I'll be back

True here.

Cook County is looking good. Development is under control. Ya, there are issues but for now the peace of summer, the joy of Fish Pic, the Library Friends sale, the upcoming County Fair, and many another celebrations take center stage.

So, I'll be back. When there's something to debate or to do.

Cheers!

Power Without Limits - New York Times

Recent executive orders by the Bushco seem to be preparing the way to declare the United States Constitution and laws in abeyance while the Decider takes over. Don't believe it? Well, even the MSM (NY Times) has weighed in on this terrifying power grab.... Check it out:

Power Without Limits - New York Times:

70 reps, three from Minn., tell Bush no more dollars for war

Here's the text of a letter sent yesterday to The Shrub by 70 liberal members of Congress, including our own Jim Oberstar. A note of thanks might be in order.
True

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to inform you that we will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.

More than 3,600 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 26,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.

We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.

Sincerely,

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (CA); Rep. Barbara Lee (CA); Rep. Maxine Waters (CA); Rep. Ellen Tauscher (CA); Rep. Rush Holt (NJ); Rep. Maurice Hinchey (NY); Rep. Diane Watson (CA); Rep. Ed Pastor (AZ); Rep. Barney Frank (MA); Rep. Danny Davis (IL); Rep. John Conyers (MI); Rep. John Hall (NY); Rep. Bob Filner (CA); Rep. Nydia Velazquez (NY); Rep. Bobby Rush (IL); Rep. Charles Rangel (NY); Rep. Ed Towns (NY); Rep. Paul Hodes (NH); Rep. William Lacy Clay (MO); Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR); Rep. Albert Wynn (MD); Rep. Bill Delahunt (MA); Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC); Rep. G. K. Butterfield (NC); Rep. Hilda Solis (CA); Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY); Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY); Rep. Michael Honda (CA); Rep. Steve Cohen (TN); Rep. Phil Hare (IL); Rep. Grace Flores Napolitano (CA); Rep. Alcee Hastings (FL); Rep. James McGovern (MA); Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH); Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL); Rep. Julia Carson (IN); Rep. Linda Sanchez (CA); Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ); Rep. John Olver (MA); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (TX); Rep. Jim McDermott (WA); Rep. Ed Markey (MA); Rep. Chaka Fattah (PA); Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ); Rep. Rubin Hinojosa (TX); Rep. Pete Stark (CA); Rep. Bobby Scott (VA); Rep. Jim Moran (VA); Rep. Betty McCollum (MN); Rep. Jim Oberstar (MN); Rep. Diana DeGette (CO); Rep. Stephen Lynch (MA); Rep. Artur Davis (AL); Rep. Hank Johnson (GA); Rep. Donald Payne (NJ); Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (MO); Rep. John Lewis (GA); Rep. Yvette Clarke (NY); Rep. Neil Abercrombie (HI); Rep. Gwen Moore (WI); Rep. Keith Ellison (MN); Rep. Tammy Baldwin (WI); Rep. Donna Christensen (USVI); Rep. David Scott (GA); Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL); Lois Capps (CA); Steve Rothman (NJ); Elijah Cummings (MD); and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).

Congressman James L Oberstar -- National Bill Supports Minnesota Kids and Families

Good news from our great Rep. Oberstar:

Congressman James L Oberstar -- National Bill Supports Minnesota Kids and Families

The Earthquake That Screamed “NO NUKES!!!” - CommonDreams.org

If there are any folks in Boreal Land who still think nuclear energy is clean and safe, check out this post from Common Dreams today:

The Earthquake That Screamed “NO NUKES!!!” - CommonDreams.org

Mandela and ‘The Elders’ Aim to Save the World - CommonDreams.org

Enter the Elders, those wise and strong and truthful enough to perhaps save the planet:

Mandela and ‘The Elders’ Aim to Save the World - CommonDreams.org

The Politics of Fear - New York Times

It's deja vu all over again. Fake intelligence. Fool me once? Why would anybody believe anything the Bushcos say, especially when the pressure is turned up to bring the troops home from Iraq. The bin Laden- Iraq al Quaeda link has been thoroughly discredited despite the Cowboy Deciders repeated insistence that it is there. Now, they've caught the Missing Link? I don't think so.

The New York Times, hardly a bastion of progressive thought, even noticed the stagey coincidence:

The Politics of Fear - New York Times

Japan nuke plant leak worse than thought - Yahoo! News

Here's a late-breaking story that proves my point. "Worse than thought," Ha! Worse than admitted is more to the point.

Japan nuke plant leak worse than thought - Yahoo! News

Ice Nine

The so-called "clean" nuclear energy is a fraud perpetrated by the powerful energy industry and their well-paid Bushco apologists. The truth has been, would you believe, concealed from the public consistently over many years.

Nuclear power is the closest we have yet come to Ice Nine, that destroyer of life posited by dear Kurt Vonnegut: adding a molecule to ice enabled it to bond to every molecule of water, and guess what? Ice Nine took over everything.

True will be hammering the horrors and dangers of nuclear power home early and often from now on.

Beginning with this news story today:


Nuclear Power No Panacea, Critics Say - CommonDreams.org

Peace, peace and only peace

Shanti. That is Hindu for peace. The Shanti prayer calls for peace to all the beings and angels, all the herbs and shrubs, and for that peace to come to me. Shanti, shanti, shanti.
Here in Cook County we are very blessed with people who lavish love on our community, our lake, our woods and their precious bounty of beauty and abundance. "Locals" and newcomers alike have worked to preserve and cherish our assets: Grand Marais harbor, inland lakes and forests, the Boundary Waters and the Gunflint Trail. Tourism is our livelihood but it also is our passion: we want to spend our working hours sharing the treasures of the boreal forest and the waters with our guests.
In the past year we have collectively acted to protect and preserve our wetlands, our towns, our forests and our harbor. We have voted down every instance in which big development might overtake us: a super-sized marina, a monster Homeland project to criminalize our borders, gunfire on the lake, deep-pockets condo developers intent on transforming Grand Marais into Disney Gate World, and many another attack by big developers from the Twin Cities and the nation all looking for the big bucks.
Cook County, home of the best and the brightest although not the richest (except for the McMansion owners who post Keep Out signs and terrorize their neighbors), is for me. We give and give and give for the people and the place that we love.
But, what are we doing about the terrible evil that the Bush administration has loosed on the world? What are we doing to bring our soldier children home from a civil war where they are forced to kill innocent civilians and traumatized at far higher levels than earlier wars because of the moral muck in which they must participate?
There will be no peace or justice or health care or prosperity until this hideous and illegal war of aggression is brought to an end. Even so we will pay for its costs for generations to come. Even so we will have to rebuild Iraq, to dismantle the huge shadow network of mercenary soldiers that brings billions in profits to Halliburton, Blackwater and other no-bid contractors. We will have to withdraw our permanent bases and let the Iraqi people have their own oil revenue rather than "sharing" it with us. We will have to demand that the Congress take back the Constitution and restore our respect as a humane society in the rest of the world. We will have to turn our swords to plowshares.
Still, good people everywhere can rise to the occasion, just as the good people of Cook County take care of each other, so will others follow when we have made peace.

Let there be gardens

"Let a hundred flowers blossom,
Let a hundred schools of thoughts contend."
-Mao Tse Tung

How remarkable. The city Park and Recreation Board doesn't want gardens in Rec Park, despite pleas from our loyal summer residents that it would make the park more home-like and beautiful.
What's the big deal? Flowers are wonderful and even vegetables have a lot of charm to many folks. Are you the same guys that dug up the wetlands and filled them with garbage not so long ago?

In another life, in Minneapolis, True once got a citation from the city for "weeds" on account of a perennial border. Now residents of that city get "Blooming boulevard" awards for planting native prairie flowers, once known as weeds.

Hey, folks. Lighten up and let the flowers bloom and grow forever, like the edelweiss in The Sound of Music. Look at Harbor Park, planted by many many of us. People love it.

True

You are what you eat

Dear True,

EAT DEATH.

No, this is not a curse, or even a taunt from a vegetarian, although I am one. This is about eating nuked food. Yesterday I lunched with some special friends at the delightful Pie Place. While enjoying one another's company and the always fresh, always delicious food served up with friendliness in a gracious-home ambience, the subject of cooking summer meals came up.

I was bragging about how I could dish up a nutritious and delicious whole-grain bun Boca Burger with cheese and a side of corn on the cob in less than a minute in the microwave. High protein, high fiber, healthy food, yes? No, said my friends.

To backtrack a little, back in the early 1970's one of my yoga teachers who was also a homeopathic doc told us students that one day it would be understood by science how terribly damaging microwaves are. I believed him and for more than 25 years refused to have one of the darn things in my house. I changed my mind when my dad came to live with me because I could just nuke one of those frozen meals and he loved them. Still, I didn't cook with the dang contraption myself. It's only been in the last two or three years that I have lapsed. First, because I could so easily heat up tea and coffee without having it boil over. Then, just when I was in a big hurry, I might make a burrito with the touch of a button. Then, lo and behold, I discovered that tender vegetables can be achieved quickly and without boiling or stir-fry or steaming. And before I knew it I was a nukie junkie.

So, back to yesterday. My friends told me that recent studies have uncovered the horrible truth: microwaved food under Kirlian photography looks like a nuclear wasteland. Dead, in a horrible black shriveled shroud.

I believe them and I guess I really knew all the time that what looked so fresh and sweet really could not be, having had its molecules jiggled mercilessly with some kind of cosmic radiation. Shades of the desolate poisoned lands in Marion Zimmer Bradley's fantasy world, Darkover, left over from the Ages of Chaos where wars were fought with terrible weapons of mass destruction.

So. It's summer and yes, it is sometimes hot, even here on the North Shore. But it doesn't take a lot longer to cook your food on a grill, or stovetop, or even to roast your unshucked corn on the cob in the oven. Drag out the old crock pot for soups and sauces, or just simmer on the lowest flame on your back burner. Eat life-giving vegetables, fruits and plant proteins in all their summer bounty. Bon appetit!

Nancye Belding
Grand Marais

Congressman James L Oberstar -- Oberstar: Reports Show Bush Leadership Failing in Iraq

Oberstar votes for Iraq redeployment today. Read on:

Congressman James L Oberstar -- Oberstar: Reports Show Bush Leadership Failing in Iraq

Peace Pilgrims

Dear friends,

Take a few moments to read this day brightener--what a fresh, clean taste it leaves. I won't be abandoning my menagerie to walk the world for peace, though I do wish I could be walking with Cindy Sheehan towards Washington now.

But Peace Pilgrim puts me in mind of a world where all of us, wherever and whenever we walk, can think peace and speak peace person by person until every heart is touched. "All we are saying, is give peace a chance."

True

Peace Pilgrims - CommonDreams.org

Laura: A Yellow Rose in Texas

She’s the flower of White Southern Womanhood, our First Lady Laura Bush. A stand-by-your-man lady, even though she has gajillions more brain cells than her doofus cowboy dry drunk hubby who has delusions of bringing on Armageddon, and just might pull it off before he gets nabbed for his evil deeds and his reign of death and disaster. Still, she simpers along beside him, smiling and waving for every photo op.
She has barely uttered a peep about his disastrous policies for women or health so far in his six-year reign, except for a token wish that he might select a woman for the Supremes and some lip service to the downtrodden women of the Islamic world. WHICH had the net effect of furthering the Bozo’s Evil Caliphate proclamation.
But now, in search of a legacy, she comes on board for women’s heart health. She blindsides (apparently) the powerful American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) which has steadily lobbied for health care reform (meaning, against Bushco and cronies). She wangles a front-page story in the latest Bulletin, touting the amazing information that women need equal treatment with men for heart disease. Using that old Southern Charm she explains how she can’t really get about in public so she works out with her personal trainer and the White House exercise machines. God bless her, poor thing.
The AARP Bulletin compares Laura's crusade(?)with the projects taken on by former First Ladies, for example the Highway Beautification project of dear Lady Bird Johnson, God rest her soul. The thing is, all these other ladies decided early on what they would do and stuck to it.
And what about hubby’s supersizing support for the drug industry at the expense of seniors (aka Medicare Plan D)? Or his depriving millions of poor or low-income women and children from health access by cutting government subsidies AND caving to the big-insurance lobbies? What about that? No comment, if you please. Laura will think about it tomorrow. While she helps to put together the new presidential library, what there is of it after the classified secrets have been deleted.

Learn to speak your peace!

Subject: Speak Your Peace: The Civility Project

The Cook County Community Fund and the Lutsen-Tofte Tourism
Association invites the public to attend a presentation on "Speak Your Peace: The Civility Project", a project of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundations Millennium Group.

This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served!

Date: Wednesday, July 25

Time: 9:15 to 10:15 am

Place: Lutsen Resort Conference Room

Presenter: Leigh Mathison, Cook County Community Fund board member and local attorney

The focus of the Speak Your Peace Civility Project is to provide civil and respectful opportunities for people to present their views and discuss community issues and, thus, increase civic participation.

For more information on this project, visit www.dsaspeakyourpeace.org.

For more information on the Lutsen presentation, contact Sally Nankivell,
Lutsen-Tofte Tourism Association Executive Director, at 218-663-7688.

Another World Is Possible; Another USA is Necessary - CommonDreams.org

Another World Is Possible; Another USA is Necessary - CommonDreams.org

Reasons Not to GlowOn Not Jumping Out of The Frying Pan Into The Eternal Fires - CommonDreams.org

True is nearly as old as Woody Guthrie. Surely old enough to remember Chernobyl and angry NIMBY debates about nuclear waste disposal.

Shock and awe, to learn that some Sixties apostates ala Newt G and Gang are now trumpeting nuclear power as the "clean" energy solution. Not, not, not. Nuclear power is even more dirty than coal mining, even more invasive than carbon emissions, even more evil than the Iraq war for oil.

There is NO safe nuclear power, whether to nuke Iran with or to create radioactive peacetime waste that won't self-destruct for a zillion years. I would have thought that we might have learned by now the dreadful lessons of Hiroshima, But. Maybe not, since the Japs were the enemy. Does it make a difference that in the 1950's American civilians were the innocent subjects of military experiments in nuclear and chemical weapons in schools and neighborhoods? That some of these citizens, including one dear friend of True, have died or nearly died from the toxic results of these cruel games akin to pulling the wings off of butterflies?

Reasons Not to GlowOn Not Jumping Out of The Frying Pan Into The Eternal Fires - CommonDreams.org

A man's house is his Castle

As all readers must know, True puts everything in the shop window. So, many ignorant doofuses ask, why worry if he's being spied upon at home? THAT is, if he has nothing to hide.
Whether I choose to hide anything or not isn't the point. The point is what living in the land of the free is all about. Has anybody under the age of 60 actually studied the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

For example, take a look at the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Caroline Kennedy wrote a book about it, called The Right to Privacy. People have fought and died for it. True, being actually educated in American history, knows all this. What do you know? For example, do you know that every phone conversation you have, every email you write, and every Internet search you do is recorded in cyberspace? Or, that the government demands that Internet and phone providers save this information for you regardless of any little hitch like a warrant for cause?

Friend, do you care? Do you ever dream that you are naked in public, or using a public toilet without a door, or dragged away screaming by the Homeland Honcho Patrol? Do you mind that the metaphorical equivalent of your dream is what the neocons and their flunkie Dumb Dubya have established in America? Yes, HAVE established. That's what it is....Think about it.

I know many people who don't express their opinions on the phone or Internet out of fear. I am not one of them: let the spooks arrest me and drag me off to extraordinary rendition so long as somebody takes care of Katie, Sophie, Leo, Lulu and Sugar in my absence. Nobody will make me shut up.

BUT, what "bugs" me (pun intended) is:

• That my house is not any longer my Castle. It is subject to satellite surveillance of my every move, of disappearing me as an enemy combatant even though my little companions depend on me to protect them.
  
• Also, that the self-righteous, indecently rich, ultra right wing neocon hypocrites and their fat cat lobbyists and their lawless multinational corporations have in only seven years destroyed all that the Bills of Rights protects, all that the Constitution provides for against unchecked power grabs and even all that the legislative and judicial branches can decree (via Signing Statements and Executive Privilege).
• That you (we?) the people don't really give a flying f--k.

We get the government we deserve, ultimately. The modern robber barons, unlike those of the previous century, COULD be stopped. They could be called to account for their high crimes and misdemeanors against humanity, for their depradations of the planet, for their wars against innocent civilians, for their diversion of public interest funds to private gazillionaires. They could be impeached, or voted out of power, or shamed by a truth-telling media. THAT's why True keeps telling the truth.

Here, my dear readers, is a story you surely want to read:

Experts: FBI Would Skirt the Law With Phone Records Program

It's good because it's good

Recently my nephew Eric turned eight years old and for the occasion I gave him some removable tattoos and $30 in cash. By email he sent his thanks. He was saving the money towards a Wii, whatever that is, which he was sure he would be getting soon. "It's good because it's good," he wrote about my gift.
A couple of days ago, a reader accused me of being "Syndical" in response to my post, "America the Beautiful." I interpreted this to mean a combination of sinful and cynical. The post was about my longing for an idealized America and my frustation and grief at how the Bush administration has systematically destroyed all the best. I'm a Woody Guthrie kind of guy, a "This Land is Your Land" sing-a-longer. I'm a peacenik, a tree-hugger, a Buddhist and a vegetarian. But not a cynic or a sinner, I hope. My heroes are Cindy Sheehan and the Dalai Lama, who are just so good because they are good.
Anonymous and my nephew got me to thinking. There's a lot of stuff in Grand Marais and Cook County that is good because it's good.
For one, our transparent and responsive City Council. It's such a relief to know that they represent the voters, that they resist demands for inappropriate development, that if they have a conflict of interest they don't vote. I don't have to agree with every single action or vote to rest easy, because their interest is the public interest. Thanks, City Council!
Two, we are so blessed to have Harbor Friends. Always vigilant, these watchdogs caught the nasty infill of two harbor wetlands sites. The city is even now removing the landfill and restoring the wetlands. Thanks! I don't think it is too Syndical to ask who threw assorted junk in the first place. This has not been mentioned in any press reports. I am just curious.
Hey! Snowmobiles without mufflers skipping all over the harbor on the 4th of July? Well, as my mom used to say, that's why they make chocolate and vanilla. Sometimes a little live-and-let-live goes a long way.
Three, I am so delighted by the joint city-county decision to hire a housing coordinator. The Housing Study (previously reported on True) is a most excellent document and the joint decision to implement its findings deserves high praise. Everything we care about, we who live here, depends on the availability of housing for the young families, the working poor, the year-round residents, the senior citizens and retirees who give and have given so much to our history, culture, arts and well-being.
Four, WTIP continues to surpass itself in its outstanding coverage of local news. I dips me hat. Volunteer-driven, it still manages to achieve world-class coverage. BBC news every morning? You don't even get that on MPR. Hint: It's their fund drive. Please join up.
We are so lucky to live here. But having these fabulous resources: City Council, joint city-county affordable housing advocates, Harbor Friends and amazing radio coverage isn't just about luck. It's about people who care enough to make a difference.
True

Poll: Majorities say income gap too wide - Yahoo! News

Despite union-busting, minimum-wage opposition, worrisome declines in employee health care coverage, outsourcing staff jobs to avoid paying fair wages or benefits, and sending those outsourced jobs to impoverished third-world companies, corporate execs continue to see lavish salary and golden parachute increases. Is it appropriate for a CEO to earn 1,000 times what the average worker makes? Hmph. A CEO taking a dump gets paid what his lackies receive for a week or month's income. Do you think that is fair?

Poll: Majorities say income gap too wide - Yahoo! News

‘No More War’ Float Ruffles Iron Range - CommonDreams.org

Close to home: Veterans for Peace on the Iron Range found their float "No More War" banned in Virginia. Other nearby towns expressed similar concerns. Read the story here:

‘No More War’ Float Ruffles Iron Range - CommonDreams.org

Through Others’ Eyes - New York Times

"Oh what a giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us."
Robert Burns

Through Others’ Eyes - New York Times

America the Beautiful

"When you look at firecrackers up in the sky
Remember that first Fourth of July."

This maudlin couplet is the only part of a poem written by me, age 12, that I can remember. It's the first time I was published, in an upstate New York weekly, the Monroe County Gazette (not counting the "Brentwood News," hand-written and delivered to my neighbors in the Cincinnati suburb of Brentwood Village when I was all of nine or ten).

I mention the verse because as a child I loved the 4th of July, the pageantry of the firemen and Masons on parade in Highland Mills, New York, the rousing patriotic speech by my grandfather the mayor, and the fabulous midway games never seen in Cincinnati 'burbs. Simple times, good times, happy times.

BUT. Skipping ahead 51 years, moving halfway across America to Cook County, Minnesota, and much changed from that polyanna child, I am not a patriot anymore--whatever that much-abused word means now after being mangled and disgraced by the criminals who have plunged the USA into a war of aggression for oil, made us hated all over the world, tortured citizens as well as the so-called "enemy combatants" not recognized by any court, listened to our phone calls, read our emails, caged us out of voting, desroyed our environment and the fundamental protections for just-plain-folks in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.... the list goes on. And on and on and on. These guys have to be called to account. They don't have the right to trash our nation on behalf of the ultra-rich. They don't get to do that.

No, I'm not a patriot, nor even a Christian now. I don't pledge allegiance to any flag, or any other thing in this world, and especially not to "one nation, under God." I am a citizen only of Mother Earth, a follower only of the Dalai Lama, who teaches: "My religion is kindness."

I spend hours every day doing the small things I can to bring more peace and harmony to the planet. I work steadily but civilly against war, torture, spying, caging, media conglomeration, abuses of workers and women and children, global warming, cruelty to animals, rainforest destruction and most every other little thing including corporate profiteering that "my" country stands for under BushCo in the opinion of the rest of the world. Everybody hates us. Happy 4th of July, citizens of the land of the free!

Yet again, BUT... There IS something here that I love: America the Beautiful, the land (spacious skies and fruited plains) and the dream: gleaming alabaster cities populated by kindly and noble folks, a shining brotherhood of goodness stretching from sea to sea. A "Patriot's Dream," if you will, dreamed in better times but not forgotten, at least not by me. Yes, THIS America I love and cherish.

True

This Land Is Your Land

In honor of the 4th of July:

This Land Is Your Land - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bill Quigley | Injustice in Jena as Nooses Hang From the "White Tree"

Freedom for all? Born on the Fourth of July? Hmmm, not if you are black and living in Mississippi. Children are being threatened with lynching, and condemned to life in jail when they try to win in a fair fight that was unprovoked according to many witnesses.
Must the underclass simply lie down and serve as slaves, more than two centuries after slaves were liberated? Oyez, okay, according to the Buschco hubris supported by the unconsionable rich who count coup with every peon destroyed.
Wake up people, wake up and stand up for your brothers and sisters in chains. Like Jesus did.

Bill Quigley | Injustice in Jena as Nooses Hang From the "White Tree"

Congressman James L Oberstar -- Opinion: Oberstar Asks for State Cooperation on Mining Related Cancer

Read this excellent op-ed piece by Rep. Oberstar about protecting taconite workers against cancer:

Congressman James L Oberstar -- Opinion: Oberstar Asks for State Cooperation on Mining Related Cancer

Vicki offers hope, knowledge, ideas and a Qigong group for breast cancer survivors

Dear True,

Avoiding breast cancer may seem like being at the mercy of shell game hucksters. Sadly, it is Just life. The more we find out about this disease, the more baffling it can seem. But really, lots of new meds and advances are lowering the death rates after breast cancer diagnoses and raising the odds for survival.

In my case, for example, I received and am still receiving Herceptin infusions because I was "lucky" enough to have the HER2 receptive cancer cells in my breast tumor. The downside, those types do grow fast. The upside, Herceptin doubles the odds of survival. Herceptin has even been shown to be effective against non-HER2 receptive cancers. My oncologist calls it one of the handfuls of "miracles" he has seen in his decades of practice. And if that didn't make my day, there now is another drug that will zap the HER2 receptor cells should Herceptin not do a 100% job.

That is my story. For every type of breast cancer, there is another.
All differ slightly, but all have similarities. For one, there are things anyone can do to improve their chances - things that cost nothing but time. Last month I took a two-day workshop in the Chinese activity called Qigong (pronounced Chee Gong) at the Cancer Center at the Duluth Clinic. This activity may do as much as Herceptin in keeping cancer at bay. It is easy and makes me feel calm and yet energetic. Check it out by Googling Qigong cancer clinics.

I have the DVD and would like to form a weekly group in the county if anyone is interested. (free of course!)

As for True's frustration over MRIs not being routinely done to screen for breast cancer, I just don't have an opinion as to whether or not they should be done, even if free. For it is a fact that this disease can and will occur even if you throw every diagnostic device and method known to man and dog at it. Vigilance - meaning breast exams monthly and baseline mammograms, plus insistence on an ultrasound should one suspect a doctor's assessment of a lump - is the best defense against breast cancer. Still, you might get it.

If you do, stick with the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins web sites, do what your doc tells you, be yourself (and that does NOT mean being little miss sunshine) and be amazed at how quickly you will heal and be done with the treatments. I was and am.
And I even got naturally curly hair out of the deal!

Love to all transcender-survivors
Vicki Biggs-Anderson
Grand Marais

We Want Our Humanity Represented! Impeachment for Torture, Now! - CommonDreams.org - Sent Using Google Toolbar

True Blue wants the USA to survive the depradations of the Bush & Cheney coup (takeover) that feeds the new empire ruled by corporate CEOs.

Please, friends, gird up your loins,summon your courage,and look the BushCo evil in the face. Just say no. Stand firm for human rights, peace and justice. Many and many of us are watching from the wings.

True

Published on Sunday, July 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
We Want Our Humanity Represented! Impeachment for Torture, Now!
by Hank Edson
There is no shortage of reasons why we should impeach President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. Their crimes are so extensive and so egregious that it is hard to find time to grasp just how deliberate their pursuit has been over the past several years. Today’s topic, torture and how impeachment for torture is necessary to the representation of humanity in our democracy, does not even cover the subset of impeachable offenses: war crimes. By my count, this subset contains six separate impeachable war crimes committed by Bush and Cheney: (1) the supreme war crime of commencing a war of aggression, (2) torture, (3) extraordinary rendition, (4) termination of habeas corpus, (5) inhumane weaponry (such as daisy cutters, depleted uranium shells, and phosphorus bombs), and (6) the usurpation of Iraqi self-determination in economic and political affairs protected under the Geneva Conventions. If every America could take just fifteen minutes to read nine or ten pages telling the story of Bush and Cheney’s willful commitment to torture, it would go far to reorient the mindset in our country that has so passively accepted conduct by our leadership that is absolutely offensive to our values, aspirations, and responsibilities as a democratic people. With hope for such a transformation in our public discourse, I offer this summary of one of the most disgraceful episodes of a disgraceful presidency.

White House Cowboys and Dungeon Masters

In 1996, Congress passed the War Crimes Act, which made it a criminal act to violate the ban against torture and cruel of degrading treatment found in the Geneva Conventions. The United States ratified the Geneva Conventions in 1955. As a result of congressional ratification, the conventions already carried the force of law in the United States without the need for the 1996 War Crimes Act to make the government’s use of torture illegal.[1] Notwithstanding this doubly clear statement of law, five days after 9/11 Vice President Dick Cheney was already mentally adding dungeons to the defense assessment the Neo-Conservative think tank, Project for a New American Century, had prepared for him for use in installing the U.S. industrial-arms complex throughout the Middle East.

On September 16, 2001, Cheney told Tim Russert on Meet the Press,

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side…a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies…it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.” [2]

Juvenile George Bush took up his Vice President’s demented, but dead serious advice with gusto, telling his then-counter-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke and his then-Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,

“I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”[3]

What penance will America have to pay for placing such a man in its highest office?

Building the Legal Shield

As former CIA analyst Ray McGovern writes, “‘Dark-side’ operations, using ‘any means at our disposal’ - like, say, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ - by law require a ‘finding’ signed by the president.” [4] To protect himself in the event this “finding” was improper, Bush called upon his counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who provided a January 25, 2002 memo to the president authored by Cheney’s counsel, David Addington. The memo described as “quaint” and “obsolete” a number of provisions of the Geneva Conventions relating to prisoners of war. The memo also concluded that there was a “reasonable basis in law” that Bush could avoid any future criminal prosecution for violating the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996. [5]

Secretary of State Powell, however, disagreed with the advice and inserted the following warning in Gonzales’ January 25, 2002 memo:

“A determination that the GPW [Geneva Convention of Prisoners of War] does not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could undermine US military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.”

The next day, Powell wrote his own memo, adding that abandoning the Geneva Conventions would “undermine public support among critical allies [and] reverse over a century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops.” [6]

Powell’s objections, however, were fruitless. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed the memorandum ordering our armed forces in the subtlest of language “to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.” The qualification, “to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity,” meant: “when you get an order to torture, do it.” As with so many of the outrages in the Bush administration, the author of the torture memo, Addington, was later promoted for his good work to take over as Cheney’s Chief of Staff when Lewis Libby was indicted. Addington’s legal work was later condemned by 130 of the nation’s most respected jurists, including twelve federal judges and eight former American Bar Association presidents for failing in his “high obligation to defend the Constitution.”[7]

The Administrative Base for Torture

Once the legal shield had been put in place to permit the White House to order torture, the next step was to give the order, but to do it in such a way that the order would be impossible to trace. After the Iraq invasion, it was the man who General Tommy Franks called “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth,” Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, who was called upon to do the dirty work. His office was given the responsibility of planning the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq.

True to the familiar pattern of White House methodology, Journalist Jim Lobe describes this decision as “effectively exclude[ing] input from Iraqi experts from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and even from the Iraqi-American community, who had participated in a mammoth project that anticipated most of the problems occupation authorities have since encountered.”[8]

Working in Feith’s office at this time was Stephen Cambone, who was instrumental in transferring Major General Geoffrey Miller from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to Abu Ghraib prison. Lobe reports that Miller “brought high-pressure interrogation tactics barred by the Geneva Conventions with him from Guantanamo” and that Newsweek, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times all reported that “top officials in the Pentagon, acting on the advice of civilian lawyers, authorized a reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions to permit tougher methods of interrogation of prisoners of war.”[9] It was no doubt this new administration of a “torture policy” that led Secretary of State Colin Powell to call Feith’s operation the “Gestapo Office.”[10]

Despite Powell’s continued opposition, the new interrogation techniques were approved in April 2003. According to Lobe, senior Pentagon officials simultaneously approved excluding JAG officers, who normally are present to ensure the Geneva Conventions are followed. During this time, Scott Horton, a former senior JAG officer then serving as chairman of the committee on International Human Rights of the New York City Bar Association was contacted by JAG officers disturbed about the new policy. Lobe writes that “[a]ccording to Horton, the JAG officers identified the main forces behind loosening the rules as Feith and the Pentagon’s general counsel, William Haynes, another political appointee.”[11]

The “Enhanced” Techniques of a “few Bad Apples”

On the ground in Iraq, as many as fifty thousand men and women were being jammed into Abu Ghraib at a time. The cells were twelve-by-twelve and, according to veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, were “little more than human holding pits.”[12] After the Iraq invasion, Rumsfeld ordered that a secret Pentagon interrogation unit dedicated to collecting intelligence about al-Qaeda be assigned responsibility for interrogating prisoners in Iraq. Hersh wrote, “According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, [the program] ‘encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.’” Hersh further reported in that anonymous military and intelligence sources indicated that Rumsfeld approved the use of interrogation tactics implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

Specifically, special “biscuit teams,” as the soldier call them, staffed with psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians knowledgeable about Arab cultures would create conditions specifically designed to inflict maximum psychological pain within the cultural parameters of their prisoner’s psychology. Thus, American soldiers were instructed to make use of deeply seated religious taboos, their prisoner’s cultural anxiety caused by aggressive dogs, and culturally specific forms of humiliation to torture prisoners of war under their charge. Soldiers threatened naked prisoners with attack dogs. They used injections, suppositories, and other “techniques” to make the prisoners chained to the floor of their cells lose control of their bowels. Some prisoners they wiped with fake menstrual blood. Female interrogators questioned men forced to stand naked before them.

A former specialist in a military intelligence battalion, Tony Lagouranis has spoken openly about interrogations techniques he used in Abu Ghraib, Al Asad Airfield, and other locations in Iraq through out 2004, which he admitted were torture. The techniques he used included the use of dogs, waterboarding and prolonged stress positions. At Al Asad Airfield, he witnessed prisoners being shackled and hung from an upright bed frame welded to the wall. Lagouranis says these techniques “take a healthy guy and you turn him into a cripple, at least for a period of time.” Lagouranis, who reported the detainee abuses, only participated in techniques that “were technically legal.” Lagouranis told one reporter, “I started realizing that most of the prisoners were innocent. We were torturing people for not reason. I started getting really angry and really remorseful and by the time I got back I completely broke down.”[13]

Joseph Polermo writes:

“They bombarded them with loud music for days at a time and kept them under fluorescent lights. Other practices included: ‘Harsh heat or cold, withholding food; hooding for days at a time; naked isolation in cold, dark cells for more than thirty days; and “stress positions” designed to subject detainees to rising levels of pain.”[14]

General Antonio M. Taguba’s report on the Abu Ghraib scandal found repeated instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” including:

“Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall of his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”[15]

We all saw the pictures: the pyramids of naked bodies, the forced masturbation in front of female guards, the hooded figure with fake electrodes hooked to his finger tips, the smiling young girl with the snarling dog at leash’s end.

The lawyer of one of the enlisted men court marshaled because of the scandal complained of the absence of accountability up the command chain:

“Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?” [16]

All told, seven soldiers were convicted for participating in the torture; one was sentenced to ten years in prison. Whatever the culpability of these grunt soldiers was, these soldiers were committed legally and culturally to a chain of command that did not take lightly unscripted departures from routine duties, explicit orders, and the military’s code of honor. The claim that the torture was but the act of “a few bad apples,” not only defies the overwhelming evidence that such conduct was endorsed, encouraged, and engineered with White House knowledge, but is also a completely unrealistic portrayal of the psychology of enlisted servicemen and women.

It turns out that the photos we all saw were staged by “contract interrogators” working for Titan Corporation, hired under the Rumsfeld Doctrine of privatized war. The photos were to be used as psychological intimidation tools in future interrogations.[17] The use of civilian contractors served to put another layer of insulation between the high command and the troops being blamed, as the civilian contractors are not accountable under the same chain of command as the M.P.’s who were court marshaled were.

The Dungeon Master and the Scapegoat

The highest-ranking military officer reprimanded because of the torture scandal was Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the first female to ever command soldiers in a war zone-a fact that ought to be suspicious in and of itself.

Karpinski, who had never run a prison system, was given command of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, as Seymour Hersh points out, “like her, had not training in handling prisoners.”[18] She would eventually be demoted to Colonel because of the torture revelations.

When Doug Feith and Stephen Cambone got Two Star Major General Geoffrey Miller transferred from Guananamo Bay to Abu Ghraib, Miller told Karpinski that he was going to “Gitmo-ize” the operation and use the M.P.s to assist the interrogators to enhance interrogations. The M.P.’s, however, were under Karpinski’s command, whereas interrogators were answerable to the commander of the Military Intelligence Brigade.

Karpinski says, “I explained to him that the M.P.s were not trained in any kind of interrogation operations, and he told me that he wanted me to give him Abu Ghraib, because that’s the location he selected.”[19] Essentially, Miller was going to misuse untrained M.P.s under someone else’s command to insulate himself from the legal consequences of torturing prisoners.

Miller focused his interrogation operation in Cell Blocks 1A of Abu Ghraib, which he put under the charge of Colonel Pappas. Meanwhile, General Sanchez, who was responsible for the entire Iraqi command ordered General Karpinski to Camp Victory near the Iranian border. Karpinski said, “He wanted me away from the situation. He wanted me away from the possibility of finding out about what was going on in interrogations. So he incrementally moved me farther away, took Abu Ghraib away from me, then moved me out of Baghdad completely.” When the scandal broke, however, it would be Karpinski who was targeted by the higher command to take the blame.[20]

Karpinski told journalist Amy Goodman about the first news she got of torture being conducted at her own prison:

About the situation at Abu Ghraib, I was first informed by an email that I received on classified-what they call “classified traffic.” I opened it up late one night on the 12th of January 2004. And it was from the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division. He sent me an email and said, “Ma’am, I just want to make you aware, I’m going into brief the C.G.,” meaning General Sanchez, “on the progress of the investigation at Abu Ghraib. This involves the allegations of abuse and the photographs.” That was the first I heard of it.

I did not receive that email or phone call or a message from General Sanchez himself, who would ultimately attempt to hold me fully responsible for this, but from the C.I.D. Commander. And I was alarmed at just that short email. I was not in Baghdad at the time. I was at another location very close to the Iranian border, so we made arrangements to leave at the crack of dawn to drive down to Abu Ghraib to see what we could find out about this ongoing investigation and went through the battalion over to Cell Block 1A. The people who would normally be working on any shift were not working. The sergeant that I spoke to said that their records had been seized by the investigators, and they started a new log to account for prisoners, make sure that their meals were on time, those kin of things, and he pointed out a memo that was posted on a column just outside of their small administrative office. And the memorandum was signed by the Secretary of Defense…by Donald Rumsfeld. And said-it discussed interrogation techniques that were authorized. It was one page. It talked about stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of music, disrupting sleep patterns, those kind of techniques. But there was a handwritten note out to the side. And this was a copy. It was a photocopy of the original, I would imagine. But it was unusual that an interrogation memorandum would be posted inside of a detention cell block, because interrogations were not conducted in the cell block.[21]

The handwritten note, in the same script as Rumsfeld’s signature, said: “Make sure this happens.” Essentially, Rumsfeld gave an order to Karpinski’s untrained M.P.s to apply “enhanced techniques” that were, at best, only to be applied by the trained “Intelligence Brigade” under a separate command. The order, however, was never passed through General Karpinski.

Rumsfeld, Feith, Cambone, and Miller had “Gitmo-ized” Abu-Ghraib and when they got caught, they blamed the first and only female war zone commander, who they had kept completely out of the loop. Karpinski confirmed that the M.P.s understood the memorandum to come from Rumsfeld, himself. Karpinski further explained that Rumsfeld had also ordered some prisoners to be held without a prisoner number or notation in the prisoner database-omissions which violate the Geneva Conventions. Karpinski says that on several occasions prisoners fell into this category of “ghost detainees.” According to the ACLU, there is documentary evidence that at least 21 detainees were murdered while in detention as a result of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, but of course, we cannot know how many undocumented prisoners may have been murdered as well.[22]

Although Karpinski took responsibility for violating the Geneva Conventions in allowing ghost prisoners to be kept undocumented in the prison database, she says she also protested to the prison legal advisor, Colonel Warren, when one such prisoner, prisoner “Triple X,” was ordered by Rumsfeld to be held in secrecy: “It’s a violation. You have to put people on the database. And how much longer are we going to be held responsible for him? You take control of him. If you want to violate a Geneva Convention, that’s up to you, but I don’t want to keep him in one of our camps this way.”

Karpinski asserts that responsibility for the torturing that occurred at Abu Ghraib ought “to start at the very top, and the original memorandum directing interrogation…” which Bush signed and that the M.P.s who were court marshaled were “unfairly and unjustly held accountable for all of this, as if they designed these techniques, as if Linddie England deployed with a dog collar and a dog leash.”[23]

The Department of Defense Investigates Itself; Bush Does Nothing

When the torture scandal broke in the Press, Rumsfeld appointed a four-person commission to investigate. All four members of the commission were members of the Defense Policy Board, the private advisory board that played an unprecedented role in influencing the decision to go to war and that assisted in the manipulation of evidence presented to the public and the United Nations about the dangers presented by Saddam Hussein. Two of the members of the investigative commission were also past Secretaries of Defense-part of the military-arms complex old-boy network unlikely to place blame on a fellow Secretary of Defense.

Predictably, the commission exonerated the three senior most senior officers responsible for prisoner interrogation, Rumsfeld, Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and Major General George Fay. Instead, the commission concluded that ‘freelancing’ guards on the night watch were responsible for the torture, not any effort orchestrated from higher up to collect more information from prisoners.[24] Human Rights Watch criticized the commission’s report for failing to look into the connection between the torture and Rumsfeld’s approval of interrogation techniques that intentionally used pain, humiliation and abuse of prisoners.”[25] Former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman argues, “President Bush failed to ensure a full investigation and to see that the responsible parties, including higher-ups were held accountable. These failures are impeachable offenses.”[26]

Torture’s Lobbyist

Meanwhile, Congress decided that since President Bush did not seem to understand the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996, it was necessary in 2005 to pass a new law, once more clearly outlawing torture. When the senate passed the McCain amendment banning torture by a definitive majority of 91 to 9, Cheney proved himself a national embarrassment by lobbying Senator McCain, hard to exempt the C.I.A. Of course, McCain is a man who had personally endured torture as a prisoner of war in the same Vietnam War, which as a young man Cheney promoted, but avoided serving in by obtaining numerous deferments.

Torture’s Anti-Democratic Authoritarian Puppet

When both houses passed the McCain amendment without Cheney’s exemption, President Bush added one of his over 1,000 signing statements to it, declaring that the act of signing the bill into law did not mean that he was legally bound to follow the new law. In this case, Bush used his signing statement to reserve the right to use torture if he thought it was necessary for national security.[27] Thus, after three iterations of an absolute prohibition against torture passed by the legislative branch and signed by the President-once in the ratification of the Geneva Conventions in 1955, again in the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996, and a third time in the 2005 McCain anti-torture amendment-George W. Bush still persisted in his determination to use torture in defiance of the law.

Accountability in the White House

In the final assessment, we have Donald Rumsfeld signing memos authorizing violations of the Geneva Conventions and running out of the Pentagon a deliberate effort to expand interrogation techniques to include illegally cruel and degrading treatment specifically developed by the so-called “biscuit teams.” Under Rumsfeld, we have Doug Feith’s “Gestapo office,” in which Stephen Cambone orchestrates the transfer of Major General Miller to Abu Ghraib to get M.P.s outside Miller’s chain of command to assist in the use torture techniques in Iraq previously developed at the infamous Guantanemo Bay detention facility.

We have the pathologically authoritarian Vice President Dick Cheney declaring on national television just five days after the national trauma of the September 11th attacks, “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side… without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies… any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”[28] Then after revelations of torture, murder, and perversion cause worldwide revulsion toward the United States and after congress passes a completely unnecessary third law to again outlaw torture, still Cheney continues to lobby obsessively the law’s author for an exception that would allow torture by the CIA to continue.

And finally, we have an incredibly juvenile and himself, psychologically manipulated puppet, president George W. Bush who takes up his Vice President’s demented, but dead serious advice with gusto, telling his then-counter-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke and his then-Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”[29] Then after the congress has passed the third and completely unnecessary prohibition against torture, Bush goes on to add to the law a signing statement declaring his intention to disregard the law whenever he sees fit.

We Want Our Humanity Represented!

After all these facts are reported in the press, still we have Nancy Pelosi saying, “Impeachment is off the table,” and “the American people want congress to get to work,” not to engage in “partisan struggles.” I beg to differ. The American people want a process for accountability when the President of the United States abuses the power and reputation the American people gave him to torture human beings in violation of three separate legal acts, not to mention the principle set forth in the 8th Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. The American people want their humanity represented and their humanity lies in the application of the democratic process that prevents elected leaders from abusing their power. Passing a law in congress has done nothing to stop Bush’s abuse of power. Getting “to work” is not what we, the people, elected a Democratic congress to do in 2006. We can get by without anti-flag burning amendments and new labels for DVDs. What we cannot do without is an impeachment of a president who willfully defies congress for the purpose of torturing human beings.

As the Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh says:

“If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.”[30]

The balance of power in our democracy, however, is not defined by the law in and of itself, but by exercise of the law by those with a legal claim. Thus, under the Constitutional framework that supports our democracy, the limits of the commander-in-chief’s power are ultimately defined by the exercise of the right of impeachment. By failing to exercise the people’s legal claim against the vice president and president, Congress is letting the vice-president and president seize a despot’s hold over our humanity. This is not a moment in history for simply getting to work; it is the moment for dropping everything and making a stand for who we really are.

Hank Edson is an author, attorney, and activist located in the San Francisco Bay Area. His blog, “MP3 - My Politics and Progressive Perspective” can be found at: http://hankedson.squarespace.com

[1] Elizabeth Holtzman, “Calling Nancy Pelosi: The People’s Case for Impeaching Bush,” The Washington Spectator, November 14, 2006, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1114-22.htm.

[2] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[3] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[4] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[5] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[6] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[7] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[8] Jim Lobe, “Pentagon’s Feith Again at Center of Disaster,” Inter Press Service, May 20, 2004 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0520-02.htm.

[9] Jim Lobe, “Pentagon’s Feith Again at Center of Disaster,” Inter Press Service, May 20, 2004 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0520-02.htm.

[10] Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, (New York, Simon & Schuster 2004), p. 292.

[11] Jim Lobe, “Pentagon’s Feith Again at Center of Disaster,” Inter Press Service, May 20, 2004 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0520-02.htm.

[12] Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, May 10, 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact?printable=true.

[13] Tara McKelvey, “We Were Torturing People For No Reason,” The International Herald Tribune, March 29, 2007, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/29/166.

[14] Joseph Palermo, “Bush’s Shame: From “Buscuit” Teams to PTSD,” CommonDreams.org, March 20, 2007, http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0320-28.htm.

[15] Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, May 10, 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact?printable=true.

[16] Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, May 10, 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact?printable=true.

[17] Amy Goodman, “Col. Janis Karpinski, the Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions But Says the Blame ‘Goes All the Way to the Top,” Democracy Now!, October 26, 2005, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10-/26/1423248.

[18] Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, May 10, 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa-fact?printable=true.

[19] Amy Goodman, “Col. Janis Karpinski, the Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions But Says the Blame ‘Goes All the Way to the Top,” Democracy Now!, October 26, 2005, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10-/26/1423248.

[20] Amy Goodman, “Col. Janis Karpinski, the Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions But Says the Blame ‘Goes All the Way to the Top,” Democracy Now!, October 26, 2005, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10-/26/1423248.

[21] Amy Goodman, “Col. Janis Karpinski, the Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions But Says the Blame ‘Goes All the Way to the Top,” Democracy Now!, October 26, 2005, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10-/26/1423248.

[22] Amy Goodman, “Col. Janis Karpinski, the Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions But Says the Blame ‘Goes All the Way to the Top,” Democracy Now!, October 26, 2005, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10-/26/1423248.

[23] Amy Goodman, “Col. Janis Karpinski, the Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions But Says the Blame ‘Goes All the Way to the Top,” Democracy Now!, October 26, 2005, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10-/26/1423248.

[24] Chris Shumway, “Rumsfeld’s Torture Panel Clears Rumsfeld,” The New Standard, August 26, 2004, http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shumway.php?articleid=3450.

[25] Chris Shumway, “Rumsfeld’s Torture Panel Clears Rumsfeld,” The New Standard, August 26, 2004, http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shumway.php?articleid=3450.

[26] Elizabeth Holtzman, “Calling Nancy Pelosi: The People’s Case for Impeaching Bush,” The Washington Spectator, November 14, 2006, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1114-22.htm.

[27] Phil Worden, “Has Bush Committed Impeachable Acts?,” The Bangor Daily News, April 30, 2007, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/30/875/print/

[28] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[29] Ray McGovern, “Cheney and Fried Rice in Hot Water,” CommonDreams.org, December 10, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/1210-27.htm.

[30] “About John Yoo’s Torture Memo,” The National Lawyer’s Guild, Boalt Hall Chapter, http://nlg.boalt.org/Yoo.html.