t r u t h o u t | Bush, Musharraf, Ahmadinejad Least Trusted Leaders

t r u t h o u t | Bush, Musharraf, Ahmadinejad Least Trusted Leaders

True laughed out loud, an uncommon behavior in these precarious latter days of Worst President Ever, who is however SO OVER.
Here's the funny (really, not so funny) news: That a survey of people in 20 countries found Dubya the Decider the 3rd WORST in terms of trust. Who outranked him? Number one, Musharraf, that Pakastani dictator who everybody but Bushco and the neocons love to hate, with only 18 percent trust rate. Number two, that tricky fellow Ahmadinejab of Iran, who DARES to challenge the American Empire and courts nuclear war with his defiance., with an actual 22 percent trust rate (Noted here: the MSM press use "defiant" to undermine a person, as was done by AP today in calling Obama "defiant" because he actually stood up to a McCain attack).
AND THE NUMBER THREE LEAST TRUSTED WORLD LEADER: King George Dubya Bush with the astonishing trust rate of 23 percent! Dig it!

Cook County: Torture is a moral and a religious issue

Who will stand against torture?

If not me, who? If not now, when? Cook County has more people of faith per capita than almost anywhere. Read this story and take it to your congregations.
True

Where Is the Outrage?

by Robert Scheer

Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It's a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of the detailed 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture, issued last week by the Justice Department's inspector general.

Because the report was widely cited in the media and easily accessed as a pdf file on the Internet, it is fair to assume that those of our citizens who remain ignorant of the extent of their government's commitment to torture as an official policy have made a choice not to be informed. A less appealing conclusion would be that they are aware of the heinous acts fully authorized by our president but conclude that such barbarism is not inconsistent with that American way of life that we celebrate.

But that troubling assessment of moral indifference is contradicted by the scores of law enforcement officers, mostly from the FBI, who were so appalled by what they observed as routine official practice in the treatment of prisoners by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo that they risked their careers to officially complain. A few brave souls from the FBI even compiled a "war crimes file," suggesting the unthinkable — that we might come to be judged as guilty by the standard we have imposed on others. Superiors in the Justice Department soon put a stop to such FBI efforts to hold CIA agents and other U.S. officials accountable for the crimes they committed.

That this systematic torture was carried out not by a few conveniently described "bad apples" but rather represented official policy condoned at the highest level of government was captured in one of those rare media reports that remind us why the Founding Fathers signed off on the First Amendment.

"These were not random acts," The New York Times editorialized. "It is clear from the inspector general's report that this was organized behavior by both civilian and military interrogators following the specific orders of top officials. The report shows what happens when an American president, his secretary of defense, his Justice Department and other top officials corrupt American law to rationalize and authorize the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners."

One of those top officials, who stands revealed in the inspector general's report as approving the torture policy, is Condoleezza Rice, who in her capacity as White House national security adviser turned away the concerns of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft as to the severe interrogation measures being employed. Rice, as ABC-TV reported in April, chaired the top-level meetings in 2002 in the White House Situation Room that signed off on the CIA treatment of prisoners — "whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called water boarding. …" According to the report, the former academic provost of Stanford University came down on the side of simulated drowning.

As further proof that women are not necessarily more squeamish than men in condoning such practices, the report offers examples of sexual and religious denigration of the mostly Muslim prisoners by female interrogators carrying out an official policy of "invasion of space by a female." In one recorded instance observed by startled FBI agents, a female interrogator was seen with a prisoner "bending his thumbs back and grabbing his genitals … to cause him pain." One of the agents testified that this was not "a case of a rogue interrogator acting on her own." He said he witnessed a "pep rally" meeting conducted by a top Defense Department official "in which the interrogators were encouraged to get as close to the torture statute line as possible."

That was evidently the norm, according to FBI agents who witnessed the interrogations. As The New York Times reported, "One bureau memorandum spoke of 'torture techniques' used by military interrogators. Agents described seeing things like inmates handcuffed in a fetal position for up to 24 hours, left to defecate on themselves, intimidated by dogs, made to wear women's underwear and subjected to strobe lights and extreme heat and cold."

In the end, what seems to have most outraged the hundreds of FBI agents interviewed for the report is that the interrogation tactics were counterproductive. Evidently the FBI's long history in such matters had led to a protocol that stressed gaining the confidence of witnesses rather than terrorizing them into madness. But an insane prisoner is the one most likely to tell this president of the United States what he wants to hear: They hate us for our values.

Robert Scheer's new book, "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America," will be released June 9 by Twelve.

Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.

The helipad in the harbor

Like everybody else True was shocked to learn that the feds have decided to use the Coast Guard station to house their expanded Border Patrol.
This came about after more than a year of secrecy, rebuffs to the press who tried to find out what was going on, and a general "Up Yours" attitude as people continued to wonder where they planned to build their 10-acre compound surrounded by barbed wire fence and enclosing an underground parking bunker, a helipad, and a jail.
Turns out, the Department of Homeland Security, thanks to the machinations of the Bush administration, now owns our historic Coast Guard station. Nyaa, nyaa, too bad for us.
The PR team insists the facility will only be used for "office space." Even so, the harbor parking lot is a favorite tourist spot. Even locals like to have lunch while watching the changing landscape. As County Commissioner Bruce Martinson said, the Homeland Honchos have chosen the "worst possible" site for their military hi-jinks (apologies to Bruce, the honchos and hi-jinks are my own words not his).
But DHS's credibility is sorta in doubt here. Why should we believe what they tell us now after they have lied for so long?
Here is one possible reason: the new satellite surveillance system being imposed as we speak on every citizen in the "Homeland" and described in this week's Washington Post...This could mean there doesn't have to be so many night surveillance flights or Border Patrol staff riding herd on people who don't look like us: the satellite sees all. Are you out on your deck on a summer eveing, enjoying the Milky Way, and perhaps entertaining a friend? Big Brother will take note.
Still, True is not so sure there won't be a high fence around the Coast Guard station and worries about tourists finding their way to our beloved Artist's Point without DHS harassment.
They do it because they can. The community can't stop them. They are the Deciders. They own the property.

Poor Lynddie England, chump and poster child of bad soldier

The MSM vilified Lynndie England as the evil incarnate of Abu Ghraib after the world looked on in horror at the photos of her tormenting prisoners. Poor dumb Lynddie admitted her guilt and said she knew she was wrong and got sent to jail despite the obvious sexual abuse by her superior officer (namely, she was preggers with his kid).
It boggles the mind that the press could demonize this subnormal child-woman for obeying the orders of her bosses while exonerating the Commander-in-Chief who made it all happen, who now admits with pride that he authorized torture of the "hardened terrists." You surely know who I am talking about? The "mission accomplished," "heckuva job, Brownie" guy? Yep, the buck stops with him.
Lynndie recently gave an interview. She's really mad at the press (well, who isn't?) But for Lynndie they are entirely to blame for the whole scandal that damaged America in world opinion, and why is that? Why, because stuff like the Abu Ghraib torture is just doing business as usual in the Army but the people can't be expected to understand that. They need to be protected from the truth.
Lynndie, poor boobie, took the rap like a good soldier but she is really pissed because the press didn't go along with the Big Lie that her "superiors" bamboozled her into pleading guilty for.
What a mug! She doesn't even get it, that her latest admisison about torture-as-usual is the most damning evidence we have that we need to look way up to the top of the food chain for the real perpetrators of the horrors at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and all those secret detention sites in countries that don't fool around denying that they torture, and torture, and torture.
Thanks, Lynndie, for helping us get the big picture

Relaxing with the Sunday paper: It's the news, stupid

How astonishing that only 40 percent of Americans know that nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq so far. If that is the case I imagine far fewer know that over a million Iraqis have died, mostly civilians, and four million have been displaced. Or that returning soldiers have huge suicide rates and are refused treatment for PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder for you dummies). Or that to the rest of the world the United States is synonymous with torture and unilateral aggression against other sovereign nations.
Ya ya, Fox news is a Repug mouthpiece and the MSM parrot the Bushcos. But, even an ordinary reader of the Sunday paper should know how many soldiers have died in Iraq. Even dummies ought to figure out that the Iraq war was a disaster which will also cripple our children's generation with debt, and that the impending war of aggression with Iran orchestrated by our nutty right wing neocons who welcome the Apocalypse will ignite a new world war with superpowers Russia and China against us. What IS it with you, amigos?
Hmm, reading on in the new Strib Lite, there's a story about how folks are leaving their houses behind so they can make their car and credit card payments. Say, what? Isn't that deja vu Depression all over again? Why aren't people asking that question? If you can make your own house payment, do you just blow it off?
Another story, about Tibet:
The repressive Chinese government is blaming the victim, not to mention killing them and rounding them up into jail. The Chinese regime has refused to acknowledge Tibetan Buddhism ever since their 1951 coup and takeover of this small country in the Himalayan mountains. The Dalai Lama, the holiest person on the planet, who now "rules" his worldwide constituencies of faith from Dharamsala, India, is being blamed for the violence perpetrated by the Chinese. Buddhits devotees and monks are imprisoned for their nonviolent protests. Look more closely at the photos: the monks are in pain on account of the "violence" by the Chinese police with their night sticks and guns.
People will rise up when their deepest beliefs are subjugated (except in the modern-day US of A where the pioneers have morphed into limp wimps who cave at the bogey "terrists"). This is sorta mentioned in the LiteStrib story but like everything else the MSM reports it favors the party line. In this case, the Chinese party line.... And who will stand up for the peace-loving Tibetans in the press? So far, nobody. Not even the groupies who reverently attend appearances by the Dalai Lama around the world, and who listen to his wise and loving message of peace to all beings.
Soldiering on, as we move into the afternoon and toss the junk pages that could have saved a couple acres of rainforest: Readers learn how fed reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is "improvising" and making "bold moves" to save the U.S. economy. Hmph. Jumping ahead: On Monday it appears that the latest bold move bails out Wall Street mega-giant Bear Stearns to the tune of billions, just a little blip, while children go without health care, our infrastructure crumbles and collapses, and people don't have jobs. Even AP reported this news but maybe you missed it on Fox.....
We get the government we deserve. True admits it is harder to get the real news now but it is the duty of us citizens to try. You just have to actually read the paper and skip front page which might as well be what we used to call the "Women's Page," back in the day.
The people divided will always be defeated. The people, stupid, will always be conned.
True

Stop that spying or I'll give you something to spy about!

True,

Who still believes in the sanctity of the home? Or would you believe a person's house is her castle? Does anybody else care that satellite spying on our every email and phone conversation has just been okayed by the US Senate?

Oh ya I know the argument, that only the bad guys have anything to hide. NOT. I have my private thoughts to hide. I have my friends, my memories, my saints, my sins, my longings and hopes and dreams and fears to hide from a merciless Big Brother who would shred the American Dream for the sake of imperial domination, for the sake of oil and wealth and limitless power.

Well, then, scumbags aka elected officials, put this in your pipe and smoke it:

As a person of peace I am the enemy of the United States who stands for endless war. Enemy, enemy, enemy. USA equals Evildoer, evildoer, evildoer.

Ah so, you spy on me? OK then I will spew out all that stuff you are looking for and dare you to come and get me:

F**k Bu$hco. Death to the Repuglican agenda. Impeach Bush and Cheney and put them in jail. End Torture and arrest all those who condone or practice it. Let you be judged and sentenced to your own wicked and cruel torments of others, like the old fairy tales where the baddies were dragged behind a team of horses in a nail-studded cask. YOU ALWAYS PAY FOR WHAT YOU DO, or so I wish.

Nya nya nya, You Can't Catch Me I'm the Gingerbread Man...... by the time you head to my Castle I will be so out of here, out of this friggin country where I was born but no longer belong....
Anonymous

Bush Administration Argues Veterans Have No Right to Mental Health Care

Support our troups? Of course, unless you are a Bushie. Put troops in a desperate no-win situation, then opt out on caring for their PSTD among other egregious lapses in thankfulness....Read on:

Bush Administration Argues Veterans Have No Right to Mental Health Care:
"Tuesday 05 February 2008

Veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care, the Bush administration argues in a lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The arguments, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, strike at the heart of a lawsuit filed on behalf of veterans that claims the health care system for returning troops provides little recourse when the government rejects their medical claims.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is making progress in increasing its staffing and screening veterans for combat-related stress, Justice Department lawyers said. But their central argument is that Congress left decisions about who should get health care, and what type of care, to the VA and not to veterans or the courts.

A federal law providing five years of care for veterans from the date of their discharge establishes 'veterans' eligibility for health care, but it does not create an entitlement to any particular medical service,' government lawyers said.

They said the law entitles veterans only to 'medical care which the secretary (of Veterans Affairs) determines is needed, and only to the extent funds ... are available.'

Go to the link for the rest of the story.

True

Obama landslide winner in Cook County: Yes!

Nobody even came close to challenging Barack Obama's caucus victory in Cook County on Super Tuesday. This is good. True is old enough to remember the 1960 election of President John Kennedy, also an inspiring and charismatic figure but he only won by a short margin. How different the future of our country might have been if he had lost; despite the right wing assassins who took him down along with his brother Bobby, MLK Junior and John Lennon, we at least had a time where idealism found a place in the sun, where young people were thrilled to work on behalf of their country, where the rich and the poor united in working for America and for the world. "Ich bin ein Berliner," said JFK to screaming crowds in Berlin, long before the Wall was torn down. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Thousands of young people flocked to the Peace Corps and millions more of us worked on a more local scale to bring peace and justice to our people.
Much of being a great leader is being a visionary, capturing the hopes and dreams of the people. John Kennedy made some big mistakes early on, most noticeably bringing us to the brink of nuclear war over the Bay of Pigs. But, he learned and he always led from the heart.
And that is why True believes in Barack Obama. He might not stand up so strong as John Edwards on behalf of the poor, the two Americas, but when elected I believe he will step into the big footprints of history. I believe he will try to extricate us from the endless and evil war in Iraq, will start a new dialogue with other nations, will build a base of Americans with his experience as a community organizer guides him....Nobody else has the capacity to inspire the young, to bring everybody back to the table where peace and justice might be on the agenda.
YES, Cook County!
True

Go to your precinct caucus (if you can)!

Dear True,
Coming of age in the fabulously hopeful 1960's I learned that the precinct caucus in Minnesota is the true way to grassroots politics. It's a nice idea. And I urge anyone who can to go to the Super Tuesday caucuses here in Cook County tomorrow night. There won't be another opportunity to choose the presidential candidate for your party.
Being much older now, I don't have such good night vision to be driving around on icy roads and highways. Being a resident of Cook County now I have only one place to go for my precinct caucus, and if I go I probably won't be able to get back home given the weather predictions and my remote location.
So! Is it fair, is it right, to deny the many homebound citizens of our 60-mile long county the chance to choose the next presidential candidate? We don't have taxis. Our Arrowhead bus doesn't run at night. And those of us who are most marginal are the very ones who need to let the pols know who we want to have a chance to vote for.
Minnesota, you need to do better. In the early glory days of Bean Feeds and long speeches by HHH, when most of us could drive or take the bus, it seemed good. Now I would like to demand an absentee ballot for my presidential choice, who happens to be Barack Obama. I am not a Hillary basher and would love for a woman to be the next prez, but she is just way too far to the right for me. She gets megabucks from the megacorporations and she is fuzzy about Iraq where we are pouring trillions of treasury dollars down a sinkhole and by the way generating bitter hatred against us, when we could be investing in desperately needed infrastructure.
Anonymous

The Soft Underbelly of the Democratic Party - CommonDreams.org

Since the vote by Congress to support warrantless spying on all Americans, the blogosphere has been buzzing. Hmm, Minnesota "Nice" folks don't like Minnesota Mad Belding; they prefer to sit back and ignore the evil around them while making nasty cracks at the people who speak out.

Even the stuffy New York Times is with Belding on this one, though not using the "H" word. Oh my goodness, how NOT nice.

The frustration is not being listened to by any of the three branches of government which are supposed to check and balance each other. The Rage is that the Congress has given retroactive approval to the crimes of Bushco.

True

Read this Common Dreams post; others will follow:

The Soft Underbelly of the Democratic Party - CommonDreams.org

Minnesota Mad: Disgust and rage

Dear True,

No, not love and happiness, not today. I have nothing but disgust and rage for the politicians of this country, ALL of them (well, almost).

As for Mr. No New Taxes Pawlenty, he bears a great share of the responsibility for the lives lost and maimed in the Minneapolis bridge collapse, not to mention the fear and terror of the rest of us who must entrust our lives to structurally unsound bridges, having vetoed a major transportation bill in 2005 that would have addressed the state's aging road infrastructure.

As for the evil cowboy Mr. Photo Op Bush, he bears an even greater burden of this guilt, having squandered the resources paid by taxpayers in the assumption that they will be spent to keep bridges and levees and roads and waterways and sewers and .... well, everything we depend on for life and health, safe. No, better to spend a couple trillion dollars killing off people in Iraq and destroying THEIR infrastructure completely, so his Texas cronies continue to reap megaprofits from oil and get no-bid private contracts to run the war. Who gives a flying fuck that the people of Baghdad don't have any water? That Iraqis working with Americans have separate (presumably not equal) bathrooms and meals? That millions are homeless thanks to the devastation wrought by the US, that people are starving, that there is no electricity for most of the day in devastating heat? Who cares? They are only Iraqis, as one US soldier said.

As for the Congress, shame. They bear the responsibility to reign in a rogue administration, protect the Constitution, and make laws that promote the general welfare. But what do they do? They sling impeachment off the table when the constitutional crimes of this administration challenge our three-tiered government to the very core, and then they proceed to knuckle under to every illegal and outrageous demand made by Bushco. The latest: a secret FISA panel decided Bush's wiretapping was illegal and so what does Congress do? They pass a law to make it legal. I for one am sick of knowing I have no private communications unless I meet someone somewhere where there are no phones, computers, or mail and even then who knows what those satellites are picking up?

It's a sad, sad world but the worst is that it doesn't have to be that way. The American people want good government, good schools, good health care, good communities, good infrastructure, a clean and safe environment, retirement security ... and they are paying enough to get it. Even without new taxes, which in Minnesota is totally stupid because we will pay one way or another.

Us poor people pay so much in fees and sales taxes that we trump even the biggest billionaire who actually does pay tax (if any) in terms of percentage of income. However, almost any of us would gladly pay more to save the lives of loved ones and protect the world for future generations. As for Bushco, he lavishly rewards the richest of the rich, not only with absurd tax cuts but also with his shadow government which pays them billions in contracts that are scrutinized by none. Many of these contracts usurp the lawful function of government, such as intelligence gathering and military forces, and unlawful ones as well, such as murder, torture, rape and spying.These bad politicians, and that includes nearly all of them, know that people don't like what they do. They receive thousands and millions of emails, phone calls and petitions daily from people who feel they must speak out. Bush apologist Sen. Coleman responds with a knee-jerk blip but never a word on any issue. All elected officials in this mega-media, mega-business and mega-shadow government age depend on the millions these people pay them. Who will stand up to the coal industry, the nuclear industry, big oil, when they are major campaign contributors? All the major candidates are beholden to the big multinational corporations and media, without whom they could never be elected. (Except maybe John Edwards who is getting a rilli-rilli-bad media rap....)

Finally, the American people have allowed these travesties to happen. Democracy means that the grass roots don't get mowed down, even if all their heroes are assassinated: John and Bobby Kennedy, MLK, John Lennon, and YES, our beloved Paul Wellstone.... I don't have a nanosecond of doubt that they were removed by the Rich Repug Reich.

Hate and rage.

Nancye Belding
Grand Marais

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).

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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"

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.