saudi oil is. Sovereignty in Iraq might well lead to a loose Shia alliance controlling most of the world's petroleum resources and independent of the US, undermining a primary goal of US foreign policy since it became the world-dominant power after the Second World War. Worse yet, though the US can intimidate Europe, it cannot intimidate China, which blithely goes its own way, even in Saudi Arabia, the jewel in the crown - the primary reason why China is considered a leading threat. An independent energy bloc in the Gulf area is likely to link up with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council, with Russia (which has its own huge resources) as an integral part, and with the Central Asian states (already members), possibly India. Iran is already associated with them, and a Shia-dominated bloc in the Arab states might well go along. All of that would be a nightmare for US planners and their Western allies. There are, then, very powerful reasons why the US and UK are likely to try in every possible way to maintain effective control over Iraq. The US is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis. All of this is quite separate from the expectations that matters can be arranged so that US corporations profit from the vast riches of Iraq. These topics, though high on the agenda of planners, are not within the realm of discussion, as can easily be determined. That is only to be expected. These considerations violate the fundamental doctrine that state power has noble objectives, and while it may make terrible blunders, it can have no crass motives and is not influenced by domestic concentrations of private power. Any questioning of these Higher Truths is either ignored or bitterly denounced, also for good reasons: allowing them to be discussed could undermine power and privilege. There is another issue: even the most dedicated scholar/advocates of "democracy promotion" recognise that there is a "strong line of continuity" in US efforts to promote democracy going back as far as you like and reaching the present: democracy is supported if and only if it conforms to strategic and economic objectives. For example, supporting the brutal punishment of people who committed the crime of voting "the wrong way" in a free election, as in Palestine right now, with pretexts that would inspire ridicule in a free society. As for democracy in the US, élite opinion has generally considered it a dangerous threat which must be resisted. But some Iraqis agreed with Bush's mission to bring democracy to the world: 1 per cent in a poll in Baghdad just as the noble vision was declared in Washington. On withdrawal proposals from élite circles, however, I think one should be cautious. Some may be so deeply indoctrinated that they cannot allow themselves to think about the reasons for the invasion or the insistence on maintaining the occupation, in one or another form. Others may have in mind more effective techniques of control by redeploying US military forces in bases in Iraq and in the region, making sure to control logistics and support for client forces in Iraq, air power in the style of the destruction of much of Indochina after the business community turned against the war, and so on. As to the consequences of a US withdrawal, we are entitled to have our personal judgements, all of them as uninformed and dubious as those of US intelligence. But they do not matter. What matters is what Iraqis think. Or rather, that is what should matter, and we learn a lot about the character and moral level of the reigning intellectual culture from the fact that the question of what the victims want barely even arises. The Baker-Hamilton report dismisses partition proposals, even the more limited proposals for a high level of independence within a loosely federal structure. Though it's not really our business, or our right to decide, their scepticism is probably warranted. Neighbouring countries would be very hostile to an independent Kurdistan, which is landlocked, and Turkey might even invade, which would also threaten the long-standing and critical US-Turkey-Israel alliance. Kurds strongly favour independence, but appear to regard it as not feasible - for now, at least. The Sunni states might invade to protect the Sunni areas, which lack resources. The Shia region might improve ties with Iran. It could set off a regional war. My own view is that federal arrangements make good sense, not only in Iraq. But these do not seem realistic prospects for the near-term future. US policy should be that of all aggressors: (1) pay reparations; (2) attend to the will of the victims; (3) hold the guilty parties accountable, in accord with the Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and other international instruments. A more practical proposal is to work to change the domestic society and culture substantially enough so that what should be done can at least become a topic for discussion. That is a large task, not only on this issue, though I think élite opposition is far more ferocious than that of the general public. Adapted from an interview for Z Net with Michael Albert, published tomorrow in 'The Drawbridge'. Noam Chomsky's latest book is 'Failed States' (Hamish Hamilton, June 2006; Penguin Books, March 2007) © 2007 The Independent

Democracy in Iraq a smokescreen motive?

he US Says it is Fighting For Democracy - But is Deaf to the Cries of the Iraqis They are not building a palatial embassy with the intention of going

by Noam Chomsky

There was unprecedented élite condemnation of the plans to invade Iraq. Sensible analysts were able to perceive that the enterprise carried significant risks for US interests, however conceived. Phrases thrown in by the official Presidential Directive from the standard boilerplate about freedom that accompany every action, and are close to a historical universal, were dismissed as meaningless by reasonable people. Global opposition was utterly overwhelming, and the likely costs to the US were apparent, though the catastrophe created by the invasion went far beyond anyone's worst expectations. It's amusing to watch the lying as the strongest supporters of the war try to deny what they very clearly said. On the US motives for staying in Iraq, I can only repeat what I've been saying for years. A sovereign Iraq, partially democratic, could well be a disaster for US planners. With a Shia majority, it is likely to continue improving relations with Iran. There is a Shia population right across the border in Saudi Arabia, bitterly oppressed by the US-backed tyranny. Any step towards sovereignty in Iraq encourages activism there for human rights and a degree of autonomy - and that happens to be where most of Saudi oil is. Sovereignty in Iraq might well lead to a loose Shia alliance controlling most of the world's petroleum resources and independent of the US, undermining a primary goal of US foreign policy since it became the world-dominant power after the Second World War. Worse yet, though the US can intimidate Europe, it cannot intimidate China, which blithely goes its own way, even in Saudi Arabia, the jewel in the crown - the primary reason why China is considered a leading threat. An independent energy bloc in the Gulf area is likely to link up with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council, with Russia (which has its own huge resources) as an integral part, and with the Central Asian states (already members), possibly India. Iran is already associated with them, and a Shia-dominated bloc in the Arab states might well go along. All of that would be a nightmare for US planners and their Western allies. There are, then, very powerful reasons why the US and UK are likely to try in every possible way to maintain effective control over Iraq. The US is not constructing a palatial embassy, by far the largest in the world and virtually a separate city within Baghdad, and pouring money into military bases, with the intention of leaving Iraq to Iraqis. All of this is quite separate from the expectations that matters can be arranged so that US corporations profit from the vast riches of Iraq. These topics, though high on the agenda of planners, are not within the realm of discussion, as can easily be determined. That is only to be expected. These considerations violate the fundamental doctrine that state power has noble objectives, and while it may make terrible blunders, it can have no crass motives and is not influenced by domestic concentrations of private power. Any questioning of these Higher Truths is either ignored or bitterly denounced, also for good reasons: allowing them to be discussed could undermine power and privilege. There is another issue: even the most dedicated scholar/advocates of "democracy promotion" recognise that there is a "strong line of continuity" in US efforts to promote democracy going back as far as you like and reaching the present: democracy is supported if and only if it conforms to strategic and economic objectives. For example, supporting the brutal punishment of people who committed the crime of voting "the wrong way" in a free election, as in Palestine right now, with pretexts that would inspire ridicule in a free society. As for democracy in the US, élite opinion has generally considered it a dangerous threat which must be resisted. But some Iraqis agreed with Bush's mission to bring democracy to the world: 1 per cent in a poll in Baghdad just as the noble vision was declared in Washington. On withdrawal proposals from élite circles, however, I think one should be cautious. Some may be so deeply indoctrinated that they cannot allow themselves to think about the reasons for the invasion or the insistence on maintaining the occupation, in one or another form. Others may have in mind more effective techniques of control by redeploying US military forces in bases in Iraq and in the region, making sure to control logistics and support for client forces in Iraq, air power in the style of the destruction of much of Indochina after the business community turned against the war, and so on. As to the consequences of a US withdrawal, we are entitled to have our personal judgements, all of them as uninformed and dubious as those of US intelligence. But they do not matter. What matters is what Iraqis think. Or rather, that is what should matter, and we learn a lot about the character and moral level of the reigning intellectual culture from the fact that the question of what the victims want barely even arises. The Baker-Hamilton report dismisses partition proposals, even the more limited proposals for a high level of independence within a loosely federal structure. Though it's not really our business, or our right to decide, their scepticism is probably warranted. Neighbouring countries would be very hostile to an independent Kurdistan, which is landlocked, and Turkey might even invade, which would also threaten the long-standing and critical US-Turkey-Israel alliance. Kurds strongly favour independence, but appear to regard it as not feasible - for now, at least. The Sunni states might invade to protect the Sunni areas, which lack resources. The Shia region might improve ties with Iran. It could set off a regional war. My own view is that federal arrangements make good sense, not only in Iraq. But these do not seem realistic prospects for the near-term future. US policy should be that of all aggressors: (1) pay reparations; (2) attend to the will of the victims; (3) hold the guilty parties accountable, in accord with the Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and other international instruments. A more practical proposal is to work to change the domestic society and culture substantially enough so that what should be done can at least become a topic for discussion. That is a large task, not only on this issue, though I think élite opposition is far more ferocious than that of the general public. Adapted from an interview for Z Net with Michael Albert, published tomorrow in 'The Drawbridge'. Noam Chomsky's latest book is 'Failed States' (Hamish Hamilton, June 2006; Penguin Books, March 2007) © 2007 The Independent

Here is what really happened at the Watada Mistrial: plus brilliant work of his defense lawyer.

The Watada Mistrial: Here's What Really Happened
By Bill Simpich
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 08 February 2007

First Lt. Ehren Watada knew exactly what his case was about - and that scared the judge.

There was absolutely no reason to stop the Watada trial.

The judge's claim that Lt. Watada did not fully understand a document he signed admitting to elements of the charges is completely untrue (see Melanthia Mitchell, AP, 2/8/07).

The military seized on that claim and complimented the judge for "protecting the rights of the accused" in granting the mistrial.

Here's what really happened.

Lt. Watada repeatedly told the judge on Monday and Tuesday morning, before the trial began, that he agreed with the 12-page "stipulation of facts" that was provided to the panel of seven officers as evidence of most of the key events in this case. The lieutenant reminded the judge in every response that he continued to believe that his orders to go to Iraq were illegal.

I was there, with a roomful of media, military and civilian observers. We all saw the judge review the document at length and offer a number of suggested factual corrections. (Also see "Watada Lawyer: Double Jeopardy Will Be Argued If Second Trial Proceeds.")

The judge also asked Lt. Watada if he felt "compelled" or "coerced" in his decision to not board the plane to Iraq. The lieutenant assured him that it was an intentional act and that his failure to board the plane was not due to any fear for his personal safety, while carefully reasserting his belief that he had no duty to obey an illegal order.

The judge reminded him that he had already ruled that the order was legal. Lt. Watada responded that he understood what the judge was saying, and then repeated his belief once more.

The stipulation specifically stated that Lt. Watada did not waive any legal defenses not addressed in the document.

The purpose of this stipulation was to drop two charges against Lt. Watada (sparing him exposure to two additional years in prison) in exchange for a written agreement that most of the facts would be admitted into evidence, and thereby evaporate any purported reason for subpoenaing journalists to testify against the lieutenant at the trial.

The document was prepared by the government. When construing a document, it is interpreted in favor of the person who did not prepare it.

It was signed by all parties over a week ago. This was not a last-minute task.

The judge was satisfied. The stipulation was accepted by the court and distributed to the panel Tuesday morning.

The panel proceeded to hear the entire prosecution case on Tuesday: the 12-page written stipulation, two videos that were also part of the stipulation, and three prosecution witnesses that appeared to aid Lt. Watada's theory of the case.

The judge raised concerns about the document on Wednesday morning, moments before Lt. Watada was set to take the witness stand.

The judge had just received a new proposed legal instruction from Seitz. Since the judge had recently ruled that the order given to Lt. Watada to deploy to Iraq was "legal," Seitz took the logical next step. Entitled "Reasonable Mistake of Fact/Law," his new instruction was designed to inform the panel that even if Lt. Watada were "mistaken" in his belief that the order was illegal, a defense to the "missing movement" charge would be viable if the panel made a finding that Lt. Watada's belief that the order was illegal was "reasonable."

Shaken by this instruction, the judge tried to claim that Seitz had introduced some error by submitting this instruction, forgetting that the panel had not seen the instruction and hence any error was literally impossible!

Realizing the error of his ways, the judge then tried to speak to Lt. Watada about his understanding of the stipulation without asking Seitz for his permission. After initially warning the judge that he might not let him speak to Lt. Watada, Seitz relented and told the judge that he would let him speak to him over objection.

The judge repeatedly tried to shake Lt. Watada's insistence that he reasonably believed that he was following an illegal order, all the while insisting that he wasn't trying to mislead him in any way. Lt. Watada again respectfully but firmly punctuated his remarks with his state of mind.

Unsuccessful in his apparent effort to derail the defense, the judge then claimed that "I'm not seeing we have a meeting of the minds here," Head said. "And if there is not a meeting of the minds, there's not a contract." (Seattle Times)

At this point, both the defense and the government figuratively "threw their arms around each other" and repeatedly told the judge that they wanted the trial to go forward. Courtroom observers agreed that they had never seen such a thing in their lives.

The Seattle Times reported that "The defense and prosecution teams both believed the agreement did not constitute an admission of guilt. But the judge on Wednesday said the agreement included all the elements required to find Watada guilty. It was more than an agreement, Head said: It was what he termed a "confessional stipulation," with whatever reasons behind the action irrelevant to the question of guilt."

Lt. Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, said that the stipulation was not an admission of guilt.

"No. Absolutely no way," he said. "Lt. Watada's a smart guy. He knew exactly what he was agreeing to." (Los Angeles Times)

The judge turned to the prosecution and said "I can't unring that bell." But then, in what appeared to be a moment of panic, he suggested to the prosecution that they recall their witnesses. He warned them that he was considering issuing a mistrial. He offered to let them reopen their case if they wanted to. He offered them whatever time they needed to make a decision "thirty minutes, an hour, or more." When the prosecution assured the judge that they only needed thirty minutes, there was a disappointed look on his face.

Apparently the defense was also asked if it would be willing to withdraw the stipulation and let the case proceed on that basis. As the panel had been relying on the stipulation throughout the prosecution case, the defense was not willing to do anything of the sort.

Upon the prosecution's return, they asked for a mistrial. The defendant opposed it. The motion was granted, and a new trial date was set. But now there was a new problem that may make any new trial impossible.

Once the trial commenced, "jeopardy attached." Once jeopardy attaches, a second trial is generally not possible. This is known as "double jeopardy."

Like all maxims, there are exceptions to the rule of double jeopardy. For example, if a verdict cannot be reached by the finder of fact, defendant cannot object to the resulting mistrial. Nor can the defense create error in order to get the defendant off the hook.

But a mistrial caused by judicial or prosecutorial error is another story. Generally, the charges must be dismissed in order to ensure that the authorities are not tempted to commit error in order to obtain a second trial when events are not going their way.

This is what happened here. The prosecution knew that Lt. Watada was not waiving his right to defend himself against the charges. Again, the stipulation specifically stated that no such waiver was being made.

The judge tried to make some mileage by reciting on the record a warning that he had previously given to Lt. Watada that by signing the stipulation, he was admitting that there was sufficient evidence on each element of the "missing movement" offense (for failing to board the plane to Iraq) for the panel to find him guilty.

"Sufficient evidence," however, is a far cry from any kind of admission that there was no evidence to rebut the prosecution's evidence. It may be news to the judge that trials are conducted for defendants who have pleaded "not guilty," not for those who admit guilt. Was the judge considering what kind of trial he was suggesting? A trial where the determination of guilt or innocence by a panel of seven officers was literally meaningless?

Let's close by examining the law on whether Lt. Watada can be forced to endure a second trial despite the double jeopardy doctrine. The latest case on the subject, US v. Eliot, 463 F.3d 858, 864 (9th Cir. 2006), states: "When, as here, a mistrial is ordered over a defendant's objection, retrial is permitted only if there was a "manifest necessity" for a mistrial (a case-by-case determination with a "high" burden). Other factors to look at are whether the trial judge (1) heard the opinions of the parties about the propriety of the mistrial, (2) considered the alternatives to a mistrial and chose the alternative least harmful to a defendant's rights, (3) acted deliberately instead of abruptly, and (4) properly determined that the defendant would benefit from the declaration of mistrial."

A case to look at for guidance is United States v. Rivera, 384 F.3d 49, 56 (3rd Cir. 2004) which states: "Critically, a mistrial must not be declared without prudent consideration of reasonable alternatives. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 26.3 requires that "[b]efore ordering a mistrial, the court must give each defendant and the government an opportunity to comment on the propriety of the order, to state whether that party consents or objects, and to suggest alternatives. Where a District Court sua sponte declares a mistrial in haste, without carefully considering alternatives available to it, it cannot be said to be acting under a manifest necessity. Any subsequent reprosecution under those circumstances is barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause."

When you comment that you can't "unring a bell," and then ask the defendant to agree to withdraw a stipulation already seen by the finders of fact for an entire day, you have "consideration" about as "prudent" as a car crash.

Eric Seitz has stated, "My professional opinion is that Lt. Watada cannot be tried again because of the effect of double jeopardy," and will file a motion to dismiss the entire case. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has reported that John Junker, a University of Washington law professor, agrees that the granting of mistrial over the defendant's objection has opened the door to such a defense.

"The notion is that you can't just stop in the middle and say, 'I don't like the way it's going' and start over," Junker said. "If the defendant objected, it does raise the possibility" of double jeopardy, Junker said. "That would happen in a civilian court, and I presume in a military court. That doctrine comes from the Constitution."

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and a proposed expert witness for the defense, opines: "When the Army judge declared a mistrial over defense objection in 1st Lt. Ehren Watada's court-martial, he probably didn't realize jeopardy attached. Although he faces the possibility of a dishonorable discharge, the judge's grant of a mistrial precludes retrial on the same criminal charges."

Prominent Honolulu defense attorney Howard Luke states, "Was there manifest necessity? That's up to the court to decide...From what I understand, I think not. The case could have been continued."

I wouldn't bet against these four authorities. Any fair-minded review of this case will reveal that the defense was doing far better than anyone had expected; that Lt. Watada had protected his rights at every turn; and that the judge was scared of letting this case go to any factfinder who had any chance of being fully informed of Lt. Watada's belief that the war in Iraq is illegal.

Prosecutor Purge is Politically Driven: from "outside the Justice Department", namely influential Others.

WaPo: Prosecutor Purge Politically Driven
By Paul Kiel - February 4, 2007, 11:57 AM

The Washington Post reports on the administration's purge of federal prosecutors this morning and finds that the call for the move came, shockingly, from outside the Justice Department:

One administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing personnel issues, said the spate of firings was the result of "pressure from people who make personnel decisions outside of Justice who wanted to make some things happen in these places."

In other words, the pressure to replace the prosecutors did not come from the people who would know about the U.S. Attorneys' job performance (their supervisors at the Justice Department), but rather from power players in the White House or Republican Party. That would explain why the seven federal prosecutors purged in December were not given a reason for their dismissals -- and why justifications for the firings have sounded like lame rationalizations.

This fits, of course, with McClatchy's finding last week that the Bush administration, in a break with the practice of prior administrations, has been placing conservative loyalists in U.S. Attorney spots across the country. Instead of nominating local, qualified attorneys whose philosophy jibes with the administration (as was the traditional practice), the nomination of U.S. Attorneys has been subsumed into the Republican Party's political machine. Apparently the title of U.S. Attorney is just too attractive a resumé-fattener to dole out helter-skelter. And while you're fattening the resumés of possible future stars of the party, it can't hurt to knock out a prosecutor who was doing considerable damage to the party.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will be holding a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue Tuesday called, "Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys?" Let's see if he comes up with an answer.

Retrospective: Colin Powell changes his tune.

Retirement Syndrome

by James Carroll

Four years ago today, then Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the UN Security Council on the absolute necessity of going to war against Saddam Hussein. What followed is history. That testimony will define the bleak legacy of Colin Powell, but lately he has marked his distance from the war that his testimony both justified and enabled. In December, he contradicted administration claims to declare that the United States is "losing" the war in Iraq, and last month he contradicted the Bush "surge" strategy by calling for a "drawdown" of forces. Clearly, the former secretary of state is a man in the grip of regret. Powell's example calls to mind the long American tradition of powerful figures who, while in office, put in place structures of unbridled violence, only, upon leaving office, to warn of them. In describing this, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton adapts the familiar phrase "retirement syndrome," usually defined as stresses associated with the cessation of work, to apply to this social phenomenon -- the criticism of policy by the creators of policy after they no longer have responsibility for it. Perhaps the most famous instance of this form of retirement syndrome is Dwight D. Eisenhower's, in the stirring warning he issued in his 1961 farewell address. He decried the "military-industrial complex" as if he had not himself just spent eight years presiding over its construction. The most poignant exemplar of retirement syndrome is Robert McNamara, who has spent the last quarter century as a critic of conventional American attitudes toward war in general, and of the strategic doctrines of the nuclear age in particular. He had, of course, given masterful expression to both, as the secretary of defense responsible for Vietnam and "Mutual Assured Destruction." After the Cold War, when the United States showed every intention of maintaining its nuclear arsenal at Cold War levels, numerous senior military figures who had had responsibility for that arsenal, upon leaving uniform, became strident nuclear objectors. Chief among those was General George Lee Butler , former commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command, who said of nuclear weapons after he retired, "Such weapons have no place among us. There is no security to be found in nuclear weapons. It's a fool's game." Similarly, with Paul Nitze , the nuclear official for all seasons. Having pushed nukes on every US president from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, he denounced the enterprise in a 1999 op-ed piece for The New York Times; "The fact is, I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons." Such things still happen. The grand slam of retirement syndrome occurred last month. In a Jan. 4 op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, former secretaries of state Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Schultz , and former secretary of defense William J. Perry , together with former senator Sam Nunn , recalled fondly that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had almost agreed to the elimination of nuclear weapons. The four former US officials proposed a "rekindling" of the Reagan-Gorbachev abolitionist vision. Kissinger, with his historic 1957 article "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy," laid the intellectual justification for nukes that still makes nations want them. The very possession of the weapon, not its use, is a source of transcendent power. That thinking remains the nub of the problem Kissinger now wants to undo. Schultz was at Reagan's elbow in Reykjavik when the president made his Strategic Defense Initiative the deal-breaker with Gorbachev. Their hoped-for agreement to abolish all nuclear weapons hung in the balance. Reagan had a moment of self doubt, and slipped a note to Shultz with the question, "Am I wrong?" Schultz, according to his own memoir, whispered, "No, you are right." Right to scuttle the dream of a nuclear free world. Even Nunn agreed then that the near deal on nukes would have been an "embarrassing example of American ineptitude." Perry, for his part, presided over the Pentagon's 1994 Nuclear Posture Review, which ordered the continuance of the anti-Soviet nuclear arsenal as a "hedge" against unnamed future threats from Russia. The threats never came, but the nukes remained. It is good news that officials who put terrible structures of thought and power in place want later to undo them. How much better it would be, though, if such wisdom came to them when they could act upon it. Colin Powell's authority today instructs the critics of the war. Too bad that authority did not prevent it. James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. His most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."

White House conspiracies are crumpling in public in the Libby Trial, despite pundits and WH downplaying.

Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 04 February 2007

In the days since Dick Cheney lost it on CNN, our nation's armchair shrinks have had a blast. The vice president who boasted of "enormous successes" in Iraq and barked "hogwash" at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer has been roundly judged delusional, pathologically dishonest or just plain nuts. But what else is new? We identified those diagnoses long ago. The more intriguing question is what ignited this particularly violent public flare-up.

The answer can be found in the timing of the CNN interview, which was conducted the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney's former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president's on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq. He knew that those revelations could cripple the White House's current campaign to escalate that war and foment apocalyptic scenarios about Iran. Scariest of all, he knew that he might yet have to testify under oath himself.

Mr. Cheney, in other words, understands the danger this trial poses to the White House even as some of Washington remains oblivious. From the start, the capital has belittled the Joseph and Valerie Wilson affair as "a tempest in a teapot," as David Broder of The Washington Post reiterated just five months ago. When "all of the facts come out in this case, it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great," Bob Woodward said in 2005. Or, as Robert Novak suggested in 2003 before he revealed Ms. Wilson's identity as a C.I.A. officer in his column, "weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger" are "little elitist issues that don't bother most of the people." Those issues may not trouble Mr. Novak, but they do loom large to other people, especially those who sent their kids off to war over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent uranium.

In terms of the big issues, the question of who first leaked Ms. Wilson's identity (whether Mr. Libby, Richard Armitage, Ari Fleischer or Karl Rove) to which journalist (whether Mr. Woodward, Mr. Novak, Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) has always been a red herring. It's entirely possible that the White House has always been telling the truth when it says that no one intended to unmask a secret agent. (No one has been charged with that crime.) The White House is also telling the truth when it repeatedly says that Mr. Cheney did not send Mr. Wilson on his C.I.A.-sponsored African trip to check out a supposed Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. (Another red herring, since Mr. Wilson didn't make that accusation in the first place.)

But if the administration is telling the truth on these narrow questions and had little to hide about the Wilson trip per se, its wild overreaction to the episode was an incriminating sign it was hiding something else. According to testimony in the Libby case, the White House went berserk when Mr. Wilson published his Op-Ed article in The Times in July 2003 about what he didn't find in Africa. Top officials gossiped incessantly about both Wilsons to anyone who would listen, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby conferred about them several times a day, and finally Mr. Libby, known as an exceptionally discreet White House courtier, became so sloppy that his alleged lying landed him with five felony counts.

The explanation for the hysteria has long been obvious. The White House was terrified about being found guilty of a far greater crime than outing a C.I.A. officer: lying to the nation to hype its case for war. When Mr. Wilson, an obscure retired diplomat, touched that raw nerve, all the president's men panicked because they knew Mr. Wilson's modest finding in Africa was the tip of a far larger iceberg. They knew that there was still far more damning evidence of the administration's W.M.D. lies lurking in the bowels of the bureaucracy.

Thanks to the commotion caused by the leak case, that damning evidence has slowly dribbled out. By my count we now know of at least a half-dozen instances before the start of the Iraq war when various intelligence agencies and others signaled that evidence of Iraq's purchase of uranium in Africa might be dubious or fabricated. (These are detailed in the timelines at frankrich.com/timeline.htm.) The culmination of these warnings arrived in January 2003, the same month as the president's State of the Union address, when the White House received a memo from the National Intelligence Council, the coordinating body for all American spy agencies, stating unequivocally that the claim was baseless. Nonetheless President Bush brandished that fearful "uranium from Africa" in his speech to Congress as he hustled the country into war in Iraq.

If the war had been a cakewalk, few would have cared to investigate the administration's deceit at its inception. But by the time Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed article appeared - some five months after the State of the Union and two months after "Mission Accomplished" - there was something terribly wrong with the White House's triumphal picture. More than 60 American troops had been killed since Mr. Bush celebrated the end of "major combat operations" by prancing about an aircraft carrier. No W.M.D. had been found, and we weren't even able to turn on the lights in Baghdad. For the first time, more than half of Americans told a Washington Post-ABC News poll that the level of casualties was "unacceptable."

It was urgent, therefore, that the awkward questions raised by Mr. Wilson's revelation of his Africa trip be squelched as quickly as possible. He had to be smeared as an inconsequential has-been whose mission was merely a trivial boondoggle arranged by his wife. The C.I.A., which had actually resisted the uranium fictions, had to be strong-armed into taking the blame for the 16 errant words in the State of the Union speech.

What we are learning from Mr. Libby's trial is just what a Herculean effort it took to execute this two-pronged cover-up after Mr. Wilson's article appeared. Mr. Cheney was the hands-on manager of the 24/7 campaign of press manipulation and high-stakes character assassination, with Mr. Libby as his chief hatchet man. Though Mr. Libby's lawyers are now arguing that their client was a sacrificial lamb thrown to the feds to shield Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby actually was - and still is - a stooge for the vice president.

Whether he will go to jail for his misplaced loyalty is the human drama of his trial. But for the country there are bigger issues at stake, and they are not, as the White House would have us believe, ancient history. The administration propaganda flimflams that sold us the war are now being retrofitted to expand and extend it.

In a replay of the run-up to the original invasion, a new National Intelligence Estimate, requested by Congress in August to summarize all intelligence assessments on Iraq, was mysteriously delayed until last week, well after the president had set his surge. Even the declassified passages released on Friday - the grim takes on the weak Iraqi security forces and the spiraling sectarian violence - foretell that the latest plan for victory is doomed. (As a White House communications aide testified at the Libby trial, this administration habitually releases bad news on Fridays because "fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday.")

A Pentagon inspector general's report, uncovered by Business Week last week, was also kept on the q.t.: it shows that even as more American troops are being thrown into the grinder in Iraq, existing troops lack the guns and ammunition to "effectively complete their missions." Army and Marine Corps commanders told The Washington Post that both armor and trucks were in such short supply that their best hope is that "five brigades of up-armored Humvees fall out of the sky."

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of Colin Powell's notorious W.M.D. pantomime before the United Nations Security Council, a fair amount of it a Cheney-Libby production. To mark this milestone, the White House is reviving the same script to rev up the war's escalation, this time hyping Iran-Iraq connections instead of Al Qaeda-Iraq connections. In his Jan. 10 prime-time speech on Iraq, Mr. Bush said that Iran was supplying "advanced weaponry and training to our enemies," even though the evidence suggests that Iran is actually in bed with our "friends" in Iraq, the Maliki government. The administration promised a dossier to back up its claims, but that too has been delayed twice amid reports of what The Times calls "a continuing debate about how well the information proved the Bush administration's case."

Call it a coincidence - though there are no coincidences - but it's only fitting that the Libby trial began as news arrived of the death of E. Howard Hunt, the former C.I.A. agent whose bungling of the Watergate break-in sent him to jail and led to the unraveling of the Nixon presidency two years later. Still, we can't push the parallels too far. No one died in Watergate. This time around our country can't wait two more years for the White House to be stopped from playing its games with American blood.