Dear True,
I'm writing to comment on the troubled and sad column by Mitch Dorr in this week's News Herald, "The Death of Faith, Family and Country." I have some sympathy for Mr. Dorr, as I too recall a time in America that I think was better than today, but I'm not willing to blame the changes on "intolerant intellectuals," radical politicians, or Muslims. Also, methinks I have heard the tune he is singing before, on right-wing talk shows and in emails that sometimes come my way--such as naming Barack Obama a Muslim terrorist and other nonsense claiming to be "God's truth."
I know from Mr. Dorr's other writings that he is a good and loving family man and I don't mean to attack him in any way. But I do feel an urgent need to put forth an alternative view of religion and society.
I want to address the parts of Mr. Dorr's column about religion and try to infuse a dose of historical fact-checking. One of my personal regrets about modern society is the dismal failure of our schools to teach history. When I was a child in the 1950's we were rigorously taught to understand the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We studied the Revolutionary War and we read the speeches by Washington and Jefferson and the other so-called "founding fathers." Back then we had no problem that there were no founding mothers.
The first thing to remember is that the men who devised the Constitution were, yes, mostly Christians (in fact mostly Episcopalians) but they were even more firmly for freedom of religion, the right to worship or NOT worship as anyone may choose. They were best termed "deists" rather than Christians, however, as followers of the "Enlightenment" philosophies of Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire promoting individual liberty and equality. Of course they were referring to the equality of white men, and several were slave owners but in their time they were visionaries.
Several of them spoke quite firmly on the issue of religion and government, for example:
"I believe in one God, Creator of the universe...That the most acceptable service we can render Him is doing good to His other children...As to Jesus..I have some doubts as to his divinity..."
-Benjamin Franklin
"Every man ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."
-George Washington
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of..."
-Thomas Paine
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
-Thomas Jefferson
"That religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience."
-Patrick Henry
"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed."
-James Madison
(original wording of the First Amendment, 1789)
In short, the founders were clear and adamant about protecting the rights of all to worship as each one chooses. The Religious Right have made an issue of actual non-issues like worship in public schools or government buildings.
Granted, the founders never specifically forebade worship in public buildings because they never foresaw free public education for all, the great immigrations of many races and creeds that would re-make America in centuries to come, or that one day some people might feel excluded by a government display of one religious viewpoint such as the Ten Commandments. Nonetheless, they foresaw that there would be possibilities they couldn't cover, and so laid down the principle of religious neutrality in the brilliant First Amendment.
But ironically, what has been decreed in the past is subject to change under those same principles laid down by the founders.
And so, a "Unitary Executive" (anathema to the founders), a judicial system stacked to favor the rightest of the right wing, and a gutless Congress have conspired with the right-wing corporations that buy votes, that control our media and that are supported by the Christian right to perpetrate untruths about the role of religion in America.
The right to worship in government buildings and display the Ten Commandments smacks of a state religion. Or, why not the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism instead? Why not face Mecca and chant?
Mr. Dorr, it was not about keeping you from your Christian worship, at home, at church or within the community, but rather about respecting those who are not Christian that the founders had in mind when they decreed there would be no mixing of religion and government. They understood only too well how easily any religious group may drive "unbelievers" to become second-class citizens, refugees, or victims of genocide, as in recent times we were appalled to witness in Nazi Germany.
Genocide, by the way, proceeds unabated today in many parts of our lawless corporate dominated world. Our aid is urgently required and yet the Religious Right is silent.
In Cook County, Christians have many forums of expressions, unlike urban areas. There is a religion page and a column by a minister in both weekly papers and these are exclusively Christian. There are Christmas pageants and activities at school. Perhaps, you say, this does not matter because everybody in Cook County is a Christian? Not so. I am not.
On the other hand I am more than happy to read the thoughts of Christian ministers, SO LONG AS other voices are also heard equally (or at least occasionally). Such as columns about Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, or my own faith of Hinduism which embraces the teaching of the saints and sages of all religions.
And for those who can't bear to make it through the school day without prayer, you can always pray silently, pray with your heart and mind if not your mouth. Pray while taking tests or eating lunch.
The commonality among religious faiths is what tolerance is all about, and tolerance is the very foundation of a free and just society. I don't know how we can co-exist with one another in harmony without it.
If you seriously study Islam you will find its teachings not very different from those of Christianity. The Islamic fundamentalists who believe in jihad or holy war are not all that different from the Christians who slaughtered Muslims during the Crusades.
Any who kill in the name of religion are not practicing the great moral and universal truths of their faiths. The similarities have always been apparent to great religious leaders like the Dalai Lama, Pope John XXIII, Gandhi and Mother Teresa as well as humbler students of comparative religion, like my personal hero, Bill Moyers.
Shortly after reading Mr. Dorr's column, I chanced to read a speech by Moyers made at Union Theological Seminary in 2005 on receipt of the President's Medal, their highest award. Bill is a devout Christian. He begins his speech by, like Mr. Dorr, looking back to happier times when he was growing up but in a very different vein: "At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do."
Bill goes on to describe the First Amendment as "a remarkable arrangement honoring 'soul freedom'--the inviolate right of each of us to believe and worship as our conscience determines, in a society that honors freedom over conformity." He sees that fundamental right at risk in the rise of a new religious movement that is based in the Republican party, well-funded and organized, and resolved on a "sectarian crusade for state power." "The religious right has become the dominant force in America's governing party," he said, and thereby also complicit in "upholding a system of class and race in which the rich thrive and the poor barely survive."
"This is the crux of the matter: to these believers there is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that religion that is right; all others are immoral or wrong. They believe they alone know what the Bible means."
Bill concludes, "As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: bullies--political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies--cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with courage, clarity and conviction. This is never easy. These true believers don't fight fair."
Well, this says it all to me, Mr. Dorr, and it is why I feel obliged to take issue with your view of MY country as a CHRISTIAN country while to me it is still, if precariously, a FREE country.
Sincerely,
Nancye Belding
Grand Marais
"Kindness is my religion."
-The Dalai Lama
Showing posts with label values. Show all posts
Showing posts with label values. Show all posts
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
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.
Monday, March 31, 2008
The ATV song: Ride roughshod over the rivers and through the woods
Oh, here we go again!
Not content with inviting all the ATVers in the world to their June parade in Silver Bay, the local ATV crowd is demanding that the North Shore State Trail be opened to their noisy and destructive vehicles.
As for the old slogan that "We just want a place for locals to ride," the latest demand is to eliminate the 90-mile limit on trails in Cook County. So, how many miles do you locals want permission to destroy fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitat on?
The US Forest Service process started last year with mucho public input to try to keep everybody happy has tanked. How thankless to try to find a way to preserve the environment by limiting the damage done by ATV rough riders, not to mention protecting quiet spaces. It isn't only the people who need peace and silence, it is the wild creatures who are terrified by the noise and smells and speedy depradations of the clueless folks who bring their joyless and lawless midget psyches blundering into the ancient forest.
It looks to be a long summer. Lovers of peace and quiet, beware!
Not content with inviting all the ATVers in the world to their June parade in Silver Bay, the local ATV crowd is demanding that the North Shore State Trail be opened to their noisy and destructive vehicles.
As for the old slogan that "We just want a place for locals to ride," the latest demand is to eliminate the 90-mile limit on trails in Cook County. So, how many miles do you locals want permission to destroy fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitat on?
The US Forest Service process started last year with mucho public input to try to keep everybody happy has tanked. How thankless to try to find a way to preserve the environment by limiting the damage done by ATV rough riders, not to mention protecting quiet spaces. It isn't only the people who need peace and silence, it is the wild creatures who are terrified by the noise and smells and speedy depradations of the clueless folks who bring their joyless and lawless midget psyches blundering into the ancient forest.
It looks to be a long summer. Lovers of peace and quiet, beware!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
"My religion is kindness": US MSM strikes out again
The Dalai Lama is the most honored being on the planet, whether the US MSM knows it or not (mostly not). This holy man has sought a peaceful solution for his native Tibet by all nonviolent means for nearly 50 years of repressive rule by China. During that time he has never neglected his students. He has been tireless in his teaching of love for all sentient beings. "My religion is kindness," he once said.
This holy sage is being dissed by the Beijing government: not a new thing but escalated as the Tibetan people rise up against Chinese oppression as the Olympics draw near. The Dalai Lama will never associate himself with violent protest no matter what the Chinese propagandists say.
The US MSM has mostly reported that China is putting down "violent protests" against Chinese rule of Tibet. Although many Americans honor and revere the Dalai Lama, the Bus$cos don't want any interference with trade with China. Several news reports have quoted the spiritual leader of Tibet as barely speaking English. True knows this is bullshit, having read several books he has written about Buddhist philosophy. These erudite tomes would glaze over the eyes of your average MSM American journalist looking for the sleazy angle. They are filled with the wisdom of the Buddha and they aren't sound bites for the evening news.
Look, then, to this UK report on the truth, as mirrored by the rest of the world. No one alive is holier than the Dalai Lama. No one speaks more forcefully on behalf of peaceful dialogue. No one else declares a love for all sentient beings, especially those who Americans like to hunt, kill and eat.
Dalai Lama: "I Am Prepared to Face China. I Will Go to Beijing"
By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent UK
This holy sage is being dissed by the Beijing government: not a new thing but escalated as the Tibetan people rise up against Chinese oppression as the Olympics draw near. The Dalai Lama will never associate himself with violent protest no matter what the Chinese propagandists say.
The US MSM has mostly reported that China is putting down "violent protests" against Chinese rule of Tibet. Although many Americans honor and revere the Dalai Lama, the Bus$cos don't want any interference with trade with China. Several news reports have quoted the spiritual leader of Tibet as barely speaking English. True knows this is bullshit, having read several books he has written about Buddhist philosophy. These erudite tomes would glaze over the eyes of your average MSM American journalist looking for the sleazy angle. They are filled with the wisdom of the Buddha and they aren't sound bites for the evening news.
Look, then, to this UK report on the truth, as mirrored by the rest of the world. No one alive is holier than the Dalai Lama. No one speaks more forcefully on behalf of peaceful dialogue. No one else declares a love for all sentient beings, especially those who Americans like to hunt, kill and eat.
Dalai Lama: "I Am Prepared to Face China. I Will Go to Beijing"
By Andrew Buncombe
The Independent UK
Friday 21 March 2008
As crisis over Tibet deepens, Dalai Lama makes extraordinary offer to negotiate directly with President Hu Jintao.
Dharamsala - Almost half a century after he fled to India, the Dalai Lama has raised the extraordinary prospect of travelling to Beijing and holding face-to-talks with the Chinese regime in an effort to resolve Tibet's most serious crisis for two decades.
Having watched helplessly from exile as his Tibetan homeland has suffered under Chinese rule, the man regarded as a living god by millions of his followers said yesterday that he was ready to negotiate personally with the Chinese leadership. The Dalai Lama, 73, acknowledged the difficulty associated with a face-to-face summit, but said he was even ready to meet President Hu Jintao, notorious in Tibet for his hardline approach when he served as Tibet's local Communist leader. "I am always ready to meet the Chinese leaders, and particularly Hu Jintao. I am very happy to meet," he told a small group of journalists at his office in Dharamsala. "But as I mentioned earlier, to go to Beijing and meet leaders... that would be big news. Many Tibetans would think... may develop some unrealistic expectations. I have to think very carefully."
While a visit to Beijing would leave him open to criticism of appeasing the Chinese, the undertaking the Dalai Lama gave yesterday underlines his desperate wish to avoid further bloodshed in the country of his birth.
Seeking to put pressure on China, he said he was willing to travel to Beijing in a matter of weeks if there was a "concrete indication" that the Chinese authorities were prepared to negotiate and if the protests in Tibet had concluded. His spokesman later confirmed that while he did not wish to simply provide the Chinese with a photo-opportunity that could be used against him, he was ready to discuss a "mutually agreeable solution" to the issue of Tibet.
The remarkable prospect of a summit between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership - either in Beijing or elsewhere - came as China said police had opened fire and wounded four Tibetan protesters in Sichuan province and arrested dozens of others who had ignored a deadline to end the most serious demonstrations to rock Tibet for more than two decades.
Earlier this week, the Chinese leadership indicated it would be prepared to talk to the Dalai Lama if he stopped "separatist activities" and recognised Tibet and Taiwan as parts of China. Gordon Brown told the Commons on Wednesday that the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, had told him he was ready to meet the Dalai Lama if he renounced violence. But assessing the genuine intentions of the Chinese leadership remains at best a guessing game. Beijing is concerned about sullying its reputation ahead of the upcoming Olympic Games, but while giving an undertaking to meet the Dalai Lama, various Chinese officials have continued to demonise him and accuse him and his "clique" of orchestrating the demonstrations in Tibet.
"For the Dalai Lama, we not only listen to what he says, but more importantly, we focus on what he does," said the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang. "He has said he is not a separatist. But all of his propositions and actions prove that he has never stopped his splittist words and deeds."
The Dalai Lama knows his only real leverage as head of a Tibetan government in exile is in winning over international opinion to his cause. Today he is due to meet Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, while tomorrow he is scheduled to have lunch with the actor Richard Gere in Delhi. Both have supported him for many years.
Winning the backing of camera-friendly celebrities and power-wielding politicians has long been the strength of the smiling and avuncular 1989 Nobel laureate. Laughing, joking and yet utterly serious all in the space of a sentence, this is a role he continues to play to perfection as the cause to which he has devoted his life receives unprecedented world attention. Never more than now has he needed to stress the importance of non-violent protest and the limited nature of the movement's demands.
"The Chinese constitution already mentions autonomy [for Tibet]. So that should not be just a word on paper but implemented on the spot," he said, sitting in front of a statue of the Buddha. "The whole world knows Dalai Lama is not seeking independence, one hundred times, a thousand times I have repeated this. It is my mantra - we are not seeking independence."
In Beijing, the authorities admitted for the first time that the often violent protests that swept through Lhasa 10 days ago in protest against Chinese rule had spread to other Tibetan communities in additional provinces. Subsequently, the government has dispatched more troops and paramilitaries across the region as it seeks to reassert its control in those areas. It has banned the media and foreign tourists from travelling to the region.
Precisely how many people have been killed or injured as a result of the protests and the subsequent crackdown is unclear. The Chinese government says 16 people have died while the Tibetan exiles say the number stands at 80. On walls and buildings throughout Dharamsala, exiles have posted graphic and disturbing photographs of Tibetans apparently killed by Chinese police or soldiers.
"It's horrible. There are many bodies. The Chinese are holding the bodies," claimed Tenzin Thangh, who was participating in a candlelit vigil through the main street of the town - a procession that has become a nightly occurrence. "The soldiers are going into all parts of Tibet."
>From Dharamsala, a former British hill station established on the peaceful fringe of the Himalayas, Chinese accusations regarding the Dalai Lama's ability to direct events in Tibet and the description of him as "a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast", appear little short of preposterous. Indeed, his cautious "middle way" approach has been criticised by some Tibetans, including the Tibetan Youth Congress which seeks full independence from China. While many younger Tibetans have been outspoken in their criticism of the Dalai Lama's tactics, in recent days they have halted such comments in an apparent effort not to appear divided at a crucial juncture.
What certainly does not seem in doubt is the reverence with which he is held as the community's religious leader. Before meeting reporters yesterday, the Dalai Lama spent time in the flower-filled gardens of the compound receiving and blessing various visitors, including a family who had travelled secretly from Shanghai.
Asked later how he felt about the personal insults that Chinese officials had directed towards him, he said such comments mattered little to him. He also said he did not believe that the international community was taken in by what the Chinese said.
"As a Buddhist monk, it does not matter what they call me," he said with a chuckle. "The outside world doesn't believe that I am [a] devil."
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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
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
Friday, February 29, 2008
Minnesota: raise income taxes!
Hello, Governor Pawlenty. Hello, Cook County. Hello, Minnesota legislators!
Stop taxing the poor! New gas taxes, new sales taxes, new fees, but NEVER new income taxes! Y'all are shifting the tax burden from the richest to the poorest.
Can you say, REGRESSIVE TAXES?
Minnesota used to be all about graduated taxes, all about ability to pay. No more. Cook County and Grand Marais are hollering for a new one percent sales tax, claiming that it is borne by tourists. Hello, hello? WE are the ones who live here, who pay the tax every single day on every single thing we buy.
The legislature passed a new gas tax without even asking what anybody thinks about that. This happens even as gas prices break all records. Us po' folks can hardly manage to buy gas to get to work. Our food, our heat, our rents and mortgages, not to mention our health care have all shot through the roof. How much blood can you squeeze out of a stone? How much poorer will we have to be before the big D word is spoken aloud?
As for property taxes, nobody seems yet to have caught on: we are being taxed on inflated property values!!! We can no longer sell our homes for their inflated values but we still have to pay taxes on them. Property taxes are also regressive, but necessary at the local level, WHICH is why Minnesota used to offer lots of aid to local governments as well as homeowners. Back in the day when Minnesota government meant something good for people, before the Repugnants took over.
As for the No New Bridges governor, who keeps sending my "tax bill" spiraling by increasing all those fees like license tabs in the name of "no new taxes" meaning no new FAIR income taxes, well I hope you will be soundly defeated by an old-fashioned Minnesota DFL progressive next round.
True
Stop taxing the poor! New gas taxes, new sales taxes, new fees, but NEVER new income taxes! Y'all are shifting the tax burden from the richest to the poorest.
Can you say, REGRESSIVE TAXES?
Minnesota used to be all about graduated taxes, all about ability to pay. No more. Cook County and Grand Marais are hollering for a new one percent sales tax, claiming that it is borne by tourists. Hello, hello? WE are the ones who live here, who pay the tax every single day on every single thing we buy.
The legislature passed a new gas tax without even asking what anybody thinks about that. This happens even as gas prices break all records. Us po' folks can hardly manage to buy gas to get to work. Our food, our heat, our rents and mortgages, not to mention our health care have all shot through the roof. How much blood can you squeeze out of a stone? How much poorer will we have to be before the big D word is spoken aloud?
As for property taxes, nobody seems yet to have caught on: we are being taxed on inflated property values!!! We can no longer sell our homes for their inflated values but we still have to pay taxes on them. Property taxes are also regressive, but necessary at the local level, WHICH is why Minnesota used to offer lots of aid to local governments as well as homeowners. Back in the day when Minnesota government meant something good for people, before the Repugnants took over.
As for the No New Bridges governor, who keeps sending my "tax bill" spiraling by increasing all those fees like license tabs in the name of "no new taxes" meaning no new FAIR income taxes, well I hope you will be soundly defeated by an old-fashioned Minnesota DFL progressive next round.
True
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
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$hco. Death to the Repuglican agenda. Impeach Bush and Cheney and put them in jail. End Torture and arrest all those who condone or practice it. Let you be judged and sentenced to your own wicked and cruel torments of others, like the old fairy tales where the baddies were dragged behind a team of horses in a nail-studded cask. YOU ALWAYS PAY FOR WHAT YOU DO, or so I wish.
Nya nya nya, You Can't Catch Me I'm the Gingerbread Man...... by the time you head to my Castle I will be so out of here, out of this friggin country where I was born but no longer belong....
Anonymous
Who still believes in the sanctity of the home? Or would you believe a person's house is her castle? Does anybody else care that satellite spying on our every email and phone conversation has just been okayed by the US Senate?
Oh ya I know the argument, that only the bad guys have anything to hide. NOT. I have my private thoughts to hide. I have my friends, my memories, my saints, my sins, my longings and hopes and dreams and fears to hide from a merciless Big Brother who would shred the American Dream for the sake of imperial domination, for the sake of oil and wealth and limitless power.
Well, then, scumbags aka elected officials, put this in your pipe and smoke it:
As a person of peace I am the enemy of the United States who stands for endless war. Enemy, enemy, enemy. USA equals Evildoer, evildoer, evildoer.
Ah so, you spy on me? OK then I will spew out all that stuff you are looking for and dare you to come and get me:
F**k Bu$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
Friday, November 30, 2007
Social Capital Assessment
Here's a post from Boreal News of interest to all who care about Cook County. The benefits of social capital assessments are multiple and manifold. This theory, already adopted by scholars in many disciplines from evaluation/sociology to architecture and development, advocates for local communities. The idea is to inventory the community assets and then build on or strengthen them instead of the outside developer mentality of slash-and-burn.
Cook County is rich in social capital assets that include communities dedicated to the best interests of citizens and tourists.
Please, friends, if you can spare the time, consider taking part in this most important project that could have incredible impact on the long-term health and well being of our county:
Join us on Thursday, November 29 at 4:30 p.m. at the Cook County
Community Center to plan how this assessment will work in all parts of the
county. There is no charge to us as we are serving as a pilot project
for the U of M Extension. The information will be valuable for decision
makers.Contact the Community Center Extension Program to plan how this assessment will work in all parts of the county. There is no charge to us as we are serving as a pilot project.
We are looking for volunteers from all parts of Cook County to help with a county-wide social capital assessment. We want to set this up so that areas within the counties can determine how well their local
community is doing in terms of cooperating together for mutual benefit. This may differ between Schroeder, Gunflint Trail, or Grand Portage. The time commitment is one training session and getting folks to fill out the assessment in January.
If you are unable to attend the meeting but would be willing to help with the survey assessment in your part of the county, please contact Diane Booth at the Extension office at 387-3015.
Cook County is rich in social capital assets that include communities dedicated to the best interests of citizens and tourists.
Please, friends, if you can spare the time, consider taking part in this most important project that could have incredible impact on the long-term health and well being of our county:
Join us on Thursday, November 29 at 4:30 p.m. at the Cook County
Community Center to plan how this assessment will work in all parts of the
county. There is no charge to us as we are serving as a pilot project
for the U of M Extension. The information will be valuable for decision
makers.Contact the Community Center Extension Program to plan how this assessment will work in all parts of the county. There is no charge to us as we are serving as a pilot project.
We are looking for volunteers from all parts of Cook County to help with a county-wide social capital assessment. We want to set this up so that areas within the counties can determine how well their local
community is doing in terms of cooperating together for mutual benefit. This may differ between Schroeder, Gunflint Trail, or Grand Portage. The time commitment is one training session and getting folks to fill out the assessment in January.
If you are unable to attend the meeting but would be willing to help with the survey assessment in your part of the county, please contact Diane Booth at the Extension office at 387-3015.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
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
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
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
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
Mandela and ‘The Elders’ Aim to Save the World - 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.
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.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
‘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
‘No More War’ Float Ruffles Iron Range - CommonDreams.org
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
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
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
Sunday, July 01, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Congressman James L Oberstar -- Oberstar Legislation to Combat Invasive Species Passed by Committee
Dear readers,
Rep. Jim Oberstar scores again. Follow the link. AND think about the visit of Norm Coleman next week, looking for votes. This apologist for Bushco thinks we will re-elect him on the border passport issue and belatedly poses as poster child for Ham Lake fire recovery. Would he know an invasive species if it socked him in the eye? Where does he stand on live firing in the Great Lakes? How can he justify his lock-step yes votes for every Bushco policy or proposal anywhere in our world that is bloodied by this administration?
Please, civility is always appropriate but don't give Bush apologist Coleman your trust.
Congressman James L Oberstar -- Oberstar Legislation to Combat Invasive Species Passed by Committee
Rep. Jim Oberstar scores again. Follow the link. AND think about the visit of Norm Coleman next week, looking for votes. This apologist for Bushco thinks we will re-elect him on the border passport issue and belatedly poses as poster child for Ham Lake fire recovery. Would he know an invasive species if it socked him in the eye? Where does he stand on live firing in the Great Lakes? How can he justify his lock-step yes votes for every Bushco policy or proposal anywhere in our world that is bloodied by this administration?
Please, civility is always appropriate but don't give Bush apologist Coleman your trust.
Congressman James L Oberstar -- Oberstar Legislation to Combat Invasive Species Passed by Committee
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Cheney Power Grab: Says White House Rules Don’t Apply to Him - CommonDreams.org
How remarkable. Bushco has authorized war under false intelligence, torture, spying on Americans, signing statements refusing to obey the law, unprecedented corporate corruption disguised as no-bid government contracts, refusal to obey the Bill of Rights including separation of church and state and freedom of the press.... the list goes on, but True is stunned by Cheney's latest: the rules do not apply to him.
Still, a guy who can shoot his pal with impunity, a guy who can trash gay rights even though his daughter is a lesbian, a guy who can plot against Americans who just might vote against him.... well, what else might we expect?
Declaration of being Emperor is just the next step.
Cheney Power Grab: Says White House Rules Don’t Apply to Him - CommonDreams.org
Still, a guy who can shoot his pal with impunity, a guy who can trash gay rights even though his daughter is a lesbian, a guy who can plot against Americans who just might vote against him.... well, what else might we expect?
Declaration of being Emperor is just the next step.
Cheney Power Grab: Says White House Rules Don’t Apply to Him - CommonDreams.org
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
A hitchhikers guide to the blogosphere
Dear readers,
We are now on the map! Follow Kilroy 60's SECOND link to see us in his Guide.
True
Kilroy_60 said...
I like the approach of this blog. Interesting how you get the big picture and the grassroots.Given that, I've chosen True North to be included in the newest edition of A Hitchhiker's Guide To The Blogosphere. Keep up the good work.Cheers!
1:14 PM
Kilroy_60 said...
Sorry folks, the link changed. You'll find the Hitchhiker's Guide here.
2:49 PM
We are now on the map! Follow Kilroy 60's SECOND link to see us in his Guide.
True
Kilroy_60 said...
I like the approach of this blog. Interesting how you get the big picture and the grassroots.Given that, I've chosen True North to be included in the newest edition of A Hitchhiker's Guide To The Blogosphere. Keep up the good work.Cheers!
1:14 PM
Kilroy_60 said...
Sorry folks, the link changed. You'll find the Hitchhiker's Guide here.
2:49 PM
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