The Pentagon As FEMA or Bush IS the Anti-Christ

The New York Times
January 7, 2006
Pentagon Study Links Fatalities to Body Armor
By MICHAEL MOSS

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

The ceramic plates in vests now worn by the majority of troops in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.

Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times.

For the first time, the study by the military's medical examiner shows the cost in lives from inadequate armor, even as the Pentagon continues to publicly defend its protection of the troops.

Officials have said they are shipping the best armor to Iraq as quickly as possible. At the same time, they have maintained that it is impossible to shield forces from the increasingly powerful improvised explosive devices used by insurgents in Iraq. Yet the Pentagon's own study reveals the equally lethal threat of bullets.

The vulnerability of the military's body armor has been known since the start of the war, and is part of a series of problems that have surrounded the protection of American troops. Still, the Marine Corps did not begin buying additional plates to cover the sides of their troops until September, when it ordered 28,800 sets, Marine officials acknowledge.

The Army, which has the largest force in Iraq, is still deciding what to purchase, according to Army procurement officials. They said the Army was deciding among various sizes of plates to give its 130,000 soldiers, adding that they hoped to issue contracts this month.

Additional forensic studies by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's unit that were obtained by The Times indicate that about 340 American troops have died solely from torso wounds.

Military officials said they had originally decided against using the extra plates because they were concerned they added too much weight to the vests or constricted the movement of soldiers. Marine Corps officials said the findings of the Pentagon study caused field commanders to override those concerns in the interest of greater protection.

"As the information became more prevalent and aware to everybody that in fact these were casualty sites that they needed to be worried about, then people were much more willing to accept that weight on their body," said Maj. Wendell Leimbach, a body armor specialist with Marine Corps Systems Command, the corps procurement unit.

The Pentagon has been collecting the data on wounds since the beginning of the war in March 2003 in part to determine the effectiveness of body armor. The military's medical examiner, Dr. Craig T. Mallak, told a military panel in 2003 that the information "screams to be published." But it would take nearly two years.

The Marine Corps said it asked for the data in August 2004; but it needed to pay the medical examiner $107,000 to have the data analyzed. Marine officials said financing and other delays had resulted in the study's not starting until December 2004. It finally began receiving the information by June 2005. The shortfalls in bulletproof vests are just one of the armor problems the Pentagon continues to struggle with as the war in Iraq approaches the three-year mark, The Times has found in a continuing examination of the military procurement system.

The production of a new armored truck called the Cougar, which military officials said had so far withstood every insurgent attack, has fallen three months behind schedule. The small company making the truck has been beset by a host of production and legal problems.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is still relying on another small factory in Ohio to armor all of the military's principal transport trucks, the Humvee, and it remains backlogged with orders. The factory, owned by Armor Holdings, increased production in December after reports in The Times about delays drew criticism from Congress. But the Marine Corps said it was still waiting for about 2,000 of these vehicles to replace other Humvees in Iraq that are more lightly armored, and did not expect final delivery until June.

An initiative begun by the Pentagon nearly two years ago to speed up production by having additional companies armor new Humvees remains incomplete, Army officials said.

Body armor has gone through a succession of problems in Iraq. First, there were prolonged shortages of the plates that make the vests bulletproof. Last year, the Pentagon began replacing the plates with a stronger model that is more resistant to certain insurgent attacks.

Almost from the beginning, some soldiers asked for additional protection to stop bullets from slicing through their sides. In the fall of 2003, when troops began hanging their crotch protectors under their arms, the Army's Rapid Equipping Force shipped several hundred plates to protect their sides and shoulders. Individual soldiers and units continued to buy their own sets.

The Army's former acting secretary, Les Brownlee, said in a recent interview that he was shown numerous designs for expanded body armor in 2003, and had instructed his staff to weigh their benefits against the perceived threat without losing sight of the main task: eliminating the shortages of plates for the chest and back.

Army procurement officials said that their efforts to purchase side ceramic plates had been encumbered by the Army's much larger force in Iraq compared with the Marines' and that they wanted to provide manufacturers with detailed specifications. Also, they said their plates would be made to resist the stronger insurgent attacks.

The Marine Corps said it had opted to take the older version of ceramic to speed delivery. As of early last month, officials said marines in Iraq had received 2,200 of the more than 28,000 sets of plates that are being bought at a cost of about $260 each.

Marine officials said they had supplied troops with soft shoulder protection that can repel some shrapnel, but remained concerned that ceramic shoulder plates would be too restrictive. Similarly, they said they believed that the chest and back plates were as large as they could be without unduly limiting the movement of troops.

The Times obtained the three-page Pentagon report after a military advocacy group, Soldiers for the Truth, learned of its existence. The group posted an article about the report on its Web site earlier this week. The Times delayed publication of this article for more than a week until the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of its report. Pentagon officials declined to discuss details of the wound data, saying it would aid the enemy.

"Our preliminary research suggests that as many as 42 percent of the Marine casualties who died from isolated torso injuries could have been prevented with improved protection in the areas surrounding the plated areas of the vest," the study concludes. An additional 23 percent might have been saved with side plates that extend below the arms, while 15 percent more could have benefited from shoulder plates, the report says.

In all, 526 marines have been killed in combat in Iraq. A total of 1,706 American troops have died in combat there. The findings and other research by military pathologists suggests that an analysis of all combat deaths in Iraq, including those of Army troops, would show that 300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor.

Military officials and contractors said the Pentagon's procurement troubles had stemmed in part from miscalculations that underestimated the strength of the insurgency, and from years of cost-cutting that left some armoring companies on the brink of collapse as they waited for new orders.

To help defeat roadside ambushes, the military in May 2005 contracted to buy 122 Cougars whose special V-shaped hull helps deflect roadside bombs, military officials said. But the Pentagon gave the job to a small company in South Carolina, Force Protection, that had never mass-produced vehicles. Company officials said a string of blunders had pushed the completion date to this June.

A dozen prototypes shipped to Iraq have been recalled from the field to replace a failing transmission. Steel was cut to the wrong size before the truck's design drawings were perfected. Several managers have left the company.

Company officials said they had also lost time in an interservice skirmish. The Army, which is buying the bulk of the vehicles, asked for its trucks to be delivered before the Marine vehicles, and company officials said that move had upended their production process until the Army agreed to get back in line behind the Marines.

"It is what it is, and we're running as fast as we can to change it," Gordon McGilton, the company's chief executive, said in an interview at its plant in Ladson, S.C.

On July 5, two former employees brought a federal false-claims case that accuses Force Protection of falsifying records to cover up defective workmanship. They allege that the actions "compromise the immediate and long-term integrity of the vehicles and result in a deficient product," according to legal documents filed under seal in the United States District Court in Charleston and obtained by The Times.

The legal claim also accuses the company of falsifying records to deceive the military into believing the company could meet the production deadlines. The United States Attorney's office in South Carolina declined to comment on the case. The Marine Corps says the Justice Department did not notify it about the case until December.

Force Protection officials said they had not been made aware of the legal case. They acknowledged making mistakes in rushing to fill the order, but said that there were multiple systems in place to monitor the quality of the trucks, and that they were not aware of any deficiencies that would jeopardize the troops.

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

But the President Insists That It's Legal; He's Just Protecting Us From Evil-Doer's. Wake Up You Numbskulls!! They Are Fascists!!

The New York Times
January 6, 2006
Report Questions Legal Basis for Bush's Spying Program
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - President Bush's rationale for authorizing eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants rests on questionable legal ground and "may represent an exercise of presidential power at its lowest ebb," according to a formal Congressional analysis released today.

The analysis, conducted by the Congressional Research Service, an independent research arm of Congress, is the first formal assessment of a question that has gripped Washington for the last three weeks: Did President Bush act within the law when he ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans?

While the Congressional report reached no bottom-line conclusions on whether the program is legal or not, it concluded that the legal rationale appears somewhat dubious. The legal rationale "does not seem to be as well-grounded" as the Bush administration's lawyers have suggested, and Congress did not appear to have intended to authorize warrantless wiretaps when it gave President Bush the authority to wage war against Al Qaeda in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the report concluded.

Bush administration lawyers quickly took issue with the report's conclusions, arguing that President Bush acted within his constitutional and statutory powers in approving the N.S.A. program.

"The president has made clear that he will use his constitutional and statutory authorities to protect the American people from further terrorist attacks," said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department.

"As the attorney general has stated numerous times, the National Security Agency activities described by the president were conducted in accordance with the law and provide a critical tool in the war on terror that saves lives and protects civil liberties at the same time," Mr. Roehrkasse said.

But many Democrats and some Republicans said they found the doubts raised by Congressional report persuasive, pointing to it as another indication that President Bush may have overextended his authority in fighting terrorism.

Thomas H. Kean, the former chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said he too doubts the legality of the program. Weighing in for the first time on the controversy, he said in an interview that the commission was never told of the operation and that he has strong doubts about whether it is authorized under the law.

Federal law under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, created in 1978, "gives very broad powers to the president and, except in very rare circumstances, in my view ought to be used," said Mr. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey. "We live by a system of checks and balances, and I think we ought to continue to live by a system of checks and balances."

Opinions on the N.S.A. domestic spying issue have broken down largely, though not exclusively, along partisan lines, causing public rifts between the top Republicans and Democrats on both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

But the analyses of the Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress, are generally seen as objective and without partisan taint, said Eleanor Hill, who served as a Congressional staffer for 17 years and was staff director of the joint Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"My experience is that they're well respected in the Senate and House," said Ms. Hill, now a Washington lawyer in private practice. "I don't remember anybody attacking them for being partisan. They're more academic in approach."

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Among the myths and lies that get flattened . . .

Daily Kos

Bush did not violate the FISA. (Yes he did)

Bush did not break the law. (Yes he did)

History shows Presidents have the power to violate the law, especially in times of war. (No it doesn't)

History shows that other Presidents like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter did the same by overriding FISA. (No it doesn't)

Secret warrantless spying of Americans was/is required for national security reasons, since FISA was inadequate, and secret spying could have prevented 9/11. (No it wasn't/isn't and probably couldn't)

The secret spying only focused on Al Qaeda, terrorists and their supporters and one end of the intercepted communications was always in foreign soil. (Uh...No)

The leak to the New York Times, of Bush's secret spying on Americans, was a crime and had nothing to do with whistleblowers. (Rubbish)

Bush's critics are just partisan political hacks. (Takes one to know one...but wrong again)

Top Democrats in Congress supported the illegal spying. (No they didn't)

You can trust Bush 100% to not misuse the spying program (Hmm...maybe we should ask Christiane Amanpour about that one)

So keep this link handy for rapid-response rebuttals when all the president's pawns slime the truth. Great work, TR, and kudos also to Armando and all the other blogger elves who provided much of the air-tight source material. Now let's go squash us some right-wing bugs. Yeeee-haw!

Noam Chomsky: A Tale of Two Quagmires

Jan. 9, 2006 issue - Noam Chomsky has been called one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century, but it's an accolade the 77-year-old MIT professor doesn't take very seriously. "People just want to hear something outside the rigid dogma they're used to," he says. "They're not going to hear it in the media." The linguistics prodigy turned political theorist has been a leading mind in the antiwar movement since the early '60s; he's also still a prolific author, producing more than six books in the past five years. He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Michael Hastings about the current geopolitical climate.

Excerpts:

Hastings: Where do you see Iraq heading right now?
Chomsky: Well, it's extremely difficult to talk about this because of a very rigid doctrine that prevails in the United States and Britain which prevents us from looking at the situation realistically. The doctrine, to oversimplify, is that we have to believe the United States would have so-called liberated Iraq even if its main products were lettuce and pickles and [the] main energy resource of the world were in central Africa. Anyone who doesn't accept that is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or a lunatic or something. But anyone with a functioning brain knows that that's not true—as all Iraqis do, for example. The United States invaded Iraq because its major resource is oil. And it gives the United States, to quote [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, "critical leverage" over its competitors, Europe and Japan. That's a policy that goes way back to the second world war. That's the fundamental reason for invading Iraq, not anything else.

Once we recognize that, we're able to begin talking about where Iraq is going. For example, there's a lot of talk about the United States bringing [about] a sovereign independent Iraq. That can't possibly be true. All you have to do is ask yourself what the policies would be in a more-or-less democratic Iraq. We know what they're likely to be. A democratic Iraq will have a Shiite majority, [with] close links to Iran. Furthermore, it's right across the border from Saudi Arabia, where there's a Shiite population which has been brutally repressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. If there are any moves toward sovereignty in Shiite Iraq, or at least some sort of freedom, there are going to be effects across the border. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabia's oil is. So you can see the ultimate nightmare developing from Washington's point of view.

You were involved in the antiwar movement in the 1960s. What do you think of the Vietnam-Iraq analogy?
I think there is no analogy whatsoever. That analogy is based on a misunderstanding of Iraq, and a misunderstanding of Vietnam. The misunderstanding of Iraq I've already described. The misunderstanding of Vietnam had to do with the war aims. The United States went to war in Vietnam for a very good reason. They were afraid Vietnam would be a successful model of independent development and that would have a virus effect—infect others who might try to follow the same course. There was a very simple war aim—destroy Vietnam. And they did it. The United States basically achieved its war aims in Vietnam by [1967]. It's called a loss, a defeat, because they didn't achieve the maximal aims, the maximal aims being turning it into something like the Philippines. They didn't do that. [But] they did achieve the major aims. It was possible to destroy Vietnam and leave. You can't destroy Iraq and leave. It's inconceivable.

Was the antiwar movement more successful in the '60s than it is today?
I think it's the other way around. The United States attacked Vietnam in 1962. It took years before any protest developed. Iraq is the first time in hundreds of years of European and American history that a war was massively protested before it was launched. There was huge protest in February 2003. It had never happened in the history of the West.

Where do you put George W. Bush in the pantheon of American presidents?
He's more or less a symbol, but I think the people around him are the most dangerous administration in American history. I think they're driving the world to destruction. There are two major threats that face the world, threats of the destruction of the species, and they're not a joke. One of them is nuclear war, and the other is environmental catastrophe, and they are driving toward destruction in both domains. They're compelling competitors to escalate their own offensive military capacity—Russia, China, now Iran. That means putting their offensive nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert.

The Bush administration has succeeded in making the United States one of the most feared and hated countries in the world. The talent of these guys is unbelievable. They have even succeeded at alienating Canada. I mean, that takes genius, literally.

Need Medicaid? Show Your Passport - New York Times
The New York Times

January 5, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Need Medicaid? Show Your Passport
By
BOB HERBERT

Buried in the nearly 800-page federal budget bill is a nasty little
provision, ostensibly aimed at immigrants, that will make it difficult for
many poverty-stricken
U.S. citizens to get the health care they are entitled to under Medicaid.

Advocates believe that the provision, which will require Medicaid applicants
to document their U.S. citizenship (which means producing a passport or
birth
certificate), may be especially harmful to poor blacks, most of whom do not
have passports and many of whom do not have birth certificates.

There are no exceptions to this onerous provision, not even for people with
serious physical or mental impairments, including Alzheimer's disease.

The budget bill is scheduled for a final vote in the House on Feb. 1. The
Medicaid provision seems to have originated with a pair of Republican
congressmen
from Georgia - Nathan Deal and Charlie Norwood. The idea, Congressman Deal
told me, is to create a barrier against illegal immigrants who might slip
into
the Medicaid program by falsely claiming they are citizens.

You haven't heard much about this latest threat to the republic because
there is no evidence it is much of a problem. As the Center on Budget and
Policy
Priorities has reported, an extensive study by the inspector general's
office of the Department of Health and Human Services "found no substantial
evidence
that such false applications are actually occurring and [the inspector
general's office], accordingly, did not recommend making the change that is
included
in the [budget] agreement."

The problem will come when poor people who are ill get sucked into a
nightmare of documentation when their focus should be on their illness. The
center
noted: "Many individuals who require Medicaid coverage - such as people
affected by emergencies like Hurricane Katrina, homeless people or those
with mental
illness - may be unable to get Medicaid promptly when they need it because
they do not have such documents in their possession."

Many poor people live far from the cities or towns where they were born and
do not have ready access to their birth certificates. And, as the center
said,
a large number of African-American women, especially in the South, were
unable to give birth in hospitals because of racial discrimination. Many of
them
never received birth certificates for their babies.

A spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, who is a physician,
said the Senate went along with the House proposal because the "members did
not feel it was an unreasonable provision." He said applicants in serious
need of care would receive it, and that Medicaid officials could accept the
documentation
of citizenship later.

I wondered what would happen to individuals who were bedridden, destitute,
disoriented, enfeebled. They might receive care in theory. But would they
really?
Stepping on their care seems a heavy price to pay to address an issue that
very few people view as a serious problem.

I asked Abel Ortiz, who advises Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia on health care
issues, if he was aware of any studies that showed whether significant
numbers
of illegal immigrants in his state were getting Medicaid benefits. He said
no, although he added, "We have some cases that have happened."

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the new provision would
save more than $700 million over the next decade. But if illegal immigrants
crashing
the Medicaid program is not a big problem, where will the savings come from?
How about from the reduction in enrollment of sick or otherwise troubled
U.S.
citizens who are poor and less than savvy about the arbitrary workings of
the bureaucracy?

The budget bill is a good example of how the insiders and special interests
get what they want in Washington, while ordinary people, who are supposed to
be represented by the members of the House and Senate, get bludgeoned.

Some members of Congress wanted health care savings - if there were going to
be any - to be achieved by such measures as negotiating better rates with
large
drug companies and managed-care facilities. But that's not the sort of thing
that flies in this day and age. So the savings will be drawn like blood from
the sick and the poor.

Someday the pendulum will swing back, and the government of the United
States will become more representative and more humane. Meanwhile, as Lily
Tomlin
said, "We're all in this alone."

Posted by Miriam V.

Bush Ignored Explicit Warnings In 2002 About Mine Safety

By David Sirota

The tragic news about the death of 12 mine workers this week has brought up all sorts of questions about the Bush administration's record protecting mine workers. Back in 2002, I was working for the House Appropriations Committee. At the time, you may recall there was a big mining accident in Western Pennsylvania.

President Bush held a big photo-op to pretend like he cared - but he never responded to the fact sheet that House Democrats put out questioning why he had made so many cuts to mine safety programs. You can view this fact sheet in Microsoft Word right attached to this email (I still have it from my time at the Appropriations Committee). It was released to the media and the administration on August 5, 2002 - the same day Bush did his big photo-op (You can also find this fact sheet at http://www.davidsirota.com/mineworkers.doc).

In case the administration claims it didn't remember being warned, check out this excerpt from the big Chicago Tribune story from 6/20/02:
"We call on the Bush administration to fully fund the Mine Safety and Health Administration to ensure that coal mines are inspected more thoroughly and that the mine act is enforced more stringently," Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers Association, said in a statement. "It would be cynical to portray himself as the hero of mine safety by simply doing photo ops," said David Sirota, spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee.
Democrats also released a report from the Labor Department's inspector general--the agency's in-house watchdog--concluding that the Mine Safety and Health Administration was "unable to complete statutorily mandated inspections of ... mine operations," in part because of a lack of inspectors.

At a Senate subcommittee hearing last month, lawmakers were told that the Jim Walters Resources mine in Brookwood, Ala., where 13 miners died last September, had 31 outstanding safety violations that went unchecked because of a lack of government inspectors.The mine workers union also has criticized Bush's choice of Stanley Suboleski, an executive at coal operator Massey Energy, to serve on the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. That agency judges disputes over alleged safety violations.

Now, after another bad accident, we find out that since the last accident in 2002, not only did the President ignore calls by Democrats to address the situation seriously, but he actually enacted more cuts to mine safety programs and weakened mine safety regulations.The 2002 fact sheet and the Chicago Tribune story shows that Bush knew full well that mine safety was suffering - and now we know he didn't do anything about it, to tragic consequences. They can put out GOP hacks and administration spokespeople to deny this reality - but the facts are there.

Debunking Bush's NSA Lies: A Handy Pocket Guide

by Arianna Huffington

President Bush and his minions keep offering up "new and improved" (though already disproved) defenses for the NSA domestic spying operation.
David Sirota offers a terrific breakdown of the shifts from "it was legal" to "we needed to act faster" to "the paperwork was too hard."
Now we have a new White House strategy: straight-up lying.

(Here's what Holden had to say about it).

Of course, GOP loyalists have been quick to follow the administration's lead. In fact, over the holidays I ran into many prominent Republicans who dutifully mouthed the administration's talking points.

So, in case you, like me, run into Republicans in the course of your life -- or even if you only run into them on TV -- and feel the need for a quick response to set the record straight, here is a handy pocket guide.

Lie #1:

Trying to prove that he wasn't acting unilaterally and without oversight, the president has taken to claiming that the spy program was "constantly reviewed by Justice Department officials" -- making it sound to all the world that the initiative had received the law enforcement community's seal of approval.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

As the New York Times has reported, there was widespread concern about the legality of the program at the Justice department, with a number of high-ranking officials raising objections to it, including deputy attorney general James Comey, who refused to sign off on its continuation. Comey's refusal prompted Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales (in his role as White House counsel) to go to the bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery. But even Ashcroft had his doubts about the constitutionality of the program -- which tells you all you need to know about how dicey it really was.

Their concerns led the White House to add some restrictions to the program -- but these restrictions weren't actually very restrictive since they still allowed the NSA to listen in on whatever calls it wanted without having to get the specific approval of Justice Department officials.

So when Bush and company try to sell the idea that Justice was part of the no-warrant team, don't buy it. The program may have been "constantly reviewed" but it wasn't "approved."

Lie # 2:

Lie #2 is a companion to Lie #1's implication that everybody was on board with the spy program. It's the president's insistence that it was "reviewed by members of the United States Congress" and that it's "a program to which the Congress has been briefed."

Again, it sounds like the legislative branch was consulted and signed off on what the White House was doing. Again, not true.

Here are the facts: a very, very limited number of Senators and House members were briefed on the program -- with 14 of 535 senators and representatives receiving briefings over the last four years. What's more, those receiving these highly classified briefings were strictly prohibited from speaking about what they heard -- which kind of puts a crimp in one's ability to mount any opposition to the program. Former intelligence committee counsel Suzanne Spaulding offers chapter and verse on this "Congress has been briefed" smokescreen.

And getting briefed is a far, far, far cry from exerting oversight -- or even offering an opinion. As Tom Daschle puts it, "We were told we were being informed and not consulted."

Indeed, as Media Matters points out: "Of the seven Democratic lawmakers known to have been briefed by the program, three objected at the time and three more say they weren't given adequate information about the program." Jay Rockefeller put his objections into a letter to Dick Cheney, saying the program raised "profound oversight issues." Nancy Pelosi also put her concerns in writing. Bob Graham says his briefing left out any mention that the NSA would be listening in on calls of U.S. citizens. Even Jane Harman, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and a supporter of the program, told me over the weekend that she wants to introduce legislation to curb its excesses.

So much for the idea that Congress actually had a hand in this.

Lie #3:

Bush has repeatedly attempted to underplay the reach of the spy operation. "This is a limited program," he claimed recently, "designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat, limited. And it's limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States."

Hogwash. First of all, it's not true that the program was "limited to calls from outside the U.S." Even the White House admits that the NSA listened in on calls initiated in the U.S. too.

Second, I don't know about you, but the fact that the NSA has eavesdropped on thousands of people doesn't strike me as "limited."
And how does that stat jibe with the president's claim that the warrantless wiretaps were "limited" to "known numbers of al Qaeda members or affiliates"? Are there really thousands of known al Qaeda members or affiliates in the U.S.?

Plus, the program allowed the NSA to tap into our telecommunication system's main arteries, creating what the New York Times termed "a large data-mining operation."

I guess it all depends on what your definition of "limited" is. And of "reviewed." And of "briefed." And of "lying through your teeth."

Iran in the Crosshairs

By Ryan McGreal

http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=133

08/24/05 "RTH" -- -- Starting in 2006, Iran will start up an "oil bourse", or a stock exchange for trading energy, that will be based on the euro, not the US dollar. While this may seem innocuous, it will be a grave risk to continued American global hegemony.

Petrodollar Hegemony

Today, most oil trading takes place on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and the London-based International Petroleum Exchange (IPE). Since the 1970s, the OPEC countries have all agreed to sell oil for US dollars only. This means every country that wants to buy oil must first acquire enough US dollars to buy what it needs.

Year after year, America imports much more than it exports. It must pay out that difference (its current accounts deficit) in dollars. Last year, the US ran a current accounts deficit of over $600 billion USD; this year, it's expected to increase to $700 billion.

If there were no good reason for other countries to buy all those American dollars, then the dollar would decline in value until the US economy could no longer afford to import goods from abroad. This is what happens when other countries run large current accounts deficits over long periods.

However, the deal with OPEC means other countries have no choice but to buy all those excess American dollars, which props up the value of the dollar and allows the American "import economy" to go on year after year. Effectively, America's main export is US dollars, and it is absolutely imperative to preserve a captive market for those dollars among oil-consuming countries.

The continued viability of the US economy depends on it. Americans can still afford to consume because their economy is suffused with cheap imports; a falling dollar will raise the prices of imported goods. At the same time, Americans enjoy some of the lowest oil prices in the world, largely due to the petrodollar arrangement. This has skewed the American vehicle market toward gas-guzzling but profitable SUVs and light trucks.

Selling Oil for Euros

One of the major unstated reasons the United States invaded Iraq was to stop Saddam Hussein from trading oil for euros, which he had begun in 2000. Hussein actually made more money selling oil for euros, as the euro appreciated 17 percent against the dollar between 2000 and 2003. Other countries in the region, particulary Iran and Syria, began public musing about switching from dollars to euros around the same time.

All three countries were subject to a barrage of threats from the United States government, but only Iraq went through with the switch, and it was summarily invaded. One of the US government's first acts in Iraq was to switch oil sales back to dollars.

Now, Iran plans not just to sell oil for euros, but to create an exchange market for parties to trade oil for euros. The oil bourse will provide a euro-based price standard, the way West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) and North Sea Brent crude do today. To the extent that the balance of reserve holdings starts to shift from dollars to euros, that's very bad news for America's system of dollar hegemony.

Iran is taking a calculated risk that enough countries have an interest in a petro-euro market to contain American aggression. Many central banks are already quietly shedding their dollar reserves, nervous that America's economic fundamentals ($500 billion federal deficit, $700 billion current accounts deficit, $4.5 billion federal debt, record business and personal debts, zero savings) cannot be sustained for long, and hoping to insulate themselves from what they see as an inevitable recession. The US dollar has declined by a third against the euro since 2000, despite the petrodollar arrangement.

At the same time, Europe is eager to enjoy more of the "virtuous circle" that comes from supplying a major reserve currency: a ready market for its currency and guaranteed reinvestment as euro-holders plant their money in European markets. Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, has also expressed interest in switching from dollars to euros. Russia would benefit from getting paid in a stronger currency, and it would represent a political victory over America after fifteen years of watching its clients and assets in the oil-rich Caspian region co-opted by American expansion.

Nuclear Politics

Iran may, indeed, be attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it also has a "legitimate" interest in developing nuclear power, since its own oil reserves are already post-peak and it aims to continue in its role as an energy exporter. Iran is a signatory in good standing to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has openly informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of its intentions as requried by the Treaty.

However, Iran's presumed attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is only the politically acceptable excuse for America's threats. The real danger is that Iran will lay down the foundation for a post-hegemonic international energy industry in which America is merely one of many players. If Iran is, in fact, developing nuclear weapons, it is doing so to acquire a deterrent against exactly this kind of American encroachment.

Indeed, recent world events have only enforced the notion that a nation's successful efforts to acquire nuclear weapons confer respect and status, not the opprobrium it deserves. India, a growing economic power that possesses a nuclear arsenal and refuses to sign either the NPT or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), has just been rewarded for its efforts by US President Bush, who has agreed to "work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India." This is a straightforward violation of the NPT, which forbids signatories from exchanging nuclear materials or support with non-signatories.

If Iran really is trying to acquire nuclear weapons, is it any wonder why? Look at the advantages that having nuclear arsenals have given to US allies India, Pakistan, and Israel, all of which have benefitted immensely from a playing field tilted in their favour by their ability to project devastating power. As official hysteria about Iran's intentions escalates in volume and intensity, remember the real force undermining the moral authority of the NPT: the big nuclear 'have' countries that still refuse either to apply the ban consistently or to take any meaningful steps of their own toward "general and complete disarmament" - ostensibly the NPT's ultimate goal.

Ironically, America originally invaded Iraq - a poor, defenseless country - partly to send a message to other oil producing countries not to rock the petrodollar system, but the real message for small countries is that they need to present a credible deterrent threat or risk being ignored and/or invaded.

Further Reading

From Petrodollars to Petroeuros: Are the Dollar's Days as an International Reserve Currency Drawing to an End? Strategic Insights, Volume II, Issue 11 (November 2003)

Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro, Hazel Henderson, The Globalise, June 02, 2003

The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth William Clark, January 2003 (Revised March 2003, with Post-war Commentary January 2004)

US Dollar Hegemony Has to Go Henry Liu, Asian Times, April 11, 2002

www.allenroland.com

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/ and website www.allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net

For Principles or Profit?

AlterNet
Something to Hide
By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet
Posted on January 3, 2006, Printed on January 4, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/30352/

On Sunday, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for a Senate Committee investigation into the National Security Agency's secret wiretapping program. But instead of peering into the secrets behind the potentially illegal -- and potentially impeachable -- executive office spying, Republican officials made the Sunday talk show rounds excoriating the whistleblowers as the real threat to our security.

When Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whether there was any chance that the Senate would put new limits on the president's powers, McConnell replied:

Well, we'll certainly take a look at that, but thank goodness the Justice Department is investigating to find out who has been endangering our national security by leaking this information so that our enemies now have a greater sense of what our techniques are in going after terrorists.

Even as the discussion has shifted from the spying itself to whomever revealed the spying, the New York Times' public editor Byron Calame got stonewalled in his search for the reasons behind the Times' yearlong delay in publishing the story. In his latest column, he writes, "For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making."

Calame submitted a list of 28 questions to New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger, and says that the silence from the top offices was deafening. All Calame could get from Keller was this: "There is really no way to have a full discussion of the back story without talking about when and how we knew what we knew, and we can't do that."

The Times' obfuscation on the issue -- as well as the new Republican emphasis on hunting down the whistleblowers -- hinges on the assumption that new and vital information was leaked about our country's strategies in the "war on terror." According to White House spokesman Trent Duffy, "The leaking of classified information is a serious issue. The fact is that Al Qaeda's playbook is not printed on Page 1 -- and when America's is, it has serious ramifications."

But if you google Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), you can read all about how warrantless wiretaps have been legally conducted since 1978. FISA allows for immediate warrantless electronic surveillance as long as a warrant is sought within 72 hours. Anyone who wanted to know that the administration was capable of this, could. And anyone who didn't arguably doesn't pose much of a threat to the U.S.

And the FISA courts have historically been anything but stringent with executive-branch wiretap requests. According to a UPI report, of the nearly 19,000 search warrants requested by presidents since 1978, only 181 have been modified, and all but two of those changes occured during George W. Bush's administration. It seems that the normally lenient FISA court had some substantial doubts about this president's requests.

Tellingly, a few days after the Times published the secret wiretap story, one of the 11 judges on the FISA court resigned. According to James Robertson's colleagues, he was worried that information obtained through the secret wiretaps was then used to obtain warrants through the FISA court.

And yet, the recent hubbub is not over an investigation into the president's excruciatingly flawed legal reasoning in conducting the wiretaps. Rather, a judicial probe is being launched to find out who the whistleblowers were in the leak. The probe will not be led by an independent special prosecutor (as in the Valerie Plame case) but by Justice Department officials who will be reporting to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Those conducting the investigation will likely face quite a bit of political pressure, not only because Gonzales has proven time and again that he is willing to endorse any legal argument in order to extend the president's executive power. He is one of the people who originally pushed for the secret wire taps when other members of the Bush administration questioned the policy. The Times' Eric Lichtblau reported that when "James B. Comey, then deputy attorney general, refused to sign on to the recertification of the [NSA] program in March 2004 Alberto R. Gonzales "made" an emergency hospital visit to John Ashcroft to try to persuade him to give his authorization, as required by White House procedures for the program Mr. Ashcroft also appeared reluctant to sign on to the continued use of the program."

It is evident that the wiretap program was opposed from within the administration. Indeed, Lichtblau and James Risen, who together broke the original story, based the piece on interviews with U.S. officials who claimed they were concerned that the NSA program was proving an unchecked abuse of executive power.

But the administration's logic neatly does away with this allegation. To the question of whether executive powers have been breached, the president's lawyers repeatedly turn the tables by asserting that questioning executive power in wartime -- power granted by Congress after the 9/11 attacks -- is itself a violation of executive power.

Disturbingly, it's a similar circular logic that Times executive editor Bill Keller used when defending the yearlong delay in publishing the wiretap story. Apparently, the paper only published the story when "it could report on the secret program without damaging 'any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on public record.'" But the press is an integral component of creating public record. And, again, conducting warrantless wiretaps through FISA begs the question of what new information was actually leaked.

Keller also noted that the paper decided that the civil liberties issues "loomed larger within the government than previously understood." But these civil-liberties issues loomed large enough that, a year ago, co-author of the original wiretap piece James Risen was pushing to go ahead with publishing the story. And when he was unsuccessful, he took leave to write the book "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration." The book is due out this Thursday, Jan. 5, and Times public editor Calame discovered that Keller has been in touch with Risen's publisher. Calame notes, "It seems to me the paper was quite aware that it faced the possibility of being scooped by its own reporter's book in about four weeks." Which leads him to wonder, "to what extent did the book cause top editors to shrug off concerns that had kept them from publishing the eavesdropping article for months?"

A matter of weeks ago, the question on the table was the president's possible impeachable offense. We are now discussing a criminal investigation into who leaked information that arguably provides nothing more to the public than a clear picture of how much contempt the Bush administration has for the Constitution.

In a time of war, information plays a critical role in public opinion. Subsequently, public opinion limits what presidential moves will and will not be tolerated. Unfortunately, the little information the public received may have been too little, and delivered too late.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri is an editorial fellow at AlterNet.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/30352/

January 2, 2006
"Old Half-Witted Sheep"
A New York Times Editorial Contemplates Iraq

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thundering melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now dream-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
That bleats articulate monotony
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp and mountains steep.."

As regards the half-witted sheep, J.K. Stephen could just as well have parodying newspaper editorials as about Wordsworth.

These days editorials barely matter. Few people outside the professional political classes bother to read them. It's a form of writing as dead as the dodo, so we should find a specimen that is still in decent enough condition to be stuffed for the benefit of posterity.

By great good luck, the day after Christmas, the New York Times produced an absolutely perfect specimen of the editorial genre. Devoted to the elections in Iraq held on December 15, it should be carted off at once to the Museum of Natural History, and put in the "journalism" diorama next to the green eyeshade.

A word here about technical terms. Many newspaper readers describe opinion articles such as this one as "editorials". Within the newspaper business this is a "column", not an editorial, which refers solely to the unsigned expression of opinion usually appearing on the left hand side of the page, below the masthead. The editorial reflects the position of the newspaper, therefore, in the first analysis, of the owner of that newspaper.

On local issues a strong editorial can still make a bureaucrat or department czar tremble. Political endorsements in contests for judgeships and the like also count. The New York Times could call for Bush's impeachment tomorrow. But would even that makes waves?
In the main, the editorial thunderbolt, hurled from on high with stately and effective violence is a thing of the past. Newspapers, as institutions, simply lack the credibility to be seen as tribunes of the people. The Eighties and nineties took their toll. What respect can be granted to newspaper publishers mostly preoccupied with monopolizing cities and ensuring themselves a 20 per cent rate of return?

Of course editorial writers ­ often veterans of the foreign bureaus put out to pasture -- don't see their trade in such guise. They take their labors with tremendous seriousness. They believe, wrongly, that the world is listening.

The late Murray Kempton once famously wrote that the function of editorial writers is to come down into the valley after the battle to shoot the wounded. What Murray didn't stress that this descent into the valley is rarely marked by undue haste. Sometimes the descent is so delayed that the wounded have long since expired, their entrails consumed by vultures and their bones dried in the sun.

Nearly a week before the Times' editorial writer squared up to the topic, informed observers had scrutinized the preliminary results of the Dember 15 poll in Iraq and noted that they confirmed pre-election presentiments. For example, writing on the CounterPunch website five days before Christmas, Patrick Cockburn concluded succinctly "The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-western secular democracy in a united Iraq. Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities.

He quoted Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator. as saying that in "In two-and-a-half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq."

In fact it didn't even require Patrick's expertise to see that the elections, portrayed by President George W. Bush as a sign of success for US policies in Iraqin fact meant a tremendous triumph for America's enemies, both inside and outside the country.

I did a great deal of driving during the Christmas season, hence listened a lot to the radio and more than once heard even-voiced commentators on NPR, one of them a New York Times correspondent, expressing gratification at the elections as a American triumph, launching the nation of Iraq on its first faltering stumbles along the path of liberal democracy.

The level of self delusion reminded me of similar delusions among the left, after the Ayatollah Khomeini took over in Iran in 1978 when there were confident assertions that the Ayatollah had lived in Paris, had absorbed therefrom the spirit of the Enlightenment. It took the sight of thousands of leftists hanged en masse in Teheran to make the left realized that the Ayatollah had not spent too many hours in that Paris sojourn reading Condorcet.

So the post-Christmas Times editorialist went down into the valley and did manful battle with the obvious, always excepting the fact that the US administration had had sustained a terrible defeat. "The final votes must still be counted in Iraq, but the trend is already clear," the editorial crooned. "The biggest winners appear to be the Shiite religious parties whose politicians have run the ministries and whose militias have run the streets of southeastern Iraq for a year or more."

Actually, the Shia militia have been running the entire south and much of Baghdad. The whole editorial nervously evades admitting how bad things are for the US.

After noting Kurdish strength in its region, the editorial sadly assessed the skimpy sub-20 per cent for America's man, Ayad Allawi, and the less than 1 per cent for Ahmad Chalabi and delivered its expert judgment: "the biggest losers were secular parties and those who tried to appeal to all of Iraq's communities, not just one religion or ethnic group."

Then, with a sad wag of the head, the editorial added gloomily, "Anyone who hoped that Iraq's broadest exercise in electoral democracy so far might strengthen women's rights, secular protections or national unity will be disappointed."

Say something twice, so why not three times? "Iraqi politics are settling into an unsettling pattern. Very few people vote as Iraqis; most vote as Shiites, Sunnis or Kurds."

By law, an editorial writer is duty-bound to detect "signs of progress", and the Times' writer did not fail in this duty: " It is progress that Sunni Arabs turned out in large numbers, but" (here a cautionary wag of the editorial finger,) "that may not be enough to assure them a meaningful role in reshaping a dangerously divisive constitution and forming a broad-based government."

Already the editorial is lunging towards fantasy. Nobody in Iraq thinks the Constitution is going to be significantly amended. If the
Kurds had thought so they wouldn't have agreed to compromise in the pre-referendum period. A few paragraphs later, the editorial writer calls for such a constitutional rewrite to ensure that oil revenues 'flow to the central government". Why would the Shia and the Kurds want to surrender the revenues from their own new super-regions?

But by now the editorial writer is ecstatic in his ghost dance, urging "the victorious parties" to summon "the sense to reach out to a Sunni Arab community that now has one foot in the political process and the other in the insurgency."

The strong vote for the Shiite religious parties, the editorial writer bravely continues, "does not necessarily mean that Iraqis have abruptly turned fundamentalist." Why not?

Then, just like those leftists in 1978 thinking Khomeini had read Condorcet, the editorialist advises the Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the equally triumphant nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that "The legal rights of women, currently in limbo between civil and religious law, need reinforcement." As Patrick had pointed out, already most girls leaving schools in Baghdad wear headscarves. Women's rights in cases of divorce and inheritance are being eroded.

The Times writer scatters advice with a measured hand: "The victorious Kurdish parties need to face up to their larger responsibilities" and by the same token "The Sunni parties need to face practical political realitiesThe last thing they should be talking about is reviving the electoral boycott strategy that cost them so heavily earlier this year."

If the Sunni made such a mistake in boycotting in January why is the New York Times and US
government so keen on conciliating them, drawing them "more deeply into political life". Obviously because they go round blowing people up.

Time for the editorial finale: "It is in everyone's interest to draw the Sunni Arab community more deeply into political life, not to shut it out. Otherwise, Iraq's future will be civil war and this election will have no real winners."

There's another way of putting this. The election was notice of Iraq's funeral, and the triumph of Shia-style Islam. An astute editorial writer could have asked, in conclusion, How long will it be before the US is pumping arms and other supplies into the Sunni resistance as a counter-weight to the Shia? But that, though germane, would be cynical, and editorialists despise cynicism because it goes piggyback upon reality, and hence is an unfit companion for their stately excursions.

Student Punished for Refusing to Stand for the Pledge of Allegiance

ACLU of Florida Defends High School Student Punished for Refusing to Stand for the Pledge of Allegiance (12/22/2005)

New ACLU Lawsuit Challenges State Law and School Board Policy

WEST PALM BEACH, FL -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida today filed a federal lawsuit against Palm Beach County school officials for harassing and punishing 17-year-old Cameron Frazier when he expressed his First Amendment right to not participate in the Pledge of Allegiance. The ACLU lawsuit is challenging a Florida law and a Palm Beach County school board policy mandating that students receive written permission from their parents before declining to recite the oath.

"The courts have ruled time and time again that students in public schools have the First Amendment right to remain quietly seated during the Pledge of Allegiance," said James Green, Legal Panel Chair of the ACLU of Florida's Palm Beach County Chapter, and Frazier's attorney. "Cameron is a very patriotic student, but his is a quiet form of patriotism. In a very polite and respectful way, he declined to stand for the pledge and the teacher berated him in front of his classmates."

According to the ACLU, Boynton Beach High School teacher Cynthia Alexandre ordered Frazier to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance during her fourth period math class on December 8. When Frazier refused, citing the fact that he had not stood for the Pledge since sixth grade and that he wasn't going to change his practice, Alexandre responded by saying: "Oh you wanna bet? See your desk? Now look at mine. Big desk, little desk. You obviously don't know your place in this classroom." Frazier said the teacher cursed at him and accused him of being unpatriotic before ordering him to leave the classroom. Alexandre cited a school district policy requiring all students to stand during the Pledge, although students with written permission from their parents are excused from actually reciting the oath.

"I believe that the real meaning of the flag - freedom, liberty and equality - has been tarnished by the recent policies of our government," said Frazier. "Patriotism is more than going along with everybody else and just saluting a flag. It's about things like supporting our troops during the holidays and helping hurricane victims."

The ACLU is asking a Palm Beach federal court to declare the school district policy and Florida Statute 1003.44 (1), which requires parental permission before public school students may be excused from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The ACLU is also asking the court to prohibit school officials from disciplining or retaliating against Frazier for refusing to stand.

The lawsuit names Alexandre and assistant principal Richard Poorman as defendants, along with the Palm Beach County School Board.
The ACLU's complaint is online at: http://www.aclufl.org/issues/students/FrazierComplaintFiled.PDF

Bush's Macho Swagger is Back. But for How Long?

by Arianna Huffington

George Bush was back in flight suit mode over the weekend, exuding the macho, Protector-in-Chief swagger that got him re-elected. While passing out Purple Hearts at an Army hospital in Texas, the president strongly defended the NSA spy program as a key tool in fending off another terrorist attack.
"On September the 11th, 2001, our nation was attacked," he reminded us for the 1,365,729th time.
"And after that day, I vowed to use all the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people, which is what I have been doing, and will continue to do."

"We're at war with a bunch of cold blooded killers, who will kill on a moment's notice" he said. "If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why."

So far, the public seems to be buying this Colonel Jessep Defense ("You need me on that wall!"), with half of the country saying the warrantless domestic wiretapping had made America safer.

Nevertheless, I feel confident predicting that Bush's bluster will soon give way to a far less full-throated stance.
Why? Because we've seen this pattern before. It's the Bush administration's political spin on those five stages of grief, which move from denial to anger, through bargaining and depression to, finally, acceptance.

The president's current posturing is a Kubler-Ross twofer, combining both denial and anger in one handy stage-straddling step. It allows him to deny that what he did was wrong and illegal while simultaneously venting his anger on the enemy. No, not al Qaeda -- but the spy program whistleblower.
It's Classic Bush: challenge him and find yourself targeted for aiding and abetting the enemy. "The fact that somebody leaked this program causes great harm to the United States," he told reporters ominously. "There's an enemy out there. They read newspapers, they listen to what you write, they listen to what you put on the air, and they react."

Which is really the underlying strategy of the president's aggressive defense: the hope that by replaying his effective use of the Fear Factor, he can undercut the planned congressional investigations into the legality of his actions and shift the focus to identifying who let the spy cat out of the black bag. In Bushlandia, you see, undermining the Constitution isn't what "causes great harm to the United States"; it's the public finding out that you are undermining the Constitution that does.

But coming on strong only to eventually retreat in the face of insistent pushback is also Classic Bush. But only if the pushback is really insistent -- and especially if it's coming from members of his own party.

We saw it with the furor over the administration's stand on torture - Cheney's two-fisted intransigence ultimately giving way to the president's signature on the McCain amendment. And we saw it with Bush's acquiesce on Harriet Miers, where what he knew was in her heart didn't stand a chance against what he heard from outraged Republicans -- and his denial of her shortcomings quickly gave way to his acceptance of her withdrawal.
And we're seeing this same kind of pushback on the spy story, with GOP stalwarts Arlen Specter, Dick Lugar, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham all making it clear that Bush's claim that his actions were "within the law" is not going to go unquestioned - or uninvestigated.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Specter. "We can't become an outcome-based democracy," said Graham. "Even in a time of war, you have to follow the process, because that's what a democracy is all about: a process."

And a Democratic Senator tells me that more Senate Republicans than have already gone public are, in increasingly loud whispers in the Senate cloakroom, expressing their unease about the president's actions.

That's why it's only a matter of time before Bush's swaggering denial and anger are replaced by a flurry of bargaining, a brief bout of depression, and the inevitable acceptance - however reluctant (he is still George Bush, after all).

The president has only just begun to feel the political grief on this one.

Eat The Poor

The New York Times
January 2, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Machete Budget
By BOB HERBERT

If Congress were merely useless, the country would be better off. But it's worse than useless. In the iron grip of a Republican Party that is almost slavishly devoted to the Bush administration, it's downright destructive, especially to the interests of poor and working people.

Consider the budget that will soon be sent to the president for his signature. Members of the House and Senate have agreed on legislation that achieves something approaching $40 billion in savings over five years primarily by hammering the sick, the poor, the elderly and college students and their families.

This is the same Congress that genuflects each time the president asks for yet another gift-wrapped tax cut for the wealthiest among us. The textbooks tell us that the U.S. is a representative democracy, but only the upper strata are truly represented.

The nearly 800-page budget bill would allow states to jack up the premiums and co-payments of millions of low-income Medicaid recipients. It would also allow some Medicaid benefits to be rolled back.

One of worst aspects of the Medicaid provisions is that large numbers of poor people, faced with the higher premiums and co-payments, will inevitably decide to take a pass on the health care they need. Some will die.

"The Congressional Budget Office," wrote Kevin Freking of The Associated Press, "has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all - contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years."

(I listened the other day to a story about a woman who had repeatedly postponed a visit to the doctor because she was broke and had no health insurance. It turned out she had breast cancer. By the time it was diagnosed, the cancer had already spread through much of her body. The prognosis for this woman is not good, and it should not be the policy of the United States government to encourage this kind of situation.)

You would think that a conservative, family-values, Republican-dominated Congress would, at the very least, go to the mat on behalf of child support payments. Think again.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which has closely studied the budget agreement, noted that "its reductions in child support enforcement funding would, according to the C.B.O., mean that $2.9 billion in child support that otherwise would be collected over the next five years - and $8.4 billion that otherwise would be collected over the next 10 years - would go uncollected instead."

As the center noted:

"The conference agreement also includes provisions that would delay certain [Supplemental Security Income] payments for up to a year for many poor individuals with disabilities who are found eligible for S.S.I. In addition, the bill cuts federal foster care aid in a way that will make it much more difficult for states to provide federally funded foster care benefits to certain relatives who are raising children because the children's parents are unable or unfit to do so."

This is ugly stuff: mean-spirited legislators hacking like wild men with machetes at the already ragged safety net. Poor children, the very sick and the disabled are among those most likely to tumble into the abyss.

The largest chunk of "savings" in the budget bill would come from student aid. With the special interests driving up in 18-wheelers to haul away our tax dollars, Congress and the administration apparently felt that mugging college students would be a good way to recoup a bit of those losses.

"This is the biggest cut in the history of the federal student loan program," said David Ward, who heads the American Council on Education, an umbrella group for public and private colleges.

Republican leaders in Congress, working in tandem with the Bush administration on this issue, tried to throw up the usual smoke screen. As The Times reported:

"Republican negotiators said virtually all the cuts in student aid would be borne by banks and other lenders, an assertion sharply disputed by Democrats and college administrators, who said that two-thirds of the savings would be at the expense of students and their families."

Because of some minor, last-minute changes that have to be dealt with, the House will have one more crack at this bill before it goes to the president. It would be an opportunity for some Republican "moderates," who should be appalled at what is happening, to step up and be heard.

Don't hold your breath.

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

The Bush Family Coup

Son revisits the sins of the father on America
by James Ridgeway

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The 9-11 attacks provided the rationale for what amounts to a Bush family coup against the Constitution.
From the outset, President George Bush used 9-11 to reorganize the federal government and increase its reach far beyond any existing law to delve into the lives of innocent, ordinary people. The new powers allowed the government to arrest them at will and to subject them to endless incarceration without judicial review. Some people were sent abroad to be tortured for crimes they had nothing to do with. Who knows how many people have been tortured in American jails? When government employees within the intelligence community sought to protest, the government fired them and made sure they could never get another job in their areas of expertise. This extraordinary program of spying on Americans, much of which was carried out in fishing expeditions under the Patriot Act, has the makings of a consistent and long-range policy to wreck constitutional government.

It is little wonder both left and right have come together to fight Bush and may yet jettison the Patriot Act. Revelations of the domestic spy operation, with its secret wiretaps, ought to supply sufficient evidence to impeach Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and launch criminal prosecutions of the top federal officials involved in carrying out the program. After all, these people are directly engaged in overthrowing constitutional government. How did this all come about?

GET THE COMMIES

In opening a conference on counterintelligence in March 2005, former president George H.W. Bush, who headed the CIA from 1975 to 1977, said, “It burns me up to see the agency under fire.” Recent criticism, Bush said, reminded him of the 1970s, when Congress “unleashed a bunch of untutored little jerks out there” to investigate the CIA’s involvement in domestic spying, assassinations, and other illegal activities, and subsequently passed laws to prevent abuses.
Bush was referring to the activities of the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee after its chair, Idaho Democratic senator Frank Church. Among other things, the committee’s 1976 report detailed the workings of the infamous COINTELPRO, an FBI domestic spying program on Civil Rights leaders, anti-war groups, and anyone else who rubbed J. Edgar Hoover the wrong way. The report also detailed illegal domestic activities by the CIA and military intelligence. A simultaneous—and even more contentious—investigation was carried out in the House by the Select Committee on Intelligence, which also came to bear the name of it chair, New York Democratic congressman Otis Pike. The Pike Report focused on the CIA covert actions, as well as on the CIA’s overall effectiveness and its budget.

Within days of the 9-11 attacks, officials of Bush the younger’s administration and former intelligence chiefs were on the talk shows denouncing the “chilling effect” of the congressional investigations of the 1970s, and of subsequent halfhearted efforts to regulate the work of the intelligence agencies. Paul Bremer, the future head of the Iraq occupation, who had chaired the National Commission on Terrorism from 1998 to 2000, said on CNN that the Church Committee did “a lot of damage to our intelligence services. . . . And the more recent problem was that the previous administration put into effect guidelines which restricted the ability of CIA agents to go after . . . terrorist spies.”

Congress lost no time in repealing these rather toothless earlier guidelines, along with a host of other restrictions, especially those safeguarding the privacy of electronic communications. The Senate passed the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001 on September 13, one of its first actions in response to the attacks.
Between 1960 and 1974, the FBI conducted half a million investigations of so-called subversives, without a single conviction, and maintained files on well over a million Americans. The FBI tapped phones, opened mail, planted bugs, and burglarized homes and offices. At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a “national emergency.” Hoover was particularly obsessed with Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, which he thought was influenced by communists. The FBI proceeded to undermine the civil rights movement, planting agents among the Freedom Riders (and also the Ku Klux Klan). Hoover put spies into the ranks of labor activists and of Democratic Party insurgents during the 1964 presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, the CIA began spying domestically. The Agency planted informants of its own within the United States, especially on college campuses. Between 1953 and 1973, they opened and photographed nearly a quarter of a million first-class letters, producing an index of nearly 1.5 million names. Under something called Operation CHAOS, separate files were created on approximately 7,200 Americans and over 100 domestic groups. In 1964, the CIA even created a secret arm called the Domestic Operations Division, the very name of which flew in the face of its legal charter. Back then, there were no “communications problems” between the two agencies.

RAISE THE WALL

In documenting all this, the Church Committee concluded the intelligence community had engaged in actions “which had no conceivable rational relationship to either national security or violent activity.” The report of the House’s Pike Committee documented a history of CIA covert actions, as well as notable intelligence failures. As a result the CIA got out of domestic spying and the FBI supposedly pulled back from its orgy of homeland snooping. Some rather modest oversight was applied, the most important of which led to the creation of the “the wall.” This refers to application of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA was enacted in 1978, in the wake of the congressional investigations, as a compromise that would allow the FBI and other domestic law enforcement to carry out counterintelligence operations while putting some sort of restraints on COINTELPRO-type abuses. Under FISA, the FBI could continue to do things like conduct searches and tap phones without traditional search warrants and without probable cause, as long as agents were targeting terrorists, spies, or other purported enemies of the United States, and as long as they got permission from a secret FISA court.

There was concern from the start that FISA would be used to circumvent the Fourth Amendment in routine criminal cases. So FISA dictated that these warrantless searches and surveillance could be conducted only for counterintelligence purposes, and not for regular criminal investigations. However, if a FISA search happened to turn up evidence of a crime, this information could be handed over to law enforcement. According to a joint inquiry conducted in 2002 by the Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence, “the Intelligence Community agencies, perhaps overly ‘risk-averse’ in dealing with FISA-related matters, restricted the use of information far beyond what was required. The majority of FBI personnel interviewed . . . incorrectly believed that the FBI could not share FISA-derived information with criminal investigators at all or that an impossibly high standard had to be met before the information could be shared. Most did not know [it] could be shared with criminal investigators if it was simply relevant to the criminal investigation.”

And anyway, the FBI never stopped its domestic spying. During the ’80s and ’90s the FBI spied on and/or infiltrated peace and solidarity groups engaged in protesting U.S. involvement in the wars of Central America, put agents into Earth First, and went after the far right, again trying to plant agents and turn participants into informants. The shooting at Ruby Ridge and the raid in Waco galvanized not just the right but the heartland against the Bureau. At Ruby Ridge, it was an FBI sniper killing a mother with a baby in her arms. At Waco it was a monstrous assault on a religious enclave. And the Bureau’s handling of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995—with botched lab work and lost documents—to this day fuels the controversy over the government’s role in that catastrophe. Recent evidence suggests a federal agent may have penetrated the gang that conducted the bombing. The informant told her superior, who sat on the information until long after the bombing.

INSTALL BIG BROTHER

The failures of the FBI and CIA in 9-11 were not because of any wall. These agencies failed because they weren’t doing their jobs right. The congressional investigation found the CIA couldn’t penetrate al Qaeda—an especially odd claim since we had helped to create and finance al Qaeda as an instrument to win the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. John Walker Lindh and other Americans walked right into al Qaeda and were greeted by its high officials. How come the CIA couldn’t do the same? No wall kept the CIA from getting Osama bin Laden. They just couldn’t find him. As for how the hijackers got into the U.S., it’s hardly a mystery. An FBI informant among the Muslim community in San Diego socialized with two hijackers and rented a room to one of them. When Congress tried to figure out how this happened, the Bureau covered it up, refusing to allow the informant to testify. Again, there was no wall here—just plain incompetence made worse by a deliberate cover-up. The FBI reportedly was informed in April 2001 by a longtime reliable asset of an impending attack using airliners as missiles. It did nothing. An operation known as Able Danger reportedly turned up information on and tracked hijacker Mohammad Atta as far back as 1998, but the Pentagon wouldn’t tell the FBI what it knew. Even now, the Bush administration is fighting to prevent the Able Danger officials from testifying before Congress about what they knew and when they knew it. When it comes to intelligence, the only thing worse than the FBI’s record is the CIA’s.

Given all that’s happened, the only explanation for the Bush domestic spying is that it’s political. There are no crimes involved here. But there is an overweaning desire by this so-called conservative government to establish and institutionalize a Big Brother regime that tolerates no dissent and wrecks constitutional government.

social secuity

This must be an issue in "2008" Please! Keep it going.

----------------------------------

SOCIAL SECURITY:

(This is worth reading. It is short and to the point.)

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years.

Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of
course, they do not collect from it.

You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their
rare elevation in society.They felt they should have a special plan for
themselves.
So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan.

In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it.
After all, it is a great plan.

For all practical purposes their plan works like this:

When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die.

Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments..

For example, Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect
to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand
Dollars),
with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.

T his is calculated on an average life span for each of those two
Dignitaries.

Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more
during the rest of their lives.

Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA....ZILCH....

This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick
up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come
directly
from the General Funds;

"OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"!

>From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid)
into,-every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our
employer)-we can
expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.

Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly
benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator! Bill Bradley's
benefits!

Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.

That change would be to:

Jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and
Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us

then sit back.....

and see how fast they would fix it.

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and
maybe good changes will evolve.

How many people CAN you send this to?

Better yet.....

How many people WILL you send this to ?

Miriam V. Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social
Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.

You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their
rare elevation in society.They felt they should have a special plan for
themselves.
So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan.

In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it.
After all, it is a great plan.

For all practical purposes their plan works like this:

When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die.

Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments..

For example, Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect
to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand
Dollars),
with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.

T his is calculated on an average life span for each of those two
Dignitaries.

Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more
during the rest of their lives.

Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA....ZILCH....

This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick
up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come
directly
from the General Funds;

"OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"!

>From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid)
into,-every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our
employer)-we can
expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.

Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly
benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator! Bill Bradley's
benefits!

Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.

That change would be to:

Jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and
Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us

then sit back.....

and see how fast they would fix it.

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and
maybe good changes will evolve.

Miriam V.

George W. Bush as the New Richard Nixon

George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and ImpeachablyBoth Claimed That a President May Violate Congress' Laws to Protect National Security
by John W. Dean

On Friday, December 16, the New York Times published a major scoop by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau: They reported that Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on Americans without warrants, ignoring the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

It was a long story loaded with astonishing information of lawbreaking at the White House. It reported that sometime in 2002, Bush issued an executive order authorizing NSA to track and intercept international telephone and/or email exchanges coming into, or out of, the U.S. - when one party was believed to have direct or indirect ties with al Qaeda.

Initially, Bush and the White House stonewalled, neither confirming nor denying the president had ignored the law. Bush refused to discuss it in his interview with Jim Lehrer.

Then, on Saturday, December 17, in his radio broadcast, Bush admitted that the New York Times was correct - and thus conceded he had committed an impeachable offense.

There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons.

These parallel violations underscore the continuing, disturbing parallels between this Administration and the Nixon Administration - parallels I also discussed in a prior column.

Indeed, here, Bush may have outdone Nixon: Nixon's illegal surveillance was limited; Bush's, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope. First reports indicated that NSA was only monitoring foreign calls, originating either in the USA or abroad, and that no more than 500 calls were being covered at any given time. But later reports have suggested that NSA is "data mining" literally millions of calls - and has been given access by the telecommunications companies to "switching" stations through which foreign communications traffic flows.

In sum, this is big-time, Big Brother electronic surveillance.

Given the national security implications of the story, the Times said they had been sitting on it for a year. And now that it has broken, Bush has ordered a criminal investigation into the source of the leak. He suggests that those who might have felt confidence they would not be spied on, now can have no such confidence, so they may find other methods of communicating. Other than encryption and code, it is difficult to envision how.

Such a criminal investigation is rather ironic - for the leak's effect was to reveal Bush's own offense. Having been ferreted out as a criminal, Bush now will try to ferret out the leakers who revealed him.

Nixon's Wiretapping - and the Congressional Action that Followed

Through the FBI, Nixon had wiretapped five members of his national security staff, two newsmen, and a staffer at the Department of Defense. These people were targeted because Nixon's plans for dealing with Vietnam -- we were at war at the time -- were ending up on the front page of the New York Times.

Nixon had a plausible national security justification for the wiretaps: To stop the leaks, which had meant that not only the public, but America's enemies, were privy to its plans. But the use of the information from the wiretaps went far beyond that justification: A few juicy tidbits were used for political purposes. Accordingly, Congress believed the wiretapping, combined with the misuse of the information it had gathered, to be an impeachable offense.

Following Nixon's resignation, Senator Frank Church chaired a committee that investigated the uses and abuses of the intelligence derived from the wiretaps. From his report on electronic surveillance, emerged the proposal to create the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Act both set limits on electronic surveillance, and created a secret court within the Department of Justice - the FISA Court -- that could, within these limits, grant law enforcement's requests to engage in electronic surveillance.

The legislative history of FISA makes it very clear that Congress sought to create laws to govern the uses of warrantless wiretaps. Thus, Bush's authorization of wiretapping without any application to the FISA Court violated the law.

Whether to Allow Such Wiretaps, Was Congress' Call to Make

No one questions the ends here. No one doubts another terror attack is coming; it is only a question of when. No one questions the preeminent importance of detecting and preventing such an attack.

What is at issue here, instead, is Bush's means of achieving his ends: his decision not only to bypass Congress, but to violate the law it had already established in this area.

Congress is Republican-controlled. Polling shows that a large majority of Americans are willing to give up their civil liberties to prevent another terror attack. The USA Patriot Act passed with overwhelming support. So why didn't the President simply ask Congress for the authority he thought he needed?

The answer seems to be, quite simply, that Vice President Dick Cheney has never recovered from being President Ford's chief of staff when Congress placed checks on the presidency. And Cheney wanted to make the point that he thought it was within a president's power to ignore Congress' laws relating to the exercise of executive power. Bush has gone along with all such Cheney plans.

No president before Bush has taken as aggressive a posture -- the position that his powers as commander-in-chief, under Article II of the Constitution, license any action he may take in the name of national security - although Richard Nixon, my former boss, took a similar position.

Presidential Powers Regarding National Security: A Nixonian View

Nixon famously claimed, after resigning from office, that when the president undertook an action in the name of national security, even if he broke the law, it was not illegal.

Nixon's thinking (and he was learned in the law) relied on the precedent established by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Nixon, quoting Lincoln, said in an interview, "Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation."

David Frost, the interviewer, immediately countered by pointing out that the anti-war demonstrators upon whom Nixon focused illegal surveillance, were hardly the equivalent of the rebel South. Nixon responded, "This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the war in Vietnam, as much as the Civil War tore apart the nation when Lincoln was president." It was a weak rejoinder, but the best he had.

Nixon took the same stance when he responded to interrogatories proffered by the Senate Select Committee on Government Operations To Study Intelligence Operations (best know as the "Church Committee," after its chairman Senator Frank Church). In particular, he told the committee, "In 1969, during my Administration, warrantless wiretapping, even by the government, was unlawful, but if undertaken because of a presidential determination that it was in the interest of national security was lawful. Support for the legality of such action is found, for example, in the concurring opinion of Justice White in Katz v. United States." (Katz is the opinion that established that a wiretap constitutes a "search and seizure" under the Fourth Amendment, just as surely as a search of one's living room does - and thus that the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements apply to wiretapping.)

Nixon rather presciently anticipated - and provided a rationalization for - Bush: He wrote, "there have been -- and will be in the future -- circumstances in which presidents may lawfully authorize actions in the interest of security of this country, which if undertaken by other persons, even by the president under different circumstances, would be illegal."

Even if we accept Nixon's logic for purposes of argument, were the circumstances that faced Bush the kind of "circumstances" that justify warrantless wiretapping? I believe the answer is no.

Is Bush's Unauthorized Surveillance Action Justified? Not Persuasively.

Had Bush issued his Executive Order on September 12, 2001, as a temporary measure - pending his seeking Congress approval - those circumstances might have supported his call.

Or, had a particularly serious threat of attack compelled Bush to authorize warrantless wiretapping in a particular investigation, before he had time to go to Congress, that too might have been justifiable.

But several years have passed since the broad 2002 Executive Order, and in all that time, Bush has refused to seek legal authority for his action. Yet he can hardly miss the fact that Congress has clearly set rules for presidents in the very situation in which he insists on defying the law.

Bush has given one legal explanation for his actions which borders on the laughable: He claims that implicit in Congress' authorization of his use of force against the Taliban in Afghanistan, following the 9/11 attack, was an exemption from FISA.

No sane member of Congress believes that the Authorization of Military Force provided such an authorization. No first year law student would mistakenly make such a claim. It is not merely a stretch; it is ludicrous.

But the core of Bush's defense is to rely on the very argument made by Nixon: that the president is merely exercising his "commander-in-chief" power under Article II of the Constitution. This, too, is a dubious argument. Its author, John Yoo, is a bright, but inexperienced and highly partisan young professor at Boalt Law School, who has been in and out of government service.

To see the holes and fallacies in Yoo's work - embodied in a recently published book -- one need only consult the analysis of Georgetown University School of Law professor David Cole in the New York Review of Books. Cole has been plowing this field of the law for many years, and digs much deeper than Yoo.
Since I find Professor Yoo's legal thinking bordering on fantasy, I was delighted that Professor Cole closed his real-world analysis on a very realistic note: "Michael Ignatieff has written that 'it is the very nature of a democracy that it not only does, but should, fight with one hand tied behind its back. It is also in the nature of democracy that it prevails against its enemies precisely because it does.' Yoo persuaded the Bush administration to untie its hand and abandon the constraints of the rule of law. Perhaps that is why we are not prevailing."

To which I can only add, and recommend, the troubling report by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, who are experts in terrorism and former members of President Clinton's National Security Council. They write in their new book The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right, that the Bush Administration has utterly failed to close the venerable loopholes available to terrorist to wreak havoc. The war in Iraq is not addressing terrorism; rather, it is creating terrorists, and diverting money from the protection of American interests.

Bush's unauthorized surveillance, in particular, seems very likely to be ineffective. According to experts with whom I have spoken, Bush's approach is like hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. As sophisticated as NSA's data mining equipment may be, it cannot, for example, crack codes it does not recognize. So the terrorist communicating in code may escape detection, even if data mining does reach him.

In short, Bush is hoping to get lucky. Such a gamble seems a slim pretext for acting in such blatant violation of Congress' law. In acting here without Congressional approval, Bush has underlined that his Presidency is unchecked - in his and his attorneys' view, utterly beyond the law. Now that he has turned the truly awesome powers of the NSA on Americans, what asserted powers will Bush use next? And when - if ever - will we - and Congress -- discover that he is using them?