Has FOX Become an Attack Dog to Silence Critics of Bush Administration, Asks Scholars for 9/11 Truth
Television commentators compare 9/11 truth-seekers to terrorists. The 9/11 experts reject the comparison.
Madison, WI (PRWEB) October 23, 2006 --- Has the Fox television broadcasting network become an attack dog to silence critics of the Bush administration? A group of American citizens called Scholars for 9/11 Truth says yes. They charge that commentators on the Fox network, already known for its conservative bias, have maliciously compared the 9/11 scholars to terrorists and suggested that the FBI follow their members 24 hours a day, thereby contradicting the network’s motto of being “fair and balanced”.
“The Fox News Network has gone to war with Scholars for 9/11 Truth,” founder and co-chair James Fetzer said. “FOX has used ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ and ‘Hannity & Colmes’ as attack dogs against 9/11 truth-seekers. These broadcasters charge that we have supplied ‘material support’ for terrorists, which paves the way for us to be classified as ‘enemy combatants.’ That means that our members can be arrested and held indefinitely with no charges simply for questioning the government. That smacks of unAmericanism.”
“If it can happen to us, it can happen to anyone,” Fetzer said. “The situation is fraught with ironies”, he added. “The President himself has admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. The FBI has acknowledged that it has ‘no hard evidence’ relating Osama to 9/11. But if neither Saddam nor Osama had anything to do with 9/11, then who was responsible? That’s the question that we are trying to answer. Fox treats us as terrorists for wanting to know. There’s nothing ‘fair and balanced’ about these attacks.”
Fox News as Attack Dogs
Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a non-partisan organization of students, experts, and faculty, has more than 300 members, among them physicists, engineers, and pilots who dispute the government’s account of 9/11. Supporters of the society include distinguished theologian David Ray Griffin, BYU physicist Steven Jones, former head of the U.S. “Star Wars” research program Bob Bowman, MIT engineer Jeff King, and former Bush administration chief economist Morgan Reynolds.
Fetzer charged that on October 12-13, Fox broadcasters launched “a prolonged and vindictive assault upon me, Kevin Barrett and all the members of the 9/11 truth movement.” Rich Lowry, sitting in for the absent Sean Hannity, hosted a ‘terrorism expert’ who said that the 9/11 scholars were serving as “recruiting instruments” and providing terrorists with “material support.” Fetzer found it stunning.
“This is a chillingly obvious tactic by Fox to lay the groundwork for having the 9/11 scholars and anyone labeled ‘an unlawful enemy combatant,’” Fetzer said, “because that’s one of the new technical definitions under The Military Commissions Act. ” Other critics of the government’s account of 9/11, including syndicated talk show host Alex Jones, have been outraged by Fox’s effort to identify 9/11 critics with terrorists. In his latest column, Jones observed that they are following the lead of the President himself, who suggested that 9/11 critics are “terrorist recruiters” in a recent speech.
Basic Civil Rights at Stake
Kurt Nimmo, a columnist for Counterpunch, an on-line journal of commentary and opinion, has been troubled by O’Reilly’s proposal that James Fetzer and Kevin Barrett should be followed by the FBI. “But then, as we know, or as some of us know, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are now effectively dead,” he writes. “Increasingly, it is a crime to question the government, especially in an academic setting, just the same as it was after the Nazis took over German.”
"The problem," Barrett added, "is that our loyalty to the nation and to the Constitution overrides our loyalty to President Bush and his administration. Before being hired to teach, I signed an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If our research is well-founded, this administration is practicing terrorism against the American people. As Gore Vidal said, the enemy is within. It is our duty to defend this nation and its Constitution against a criminal administration."
The situation has been compounded by The New York Times’ failure to report that, under the new “Military Commissions Act”, American citizens may now be classified as “unlawful enemy combatants” at the whim of the President, Fetzer said. “I am shocked and dismayed that our nation's newspaper of record cannot even accurately report the most stunning subversion of the Constitution in our history by falsely asserting that citizens are not covered by the law” ("President Signs New Rules To Prosecute Terror Suspects", October 18, 2006).
“Perhaps the reporter, Sheryl Gay Stolberg didn't bother to read even the first few paragraphs of the Military Commissions Act,” Fetzer observed, “but when she writes that it ‘strips the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear petitions from non-citizens for writs of habeas corpus,’ she fails to reflect the language of the act. There is no provision for exceptions for American citizens!” Writs of habeas corpus require that the government provide justification for holding a person in custody, a fundamental legal right that dates from the Magna Carta.
Polls Reflect Public Skepticism
Barrett and Fetzer have been repeatedly attacked on FOX programs, including both “O’Reilly” and “Hannity & Colmes”, which came to a head on October 12-13, 2006. According to O’Reilly, for example, Barrett and Fetzer maintain that President Bush is responsible for the murder of 3,000 persons by orchestrating the events of 9/11, a charge for which they “have no evidence”. In his response, Fetzer observed that there are hundreds of studies, documents, records, and photographs archived on st911.org, which support the claim that the “official account” the government has advanced is false.
“Of course, O’Reilly gave an exaggerated version of our position. He would probably have been astonished to know that, after I appeared on The Jerry Springer Show about two months ago, he formulated a question that was clearly intended to elicit a minimal positive response. ‘Did George Bush kill 3,000 of his fellow citizens on 9/11 for political gain?’, Springer asked. 66% answered, ‘Yes!’” Although this was not a scientific poll, it suggests that O’Reilly may not be up-to-speed about public perceptions of the events of 9/11, Fetzer said.
In fact, according to a more recent New York Times/CBS poll, 53% of the American public thinks that the administration is hiding the truth from the American people and 28% believe it is lying. Only 16% believe that the administration has been telling the truth. “I’m really not surprised,” said Fetzer, “considering that they have been withholding massive quantities of evidence in 12 categories from public inspection. They clearly have a lot to hide. All we want to know is how and why 3,000 of our fellow citizens died on 9/11.”
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
In Bushworld, we're all friggin idiots.
Two weeks before the vote, there's talk of new ideas on Iraq. Just don't bring up "Stay the Course" Reminds me of Nixon's secret plan" to win the Vietnam War.
Monday, October 23, 2006
BUSH WASN'T EVEN A FIGHTING DRUNK!
by Tony Parsons
GEORGE Dubya Bush says that Iraq is just like Vietnam - but how would he know?
When he had a chance to fight for his country in Vietnam he chose to lay on the floor of a bar in Dallas sucking on a bottle of tequila instead. It was a long way from Saigon.
Bush was the right age for Vietnam, but he ducked the call to arms by signing on for the soft option of the stay-at-home National Guard. Or was it the Mouseketeers?
We are cursed by a generation of leaders who have never heard a shot fired in anger. And that, more than anything, has made Iraq possible.
Would Bush have been so gung-ho about invading Iraq if he had, seen the reality of war in Vietnam, instead of the unreality of happy hour in downtown Houston?
Would Tony Blair have been so keen on sending other people's sons off to fight if he had actually seen a man die?
My father, an old soldier, was totally against the Falklands War. My old man was no pacifist, but he had some understanding of what it would cost to get those South Atlantic rocks back.
"Let the Argentinians have the Falklands," he said. "Let them have the sheep, too, and do with them what they will."
Maggie Thatcher had no idea what the Falklands would cost. She had no concept of what it would be like when men were dying in Goose Green, or burning alive on the lower decks of HMS Sheffield.
Denis Healey could have told her. Or Ted Heath. Or my dad. They were from a generation who had fought a war. But that generation is dying out and we are all the poorer for it.
Thatcher never got closer to combat than watching The Bridge On The River Kwai on a Sunday afternoon. Like Blair and Bush, it was easy for her to send somebody else's son off to fight and maybe die because she knew not what she did.
Bush is right, of course. Iraq does resemble Vietnam in the sense that a one-sided military engagement turned into an unpopular war and then an unwinnable one.
America chose Vietnam to make a stand against Communism, and Iraq to make a stand against al-Qaeda - even though there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda until Bush and Blair created one.
But what do we expect? Unlike John F Kennedy, or Churchill, or indeed my old man, they have no idea of the reality of war.
Bush the drunk, Blair the lawyer - what do these pampered men know about anything apart from their own privileged little worlds?
There is no solution to the problem. For the developed world, the horrors of war are receding into the history books. My parents are dead. Their generation is almost gone. Those of us who are left have peace that they fought for, and we should always be grateful for that.
But it does mean that we have a Prime Minister who, at an age when previous generations were in uniform, was practising the chords to Honky Tonk Women.
Good luck to him. I am from that mollycoddled, born-at-the-right-time generation, too.
But how can a spoilt baby boomer like Blair make decisions about when to go to war? Little wonder he can't even look the loved ones of our dead soldiers in the eye.
And Bush is even worse. The leader of the western world had a chance to fight for his country and chose to crawl into a bottle.
Men who have known nothing but peace cannot possibly be effective war leaders.
Bush and Blair are men who never wore a uniform apart from a blue suit and tie. No wonder they got us into this mess.
Apparently, Hollywood is planning a film of Dubya's experience at the time of the Vietnam War - Full Dinner Jacket.
Bill Maher: NEW RULES . . . And finally, new rule in two parts: (A) You can't call yourself a think tank if all your ideas are stupid; and (B) If you're someone from one of these think tanks that dreamed up the Iraq War and who predicted that we'd be greeted as liberators, and that we wouldn't need a lot of troops, and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war, that the WMD's would be found, that the looting wasn't problematic, that the mission was accomplished, that the insurgency was in its last throes, that things would get better after the people voted, after the government was formed, after we got Saddam, after we got his kids, after we got Zarqawi, and that whole bloody mess wouldn't turn into a civil war, you have to stop making predictions.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
After Pat's Birthday
Kevin Tillman Honors Late Brother's Birthday with Plea to Speak up for Democracy
by Kevin Tillman
It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.
Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin was discharged in 2005.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Bush Betrays Democracy and Truth in Signing Military Commissions Act
By Matthew Rothschild
George Bush just signed the Military Commissions Act, the bookend to the Patriot Act on the shelf marked “Assault on Democracy.”
It allows the President himself to decide what is covered by Geneva Conventions, and what is not.
In short, it gives the President a green light to torture.
Bush, with his usual flare for falsehood, said it “will allow the Central Intelligence Agency to continue its program for questioning key terrorist leaders.”
Bush does not believe that history will be concerned with the question: Did we uphold our Constitution?But this isn’t about questioning them. It’s about torturing them. It’s about subjecting them to such things as waterboarding, a medieval instrument of sadism.
Bush repeated that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values.”
But he knows full well that the CIA used waterboarding against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and he even cited Mohammed by name to justify the continued use of the CIA “program.”
Bush also asserted, falsely, that the Military Commissions Act will enable the United States to prosecute captured terrorists “through a full and fair trial.”
Hardly.
It will permit secret evidence, hearsay evidence, and even coerced testimony.
With this new law, Bush can have the CIA torture someone into a confession, and then use that confession against the person at trial.
In fact, the person can be executed on the basis of testimony that was beaten out of him.
In his statement, Bush also completely avoiding mentioning one of the most egregious aspects of the Military Commissions Act: the stripping of habeas corpus protection that has been enshrined since the days of the Magna Carta and codified in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. “What this bill will do is take our civilization back 900 years,” warned Senator Arlen Specter, when he tried to amend the bill by restoring habeas corpus. (When it failed, 51-48, Specter inexplicably turned around and voted for the bill.)
The Military Commissions Act authorizes the President of the United States to designate anyone—foreigner or citizen alike—as an “enemy combatant.” He can then detain this enemy combatant indefinitely, and if that person is not a U.S. citizen, that person has no recourse whatsoever.
“No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination,” the new law states.
This gives the President “the privilege of kings,” as Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has noted. But Bush doesn’t want you to care about such little things.
“Over the past few months, the debate over this bill has been heated, and the questions raised can seem complex,” he said, just before signing it. “Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”
Note that Bush does not believe that history will be concerned with the question: Did we uphold our Constitution?
Bush said the law sends a “clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair, and we will never back down from the threats to our freedom.”
But there is nothing “decent and fair” about it, and it only increases the threats to our freedoms.
For it shows us to be hypocrites, and it makes barbarism the rule.
Bush's Pyongyang Boomerang by Paul Starr
A nuclear Korea, a futile Iraq war, and an aggressive Iran -- such is Bush's progress on the "axis of evil."
GOP IN DISARRAY
"The failure of conservative attempts at governance at home (see Katrina) and the collapse of neo-conservative foreign policy abreoad (see Iraq, if you can bear to) has lead to two reactions. First, in order to minimize losses, Bush and the GOP will push "Elect Democrats and you will die" as their only message. And more importantly, the GOP coalition will break apart into feuding tribes, each blaming the other for why they're losing. It is inevitable; it cannot be stopped.
- DemFromCT (Daily Kos)
"The failure of conservative attempts at governance at home (see Katrina) and the collapse of neo-conservative foreign policy abreoad (see Iraq, if you can bear to) has lead to two reactions. First, in order to minimize losses, Bush and the GOP will push "Elect Democrats and you will die" as their only message. And more importantly, the GOP coalition will break apart into feuding tribes, each blaming the other for why they're losing. It is inevitable; it cannot be stopped.
- DemFromCT (Daily Kos)
Friday, October 20, 2006
Hail, Hail Rock and Roll!
Chuck Berry Celebrates 80th Birthday
Hail, hail rock'n'roll
Deliver me from the days of old
Long live rock'n'roll
The beat of the drum is loud and bold
Rock rock rock'n'roll
The feelin' is there body and soul
-Chuck Berry
Thursday, October 19, 2006
A Dangerous New Order - New York Times
The New York Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 19, 2006
Editorial
A Dangerous New Order
Once President Bush signed the new law on military tribunals, administration
officials and Republican leaders in Congress wasted no time giving Americans
a taste of the new order created by this unconstitutional act.
Within hours, Justice Department lawyers notified the federal courts that
they no longer had the authority to hear pending lawsuits filed by attorneys
on
behalf of inmates of the penal camp at Guantánamo Bay. They cited passages
in the bill that suspend the fundamental principle of habeas corpus, making
Mr. Bush the first president since the Civil War to take that undemocratic
step.
Not satisfied with having won the vote, Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the
House, quickly issued a statement accusing Democrats who opposed the
Military
Commissions Act of 2006 of putting "their liberal agenda ahead of the
security of America." He said the Democrats "would gingerly pamper the
terrorists
who plan to destroy innocent Americans' lives" and create "new rights for
terrorists."
This nonsense is part of the Republicans' scare-America-first strategy for
the elections. No Democrat advocated pampering terrorists - gingerly or
otherwise
- or giving them new rights. Democratic amendments to the bill sought to
protect everyone's right to a fair trial while providing a legal way to
convict
terrorists.
Americans will hear more of this ahead of the election. They also will hear
Mr. Bush say that he finally has the power to bring to justice a handful of
men behind the 9/11 attacks. The truth is that Mr. Bush could have done that
long ago, but chose to detain them illegally at hidden C.I.A. camps to
extract
information. He sent them to Guantánamo only to stampede Congress into
passing the new law.
The 60 or so men at Guantánamo who are now facing tribunals - out of about
450 inmates - also could have been tried years ago if Mr. Bush had not
rebuffed
efforts by Congress to create suitable courts. He imposed a system of
kangaroo courts that was more about expanding his power than about combating
terrorism.
While the Republicans pretend that this bill will make America safer, let's
be clear about its real dangers. It sets up a separate system of justice for
any foreigner whom Mr. Bush chooses to designate as an "illegal enemy
combatant." It raises insurmountable obstacles for prisoners to challenge
their detentions.
It does not require the government to release prisoners who are not being
charged, or a prisoner who is exonerated by the tribunals.
The law does not apply to American citizens, but it does apply to other
legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the
judicial
system in ways that all Americans should find threatening. It further
damages the nation's reputation and, by repudiating key protections of the
Geneva
Conventions, it needlessly increases the danger to any American soldier
captured in battle.
In the short run, voters should see through the fog created by the
Republican campaign machine. It will be up to the courts to repair the harm
this law
has done to the Constitution.
Copyright 2006
The New York Times Company
Posted by Miriam V.
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