A Secret the Terrorists Already Knew - New York Times
The New York Times

June 30, 2006
Op-Ed Contributors

A Secret the Terrorists Already Knew
By RICHARD A. CLARKE and ROGER W. CRESSEY

COUNTERTERRORISM has become a source of continuing domestic and
international political controversy. Much of it, like the role of the Iraq
war in inspiring
new terrorists, deserves analysis and debate. Increasingly, however, many of
the political issues surrounding counterterrorism are formulaic, knee-jerk,
disingenuous and purely partisan. The current debate about United States
monitoring of transfers over the Swift international financial system
strikes
us as a case of over-reaction by both the Bush administration and its
critics.

Going after terrorists' money is a necessary element of any counterterrorism
program, as President Bill Clinton pointed out in presidential directives in
1995 and 1998. Individual terrorist attacks do not typically cost very much,
but running terrorist cells, networks and organizations can be extremely
expensive.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups have had significant
fund-raising operations involving solicitation of wealthy Muslims,
distribution
of narcotics and even sales of black market cigarettes in New York. As part
of a "follow the money" strategy, monitoring international bank transfers is
worthwhile (even if, given the immense number of transactions and the
relatively few made by terrorists, it is not highly productive) because it
makes
operations more difficult for our enemies. It forces them to use more
cumbersome means of moving money.

Privacy rights advocates, with whom we generally agree, have lumped this
bank-monitoring program with the alleged National Security Agency
wiretapping of
calls in which at least one party is within the United States as examples of
our government violating civil liberties in the name of counterterrorism.
The two programs are actually very different.

Any domestic electronic surveillance without a court order, no matter how
useful, is clearly illegal. Monitoring international bank transfers,
especially
with the knowledge of the bank consortium that owns the network, is legal
and unobjectionable.

The International Economic Emergency Powers Act, passed in 1977, provides
the president with enormous authority over financial transactions by
America's
enemies. International initiatives against money laundering have been under
way for a decade, and have been aimed not only at terrorists but also at
drug
cartels, corrupt foreign officials and a host of criminal organizations.

These initiatives, combined with treaties and international agreements,
should leave no one with any presumption of privacy when moving money
electronically
between countries. Indeed, since 2001, banks have been obliged to report
even transactions entirely within the United States if there is reason to
believe
illegal activity is involved. Thus we find the privacy and illegality
arguments wildly overblown.

So, too, however, are the Bush administration's protests that the press
revelations about the financial monitoring program may tip off the
terrorists. Administration
officials made the same kinds of complaints about news media accounts of
electronic surveillance. They want the public to believe that it had not
already
occurred to every terrorist on the planet that his telephone was probably
monitored and his international bank transfers subject to scrutiny. How
gullible
does the administration take the American citizenry to be?

Terrorists have for many years employed nontraditional communications and
money transfers - including the ancient Middle Eastern hawala system,
involving
couriers and a loosely linked network of money brokers - precisely because
they assume that international calls, e-mail and banking are monitored not
only
by the United States but by Britain, France, Israel, Russia and even many
third-world countries.

While this was not news to terrorists, it may, it appears, have been news to
some Americans, including some in Congress. But should the press really be
called unpatriotic by the administration, and even threatened with
prosecution by politicians, for disclosing things the terrorists already
assumed?

In the end, all the administration denunciations do is give the press
accounts an even higher profile. If administration officials were truly
concerned
that terrorists might learn something from these reports, they would be wise
not to give them further attention by repeatedly fulminating about them.

There is, of course, another possible explanation for all the outraged
bloviating. It is an election year. Karl Rove has already said that if it
were up
to the Democrats, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would still be alive. The attacks on
the press are part of a political effort by administration officials to use
terrorism to divide America, and to scare their supporters to the polls
again this year.

The administration and its Congressional backers want to give the impression
that they are fighting a courageous battle against those who would wittingly
or unknowingly help the terrorists. And with four months left before
Election Day, we can expect to hear many more outrageous claims about
terrorism -
from partisans on both sides. By now, sadly, Americans have come to expect
it.

Richard A. Clarke and Roger W. Cressey, counterterrorism officials on the
National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush,
are
security consultants.

Possted by Miriam V.

Religion In Schools: My Own Thoughts

I was a student in the NYC public schools in the 1940's and 50's. I was the
child of a non religious Jewish family attending a public elementary school
in Queens. Once a week, there was an assembly for all the grades. It began
with the Pledge of Allegiance ("under God" was not part of the pledge back
then), the singing of the National Anthem, a selection read from the New
Testament, and the singing of one or more Protestant hymns. Everyone was
required to participate. When I questioned all of this at home, my father
said, "Don't forget - this is a Christian country". To me, that meant we
Jews were here on suffrance. We should keep a low profile and not complain.
We could take Jewish holidays off from school without negative consequences.
We sang Christmas songs at Christmas time. We did not sing Chanukah songs
at Chanukah.

When my oldest daughter graduated from public high school, a Protestant
minister said a prayer as part of the graduation ceremony. No one
questioned a prayer at graduation and certainly, no one questioned a
Christian minister saying it.

From my point of view, prayers, hymns, Christmas caroles etc. should be
prohibited from being part of public school procedures. If kids want to
talk to each other about religion before and after school and during lunch
time and recess, that's fine. If they want to say prayers privately around
a flag pole, that's fine too. But when Religion becomes part of the school
day, it is invariably some form of Protestant religion and to children who
aren't Protestant, it is as if our government is saying that this particular
religion is the correct one and all others are not. And what about those of
us who don't follow a religion? What about those of us benighted souls who
are atheists? In this "Christian" country, are we to be marginalized?

Many years later, my daughter graduated from Turo Law School. She attended
law school as an adult. I had no idea that it was a Jewish school. I have
to say that when a rabbi gave the convocation, I was absolutely thrilled.
I'm not religious, but to see a rabbi having a part in a graduation was a
new experience and an absolute joy.

Posted by Miriam V.

What's the matter with Barack Obama?

by Michele Goldberg

The trouble with Barack Obama's controversial recent speech about religion and the Democratic Party is not his embrace of religious language in the service of liberalism. Religious speech can be transcendent, and genuinely Christian ideals about justice and mercy can inspire even non-believers. The right has successfully convinced much of the country that the Democratic Party is hostile to people of faith, and speeches that work to counter that myth are valuable.

Unfortunately, Obama's rhetoric ends up reinforcing Republican myths about liberal Godlessness instead of challenging them.

There's much in the speech to admire, particularly Obama's call for us to take the religious right's rhetoric seriously, to engage and argue with the movement's ideas rather than brushing them off as mere fanaticism. He gets the spiritual void at the heart of American life, and the need for social movements to offer people meaning and existential solace along with practical policy solutions. "Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily rounds -- dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets -- and they're coming to the realization that something is missing," he said. "They are deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They're looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them -- that they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness."

When I was in Dover, PA during the intelligent design controversy, a preacher's wife told that if evolution is true, life has no meaning. "Where's this universe heading?" she asked. "What's the purpose of it all? There's no standard, no guidelines." Obviously, Democrats should not join Republicans in pretending that they have a lock on divine truth, but they can speak to people's anxiety, their hunger for community and purpose. The religious right offers people a narrative arc, not just about their own lives, but also about America's decline and imminent resurrection. Democrats need a mobilizing vision as well, one that speaks to the despair that underlies so much of our politics.

Obama recognizes this, but he errs in taking Republican propaganda as fact, or, to put it in Lakoff's terms, in accepting the GOP frame. He perpetuates the fantasy that there really is a liberal war on faith. "[A] sense of proportion should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and state," he says. "Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation -- context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase 'under God.' I didn't. Having voluntary student prayer groups use school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats. And one can envision certain faith-based programs -- targeting ex-offenders or substance abusers -- that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problems."

Let's unpack this. It is a common right-wing talking point that liberals want to take the phrase "under God" of the pledge of allegiance. Undoubtedly, some of us regret that, during a moment of Cold War panic in 1954, our government amended the historic pledge to put the word God in it. However, there is now no organized movement to take it out. The California man who sued over the pledge a few years ago represented no one but himself, and in 2002, when the 9th Circuit voted in his favor, many ardent defenders of church/state separation groaned. "This is a godsend for the religious right," Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State told me that day. "They're going to raise millions of dollars on this issue. I'm sure even as we're speaking, there are presses running overtime printing fundraising letters saying, 'Save the Pledge of Allegiance!'" Meanwhile, the Supreme Court had recently ruled that public money could be used for religious school tuition. "We're on the verge of tax-supported religion in this country. It's a startling change of policy, and instead of taking a hard, serious look at that, we're going to spend a couple of months arguing about the Pledge of Allegiance."

The fact is, no liberal of any stature -- and certainly no Democrat -- is fighting against the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Indeed, the day that decision came down, the Senate unanimously voted to condemn it.

Similarly, no one is stopping religious kids from gathering together to pray at school. Last year, when I was writing about the myth of the War on Christmas, I interviewed Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and an expert on religion in public schools. He's presented as a heroic voice of sanity in John Gibson's ridiculous book "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." This is what he told me: "The big picture is that there's more religion now in public schools than ever in modern history. There's no question about that. But it's not there in terms of the government imposing religion or sponsoring it, and that bothers some people on the right. They miss the good old days when public schools were semi-established Protestant schools."

In the last two decades, Haynes said, "religion has come into the public schools in all kinds of ways ... many schools now understand that students have religious liberty rights in a public school, so you can go to many public schools today and kids will be giving each other religious literature, they will be sharing their faith. You go to most public schools now and see kids praying around the flagpole before school." In this evangelical climate, I suspect many students who practice minority religions, or no religion at all, are made to feel far more alienated than when I was in school during the 80s and 90s. Nevertheless, when schools have stopped kids from engaging in religious speech -- say, not letting them hand out religious tracts at lunch -- the ACLU has stepped in to defend them, and they've been correct to do so. Liberalism, at its best, stands for free speech, even when that speech is annoying.

The relevant argument, then, is not about whether there will be prayer in public schools. It's about whether there will be government-mandated prayer in public schools. The argument is not whether religion can do good things in people's lives. It's whether the government should fund religion. The argument is not even whether religious groups should contract with the government to provide social services -- Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army and others have been doing that for decades. It's whether religious groups that do receive taxpayer funds should be permitted to proselytize on the public dime, and to refuse to hire those of the wrong faith. The relevant debate is about government-financed religious discrimination. The rest is just a smokescreen to make it seem like defenders of the First Amendment are the ones on the offensive

Supreme Court to Bush: Clean Up Your Act!

By Matthew Rothschild

With the Supreme Court’s Guantánamo decision on Thursday, the Bush Administration was put on notice: Their dirty way of doing things has got to stop.
At Guantánamo, the Supreme Court prohibited Rumsfeld from holding military trials without Congressional authorization and, beyond that, with substandard due process. Rumsfeld’s tribunals were allowing in hearsay and even coerced testimony.

The Court said no to all that.

But the Court’s decision goes way beyond the gates of Guantánamo.

For it now casts into doubt a whole range of reprehensible practices that this Administration has been engaging in.

This includes mistreating and torturing detainees: the hooding, the dangling, the painful shackling, the exposure to high heat and freezing temperatures, the beatings, the waterboarding, and the homicides of more than two dozen detainees at the hands of U.S. personnel.

This includes the transfer of detainees to countries that practice torture.

This includes the CIA’s secret prisons, where hundreds of detainees are being kept, without access to any court, reportedly for the rest of their lives.None of that’s kosher, implied Justice John Paul Stevens in his majority opinion (proving once again the wisdom of Will Durst’s quip that the most important person in the country right now is Stevens’s doctor). (Full disclosure: Stevens is a former law partner and still good friend of my father’s.)Stevens cited Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions as a governing authority. That article says detainees should “in all circumstances be treated humanely.”

It bans “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”

And it talks about “judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

Those are just the guarantees that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have been violating.

And those are just the outrages that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have been countenancing.

The question is whether Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld will obey the Court or whether they will directly flout it. This latter course of action is unlikely, though the legal claim the Administration has been asserting—that the judiciary has no authority to interfere with the exercise of the President’s commander in chief powers—suggests that this may have crossed their minds.

More likely, the Administration will drag its feet, as it did after the Rasul decision, the 2004 ruling that allowed Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention. And Bush will probably look to Republicans in Congress to give him approval for tribunals and more.

But for now, three cheers for the Supreme Court.

Three cheers for Justice William Kennedy, who is now the swing vote on the Court, and this time swung the right way.

And three cheers for Justice John Paul Stevens, still going strong at eighty-six.

What's the matter with Barack Obama?

by Michele Goldberg

The trouble with Barack Obama's controversial recent speech about religion and the Democratic Party is not his embrace of religious language in the service of liberalism. Religious speech can be transcendent, and genuinely Christian ideals about justice and mercy can inspire even non-believers. The right has successfully convinced much of the country that the Democratic Party is hostile to people of faith, and speeches that work to counter that myth are valuable.

Unfortunately, Obama's rhetoric ends up reinforcing Republic myths about liberal Godlessness instead of challenging them.

There's much in the speech to admire, particularly Obama's call for us to take the religious right's rhetoric seriously, to engage and argue with the movement's ideas rather than brushing them off as mere fanaticism. He gets the spiritual void at the heart of American life, and the need for social movements to offer people meaning and existential solace along with practical policy solutions. "Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily rounds - dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets - and they're coming to the realization that something is missing," he said. "They are deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They're looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness."

When I was in Dover, PA during the intelligent design controversy, a preacher's wife told that if evolution is true, life has no meaning. "Where's this universe heading?" she asked. "What's the purpose of it all? There's no standard, no guidelines." Obviously, Democrats should not join Republicans in pretending that they have a lock on divine truth, but they can speak to people's anxiety, their hunger for community and purpose. The religious right offers people a narrative arc, not just about their own lives, but also about America's decline and imminent resurrection. Democrats need a mobilizing vision as well, one that speaks to the despair that underlies so much of our politics.

Obama recognizes this, but he errs in taking Republican propaganda as fact, or, to put it in Lakoff's terms, in accepting the GOP frame. He perpetuates the fantasy that there really is a liberal war on faith. "[A] sense of proportion should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and state," he says. "Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation - context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase 'under God.' I didn't. Having voluntary student prayer groups use school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats. And one can envision certain faith-based programs - targeting ex-offenders or substance abusers - that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problems."

Let's unpack this. It is a common right-wing talking point that liberals want to take the phrase "under God" of the pledge of allegiance. Undoubtedly, some of us regret that, during a moment of Cold War panic in 1954, our government amended the historic pledge to put the word God in it. However, there is now no organized movement to take it out. The California man who sued over the pledge a few years ago represented no one but himself, and in 2002, when the 9th Circuit voted in his favor, many ardent defenders of church/state separation groaned. "This is a godsend for the religious right," Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State told me that day. "They're going to raise millions of dollars on this issue. I'm sure even as we're speaking, there are presses running overtime printing fundraising letters saying, 'Save the Pledge of Allegiance!'" Meanwhile, the Supreme Court had recently ruled that public money could be used for religious school tuition. "We're on the verge of tax-supported religion in this country. It's a startling change of policy, and instead of taking a hard, serious look at that, we're going to spend a couple of months arguing about the Pledge of Allegiance."

The fact is, no liberal of any stature -- and certainly no Democrat -- is fighting against the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Indeed, the day that decision came down, the Senate unanimously voted to condemn it.

Similarly, no one is stopping religious kids from gathering together to pray at school. Last year, when I was writing about the myth of the War on Christmas, I interviewed Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and an expert on religion in public schools. He's presented as a heroic voice of sanity in John Gibson's ridiculous book "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought." This is what he told me: "The big picture is that there's more religion now in public schools than ever in modern history. There's no question about that. But it's not there in terms of the government imposing religion or sponsoring it, and that bothers some people on the right. They miss the good old days when public schools were semi-established Protestant schools."

In the last two decades, Haynes said, "religion has come into the public schools in all kinds of ways ... many schools now understand that students have religious liberty rights in a public school, so you can go to many public schools today and kids will be giving each other religious literature, they will be sharing their faith. You go to most public schools now and see kids praying around the flagpole before school." In this evangelical climate, I suspect many students who practice minority religions, or no religion at all, are made to feel far more alienated than when I was in school during the 80s and 90s. Nevertheless, when schools have stopped kids from engaging in religious speech -- say, in handing out religious tracts at lunch -- the ACLU has stepped in to defend them, and they've been correct to do so. Liberalism, at its best, stands for free speech, even when that speech is annoying.

The relevant argument, then, is not about whether there will be prayer in public schools. It's about whether there will be government-mandated prayer in public schools. The argument is not whether religion can do good things in people's lives. It's whether the government should fund religion. The argument is not even whether religious groups should contract with the government to provide social services -- Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army and others have been doing that for decades. It's whether religious groups that do receive taxpayer funds should be permitted to proselytize on the public dime, and to refuse to hire those of the wrong faith. The relevant debate is about government-financed religious discrimination. The rest is just a smokescreen to make it seem like defenders of the First Amendment are the ones on the offensive.

The Supreme Court clips Bush's war wings

In a major rebuke to the president's draconian tactics, the court rules that secret military tribunals for terror suspects fundamentally violate U.S. and international law.
By Walter Shapiro

It remains one of the most chilling public statements by a senior Bush administration official. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft blustered, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists -- for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends."

Ashcroft's inflammatory claim that civil libertarians were arming al-Qaida came on a day when the attorney general had the unsavory duty of defending the administration's initial rules covering military tribunals. Now four and a half years later, the Supreme Court's end-of-the-session decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld both rejected these military tribunals and quickened the hearts of civil libertarians.

Read narrowly, the court's ruling applies only to the roughly 450 prisoners held at Guantánamo. In fact, Thursday's decision does not even guarantee any kind of trial for these detainees. As Justice Paul Stevens noted in his majority opinion, "Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the Government's power to detain him for the duration of active hostilities." Yet such a gimlet-eyed interpretation may be the equivalent of believing that Brown v. Board of Education applies only to schools in the greater metroplex of Topeka, Kan.

It is possible that Hamdan may someday be seen as the turning point in repudiating the Bush-Cheney view that all branches of government are equal but some are more equal than others. An optimist could find persuasive evidence in the decision that the Supreme Court was, in effect, saying to the White House: "Enough of your cockamamie theories about the all-powerful president in wartime. Enough of your cloud-cuckoo readings of the resolution that Congress passed after Sept. 11. And enough of your cataclysmic claims that the war against al-Qaida requires a wanton disrespect for international law and the norms of civilized behavior."

Of course, the Supreme Court tends to be more Delphic than direct. Any quick-off-the-mark interpretation of Hamdan should be regarded as the first rough draft of legal theory rather than settled jurisprudence. This complex 5-3 decision was still being read in detail by the law professors and legal scholars who were simultaneously being asked to comment on its meaning.

Probably the most compelling passage in Stevens' opinion is this four-word sentence: "That reasoning is erroneous." The octogenarian justice was rejecting the government's cherished argument that not one syllable of the Geneva Conventions applies to alleged al-Qaida captives at Guantánamo. Stevens held that, at minimum, Hamdan and his companions on the American-held tip of Cuba are covered by the portions of the Geneva Conventions that regulate the treatment of prisoners in civil wars and similar conflicts.

Marty Lederman, a Georgetown law professor who contributes to SCOTUSblog, was among the first to grasp the implications of the Geneva Conventions portion of the opinion. As Lederman recounted in a Thursday afternoon interview, "When I saw it, I thought it was the big kahuna." Under Lederman's reasoning, if al-Qaida members are covered by at least portions of the Geneva Conventions, as the opinion confirms, then so would be American soldiers and CIA operatives.

Not only do these treaties set fair-trial standards for military commissions, but they also (much to the horror of Cheney and company) mandate the humane treatment of prisoners.

"After today, any waterboarding will open you up to a possible war-crimes prosecution," said Lederman, who served in the Clinton and Bush Justice Departments. He expressed the tentative view that Thursday's decision probably could not be used retroactively to punish anyone for employing extralegal interrogation techniques. But Lederman added, "I wish I could see the memos that are going out today from the CIA to the field."

In the Hamdan decision the court also vigorously dismissed the claim that Congress had already ceded to the president any power he wants to assert under the guise of battling al-Qaida. Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University and the author of "The Most Democratic Branch," a just-published portrait of the Supreme Court, said, "They completely rejected the notion that the president can do whatever he likes because of the post-9/11 'Use of Force' resolution."

Significant as this ruling is, decisions like Hamdan do not by themselves instantly transform behavior as if they were a fiat from Mount Sinai. Their broader implications are bound to be tested in the courts and challenged by the administration. If Congress and the voters lack the political will to act on the Hamdan precedent, then Thursday's decision will probably be remembered as a momentary flicker of judicial independence in the era of a "laws only apply to little people" presidency.

But, for the moment, the Supreme Court in its robed majesty has rebuked the White House. As Michael Posner, the president of Human Rights First, put it, "They challenged the global notion that there's war and that there's law -- and that war trumps law."

The court has played its trump card. Now the question remains: Who will follow suit?

The omnipotent presidency

Power Grab
by Elizabeth Drew

Disproportionate Response

by Steve Clemons

A group of armed Palestinians, some connected to the militant wing of Hamas, did penetrate Israel's border security and did kidnap a young soldier, Gilad Shalit. Those who defend the action say that it was in response to Israel's killing 7 members of an innocent Palestinian family. It was wrong to kidnap the soldier -- absolutely wrong, and the G-8 leaders have said that; but they have also condemned Israel's perceived disregard for the safety and value of innocent Palestinian lives.

Since then, Israel has been on a rampage and has permitted emotion and knee-jerk, overzealous responses prevail over measured and sober approaches that might not have only helped get the Israeli soldier freed but made some progress in establishing a climate to talk about the bigger picture of an Israeli-Palestinian solution.

Now Israel is not only blowing up bridges and power plants but has arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and lawmakers. Israel is arresting symbols of the Palestinian government -- and edging this situation to potential full-out war. Condi Rice is urging restraint, but Israel seems out of control.

Americans have a lot to be thankful for that they didn't live under this Israeli government during the Cold War because the hot-headed, lack of restraint would have surely led to a nuclear exchange with the Soviets if Israel had been at the helm.

Israel would do well to go reacquaint itself with the USS Liberty, which Israelis fired on killing American servicemen. I have had a discussion with someone who was the former head of the U.S. National Security Agency who has no doubt at all that Israel's attack on the U.S. ship was purposeful and not an accident, as Israelis and Americans eager to cover up the incident have asserted.

America's response was measured and put in context -- whether one agrees with that or not. Israel got a huge pass.

Israel is demonstrating profound immaturity with its behavior, though I support the importance of negotiating and even pursuing its kidnapped soldier. However, despite its regional superpower status, Israel is showing that it tilts too easily towards responses far disproportionate to any sane or reasonable action. While Israel radicalizes Palestininans and many Arabs in the region with this behavior, it needs to know that it is eroding American support for its behavior and position.

Lines must be drawn -- and Israel is way over the line now.

Bush? Never heard of him.

Desperate to appeal to voters but fleeing from an unpopular president, Republicans are embracing jingoism, nativism and even Jim Crow. By Sidney Blumenthal

President Bush's effectiveness as a domestic president is ending not with a bang but with a whimper. Almost four months before the midterm elections, congressional Republicans fear an association with him might alienate their constituencies and result in a loss of the House of Representatives. They hold the House by only 15 seats and suddenly even previously safe districts are at risk. Just a month ago Bush delivered a nationally televised address on immigration, urging Congress to provide for eventual citizenship for the more than 12 million illegal immigrants in the country (the pro-business position). He convinced the Senate, but the House refused to budge from its punitive position to criminalize any assistance to illegal immigrants.

The White House had hoped that the killing of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would reverse Bush's slide in popularity. Indeed, there was a slight bump upward of several points. But this is a classic epiphenomenon that has already started to wither.

From the vantage point of Capitol Hill, the most salient factor is that Bush's evanescent Zarqawi "recovery" has failed to cast any glow onto Republican prospects. Enforcing party discipline for a purely political congressional vote last week that endorsed Bush's policy in Iraq, such as it is, has barely quelled panic. Even as Bush briefly nudged up ever so slightly from the low to mid-30s, Republican candidates fell further behind in the polls. For Republicans, Bush has become cement shoes.
Two recent near-death experiences have desperately frightened Republicans. In a June 6 by-election to fill the seat of the corrupt and imprisoned Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham in suburban San Diego, one of the safest Republican districts in the country, the Republican narrowly held on only through demagogic appeals against immigrants. Then, in Utah, in an even safer Republican district, the state party denied endorsement to Rep. Chris Cannon, a Republican with a 100 percent American Conservative Union voting record, because he had made the mistake of supporting Bush's immigration plan. On Tuesday, Cannon edged out a primary challenge from an anti-immigrant activist who insisted he was battling "Satan."

Southern Republicans picked this moment to stall the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that had been enacted after a century of African-American disenfranchisement in the South. Their ringleader, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, is also the sponsor of bills that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in the House and Senate as well an of amendment to the Constitution to justify these sorts of displays. On June 14, he ventured forth to explain his proposals on Comedy Central, where comedian-interviewer Stephen Colbert asked him a trick question, "What are the Ten Commandments?" "You mean all of them?" Westmoreland stammered. "Um. Don't murder. Don't lie. Don't steal. Um. I can't name them all."

In the Senate on Tuesday, Republicans staged a daylong debate on a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist proclaimed the issue nothing less than a "crisis": "Enemies of American freedom abroad are well aware of the ideals emblemized by the American flag." The measure failed by one vote to attain the necessary two-thirds majority.

So far this year, according to the Citizens Flag Alliance, there have been four incidents of flag burning, whose evildoers have been not a single al-Qaida suspect but the usual rowdy small-town teenagers. One of the most notable cases of 2005 occurred last July 4, after midnight, when an 18-year-old in Maryville, Tenn. (population 23,000, located in Frist's native state), burned a flag in a neighbor's yard and was arrested after the police detected "beer cans 'all over the property and in the street,'" according to the local newspaper. The Associated Press reported, "His father said the teenager 'has no reason for anger against the United States' and could easily have ignited a garbage can instead of a flag." The lad was jailed for nine days.

While the Senate was consumed debating the flag-burning amendment, Rep. Mark Kennedy, the Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota, was removing every mention and likeness of Bush from his campaign literature and advertising. As the Republican cultural warriors march into the midterm elections, they are unfurling nativism and jingoism as their banners, and some are even raising the shadow of Jim Crow. The unpopular conservative president is the emblem they seek to hide. Only by suffering slights from Republicans can Bush hope to escape a Congress led by Democrats that would cast sunlight on his remarkably secretive and unaccountable administration.

Supreme Court Decision on Gitmo Undermines Bush's Legal Case For Warrantless Wiretapping

The impact of today’s Supreme Court decision on military commissions goes well beyond Guantanamo. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force – issued by Congress in the days after 9/11 – is not a blank check for the administration.

From the syllabus:
Neither the AUMF [Authorization for the Use of Military Force] nor the DTA [Detainee Treatment Act] can be read to provide specific, overriding authorization for the commission convened to try Hamdan. Assuming the AUMF activated the President’s war powers, see Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U. S. 507, and that those powers include authority to convene military commissions in appropriate circumstances, see, e.g., id., at 518, there is nothing in the AUMF’s text or legislative history even hinting that Congress intended to expand or alter the authorization set forth in UCMJ Art. 21.

The point here is that the AUMF does not authorize activity that was not specifically contemplated in the text or legislative history. This is incredibly significant.

The administration is relying on the AUMF to justify its warrantless wiretapping program.

Here’s Alberto Gonzales on 12/19/05:
"Our position is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this kind of signals intelligence."

The Bush administration doesn’t argue that warrantless wiretapping was something specifically contemplated in the text or by Congress. Rather, the administration argues that it is implied as part of a broad authorization to “use all necessary and appropriate force.”

The Supreme Court has rejected that expansive interpretation. It’s a huge blow to the administration’s legal rationale for warrantless wiretapping.

Supreme Court Blocks Trials at Guantanamo

Supreme Court Blocks Trials at Guantánamo
By JOHN O'NEIL and SCOTT SHANE
The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that the military tribunals it created to try terror suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva Convention.
The Ruling
Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Insanity Law
More on the Supreme Court

Insurgents Offer to Halt Attacks in Iraq

By STEVEN R. HURST and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
Associated Press Writers

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Eleven Sunni insurgent groups have offered an immediate halt to all attacks - including those on American troops - if the United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years, insurgent and government officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Withdrawal is the centerpiece of a set of demands from the groups, which operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala. Although much of the fighting has been to the west, those provinces are increasingly violent and attacks there have crippled oil and commerce routes.

The groups who've made contact have largely shunned attacks on Iraqi civilians, focusing instead on the U.S.-led coalition forces. Their offer coincides with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's decision to reach out to the Sunni insurgency with a reconciliation plan that includes an amnesty for fighters.

The Islamic Army in Iraq, Muhammad Army and the Mujahedeen Shura Council - the umbrella group that covers eight militant groups including al-Qaida in Iraq - were not party to any offers to the government.

Naseer al-Ani, a Sunni Arab politician and official with the largest Sunni political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said that al-Maliki should encourage the process by guaranteeing security for those making the offer and not immediately reject their demands.

``The government should prove its goodwill and not establish red lines,'' al-Ani said. ``If the initiative is implemented in a good way, 70 percent of the insurgent groups will respond positively.''

Al-Maliki, in televised remarks Wednesday, did not issue an outright rejection of the timetable demand. But he said it was unrealistic, because he could not be certain when the Iraqi army and police would be strong enough to make a foreign presence unnecessary for Iraq's security.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that President Bush's ``view has been and remains that a timetable is not something that is useful. It is a signal to the enemies that all you have to do is just wait and it's yours.

``The goal is not to trade something off for something else to make somebody happy, the goal is to succeed,'' he said.

Bush has said U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for years to guarantee the success of the new Iraqi government. However, American military officials have said substantial reductions of the current force of 127,000 U.S. troops could be made before the end of 2007.

Eight of the 11 insurgent groups banded together to approach al-Maliki's government under The 1920 Revolution Brigade, which has claimed credit for killing U.S. troops in the past. All 11, working through intermediaries, have issued identical demands, according to insurgent spokesmen and government officials.

The officials spoke on condition of anomymity because of the sensitivity of the information and for fear of retribution.

The total number of insurgents is not known, nor how many men belong to each group. But there are believed to be about two dozen insurgent organizations in Iraq, so the 11 contacting the government could represent a substantial part of the Sunni-led insurgency.

Al-Maliki's offer of amnesty for insurgents would not absolve those who have killed Iraqis or American coalition troops. But proving which individuals have carried out fatal attacks would, in many - if not most - cases, be a difficult task.

The issue is extremely sensitive in the United States, which has lost more than 2,500 uniformed men and women in Iraq, many to the insurgents' bombs and ambushes.

Coinciding with al-Maliki's attempts to bring Sunni Arabs to the bargaining table, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad held talks Tuesday in Saudi Arabia with King Abdullah. The Saudis have influence with many Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

Al-Maliki also set up an e-mail account to communicate with insurgents, flashing the address on the screen during a broadcast Sunday night.

For al-Maliki, reaching out to the Sunnis risks heightening tensions in his ruling coalition of mostly Shiite Muslim political groups. Al-Maliki is said to be increasingly disenchanted with the close ties between the country's most powerful Shiite organization and Iran, which is ruled by a Shiite theocracy.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group with historic ties to the Iranians, favors close relations with Iran. Many of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politicians and religious figures spent years in Iranian exile during Saddam Hussein's regime.

In addition to the withdrawal timetable, the Iraqi insurgents have demanded:

- An end to U.S. and Iraqi military operations against insurgent forces.

- Compensation for Iraqis killed by U.S. and government forces and reimbursement for property damage.

- An end to the ban on army officers from Saddam's regime in the Iraqi military.

- An end to the government ban on former members of the Baath Party - which ruled the country under Saddam.

- The release of insurgent detainees.

The 1920 Revolution Brigades, the umbrella for seven other groups, was established in the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Its name refers to Iraq's historical fight against British colonialism.

The group has claimed responsibility for attacking American troops, including the downing of two helicopters in 2004.

``If they set a two-year timetable for the withdrawal we will stop all our operations immediately,'' said the leader in a telephone interview with the AP. The man, who refused to give his name for security reasons, spoke from the telephone of one of the mediators. Others present made similar remarks.

Besides the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the eight include Abtal al-Iraq (Heroes of Iraq), the 9th of April Group, al-Fateh Brigades, al-Mukhtar Brigades, Salahuddin Brigades, Mujahedeen Army and the Brigades of the General Command of the Armed Forces. The three other groups are small organizations that also mainly operate in areas north of Baghdad.

Encouraging Corporations that Commit to America and American Workers

by Rep. Jan Schakowsky

If you want to make Americans of all stripes mad, tell them about the billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks our government gives to companies that outsource jobs and relocate to avoid giving back to the our great country. A recent poll in Foreign Affairs magazine reported that nearly 90% of Americans worry about losing their jobs to corporate outsourcing.

Tell them about Accenture, for example, which advises other companies how to outsource jobs overseas while avoiding its fair share of tax payments by incorporating offshore in Bermuda.

Like many other US corporations, Accenture continues to qualify for tax breaks, and it currently has more than $500 million in government contracts – paid for by taxpayers.

Meanwhile, urban communities and small towns are devastated by plant closings. Often these plants are owned by profitable corporations like Maytag, which moved its Galesburg, Illinois, plant to Reynosa, Mexico, in 2004, leaving 1,600 workers without their good-paying jobs.

In honor of our country and the great American patriotic spirit that is renewed at this time each year – and just a few days short of the 230th anniversary of the 1776 Declaration – today I announced that I'm introducing the Patriot Corporations of America Act.

It is time to rekindle the spirit of patriotism and encourage corporations that commit to America and American workers. The Patriot Corporations of America Act would do so by rewarding companies which invest in our nation's economic future. And, it would do so in a revenue neutral way.

To end this race to the bottom, to end the offshoring of jobs and research, Bill Edley, a former State Representative in Illinois, and political scientist Robin Johnson of Monmouth College, introduced a new idea of turning the tables around.

Bill Edley asked, "What if we stopped rewarding outsourcers and tax dodgers, and make corporations earn their tax incentives by investing in America and American workers?"

The idea of the Patriot Corporations of America Act was born, and I am honored to be introducing it in the US Congress – along with my colleagues, Sherrod Brown, Barbara Lee, Hilda Solis, Lynn Woolsey, David Obey, Tom Lantos, Peter DeFazio, John Conyers and Major Owens.

Instead of providing corporations incentives to slash benefits, offshore their finances, and outsource jobs, the Patriot Corporations Act would encourage American corporations to meet standards that would create a rising tide for all.

Those companies that choose to participate in the Patriot Corporation program would be provided with preferential treatment in government contracting and a 5% tax rate reduction for pledging their allegiance to our country by meeting a few no-nonsense standards.

To qualify, Patriot Corporations would need to:
Produce at least 90% of their goods and services in the United States and do at least 50% of their research and development in the United States.

Limit top managements' compensation to no greater than 100 times – or 10,000% – of that of their lowest-compensated full-time workers.

Patriot Corporations would commit to their workers by:
Contributing at least 5% of payroll to a portable pension fund and by paying for at least 70% of the cost of health insurance plans.

Finally, Patriot Corporations would:
Comply with federal regulations regarding the environment, workplace safety, consumer protections and labor relations, including maintaining neutrality in employee organizing drives.

And, the incentives would be paid for by closing corporate offshoring loopholes and reining in some of the new tax breaks for millionaires.

Patriot Corporations would be leaders in creating a new patriotic corporate ethic in America – one that unites workers and their employers in the mutual goal of building a stronger, more prosperous, more democratic business sector that can vigorously and proudly compete in the twenty-first-century global economy.

Patriot Corporations are an expression of the American spirit of our fore fathers and mothers when they took that brave step of declaring our independence and creating the United States of America.

Wholesale Treason

by Kevin Drum

The New York Times story that exposed the Treasury Department's terrorist finance tracking program says it relied on "nearly 20" former and current government officials. The LA Times story on the same subject relied on "more than a dozen" sources.

Isn't that an awful lot of traitors in our midst? Why were so many people willing to talk about this? Was it because (a) revealing the program's existence didn't really endanger anything, or (b) they were concerned about its legality? Or both?

A Disgraceful Attack on the New York Times

Published on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 by TruthDig
by Robert Scheer

The Bush administration’s jihad against newspapers that reported on a secret program to monitor the personal-banking records of unsuspecting citizens is more important than the original story. For what the president and his spokesmen are once again asserting is that the prosecution of this ill-defined, open-ended “war on terror” inevitably trumps basic democratic rights in general and the constitutionally enshrined freedom of the press in particular.

The stakes are very high here. We’ve already been told that we must put up with official lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the unprecedented torture of prisoners of war and a massive electronic-eavesdropping program and other invasions of privacy. Now the target is more basic — the freedom of the press to report on such nefarious government activities. The argument in defense of this assault on freedom is the familiar refrain of dictators, wannabe and real, who grasp for power at the expense of democracy: We are in a war with an enemy so powerful and devious that we cannot afford the safeguard of transparent and accountable governance.

“We’re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America,” President Bush said Monday.

The “bunch of people” Bush says we are fighting was originally believed to be those behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, specifically Osama bin Laden and his decentralized Al Qaeda terrorist organization. Yet Bush, prodded by the neoconservative clique, quickly expanded this war beyond what should have been a worldwide manhunt for Al Qaeda operatives into an open-ended occupation of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — which, as we know from the Sept. 11 commission report, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or Sept. 11.

In fact, if the media, or Congress, had aggressively pursued the truth earlier, rather than being overwhelmed by the shock of Sept. 11, anti-U.S. terrorists of every stripe would not now be swarming over Iraq. Nor would the degenerating situation in Afghanistan and the enhanced power of religious fanatics throughout the Mideast, from Tehran to Gaza, pose such threats to peace if a fully informed public had held this president in check. Even today, the Bush administration continues to place the situation in Iraq in the “war on terror” framework, instead of acknowledging the primary role of religious and nationalist passions unleashed by the unwarranted U.S. invasion.

As Bush has continued to stretch it to cover all of his leadership failings, the “war on terror” has become a meaningless phrase, to be exploited for the political convenience of the moment. Terrorism, which should be treated clinically as a dangerous pathology threatening all modern societies, instead has been seized upon as an all-purpose propaganda opportunity for consolidating this administration’s political power. In such a situation, the press’ role as a conduit of both information and debate is more essential than ever. Freedom of the press, enshrined in our Constitution at a time when our fragile nation was besieged by enemies of the new republic, is not an indulgence to be allowed in safe periods but rather an indispensable tool for keeping ourselves safe. That is just the point that Vice President Dick Cheney, the high priest of excessive secrecy — even in domestic matters, such as refusing to reveal the content of his negotiation with Enron lobbyists in framing the administration’s energy policy — is bent on obscuring.

“Some in the press, in particular The New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult,” said Cheney, all but calling the newspaper traitorous.

How convenient to leave out The Wall Street Journal, which editorially supports the administration but which also covered this latest example of Bush’s abuse of power in its news pages. The administration’s attack on the Times, in fact, is not really about national security, but rather follows a domestic political agenda that requires attacking free media that dare offer criticism.

On Monday, following the pattern, Cheney also attacked the Times’ earlier disclosure that the National Security Agency had simply ignored the legal requirement of court warrants in monitoring telephone calls. “I think that is a disgrace,” he said of the Times winning a Pulitzer Prize for the stories.

What is truly a disgrace, though, is an administration that has consistently deceived the public about its intentions and which continues to shamefully exploit post-Sept. 11 fears to ensure its grip on the body politic.

Robert Scheer is the editor of truthdig.com and author of “Playing President.” Email to: rscheer@truthdig.com.

If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention

by John Sweeney

We're at war. Wages are stagnant. Gasoline prices have doubled since 2001. Pensions are disappearing. Health coverage is slipping out of reach. Parts of New Orleans remain uninhabitable.

So congressional leaders decide to debate unpassable constitutional amendments barring flag-burning and same-sex marriage.

The minimum wage hasn't increased since 1997. Still at $5.15 an hour, it's hit its lowest value in 51 years.

Full-time work at the minimum wage can't lift even a small family out of poverty.

So the leadership of the U.S. Senate refuses to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and instead considers eliminating the 40-hour week, taking wage and hour protections from millions of workers and lowering pay for tipped workers.

And House leaders are blocking any minimum wage vote while taking up a tax break for people who have estates worth $5 million ($10 million for couples) and clearing the way for their ninth pay raise since the minimum wage was last raised.

Really, if you're not outraged by now, you are not paying attention.

The upcoming congressional elections are taking the masks off congressional leaders and revealing just how morally corrupt they really can be. Instead of spending their time passing legislation to get America back on the right track--creating good jobs and keeping them in this country, making health care affordable for all and protecting our pensions, for example--they're creating opportunities to win votes from the narrow slice of the public that makes up their extremist, far right-wing base.

Of course, they are led by a presidential administration that sees airlines and manufacturing companies dumping workers' pensions right and left.
And responds by trying to bar Department of Energy contractors from providing guaranteed pensions and solid health care coverage for employees.
What do these people have against America's working families?

The only positive thing I can say about the recent behavior of the administration and congressional leaders is this: It's giving reasonable people--people who care about this country and the working families that fuel it--one hell of a big incentive to vote in November.

Across the country, AFL-CIO unions, state federations, central labor councils and volunteers are gearing up for an all-out push to fill Congress with friends of working families. The current congressional leadership has disgraced itself. It's time for them to go.

Get your precinct-walking shoes and your phone-banking voice ready. For the sake of working families and the future of our country, turn your outrage into action. Volunteer now in the fight for good jobs, affordable health care, secure pensions, a minimum wage increase and other working family priorities. Help elect leaders who will put our country, our states and our communities back on the right track.

Union members: Talk to your union steward or call your central labor council today to volunteer for Labor 2006. If you don't have the benefit of a union on the job, contact Working America to volunteer.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Electric Car Subject of Documentary
By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer

Was it murder? Or was it natural selection simply weeding out a weakling unable to compete in our consumer world? Or was the electric car just ahead of its time?

The documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" may not have the answer, but it makes for a lively, informative whodunit about an energy-efficient vehicle that debuted with fanfare and went out with a whimper.

Soaring fuel prices make director Chris Paine's film irksomely relevant as it lays out suspects in the demise of General Motors' EV1: Potentially complicit parties include automakers, oil companies and governments.

The film makes a fine bookend to "An Inconvenient Truth," the current documentary hit chronicling former Vice President Gore's campaign against global warming.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is an alarming classroom warning about catastrophic climate changes potentially looming from the buildup of fossil-fuel emissions. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" hits at street level, an infuriating examination of corporate and public indifference to consumer desire.

Paine was among drivers who leased an EV1 from GM in 1998, joining a list of electric-car enthusiasts that included Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Ted Danson and other celebrities. (Gibson contributes some hilarious interview segments.)

The cars were sleek, futuristic two-seaters powered by batteries that could be recharged overnight at home.

The vehicles were most prevalent in California, which had enacted laws requiring automakers to begin putting zero-emission cars on the road. After lawsuits and lobbying by automakers, California eventually softened the rules, and the EV1 and other companies' prototypes for electric cars started vanishing from the highways.

The film depicts a community of drivers clearly in love with their EV1 cars, yet GM refused to renew the leases or let consumers buy the vehicles outright. As leases expired, there was a gradual roundup — the EV1s bound for a crushing facility in the desert.

"I've never seen a company be so cannibalistic about its own product before," says actor Peter Horton ("thirtysomething"), the last Southern California driver to have his EV1 taken away in 2004.

A GM spokesman contends demand was insufficient. Paine's film counters with a prolonged vigil by former EV1 drivers outside a parking lot in Burbank, Calif., where about 80 of the repossessed cars were stored. A coalition of drivers offered $1.9 million to buy the cars, but GM declined, sending the vehicles to the crusher.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?" indicts pretty much everyone in the car's demise — auto companies whose huge stake in repair parts could be undermined by low-maintenance electric cars; oil companies whose profits hinge on fossil fuel; the California Air Resources Board; governments pushing other unproved technology such as hydrogen-fuel cells; even consumers in love with gas-guzzling SUVs.

The film lacks a certain balance, focusing most of its time on indignant electric-car enthusiasts.

Paine does analyze critics' contention that the limited driving range of EV1s may have hampered its introduction. But the film glosses over and quickly dismisses the "long tailpipe theory" — the notion that electric cars would simply transfer pollution from vehicle exhaust pipes to power-plant smokestacks.

Still, it's a fun road trip for moviegoers who like to shake their heads in disbelief at our consumer culture. And whether or not you believe in a conspiracy theory to kill the electric car, the film just might have you checking out a fuel-efficient hybrid instead of an SUV the next time you visit a car lot.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?", a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated PG for brief mild language. Running time: 92 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Greg Palast Interviews Hugo Chavez

By Greg Palast

"Here the empire is finished, and I believe that before the end of this century, it will be finished in the rest of the world. We will see the burial of the empire of the eagle."
read more

Cynical Manipulation

by John Nichols

In a democracy, the first responsibility of a journalist is to get accurate information about what the government is doing to the people so that they can make appropriate decisions about what is done in their name. That's why the founders put an unequivocal freedom-of-the-press protection in the First Amendment to the Constitution, and its why Thomas Jefferson famously declared, "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Of course, there have been some limits on what information journalists share with the citizenry. It is generally agreed, for instance, that reporters ought not report in too much detail on troop movements in wartime, as the publication of such information could endanger soldiers and undermine military objectives.

So when the Washington press corps began reporting this week on leaked information about planning by U.S. commanders in Iraq to withdraw two of the 14 combat brigades stationed in that country by September of this year, it would not have been surprising if the stories had raised eyebrows among the more sensitive players in the Bush administration.

While this is hardly a classic example of "reporting on troop movements," it is an instance where the media is getting into quite a bit of detail about where U.S. troops will be positioned in the none-too-distant future. As an example, television networks are showing maps of the regions of Iraq from which U.S. troops might exit in relatively short order.

So what has been the reaction of a White House that is known to be on edge about leaks to leaks regarding the deployment of U.S. troops in coming months?

President Bush and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow have both ruminated on the rumors in some detail. Each has suggested that no decision has yet been made, and they have even detailed the standards that are being used to come to decisions about withdrawal.

The conversations have been easy going and White House reporters have felt no presidential fury.

Contrast that reaction to the response by the president, his aides and allies to reports in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal that the president has authorized federal agencies to monitor the banking transactions of private citizens.

Ostensibly, the monitoring is intended to track transfers of money by supposed terrorists. But the program, like many of the administration's other moves to monitor the conversations and business dealings of private individuals, has been implemented in secret, without the subpoenas that are traditionally required for such reviews, and in a manner designed to avoid the sort of independent governmental oversight that is supposed to prevent abuse.

Now, it would be ridiculous to think that Osama bin Laden or anyone else associated with al Qaeda would be naïve enough to think that they could transfer large amounts of money through regular banking channels without being found out. So the revelation of the monitoring could hardly be called a threat to the "war on terror" – at least, not by anyone who knows anything about dealing with terrorist networks.

Yet, President Bush went ballistic about reporting on the monitoring, telling White House reporters, "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America. And for people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America."

Vice President Cheney was even blunter, saying, "Some of the press, particularly the New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs."

Bush allies in Congress have even called for the prosecution of the New York Times for revealing to Americans the extent to which they are being spied upon.

So why is the Bush administration so freaked out about a leak regarding a spying program that could not possibly have come as news to any terrorists but that certainly might interest average Americans? And why isn't the president concerned about leaks regarding specific redeployments of troops in the near future?

There's no mystery.

The leak about spying on bank records will feed concerns about the extent that this administration has engaged in spying on citizens. That could be politically damaging.

On the other hand, the leak about planning for troop deployments – coming at a time when the majority of Americans say they want to see a plan for getting the U.S. out of Iraq – eases the political pressure on the president and his Republican allies.

What's the bottom line? The cynical Bush White House has always seen the "war on terror" as a political tool. The president and his allies – heeding the advice of White House political czar Karl Rove – regularly tailor their responses to new developments to benefit their domestic political fortunes while undermining the prospects of their political foes.

Leaks about plans for troop redeployment are fine with the president because they could help him and his congressional allies politically.

Leaks about the administration spying on citizens, on the other hand, are "disgraceful" because they could cause the president and his Republicans acolytes political harm.

Chinese Medicine for American Schools - New York Times
The New York Times

June 27, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Chinese Medicine for American Schools
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

SHANGHAI

Visitors to China are always astonished by the new highways and skyscrapers,
and by the endless construction projects that make China's national bird the
crane.

But the investments in China's modernization that are most impressive of all
are in human capital. The blunt fact is that many young Chinese in cities
like
Shanghai or Beijing get a better elementary and high school education than
Americans do. That's a reality that should embarrass us and stir us to seek
lessons from China.

On this trip I brought with me a specialist on American third-grade
education - my third-grade daughter. Together we sat in on third-grade
classes in urban
Shanghai and in a rural village near the Great Wall. In math, science and
foreign languages, the Chinese students were far ahead.

My daughter was mortified when I showed a group of Shanghai teachers some of
the homework she had brought along. Their verdict: first-grade level at a
Shanghai
school.

Granted, China's education system has lots of problems. Universities are
mostly awful, and in rural areas it's normally impossible to hold even a
primitive
conversation in English with an English teacher. But kids in the good
schools in Chinese cities are leaving our children in the dust.

Last month, the Asia Society published an excellent report, "Math and
Science Education in a Global Age: What the U.S. Can Learn from China." It
notes that
China educates 20 percent of the world's students with 2 percent of the
world's education resources. And the report finds many potential lessons in
China's
rigorous math and science programs.

Yet, there isn't any magic to it. One reason Chinese students learn more
math and science than Americans is that they work harder at it. They spend
twice
as many hours studying, in school and out, as Americans.

Chinese students, for example, must do several hours of homework each day
during their summer vacation, which lasts just two months. In contrast,
American
students have to spend each September relearning what they forgot over the
summer.

China's government has developed a solid national curriculum, so that nearly
all high school students study advanced biology and calculus. In contrast,
only 13 percent of American high school pupils study calculus, and fewer
than 18 percent take advanced biology.

Yet if the Chinese government takes math and science seriously, children and
parents do so even more. At Cao Guangbiao elementary school in Shanghai, I
asked a third-grade girl, Li Shuyan, her daily schedule. She gets up at 6:30
a.m. and spends the rest of the day studying or practicing her two musical
instruments.

So if she gets her work done and has time in the evening, does she watch TV
or hang out with friends? "No," she said, "then I review my work and do
extra
exercises."

A classmate, Jiang Xiuyuan, said that during summer vacation, his father
allows him to watch television each evening - for 10 minutes.

The Chinese students get even more driven in high school, as they prepare
for the national college entrance exams. Yang Luyi, a tenth grader at the
first-rate
Shanghai High School, said that even on weekends he avoided going to movies.
"Going to the cinema is time-consuming," he noted, "so when all the other
students are working so diligently, how can you do something so irrelevant?"

And romance?

Li Yafeng, a tenth-grade girl at the same school, giggled at my question. "I
never planned to have a boyfriend in high school," she said, "because it's
a waste of time."

Now, I don't want such a pressured childhood for my children. But if Chinese
go overboard in one direction, we Americans go overboard in the other. U.S.
children average 900 hours a year in class and 1,023 hours in front of a
television.

I don't think we could replicate the Chinese students' drive even if we
wanted to. But there are lessons we can learn - like the need to shorten
summer
vacations and to put far more emphasis on math and science. A central
challenge for this century will be how to regulate genetic tinkering with
the human
species; educated Chinese are probably better equipped to make those kinds
of decisions than educated Americans.

During the Qing Dynasty that ended in 1912, China was slow to learn lessons
from abroad and adjust its curriculum, and it paid the price in its
inability
to compete with Western powers. These days, the tables are turned, and now
we need to learn from China.

Possted by Miriam V.

An Epic Week of Cutting and Running

Published on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 by TruthDig
by Molly Ivins

And then along comes Cut’n’Run Casey. We spend all last week listening to cut’n’run Democrats talking about their cut’n’run strategy for Iraq, and the only issue is whether they want to cut’n’run by the end of this year or to cut’n’run by the end of next year, and oh, by the way, did I mention that Republicans had been choreographed to refer to the Democrats’ plans as cut’n’run?

As Vice President Dick ("Last Throes") Cheney said Thursday, redeployment of our troops would be “the worst possible thing we could do. ... No matter how you carve it—you can call it anything you want—but basically it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don’t have the stomach for this fight.”

Then right in the middle of Cut’n’Run Week, the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., held a classified briefing at the Pentagon and revealed his plan to reduce the 14 combat brigades now in Iraq to five or six. And here’s the best part: Rather than wait till the end of this year or, heaven forefend, next year, Casey wants to start moving those troops out in September, just before whatever it is that happens in early November. They don’t call him George W. Jr. for nothing.

One has to admit, the party never ends with the Bush administration. The only question about Cut’n’Run Week is whether they meant to punctuate a weeklong festival of referring to Democrats as the party of “retreat” and “the white flag” with this rather abrupt announcement of their own cut’n’run program. Was it an error of timing?

I say no. I say Karl Rove doesn’t make timing mistakes. This administration thoroughly believes the media and the people have a collective recollection of no more than one day. Five days of cut’n’run, one day off and BAM, you get your own cut’n’run plan out there.

Republicans have, in fact, a well-developed sense of aesthetics. Regard the superb pairing of the decision not to raise the minimum wage with the continued push to repeal the estate tax. House Republicans had almost opened their marble hearts and raised the minimum, now at $5.15 an hour, to a whopping $7.25 an hour by 2009. (Since 1997, when they last raised it, members of Congress have hiked their own pay by $31,000 a year.)

This might have gone well with their decision to reduce the estate tax yet again, so that only the top half a percent of estates will pay it, while it will cost the treasury $602 billion over the first 10 years—but even better, no increase in the minimum wage to match the vote to decrease taxes on the very, very, very richest. Is that suave or what?

Also, very slick move on the Voting Rights Act extension. No amendments, no exemptions, the South rose again and blocked the whole deal. Which Southern state do you think will be the first to pass laws to hold down the black vote? My money is on ’Bama—for sentimental reasons.

And now, on to flag burning. What flag burning, you may well ask. Just because something doesn’t happen is no reason not to outlaw it. Or, for that matter, not to amend the Constitution of the United States.

I am considering introducing an amendment to require everyone in the audience at “Peter Pan” to clap for Tinkerbell. I believe 99.8% of them do, but that’s no reason not to amend the Constitution. I don’t believe we should allow people to be different. If someone wants to burn a flag as symbolic political protest, I believe they should be beheaded. Also, flipping the bird at George W. should merit the same—but not flipping off Clinton, Bill or Hillary.

Bush Goes After The New York Times

By Matthew Rothschild

Back during the 1790s under the Alien and Sedition Acts, then during the Civil War and again during World War I, the government prosecuted editors.
It’s not a practice that thrills me, as an editor.

Nor should it thrill you, for that matter, because it’s about as blatant a violation of the First Amendment as there is.

But that didn’t stop Representative Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, from wanting to get the cuffs out on the editors of The New York Times.

“We’re at war,” he said, “and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous.”

King said he would ask Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to “begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times—the reporters, the editors, and the publisher.”

Dick Cheney also dumped on the Times, saying that “some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs.” This most offensive Vice President said, “That offends me.”

Taking his cue from Cheney, as usual, Bush on Monday said, “For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America.” The revelation, he added, “makes it harder to win the war on terror.”

And Gonzales himself, who is supposed to be the leading law enforcement officer of the United States and is sworn to uphold the Constitution, has also been warning ominously about prosecuting journalists.

What King, Cheney, Bush, Gonzales, and many rightwing pundits don’t seem to appreciate is that we, the American people, need to have a free press to check the excesses of government.

Such a free press has never been needed more so than today, when the Bush Administration has taken excess to the nth degree.

To my eyes, The New York Times has not been aggressive enough. It held the NSA spying story for more than a year, and it let Judith Miller cozy up to the Iraq War cheerleaders and placed some of their propaganda on the front page.

“Our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough,” Bill Keller, editor of the Times, acknowledged in a letter to readers on June 25 [1].

He also revealed just how solicitous the Times has become of the Administration’s views.

“Our decision to publish the story of the Administration’s penetration of the international banking system followed weeks of discussion between Administration officials and The Times, not only the reporter who wrote the story but senior editors, including me,” Keller wrote. “We listened patiently and attentively. . . . We weighed most heavily the Administration’s concern that describing this program would endanger it.”

But the President doesn’t deserve a seat at the editorial meetings of The New York Times—or any other newspaper. That is not his place. He is commander in chief, not editor in chief.

It is up to reporters, and editors, and publishers to decide what is news—not the branch of government they are supposed to be covering.
Once the President takes over that job, the fourth estate has lost its function.

So before Gonzales, Cheney, Bush, and King throw Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger Jr in the hoosegow, they might want to consult a copy the Constitution, if they can still find one lying around.

A tale of two polls

by Tim Grieve

One day, two newspapers:

"Most in Poll Want Plan for Pullout From Iraq": USA Today, June 27, reporting on a new USA Today/Gallup poll in which 50 percent of the respondents say they want all U.S. troops home from Iraq within 12 months, and 57 percent say that Congress should pass a resolution outlining plans for a troop withdrawal.
"Nation Is Divided on Drawdown of Troops": The Washington Post, June 27, reporting on a new Washington Post/ABC News poll in which 51 percent of the respondents say that the Bush administration should not set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

Why the difference -- if, given the margins of error in the polls, there really is a difference?

It could be the way in which the pollsters asked the questions. The USA Today/Gallup pollsters asked respondents to pick a plan for U.S. troops: "Withdraw immediately," "withdraw in 12 months' time," "withdraw, take as many years as needed" or "send more troops." The Washington Post/ABC pollsters, on the other hand, wrapped the question in incomplete political arguments: "Some people say the Bush administration should set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further casualties. Others say knowing when the U.S. would pull out would only encourage the anti-government insurgents. Do you yourself think the United States should or should not set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq?"

What the polls have in common: Big majorities in both -- 67 percent in the USA Today/Gallup poll, 64 percent in the Washington Post/ABC poll -- say that George W. Bush does not have a clear plan for Iraq.

Rush Going Soft?

Bottle of Viagra Gets Limbaugh Held at Airport
Rush Limbaugh was released after being questioned about medicine in his luggage at a Florida airport.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (June 26) - Rush Limbaugh was detained for more than three hours Monday at Palm Beach International Airport after authorities said they found a bottle of Viagra in his possession without a prescription.

Customs officials found a prescription bottle labeled as Viagra in his luggage that didn't have Limbaugh's name on it, but that of two doctors, said Paul Miller, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

A doctor had prescribed the drug, but it was "labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes," Roy Black, Limbaugh's attorney, said in a statement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement examined the 55-year-old radio commentator's luggage after his private plane landed at the airport from the Dominican Republic, said Miller.

The matter was referred to the sheriff's office, whose investigators interviewed Limbaugh. According to Miller, Limbaugh said that the Viagra was for his use, and that he obtained it from his doctors.

Investigators confiscated the drugs, which treats erectile dysfunction, and Limbaugh was released without being charged.

The sheriff's office plans to file a report with the state attorney's office. Miller said it could be a second-degree misdemeanor violation.

Limbaugh reached a deal last month with prosecutors who had accused the conservative talk-show host of illegally deceiving multiple doctors to receive overlapping painkiller prescriptions. Under the deal, the charge, commonly referred to as "doctor shopping," would be dismissed after 18 months if he continues to submit to random drug tests and treatment for his acknowledged addiction to painkillers.
AP-ES-06-26-06 2223EDT

The jury's in

Why conservatives blew it

Close Guantanamo, and it's mindset

by Rami Khouri

Guantánamo is both American prison and un-American mindset. The violations it embodies reflect how far the Bush administration has travelled from legality, says Rami G Khouri.

George W Bush said on 14 June 2006 that he'd like to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, "but I also recognise that we're holding some people there that are darn dangerous, and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts."

Well, most of the world, and many Americans, also believe that there are some "darn dangerous" people running the White House these days, which is why Guantánamo is in the news again. Any day now the United States Supreme Court is expected to deliver its verdict in a case raised by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national who has been held at Guantánamo along with another 460 detainees. Hamdan is challenging the constitutionality of the American military "commissions", or special courts, that were established to try him and other "unlawful combatants".

It is important to distinguish the two very different strands that define the Hamdan case and the larger issue of the Guantánamo detainees. On the one hand are the fine points of law, and on the other is the more blunt projection of American power globally. It can be hard to separate these two issues, due to the devastating emotional and political impact of terrorism. The crimes and wilful inhumanity of 9/11 were so severe that this American government believes it can do anything it wishes to capture and punish the perpetrators, regardless of international or American law.

The Guantánamo Bay detention facility and its key questionable attributes – the treatment of prisoners, the lack of due process of law protections, the special "trials" the prisoners will be given – do not emanate from a political vacuum. They reflect a wider attitude among the Bush administration that savages sovereign foreign lands and sacred American constitutional traditions at the same time. Guantánamo is a place; but it is also a political mindset that defines the Bush White House and touches the lives of billions of people around the world. The Guantánamo mindset that has guided Washington's policies since 9/11 is the unfortunate consequence of an unprecedented convergence of anger, fear, ignorance and power.

The anger, understandably, is a result of the 9/11 attacks. The fear that Americans felt that day has been grotesquely cultivated by the Bush White House as an enduring foundation for partisan politics at home and something approaching lynchings and posse justice as a foreign policy.

Ignorance defines how the Bush folks woefully misdiagnosed two key things: the nature, causes and aims of the terror that was directed against their land five years ago; and the cultural and political landscapes of the Arab-Asian region where they have deployed their army in strength. Power, finally, is the asset that the United States has in greatest supply, especially military, technological and economic power, but that it has used in an erratic and often counter-productive way. Not surprisingly, most governments and people around the world today fear the consequences of American foreign policy.

Guantánamo captures the dilemma of this land and culture with impressive values that are distorted and momentarily diminished by the convergent furies of its own anger, fear, ignorance and power. Since 9/11 the American government has done many strange things, for a democratic beacon on a hill:

-waged unilateral wars

-changed regimes at will

-generated false and ideologically-driven proof of imminent threats

-mangled its own intelligence agencies

-tapped the communications of its own citizens without securing required court orders

-ignored the will of the world at the United Nations

-held hundreds of detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere without giving them the due process of law

-abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other such centres

-sent prisoners around the world for torture and mistreatment

-continued to threaten countries if they do not fall in line

-turned a blind eye to Arab and Asian despots and dictators who cooperate with its "global war on terror".

Guantánamo and its mindset is all of this and more, and seems distinctly un-American, which is why the judiciary has been called in to sort things out. The Supreme Court intervened in June 2004 to overrule George W Bush's November 2001 executive order authorising indefinite detention of suspected terrorists or any other "bad guys", without due process of law (i.e., detainees having a lawyer, being formally charged in court, or being told the accusations and evidence against them). The court affirmed that, according to international law and the American constitution, the Guantánamo detainees must be given access to American courts of law to challenge their detention and trials.

This is why so many of us out here in the swamp of the middle east still admire America and wish to emulate so many of its core principles. When the chips are down, the law is what matters; and the single most important operative principle of law is that it applies equally to all human beings in the land – or in its custody.

The Supreme Court's decision on Guantánamo will show American culture at its best, defining and affirming the rule of law and also curbing the political excesses of an enraged executive branch.

Give George Bush His War

by Larry Beinhart

"Rallied by Bush, Skittish G.O.P Now Embraces War as an Issue," is the front page story in the NY Times today.

That's a story that the White House wants us to know. How do we know they want us to know it? For one thing, it was written by Jim Rutenberg of the Washington Bureau of the NY Times.

Thanks to the miracles of modern internet technology you can go to nytimes.com, put rutenberg in their search box, and find out that he's one of the administration's go to guys when they want to the world to know that the President is in 'high spirits,' that he took time out to call the US soccer team and wish them well, or that they're honing 'strategy for the post-Zarqawi era.'

The administration is famous for the tactic of turning weakness into strength and attacking their opponent's strength as if it was weakness. The classic example was to make Bush, the guy who pulled strings to stay out of Vietnam, then went AWOL, into a strutting fighter jock warrior, while using surrogates to tear apart John Kerry, the guy who actually went to war and won actual medals in the face of actual hostile fire.

Let the Democrats learn from that.

George Bush wants the war. He wants it to be his issue. Yes. Yes, please, let him have it. Let it be all his. But it has to be all his. I heard Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on the radio and he said that it was time to get out of Iraq because it had gone on too long, with too many deaths, at too great an expense. Frankly, it sounded weak and wishy-washy. It sounded like the problem was that he - and the Democrats - just didn't have the stomach for a long, tough fight. Which is how the Republicans want it to sound.

That's not the position to take. Nor is it the issue. The position to take is that it's not America's war at all. The issue is that it's George Bush's war. His own, personal, private obsession.So much so that he was scheming and plotting for years, even before 9/11, to have that war. Then, after 9/11, he lied and misled us, he used members of his administration to lie and mislead, in order to convince both the congress and the American people to have that war.

Once he had the war, he and his people planned it ineptly and executed it disastrously. It's his ineptitude and his disaster. When the Democrats call for a date to end the war, they're trying to solve Bush's problems for him. They can't. On a realistic level, simply because he won't listen. On a political level because it puts things on Bush's terms and makes the Democrats sound like they're concerned with mere costs rather than with a moral vision.

What the Democrats should do is call for Bush to march further forward: explain why we're in Iraq, what the goals are, and how we'll achieve them. This means going through chapter and verse of the reasons that were offered. The first set - that there were connections to 9/11, al Qaeda and possession of WMD - were false. That should be formally established, certified and reiterated.The second story was that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. It is necessary to clarify why that is insufficient reason to have a war. The United States worked very hard to establish that any war that didn't have Security Council approval or was not actual self-defense would be an illegal war. The costs are vast - as we are beginning to see - and the consequences unpredictable.

The third narrative is that the war in Iraq is somehow part of the 'war on terror.' Finding bin Laden and putting him on trial in New York City would clearly have been an attack on the terrorists who attacked us and could be called a war on terror . Organizing an international police and military effort to round up al Qaeda members would also have fit. So would following the money until we caught the people who funded him.

Why didn't we do those things? Why did we invade one country in order to get bin Laden and the man who harbored him, Mullah Omar, but let them both get away? Why did we invade a second country, Iraq, instead of doing the simple things listed above?

What are we doing to actually pursue the war on terror? How are we to measure our success or failure?

It is apparent that the administration made a decision to go to 'the dark side.' That is they decided not to catch and prosecute terrorists publicly as criminals or war criminals. Instead - if they have gone after them at all - they've done so secretly, kidnapping them, puttting them in secret prisons, interrogating them with deprivation and torture and handing them over to others for even more severe tortures.

We need to ask if that is a good choice, if it's better than public trials following the rules of law. Has that policy been successful? How can we measure it? Call the administration's statements before the war what you will - lies, spin, misstatements, inadvertent inaccuracies - they demonstrate that we can't accept their assertions at face value. They need the strongest kinds of documentation and support.

That establishes that the war in Iraq was not a counter-attack against the 9/11 attackers and that it doesn't make much sense as part of the war on terror either.
That takes it back to George Bush and why he, personally, wanted this war.

The most generous explanation is that the president was pursuing a visionary policy, that he saw himself cutting the Gordian knot of the Middle East, that he believed that after Saddam was removed Iraq would become a western style, secular democracy with a total free market economy - a real neo-con paradise - and it would become, in turn, a center of stability and a beacon for change.

If that's why we're in Iraq, is that still our goal?

If not, what is our revised goal? That must be articulated in a clear and measurable way.

Then we can ask how are we to get there? What will it cost and how long will it take? The things we've been doing so far don't work. What will we do differently?

Should we consider the people in charge thus far to have failed? If so, who will replace them? Who will be responsible for oversight and review?

How will we get real information about what's happening in Iraq?

That's important and apparently difficult.

At the moment there seems to be two separate narratives.

George Bush was there for five hours and was mighty impressed.

At the same time there is a secret embassy memo that says no Iraqi dares admit that he works for the Americans or he'll be murdered. That no one can go outside the Green Zone without an armed escort. That militias and gangs are actually in control of most parts of the country.

Reconstruction has not taken place. By most material measures - hours of electricity, education, clean water, working sewers, available fuel, garbage collection, security, the rights of women - the country was significantly better off under Hussein.

In addition to having a goal we need independent, trustworthy witnesses to judge our progress toward it. Or our failure. Then we can ask the president if he intends to solve things on his watch, or leave the mess for the next president to sort out. If he can solve it, really solve it, on his watch, fine. Then we might decide, moral or immoral, honest or dishonest, as a practical matter, it's best to support it. If he can't, then let's make it clear that it's his war. His obsession. His mistake. His error.

The Republicans will try, as they have in the past, to claim that it's everyone's war. That the Senate and House voted for it. Fact #1 is that's not literally true. The war powers bill voted to allow the president to go to war without coming back to them if he determined that Saddam was an actual threat and there was no way short of invasion to deter that threat. There were ways. He didn't employ them. He avoided them. And went to war instead.
Fact #2 is they did so under false pretenses.

It's George Bush's war. It's not America's. If he can win it, great. So far, George Bush has been losing it. That's right, so far George Bush has been losing George Bush's war. Not the army, not the liberals, not the media. Like Frank Sinatra, he got to do it his way. After we accept that it was his war - and that he lost it - then America, led by someone better, can step forward and apologize on his behalf.

That's not cutting and running. That's America, taking the high road, to make up for someone else's mistake.

Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org He can be reached at beinhart@earthlink.com