How Israel is Engineering the "Clash of Civilizations"

By JONATHAN COOK

Nazareth.

The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002.

At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a "new anti-Semitism", a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US.

It was not the first time, of course, that Israel had called on American loyalists to help it out of trouble. In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein documents the advent of claims about a new anti-Semitism to Israel's lacklustre performance in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. On that occasion, it was hoped, the charge of anti-Semitism could be deployed against critics to reduce pressure on Israel to return Sinai to Egypt and negotiate with the Palestinians.

Israel alerted the world to another wave of anti-Semitism in the early 1980s, just as it came under unprecedented criticism for its invasion and occupation of Lebanon. What distinguished the new anti-Semitism from traditional anti-Jewish racism of the kind that led to Germany's death camps, said its promoters, was that this time it embraced the progressive left rather than the far right.

The fresh claims about a new anti-Semitism began life in the spring of 2002, with the English-language website of Israel's respected liberal daily newspaper, Haaretz, flagging for many months a special online supplement of articles on the "New anti-Semitism", warning that the "age-old hatred" was being revived in Europe and America. The refrain was soon taken up the Jerusalem Post, a rightwing English-language newspaper regularly used by the Israeli establishment to shore up support for its policies among Diaspora Jews.

Like its precursors, argued Israel's apologists, the latest wave of anti-Semitism was the responsibility of Western progressive movements -- though with a fresh twist. An ever-present but largely latent Western anti-Semitism was being stoked into frenzy by the growing political and intellectual influence of extremist Muslim immigrants. The implication was that an unholy alliance had been spawned between the left and militant Islam.

Such views were first aired by senior members of Sharon's cabinet. In an interview in the Jerusalem Post in November 2002, for example, Binyamin Netanyahu warned that latent anti-Semitism was again becoming active:

"In my view, there are many in Europe who oppose anti-Semitism, and many governments and leaders who oppose anti-Semitism, but the strain exists there. It is ignoring reality to say that it is not present. It has now been wedded to and stimulated by the more potent and more overt force of anti-Semitism, which is Islamic anti-Semitism coming from some of the Islamic minorities in European countries. This is often disguised as anti-Zionism."

Netanyahu proposed "lancing the boil" by beginning an aggressive public relations campaign of "self-defence". A month later Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, picked on the softest target of all, warning during a state visit that the fight against anti-Semitism must begin in Germany, where "voices of anti-Semitism can be heard".

But, as ever, the main target of the new anti-Semitism campaign were audiences in the US, Israel's generous patron. There, members of the Israel lobby were turning into a chorus of doom.

In the early stages of the campaign, the lobby's real motivation was not concealed: it wanted to smother a fledgling debate by American civil society, particularly the churches and universities, to divest -- withdraw their substantial investments -- from Israel in response to Operation Defensive Shield.

In October 2002, after Israel had effectively reoccupied the West Bank, the ever-reliable Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, lumped in critics who were calling for divestment from Israel with the new anti-Semites. He urged a new body established by the Israeli government called the Forum for Co-ordinating the Struggle against anti-Semitism to articulate clearly "what we know in our hearts and guts: when that line [to anti-Semitism] is crossed".

A fortnight later Foxman had got into his stride, warning that Jews were more vulnerable than at any time since the Second World War. "I did not believe in my lifetime that I or we would be preoccupied on the level that we are, or [face] the intensity of anti-Semitism that we are experiencing," he told the Jerusalem Post.

Echoing Netanyahu's warning, Foxman added that the rapid spread of the new anti-Semitism had been made possible by the communications revolution, mainly the internet, which was allowing Muslims to relay their hate messages across the world within seconds, infecting people around the globe.

It is now clear that Israel and its loyalists had three main goals in mind as they began their campaign. Two were familiar motives from previous attempts at highlighting a "new anti-Semitism". The third was new.

The first aim, and possibly the best understood, was to stifle all criticism of Israel, particularly in the US. During the course of 2003 it became increasingly apparent to journalists like myself that the American media, and soon much of the European media, was growing shy of printing even the mild criticism of Israel it usually allowed. By the time Israel began stepping up the pace of construction of its monstrous wall across the West Bank in spring 2003, editors were reluctant to touch the story.

As the fourth estate fell silent, so did many of the progressive voices in our universities and churches. Divestment was entirely removed from the agenda. McCarthyite organisations like CampusWatch helped enforce the reign of intimidation. Academics who stood their ground, like Columbia University's Joseph Massad, attracted the vindictive attention of new activist groups like the David Project.

A second, less noticed, goal was an urgent desire to prevent any slippage in the numbers of Jews inside Israel that might benefit the Palestinians as the two ethnic groups approached demographic parity in the area know to Israelis as Greater Israel and to Palestinians as historic Palestine.

Demography had been a long-standing obsession of the Zionist movement: during the 1948 war, the Israeli army terrorised away or forcibly removed some 80 per cent of the Palestinians living inside the borders of what became Israel to guarantee its new status as a Jewish state.

But by the turn of the millennium, following Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, and the rapid growth of the oppressed Palestinian populations both in the occupied territories and inside Israel, demography had been pushed to the top of Israel's policy agenda again.

During the second intifada, as the Palestinians fought back against Israel's war machine with a wave of suicide bombs on buses in major Israeli cities, Sharon's government feared that well-off Israeli Jews might start to regard Europe and America as a safer bet than Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. The danger was that the demographic battle might be lost as Israeli Jews emigrated.

By suggesting that Europe in particular had become a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, it was hoped that Israeli Jews, many of whom have more than one passport, would be afraid to leave. A survey by the Jewish Agency taken as early as May 2002 showed, for example, that 84 per cent of Israelis believed anti-Semitism had again become a serious threat to world Jewry.

At the same time Israeli politicians concentrated their attention on the two European countries with the largest Jewish populations, Britain and France, both of which also have significant numbers of immigrant Muslims. They highlighted a supposed rise in anti-Semitism in these two countries in the hope of attracting their Jewish populations to Israel.

In France, for example, peculiar anti-Semitic attacks were given plenty of media coverage: from a senior rabbi who was stabbed (by himself, as it later turned out) to a young Jewish woman attacked on a train by anti-Semitic thugs (except, as it later emerged, she was not Jewish).

Sharon took advantage of the manufactured climate of fear in July 2004 to claim that France was in the grip of "the wildest anti-Semitism", urging French Jews to come to Israel.

The third goal, however, had not seen before. It tied the rise of a new anti-Semitism with the increase of Islamic fundamentalism in the West, implying that Muslim extremists were asserting an ideological control over Western thinking. It chimed well with the post 9-11 atmosphere.

In this spirit, American Jewish academics like David Goldhagen characterised anti-Semitism as constantly "evolving". In a piece entitled "The Globalisation of anti-Semitism" published in the American Jewish weekly Forward in May 2003, Goldhagen argued that Europe had exported its classical racist anti-Semitism to the Arab world, which in turn was reinfecting the West.

"Then the Arab countries re-exported the new hybrid demonology back to Europe and, using the United Nations and other international institutions, to other countries around the world. In Germany, France, Great Britain and elsewhere, today's intensive anti-Semitic expression and agitation uses old tropes once applied to local Jews -- charges of sowing disorder, wanting to subjugate others -- with new content overwhelmingly directed at Jews outside their countries."

This theory of a "free-floating" contagion of hatred towards Jews, being spread by Arabs and their sympathisers through the internet, media and international bodies, found many admirers. The British neo-conservative journalist Melanie Philips claimed popularly, if ludicrously, that British identity was being subverted and pushed out by an Islamic identity that was turning her country into a capital of terror, "Londonistan".

This final goal of the proponents of "the new anti-Semitism" was so successful because it could be easily conflated with other ideas associated with America's war on terror, such as the clash of civilisations. If it was "us" versus "them", then the new anti-Semitism posited from the outset that the Jews were on the side of the angels. It fell to the Christian West to decide whether to make a pact with good (Judaism, Israel, civilisation) or evil (Islam, Osama bin Laden, Londonistan).

We are far from reaching the end of this treacherous road, both because the White House is bankrupt of policy initiatives apart from its war on terror, and because Israel's place is for the moment assured at the heart of the US administration's neoconservative agenda.

That was made clear last week when Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel, added yet another layer of lethal mischief to the neoconservative spin machine as it gears up to confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu compared Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Adolf Hitler.

"Hitler went out on a world campaign first, and then tried to get nuclear weapons. Iran is trying to get nuclear arms first. Therefore from that perspective, it is much more dangerous," Netanyahu told Israel's anti-terrorism policymakers.

Netanyahu's implication was transparent: Iran is looking for another Final Solution, this one targeting Israel as well as world Jewry. The moment of reckoning is near at hand, according to Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, who claims against all the evidence that Iran is only months away from posssessing nuclear weapons.

"International terrorism is a mistaken term," Netanyahu added, "not because it doesn't exist, but because the problem is international militant Islam. That is the movement that operates terror on the international level, and that is the movement that is preparing the ultimate terror, nuclear terrorism."

Faced with the evil designs of the "Islamic fascists", such as those in Iran, Israel's nuclear arsenal -- and the nuclear Holocaust Israel can and appears prepared to unleash -- may be presented as the civilised world's salvation.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Bush seeks immunity for violating War Crimes Act

Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2006-09-24 14:51. Impeachment

BY ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN, Chicago Sun Times

Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate -- and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.

The ''pardon'' is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ''pardon'' provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.

Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.

Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ''prosecutors and independent counsels'' might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called ''special prosecutors'' prior to the statute's reauthorization in 1994) aren't for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.

Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives. Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute.

To ''reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,'' Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn't apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.

When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.

What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.

Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.

Elizabeth Holtzman, a former New York congresswoman, is co-author with Cynthia L. Cooper of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens.

Bush lied all along !!!!

September 8th, 2006 12:37 pm
Senate panel releases Iraq intel report

By Jim Abrams / Associated Press

WASHINGTON - There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.

The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates."

Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaida. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year.

The long-awaited report, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the committee, is "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to link Saddam to al-Qaida.

"Impeach Bush"

‘Impeach Bush’ chorus grows
Sarah Baxter, Washington
THE movement to impeach President George W Bush over the war on terror began with a few tatty bumper stickers on the back of battered old Volvos and slogans such as “Bush lied, people died” on far-left websites. But as Democrat hopes rise of gaining control of Congress this autumn, dreams of impeaching Bush are no longer confined to the political fringe.

A poll last week found that voters, by 50% to 37%, would prefer the Democrats to win control of Congress. If Bush’s opponents find themselves in a position of power, the temptation to humiliate him is likely to be irresistible.

A taste of the battle to come was provided last week by Senator Russ Feingold, a popular choice for the 2008 presidential nomination among Democrat anti-war activists. He proposed a motion of censure against Bush for authorising the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans suspected of links to terrorism without a court warrant.

Feingold gave notice that the party should stop “cowering” before Bush on national security issues. “If there’s any Democrat out there who can’t say the president has no right to make up his own laws, I don’t know if that Democrat really is the right (presidential) candidate,” he said.

Plenty of his Senate colleagues ducked for cover, fearful of alienating either party activists or swing voters. The eavesdropping issue is one of the few hot-button topics where Bush has public support. One leading supporter of Hillary Clinton acknowledged ruefully: “It’s hard to beat the argument, ‘If Al-Qaeda is on the line, we want to be listening’.”

Clinton, the party’s presidential frontrunner, hid last week from reporters who wanted to question her on the censure motion while she was attending a Democrat lunch at the Senate. Most Democrats would rather keep their options open on impeachment than pronounce one way or another.

Republicans are practically begging them to “bring it on” in the hope that the chatter will tar their opponents as loony leftists who care nothing for national security. “This is such a gift,” said Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio chat show host.

For demoralised conservatives, the issue is a call to arms for the mid-term congressional elections. “Impeachment, coming your way if there are changes in who controls the House right now,” Paul Weyrich, a top conservative organiser, warned in an e-mail newsletter to supporters.

“With impeachment on the horizon maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all,” Weyrich wrote.

If few senior Democrats are calling publicly for Bush to be placed in the dock, plenty are flirting with the idea. One of them is Al Gore, the defeated 2000 presidential candidate, who is increasingly talked up as a serious anti-war contender at the next election.

Gore said recently that Bush’s “unlawful” eavesdropping was part of a larger pattern of “seeming indifference” to the American constitution, which could well be an impeachable offence.

John Kerry, the 2004 presidential nominee, was overheard in an Irish bar on Capitol Hill talking about how satisfying it would be to impeach Bush if Congress went Democrat. He was just having a laugh, his spokeswoman rushed to explain: “Impeachment jokes in Washington are as old as Donald Rumsfeld.”

But then she turned serious: “How are the same Republicans, who tried to impeach a president over whether he misled a nation about an affair, going to pretend it does not matter if the administration intentionally misled the country into war?”

The urge to impeach is partly payback for the Bill Clinton era when Republicans dragged the president through the mud over his dalliance with the intern Monica Lewinksy.

Others are convinced there is a good case against Bush based on the 2002 Downing Street memo — revealed by The Sunday Times — in which Richard Dearlove, then head of M16, said “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of removing Saddam Hussein. Congressman John Conyers, the senior Democrat who took part in Watergate proceedings against President Richard Nixon in 1974, has called for a committee of inquiry into the grounds for impeachment.

Richard Clarke Blasts Key Scene In ABC's 9/11 Docudrama

Richard Clarke Blasts Key Scene In ABC’s 9/11 Docudrama

On September 10 and 11, ABC is planning to air a “docudrama” called Path to 9/11, billed by writer Cyrus Nowrasteh as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”

The first night of Path to 9/11 has a dramatic scene where former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give the order to the CIA to take out bin Laden — even though CIA agents, along with the Northern Alliance, have his house surrounded. Rush Limbaugh, who refers to Nowrasteh as “a friend of mine,” reviews the action:

So the CIA, the Northern Alliance, surrounding a house where bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they’re on the verge of capturing, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to proceed.

So they phoned Washington. They phoned the White House. Clinton and his senior staff refused to give authorization for the capture of bin Laden because they’re afraid of political fallout if the mission should go wrong, and if civilians were harmed…Now, the CIA agent in this is portrayed as being astonished. “Are you kidding?” He asked Berger over and over, “Is this really what you guys want?”

Berger then doesn’t answer after giving his first admonition, “You guys go in on your own. If you go in we’re not sanctioning this, we’re not approving this,” and Berger just hangs up on the agent after not answering any of his questions.

ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:

1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.

2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.

3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.

In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

Tell ABC to tell the truth about 9/11.

Digg It!

Fil

Bush to Propose Billions in Cuts

Bush to Propose Billions in Cuts
Farm subsidies and food stamps are among the targets in the 2006 budget plan, to be sent to Congress on Monday. Opposition is building.
by Joel Havemann and Mary Curtius


WASHINGTON — President Bush will propose a 2006 budget Monday that, despite record spending of about $2.5 trillion, will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing.


The lower-income Americans who benefit from food stamps and Medicaid do not typically provide the Republican Party with many votes or campaign contributions.

Even before the budget is officially sent to Congress on Monday, resistance to Bush's proposals was welling up Saturday from interest groups that benefit from federal aid and from the members of Congress who represent them.

Powerful agricultural interests were among the first to label Bush's proposed budget cuts as unfair and shortsighted. Farmers receive about $15 billion annually in federal farm program payments to help produce major commodities, including corn, cotton, rice and wheat.

California farmers could end up bearing a disproportionate share of the burden if the cuts in crop subsidies were enacted, said economist Daniel Sumner. "Rice and cotton are very important to this state," said Sumner, who is director of the Agricultural Issues Center at UC Davis.

The cuts are being proposed as the president is striving to keep a campaign promise to rein in government spending and halve the federal deficit in five years. The deficit has soared since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism — and as revenue has fallen as the economy has slowed and tax cuts have taken effect.

In addition to the cuts proposed in the 2006 budget, Bush is expected to ask Congress to approve in principle many billions of dollars in additional, unspecified cuts.

Bush has seemed to challenge congressional Republicans and Democrats to make the tough choices necessary to achieve the deficit reductions that members on both sides of the aisle have called for recently.

"I welcome the bipartisan calls to control the spending appetite of the federal government," he said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "On Monday, my administration will submit a budget that holds the growth of discretionary spending below inflation."

Deficit hawks outside the government welcomed Bush's tone but warned that members of Congress would fight to maintain spending for programs popular with their voters.

"It's going to be a tight budget," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group that lobbies for smaller deficits. "That doesn't mean it's going to be a realistic budget."

Bush's budget will cut "where the money is," Bixby said Saturday, "but it's also where the resistance is."

The lower-income Americans who benefit from food stamps and Medicaid do not typically provide the Republican Party with many votes or campaign contributions.

The proposed budget will give states less flexibility to include working poor families with children as beneficiaries, sources said.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said he was willing to trim farm subsidies if other programs suffered proportionately.

"But if they try to single out the farm bill," Chambliss told reporters on Capitol Hill last week, "then we are going to have one heck of a fight."

The administration will propose a 5% across-the-board cut in price supports for crops and a reduction from $360,000 to $250,000 in the annual cap on subsidies that farmers can receive.

Under the current system, some farmers evade the limit by dividing farms into several separate corporate entities, a practice that the budget also will seek to eliminate.

A Senate Agriculture Committee aide, saying evasion of the cap was extremely rare, argued that farmers needed the safety net of federal aid for the years when they could not sell their crops for the cost of producing them.

In a letter Thursday to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, a coalition of more than 100 organizations led by the American Farm Bureau Federation, said that Congress, in the 2002 bill that authorized farm subsidies for seven more years, had already cut subsidies by $4 billion a year by imposing the $360,000 cap.

"A budget that requires further cuts or structural weakening in these important programs will put at risk the promising environmental benefits of the bill and the nutritional health of some of the poorest populations in our country," the letter said.

In California, 1.5 metric tons of rice is grown a year, second only to Arkansas, said Tim Johnson, chief executive of the California Rice Commission, which has about 1,500 farmer members. Approximately 600,000 acres of farmland in the state were planted in rice in 2004.

"It's not just farmers that benefit — rice plays an important role in the economy of California," Johnson said. "We are an important export crop — about 40% of what's produced in the state is exported to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other countries."

Daren Coppock, chief executive of the National Assn. of Wheat Growers, said the budget must not be balanced on the backs of farmers. Referring to the $360,000 maximum payment, he said: "If they change it now, that's not terribly helpful to those who made purchasing decisions over a seven-year planning period.

"The other thing to remember: The president always proposes, but Congress writes it and puts it into law," Coppock said. "There is a lot of work to be done and a lot of people to be heard from before this gets finished."

Rumors of the proposed farm subsidy cuts had been widely circulating in Washington for days before officials at the Department of Agriculture confirmed them in a background briefing to reporters. But the food stamp cut, expected to be about $1 billion in a $32-billion program, received less notice.

States must provide food stamps to people on cash welfare. But this is a much smaller population since Congress overhauled welfare in 1976.

A larger number of people now receive federal job-related aid, such as child care for working women with small children. The budget, sources said, gives states less flexibility to provide food stamps to these working poor people.

The nation's governors can be expected to lead the opposition to this proposal, just as they fought a 2003 proposal to cut their federal Medicaid support in return for greater flexibility in administering the program.

Administration officials made public Friday their proposal for increasing access to health insurance, and critics said they expected the budget itself to make another try at giving more flexibility and fewer dollars.

As announced Friday, the administration said it could save $60 billion in Medicaid over 10 years without service cuts. About $40 billion would come from changes in the way Washington pays the states for Medicaid services. The administration says states are gaming the Medicaid program by unfairly inflating costs.

Amid the welter of spending cuts, a few domestic programs were singled out for increases. Among them: community health clinics and aid to schools in low-income neighborhoods — although those schools are slated for a smaller increase than Bush proposed last year.

The budget also will seek $3 billion for the Millennium Challenge Account, the president's signature effort to help poor countries boost their economic growth. That is $500 million more than was sought for 2005 — but $2 billion less than was promised last year for 2006.

And the budget would expand Pell grants, which help the lowest-income students attend college, at the expense of the Perkins loan program for low- and middle-income college students. The $6-billion loan program would be eliminated.

Eighteen housing and community development programs would be consolidated and cut by about 40% to a total of $3.7 billion.

The budget also proposes eliminating federal subsidies for Amtrak, the national passenger rail carrier. Subsidies totaled $1.2 billion this year.

Times staff writer David Colker contributed to this report.

The 40 billion dollars Bush Debacle

The so called "christian fundamentalist" republican party representatives and the Bush crime family just passed today (2/1/06) in the Congress a 40 billion dollars spending cut that will affect the middle and poor classes very much.

Cuts in Student Loans, Wellfare and Medicaid will make the life harder for the majority of Americans.

Middle and Poor Americans are already suffering with the high gas prices thanks to GW Bush oil friends.

This cut coupled with the big tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans are part of the Bush crime family and the so called "Neocons" republicans plan which is to bankrupt the federal goverment and as a result will terminate all the social programs from the goverment (wellfare, medicaid, social-security, federal loan and all federal help programs for the poor).

This federal reserve extermination (The federal deficit is already at unsustained levels at 1 triilion dollars and counting). Onli in Iraq US is spending 2 billion/week. China, Japan and Saudi Arabia owns most of this debt.

This deficit and trade debacle coupled with wire-tapping, religious fanatism, limited civil rights is turning America into a nazi-fascist goverment.

In 2006 and 2006 vote this fascist republican party out of the goverment!!!

ImpeachPAC | Electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney

ImpeachPAC | Electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney

Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping
Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2006-01-15 15:54. Impeachment in the News | Polls

For Release: January 16, 2006

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

ImpeachPAC | Electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney

ImpeachPAC | Electing a Congress to Impeach Bush and Cheney

Should Bush and Cheney Be Impeached for the Iraq War | Democrats.com

Should Bush and Cheney Be Impeached for the Iraq War | Democrats.com: "Should Bush and Cheney Be Impeached for the Iraq War
(1) In July 2002, George Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately diverted $700 million from the authorized war in Afghanistan to provoke an unauthorized war in Iraq, including a criminal bombing campaign.

(2) On March 18, 2003, Bush and Cheney deliberately lied to Congress when he claimed in writing that continued U.N. inspections would endanger the national security of the U.S. and undermine enforcement of U.N. Resolutions, and that Iraq planned or aided the attacks of September 11, 2001.

(3) By invading Iraq without any threat or just cause, Bush and Cheney launched a War of Aggression in violation of U.S. obligations under the U.N. Charter.

(4) In the conduct of the War, Bush and Cheney violated the Geneva conventions by failing to protect civilians (including journalists) and by authorizing torture of prisoners, which also violated the War Crimes Act of 1996.

George Bush, Dick Cheney, and every top official involved in these policies must be impeached and removed from office.
"

The Year the Chickenhawks Will Go Home to Roost

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005
2006: The Year the Chickenhawks Will Go Home to Roost

...a message from Cindy Sheehan

Since hot, hot Camp Casey in August, some amazing grass roots actions have taken place all over the country. People are starting to speak up and Congress has begun to take action against the criminal and neo-Fascist regime that tried to take over America.

From Camp Casey to Katrina to use of chemical weaponry and extraordinary rendition to illegally spying on American citizens without due process, Bushco has miserably failed our country and the world. We as Americans said "enough is enough." We sacrificed a lot when we showed up in DC and other cities around the country in the hundreds of thousands to protest against and show that we withdraw any consent to be governed by murderous thugs. We started to peacefully, but forcefully resist the notion that this government has any right to govern us when they have betrayed their offices and their sacred trusts as "defenders" of the Constitution so horribly.

This was also the year that we began to hold such Republicans in Democratic clothing like: Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, and Diane Feinstein (list is by no means all inclusive) accountable for their support of what George is doing in Iraq. When we as Democrats elect our leaders we expect them to reject and loudly repudiate the murderous and corrupt policies of this administration -- not support and defend them.

There are Camp Caseys in front of Hillary's and Chuck Schumer's offices in Long Island every Friday, as well as one in front of Diane Feinstein's Los Angeles office on Fridays. There has been a Camp Casey in front of Kay Bailey Hutchinson's office in Dallas since August. Several protestors have been arrested in Dallas exercising their First Amendment rights. We need to let these warmongers, as well as the Republican warmongers, know that we mean business when we say "bring them home now." Set up Camp Caseys in front of your Senator's or Congress person's office if they support George in his wars of aggression.

Gold Star Families for Peace (www.gsfp.org) is planning many activities for the first part of 2006. I would like to give you all a heads-up on them, so you can make your plans accordingly to support us and to join us if at all possible.

On January 31st, we will be in Washington, DC for the State of the Union address when George gets in front of Congress and the world and lies through his teeth about how great everything is going in Iraq and here at home. His idiotic policies have ruined Iraq and New Orleans and made the world a more dangerous place...allowing that terrorist attacks have tripled world wide since he decided to "fight them over there." He also may be laying the ground work for further acts of needless aggression against Syria and Iraq. GSFP and representatives from other peace organizations and refugees from New Orleans will be gathering in DC to give the "Real State of the Union." Check our website for place and time.

For the Love of God, Can't you Make Him Stop? Recently, it was revealed that George only interacts with four people: Laura, Condi, Karen Hughes and his Mom. His Mom, the Ice Queen who didn't want her "pretty mind" burdened with the images of flag draped coffins coming home, lives in Houston. On President's Day, (Feb. 20) we will be demonstrating in front of her house to implore her to forget about the obscene profits that her family and their friends are making off of this occupation and to beg her to finally do the right thing and make her son stop this insane war OF terror against the world. George and Dick are defiling the highest offices of the world and they need to resign. On President's Day, when we have the day off, we need to demonstrate against the ones who are illegitimately in power, anyway. If you can't make it to Houston, organize your own President's Day protest.

The Camp Casey Peace Foundation will hold its first annual Peace Festival and Concert on April 4, 2006. April 4th is the day Casey and Martin Luther King, Jr. were killed. We want to turn it into a true day for celebrating peace. The Camp Casey Peace Foundation will be awarding the Casey Sheehan Peace Prize, a cash prize, to a young peace activist every year. We want to foster the growth of solving problems non-violently and young people are the ones who get killed in the gray haired old men's wars. We are working on an exciting event and we will announce more details as the event draws closer.

Camp Casey Easter edition: We will be heading back to our leased land in Crawford April 11th to Easter, which is April 16th. Easter is a time of renewal and hopeful promises. Casey was killed on Palm Sunday and his body was returned to us in the cargo section of a United Airlines flight on Holy Saturday and we buried him two days after Easter. Last Easter Season was so painful to us. This Easter we will again be demonstrating in front of the man's home who is responsible for such pain and abject heartache in the world. But, we will be there with a renewed sense of hope that the Chickenhawks will be sent out to pasture this year. Like Michael Moore, I want to be a fly on the wall when Bush and company are hauled out of the White House in handcuffs. Impeachment is not necessary for people who never were elected...eviction is what is needed. If you can't join us in Crawford, set up your own Camp Casey near you.

In 2005, we learned that we have the power. We learned that we can't rely on the propaganda media or the empty promises of most of our elected leadership. We learned that we need to be the change that we desire to see.

We learned that one person can and does make a difference.

We cannot relax in 2006. We cannot slip back into the evil of apathy and complacency that the neocons rejoice in. We need to keep pounding, working, and fighting. We need to support organizations like Gold Star Families for Peace, Veterans for Peace (www.veteransforpeace.org), Code Pink (www.codepink4peace.org) and Iraq Veterans Against the War (www.ivaw.net), or the Peace organization of your choice so we can continue our struggle for peace with justice. We need to support true American patriots like John Conyers who is calling for an investigation and censure for the lies that have cost us so much of our national human treasure.

2006 will be a great year for the people of our country. I know it.

It won't be easy, but we will prevail and the struggle will be worth it.

The New Madness of King George

The New Madness of King George

By Robert Parry
December 19, 2005

On the Sunday before Christmas, a fidgety George W. Bush interrupted regular programming on U.S. networks to deliver an address to the nation that painted the Iraq War and the War on Terror in the same black-and-white colors he has always favored.

Despite the media's conventional wisdom about Bush’s new “realism” on Iraq, the old canards were still there – Saddam Hussein choosing war by rejecting United Nations weapons inspectors; blurred distinctions between Iraqi insurgents and non-Iraqi terrorists; intimations that Bush’s critics are “partisan” while he embodies the national interest.

Plus, there was the same old stark choice between success and failure. “There are only two options before our country – victory or defeat,” Bush declared, brushing aside the political and military ambiguities of the Iraq War and the War on Terror.

But Bush’s speech and his curious hand gestures as he sat behind a desk in the Oval Office suggested a twitchiness over his apparent realization that the nation increasingly doubts his leadership.

Indeed, it appears the American people finally have begun to understand the costs in blood, money and freedoms that have resulted from letting the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks become a justification for transforming the United States into a modern-day empire led by an autocrat who claims the untrammeled right to strike at his perceived enemies abroad and crack down on his opponents at home.

Wiretaps

A day earlier, an angrier-looking Bush used his weekly radio address to denounce as “irresponsible” senators who resorted to the filibuster to demand more civil-liberties protections in a revised version of the Patriot Act.

Bush also lashed out at press disclosures of his three-year-old decision to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by personally approving warrantless electronic eavesdropping on international communications by people inside the United States.

“As a result (of the disclosure), our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk,” Bush said. “Revealing classified information is illegal.”

Bush’s outrage might seem strange to some observers since he has refused to punish his deputy chief of staff Karl Rove for leaking the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused Bush of twisting intelligence to build his case for invading Iraq in 2003.

But Bush apparently has judged that he, as president, and his close advisers can decide which laws they wish to obey and when, while simultaneously condemning those outside their circle of power for violating the same laws.

This attitude follows Bush’s view that the “commander in chief” clause of the U.S. Constitution grants him virtually unlimited powers as a “war president” as long as the War on Terror lasts, a concept of executive authority that recalls the days of absolute authority claimed by Medieval kings and queens.

Already, Bush has asserted that his “commander in chief” powers allow him to arrest citizens and hold them indefinitely without charges; to authorize physical abuse of prisoners; to invade other countries without the necessity of congressional approval; and to ignore international law, including the U.N. Charter and other treaty obligations.

As the New York Times reported on Dec. 16 and Bush confirmed on Dec. 17, he also is claiming – as his constitutional right – the power to wiretap Americans without court review or the presentation of evidence to any impartial body.

When Bush is challenged on these authorities, he asserts that he is following the law, although it is never clear which law or whether anyone other than his appointed lawyers have advised him on the scope of his power.

(Conservative legal scholars may have to stretch their notion of the “original intent” of the Founders to explain how the writers of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 decided to give a future president the authority to use spy satellites to intercept phone calls and other electronic communications.)

It’s also not clear what evidence exists to support Bush’s charge that disclosure of his wiretapping decision damages the national security and endangers U.S. citizens.

Under the FISA law dating back to the 1970s, electronic eavesdropping has been permitted inside the United States against foreign agents, including anyone collaborating with an international terrorist group. The law only requires a warrant from a secret court, which rarely rejects an administration request.

Presumably, al-Qaeda terrorists inside the United States were aware that their communications were vulnerable to intercepts, explaining why the Sept. 11 attackers were careful to avoid telephonic contacts abroad. But the terrorists would have no way to know whether electronic eavesdropping might be done with or without a warrant, under FISA or Bush’s order.

Yet, Bush’s complaint that disclosure of his personal wiretapping authority endangers national security presupposes the terrorists knew that their phone calls would somehow be immune from a FISA court warrant but susceptible to Bush’s wiretap order.

Since that assumption makes no sense, one can only conclude that Bush threw in the accusation about endangering national security to impugn the patriotism of his critics and rev up his base, much as he did during the run-up to invading Iraq when skeptics were shouted down as traitors and liars. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Politics of Preemption.”]

Questionable Targets

Bush’s assertion of his unilateral authority to wiretap anyone he wishes also raises questions about whether some of his eavesdropping is aimed at political opponents or journalists, rather than terrorists.

While Bush claims his wiretaps were vital to the national security, they came at a time when the FISA court was approving record numbers of warrants for secret surveillance. According to FISA’s annual report for 2004, there were a record 1,758 applications for spying authorization that year and none was denied by the special court.

The administration’s explanation for why additional secret wiretaps were needed is that Bush’s order saves time when a quick wiretap is required, such as when a foreign terrorist is captured and his phone records are seized.

But the FISA court can clear warrants in a few hours – or Bush could exercise emergency powers under the law to conduct wiretaps for 72 hours before obtaining approval from the court. That emergency provision was inserted in the law to give presidents leeway when the threat was a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union with the potential of wiping out nearly the entire U.S. population.

Even during the Cold War, the FISA provisions were acceptable to Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. But now, with a much less severe threat from al-Qaeda terrorists, George W. Bush has decided that the law must be waived at his discretion, bypassing the court on hundreds and possibly thousands of surveillance orders.

That suggests other motives may exist for some of these wiretaps, such as the possibility that some intercepted conversations would be rejected by even the rubber-stamping FISA court, like requests to spy on activists, politicians or journalists.

The Bush administration, for instance, has accused the Arab news network al-Jazeera of collaborating with al-Qaeda and U.S. news executives are known to communicate with al-Jazeera over access to its exclusive video. Would these phone calls and e-mails be covered by Bush’s extraordinary wiretap authority?

Bush’s right-wing allies also have labeled some American journalists, such as Seymour Hersh, traitors for writing articles about the War on Terror that reveal secret operations that Bush has wanted to keep hidden. Plus, there may be U.S. politicians or activists communicating with Islamic leaders overseas.

While the full range of Bush’s intercepts is not known, the administration’s use of National Security Agency intercepts was an issue earlier this year, when it was disclosed that John Bolton, Bush’s nominee to be United Nations ambassador, had requested names of Americans that had been excised from NSA transcripts for privacy reasons.

Senate Democrats demanded that documents be turned over on 10 cases in which Bolton used his position as under secretary of state for arms control to obtain the names. The White House refused to provide the information and Bush evaded the need for Senate confirmation of Bolton’s ambassadorship by making him a “recess appointment.”

Hand Gestures

As for Sunday’s prime-time Iraq War speech, Bush broke with the reassuring tradition of a president sitting behind the Oval Office desk with hands folded. Instead, Bush took to waving his arms as he delivered the speech.

“Grim-faced, yet with a trace of anxiety in his eyes, Bush delivered the remarks seated rigidly at a desk, making a variety of hand gestures,” observed Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales. [Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2005]

Some of Bush’s strange body language may be explained by the fact that even he must realize that his assertions include a number of falsehoods, such as his routine deception that Saddam Hussein defied U.N. demands on destroying his weapons of mass destruction and on letting in U.N. weapons inspectors.

“It is true that [Hussein] systematically concealed those [WMD] programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors,” Bush told the nation. “He was given an ultimatum – and he made his choice for war.”

But it is not true that Hussein blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. In fact, he acquiesced to a U.N. ultimatum and let them back into Iraq in November 2002. Chief inspector Hans Blix said his team was finally given free rein to examine suspected WMD sites, but Bush forced the inspectors to leave so the invasion could proceed.

As it turned out, Hussein was telling the truth when he said there were no WMD caches left. After the invasion, Bush’s own team of inspectors concluded that Iraq’s WMD stockpiles had been destroyed by earlier U.N. inspections and by U.S. bombing during the Clinton administration.

Yet, beginning a few months after the U.S. invasion – as it became clear there was no WMD and as U.S. casualties mounted – Bush began rewriting history, claiming that Hussein had not let the U.N. inspectors in, thus forcing Bush to invade. This lie presumably made Bush appear more reasonable.

On July 14, 2003, Bush said about Hussein, “we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”

In the following months, Bush repeated this claim in slightly varied forms.

On Jan. 27, 2004, Bush said, “We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution – 1441 – unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in.”

Eventually, this false history became part of Bush’s regular litany about the war. Despite the fact that it was an obvious lie – the U.S. news media had witnessed the work of the U.N. inspectors inside Iraq – Bush was rarely challenged about his historical revisionism. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “President Bush, With the Candlestick…”]

Terrorists or Insurgents

Similarly, Bush continues to blur the distinctions between the Sunni-led Iraqi insurgency that has often used roadside bombs to attack American troops and the relatively small number of non-Iraqi terrorists who have exploded bombs aimed at civilian targets.

Bush has employed the rhetorical device of using insurgent and terrorist synonymously, much as he and Vice President Dick Cheney used juxtaposition to convince millions of Americans that the Iraqi government was somehow responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

In his Dec. 18 speech, for instance, Bush said, “the terrorists will continue to have the coward’s power to plant roadside bombs and recruit suicide bombers,” making no distinction between the tactics of the insurgents and the terrorists.

The danger from this sleight of hand is that it blocks consideration of possible resolution of the Iraq War. Many military analysts believe the only realistic route toward a reasonably successful policy in Iraq is to address the political and economic concerns of Iraq’s Sunni minority – who want a U.S. withdrawal, more political clout and a share of the nation’s oil revenues – while isolating the relatively small number of foreign jihadists.

Though Bush has made some concessions to this reality in recent speeches, he chose to return to his broad-brush rhetoric in the national address. Again, it was a case of good versus evil, victory or surrender, his way or the highway.

“Defeatism may have its partisan uses,” Bush said of his critics, “but it is not justified by the facts.”

Bush also resorted to a favorite tactic of ascribing ridiculous notions to his critics. “If you think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone,” Bush said.

The president then returned to his long-time claim that Islamic extremists are motivated by their hatred of America’s freedom.

“The terrorists do not merely object to American actions in Iraq and elsewhere, they object to our deepest values and our way of life,” Bush said. “And if we were not fighting them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia, and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens, they would be on the offense, and headed our way.”

Again, Bush was reprising rhetoric that exaggerates or misstates the enemy’s goals and capabilities as a way to box in the U.S. political debate and shut the door on reasonable alternative strategies.

Bush continues to discuss al-Qaeda as if it is a powerful international force on par with Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, when many analysts see it as a fringe organization that was driven out of most Islamic countries, almost to the ends of the earth – or in this case to the mountains of Afghanistan.

Without doubt, al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists exploited a letdown in U.S. security in 2001 to conduct an extraordinary attack on New York and Washington, but a realistic assessment of its actual clout is important in calibrating a response.

If al-Qaeda is actually a marginal organization that can be isolated even more by the West adopting a respectful approach to the Muslim world, then Bush’s approach of invading Arab countries – and curtailing American liberties – makes no sense, unless Bush’s real motives are something else: say, controlling Middle East resources and transforming the United States into a modern one-party state with him or his allies in permanent control.

The analysis that follows from Bush’s assertion of unlimited presidential powers and his deceptive explanations to the American people about Iraq suggests two alternative theories. Either Bush is increasingly unstable, incapable of discerning reality from his own propaganda, or he is concealing his real agenda with misleading arguments.

Put differently, either the United States is experiencing a kind of modern “madness of King George” – like what happened when King George III became unstable in the years after losing the Colonies – or the American people are living under a cunning Machiavelli with a calculated method to his apparent madness.

Either way, the prospects are troubling for American democracy – and it may not be clear which of the alternative scenarios is more worrisome.

Bush's abuse of power deserves impeachment

Bush's abuse of power deserves impeachment
With latest outrages, Bush puts impeachment talk into the mainstream

Recklessly and audaciously, George W. Bush is driving the nation whose laws he swore to uphold into a constitutional crisis. He has claimed the powers of a medieval monarch and defied the other two branches of government to deny him. Eventually, despite his party's monopoly of power, he may force the nation to choose between his continuing degradation of basic national values and the terrible remedy of impeachment.

Until Mr. Bush openly proclaimed as commander in chief that he can brush aside the law, cries for impeachment were heard only on the political fringe, although most Americans have long since realized that he misled America into war. Much as he is disliked and disdained by liberals, even they have shown little enthusiasm for impeachment. In addition to the obvious obstacle of a Republican-controlled Congress, there appeared to be no firm proof of an offense that justified such action. To mention the word was to be dismissed -- even by people who believe that this President may well have committed "high crimes and misdemeanors."

The partisan peepshow of the Clinton impeachment did not leave much enthusiasm for that process. Nor would any thoughtful citizen want to risk abusing it in the manner made infamous by Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.

For responsible citizens, the reluctance to seek the ultimate sanction against the President is especially strong in a time of peril. He and his supporters could argue, quite plausibly, that to impeach him now would be dangerous and destabilizing. His pet pundits and flacks would deploy all the defensive arguments they scorned in 1999.

He might well be able to rally the public to his side again by denouncing "politicians in Washington" for "undermining national security."

As political strategy and as public policy, the impeachment of Mr. Bush is an unappealing prospect. (Besides, if he could be thrown out somehow, who would want Dick Cheney to succeed him?) And yet, the actions and attitudes of this President raise the question of how else we can preserve the bedrock principles of a democratic republic.

Dark suspicions would be aroused by Mr. Bush's insistence on his supposed wartime exemption from the law even if he had greater credibility than he now possesses. Hearing a leader with his diminished reputation for honesty announcing such claims, as he seeks to regain authority by promoting fear, it is impossible not to imagine the worst.

The President says that if he is to protect the nation from our enemies, he must be able to order the surveillance of American citizens without seeking the authority of a court. He has repeatedly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which provides very few safeguards of traditional civil liberties. He disdains a law that permits him to order the immediate electronic monitoring of anyone, requiring only that his officers seek a warrant within 72 hours from a secret court that approves those requests in almost every case and never hears an opposing brief. He claims that even those minimal restraints are too onerous.

Why would the President instruct the Attorney General not to seek warrants from the FISA court, as the statute requires? What did he and his aides fear from that court's conservative judges -- appointed by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist -- who have routinely approved all but a tiny percentage of the warrants presented to them by this and other administrations over the past quarter-century? Which wiretaps did he expect those pliable judges to reject?

The Bush doctrine of a President above the law and the Constitution has a dishonorable tradition that dates back to his father's idol, Richard Nixon. More recently, its pedigree derives from memoranda prepared by the same White House lawyers who have told Mr. Bush that he can tear up international treaties and American statutes that prohibit torture and protect against detention without trial.

What has provoked fresh discussion of impeachment is the President's admission that he has ignored the law's requirements and that he intends to keep doing so. The impeccably conservative legal scholar and former Reagan aide Bruce Fein explained the deep implications of the President's arrogance:

"If President Bush is totally unapologetic and says, 'I continue to maintain that as a wartime President I can do anything I want -- I don't need to consult any other branches,' that is an impeachable offense. It's more dangerous than Clinton's lying under oath, because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that... would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant."

There are politicians in both parties who know that Mr. Bush's trespasses cannot be allowed to stand. Only a bipartisan coalition can restrain and, if necessary, remove him. It is to be hoped that he steps back before such a struggle becomes inevitable. Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer and Salon.com, and is the author of Big Lies: The Right- Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.

Raising the Issue of Impeachment

Raising the Issue of Impeachment

Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2005-12-20 16:05. Impeachment

Raising the Issue of Impeachment
By John Nichols, The Nation

As President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice president.

U.S. Representative John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

The Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how to hold the administration to account. Members of Congress have become increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, saiying Monday, "Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution." Even Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, are talking for the first time about mounting potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the president.

But Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing, or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that the Congress use all of the powers that are available to it to hold the president and vice president to account – up to and including the power to impeach the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them from office.

The first of the three resolutions introduced by Conyers, H.Res.635, asks that the Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.

The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

The second resolution, H.Res.636, asks that the Congress to censure the president "for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in his Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of his Administration, for failing to adequately account for specific misstatements he made regarding the war, and for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958." (Executive Order 12958, issued in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton, seeks to promote openness in government by prescribing a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information.)

A third resolution, H.Res.637, would censure Cheney for a similar set of complaints.

"The people of this country are waking up to the severity of the lies, crimes, and abuses of power committed by this president and his administration," says Jon Bonifaz, a co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of more than100 grassroots groups that has detailed Bush administration wrongdoing and encouraged a Congressional response. Bonifaz, an attorney and the author of the book, Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush (Nation Books), argues that, "Now is the time to return to the rule of law and to hold those who have defied the Constitution accountable for their actions."

Bonifaz is right. But it is unlikely that the effort to censure Bush and Cheney, let alone impeach them, will get far without significant organizing around the country. After all, the House is controlled by allies of the president who have displayed no inclination to hold him to account. Indeed, only a few Democrats, such as Conyers, have taken seriously the Constitutional issues raised by the administration's misdeeds.

Members of Congress in both parties will need to feel a lot of heat if these improtant measures are going to get much traction in this Congress.

The grassroots group Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), which has had a good deal of success organizing activists who want the Democrats to take a more aggressive stance in challenging the administration, will play a critical role in the effort to mobilize support for the Conyers resolutions, as part of a new Censure Bush Coalition campaign. (The campaign's website can be found at www.censurebush.org)

PDA director Tim Carpenter says his group plans to "mobilize and organize a broad base coalition that will demand action from Congress to investigate the lies of the Bush administration and their conduct related to the war in Iraq."

Getting this Congress to get serious about maintaining checks and balances on the Bush administration will be a daunting task. But the recent revelations regarding domestic spying will make it easier. There are a lot of Americans who share the view of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, that Bush and Cheney have exceeded their authority. As Feingold says of Bush, "He is the president, not a king."

It was the bitter experience of dealing with King George III led the founders of this country to write a Constitution that empowers Congress to hold presidents and vice accountable for their actions.

It is this power that John Conyers, the senior member of the House committee charged with maintaining the system of checks and balances established by those founders, is now asking the Congress to employ in the service of the nation that Constitution still governs.

An expanded paperback edition of John Nichols' biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History (The New Press: 2005), is available nationwide at independent bookstores and at www.amazon.com. The book features an exclusive interview with Joe Wilson and a chapter on the vice president's use and misuse of intelligence. Publisher's Weekly describes the book as "a Fahrenheit 9/11 for Cheney" and Esquire magazine says it "reveals the inner Cheney."

LINK TO ORIGINAL

It's Good to be King -- Bush and FISA

December 19, 2005

Commentary -- It's Good to be the King -- Bush and FISA
This is going to come as quite a surprise, but apparently President Bush has flagrantly violated the law of the land. Before your eyes glaze over and your brain starts to turn off, let me assure you, you actually haven’t heard this one before. This one is a little bit different.

In 2002, Bush signed an Executive Order allowing the National Security Agency to wiretap certain people in the United States who are communicating with someone abroad without obtaining a warrant from a court. Since then, he’s renewed this authorization 36 times, and presumably thousands of people in America have been spied on in this manner.

Now, the NSA is already allowed, in a relatively unrestricted way, to obtain intercepts of electronic communications from everybody else in the world; it is also allowed to do this to Americans, in accordance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It’s just that the Justice Department needs to go to a special court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in order to get a warrant. To get such a warrant, Justice need not meet convention probable cause standards that would be required in criminal cases. The FISC approves the vast majority of requests. If the situation is an emergency, the wiretap can be kept in place for up to 72 hours before getting a warrant. Indeed, it’s difficult if not impossible to make the case that this executive order is necessary in order to thwart potential terrorist attacks.

There are two ways in which this latest revelation is somewhat different from previous ones.

First, in their open, gung-ho defense of this decision, the administration is somewhere between Nixon’s constant assertion of extreme executive privilege and resurrecting the divine right of kings. Not only can they give no specific justification of the need for indefinitely extended warrantless searches, they can give no real argument about how Bush can simply order a federal agency to commit acts in gross violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and thus of U.S. statute. There are some vague claims about how Congress’s authorization of the use of force on September 14, 2001 is the basis for this authority, but it’s rather hard to read into that document a statement that Bush has the right to set aside any existing legislation by executive decree in the fight against terrorism.

So, in fact, the essence of the argument is that the president, by virtue of his office, can decide whether he believes a law passed by Congress is unconstitutional or not and if it is he can direct agents of the government to violate it. This is equivalent to saying that the president is above the law and is empowered to rule by decree. As Russ Feingold suggested, we have to decide whether we have a president or a king.

Second, Bush has openly admitted to doing this. The administration lied and as much as it could about Iraq’s WMD, but has never admitted anything about it.

When somebody asked me recently whether, in the light of Bush’s increasing unpopularity and increasing perceptions of his dishonesty, there was any chance of impeachment, my answer was no. Crucial to making the case against Nixon for Watergate was his practice of taping Oval Office conversations. The release of those tapes, plus the unexplained 18-minute absence in one of them, was necessary to build the impeachment consensus.

In the case of the much smaller crimes for which Bill Clinton was impeached, again, there was direct physical evidence and he was forced to admit to them.

In Bush’s case, while inferentially there’s been not just a smoking gun but a whole smoking arsenal, there’s been nothing quite as concrete – too much has remained a matter of interpretation, possible to explain or spin away. That’s starting to change.

At the same time, it’s been revealed that the Pentagon frequently spies on antiwar groups; also, under guise of passing an anti-torture bill, Congress has just effectively approved use of testimony obtained by torture to help keep detainees locked up. The outlines of a police state are starting to emerge.

So far, opposition to this particular aspect of what Bush likes to call the advance of freedom has aroused little public opposition, if only because the people directly affected are marginalized groups that no one cares about. That could change if we see the list of people the NSA has spied on.

Impeach Bush!!!

Truth About Bush

December 18, 2005

Major Bush and Neocons Accomplishments:

* Killing of 2000+ American soldiers
* Killing of 100,000 Iraq civilians
* Killing of 6000+ Americans in New Orleans
* Half Trillion dollars Debt
* 100 Million dollars negative trade balance
* Most Corrupted Goverment ever
* Tax Cuts to the richest 1% Americans
* Destruction of Social Programs for the poor amd middle class
* Government for the Corporations
* Careless for the Environment
* Nazi stilus goverment conduct and policies
* Spying on Civilians
* Torture of Prisonners
* Rigging of Elections

In 2006 and 2008 Itr is time to send this corrupt GOP goverment home (and to jail!)

Rumsfeld's Epiphany

November 29th, 2005 6:18 pm
Rumsfeld: Don't Call Them 'Insurgents'


By Robert Burns / Associated Press

WASHINGTON - More than 2 1/2 years into the Iraq war, Donald H. Rumsfeld has decided the enemy are not insurgents.

"This is a group of people who don't merit the word `insurgency,' I think," Rumsfeld said Tuesday at a Pentagon news conference. He said the thought had come to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.

"It was an epiphany."

Rumsfeld's comments drew chuckles but had a serious side.

"I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe," he said. "These people don't have a legitimate gripe." Still, he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard definition of `insurgent.' He promised to look it up.

Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the term "insurgent" as "rising up against established authority."

Even Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stood beside Rumsfeld at the news conference, found it impossible to describe the fighting in Iraq without twice using the term `insurgent.'

After the word slipped out the first time, Pace looked sheepishly at Rumsfeld and quipped apologetically, "I have to use the word `insurgent' because I can't think of a better word right now."

Without missing a beat, Rumsfeld replied with a wide grin: "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. How's that?"

At another point in their news conference, Rumsfeld and Pace had an unusual exchange in which Rumsfeld corrected his senior military adviser, only to have Pace gently insist that it was the defense secretary who was wrong.

A reporter asked Pace what U.S. commanders in Iraq are supposed to do if they find Iraqi forces abusing prisoners. Pace replied that if inhumane treatment is observed it is a service member's duty to stop it.

"I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it — it's to report it," Rumsfeld said, turning to Pace.

Replied the general: "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it."

The Murderer John Negroponte in Iraq: Death Squds now operating in Iraq

The Times January 10, 2005

El Salvador-style 'death squads' to be deployed by US against Iraq militants
From Roland Watson in Washington

John Negroponte was in Honduras when American money was used to train Contras to fight Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. (AL-RAYA/AP)

THE Pentagon is considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.

Under the so-called “El Salvador option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter.

The plans are reported in this week’s Newsweek magazine as part of Pentagon efforts to get US forces in Iraq on to the front foot against an enemy that is apparently getting the better of them.

Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi Prime Minister, was said to be one of the most vigorous supporters of the plan.

The Pentagon declined to comment, but one insider told Newsweek: “What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are. We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defence. And we are losing.”

Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret.

The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.

Then, the Reagan Administration funded and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise Salvadorean rebel leaders and sympathisers. Supporters credit the policy with calming the insurgency, although it left a bitter legacy and stirred anti-American sentiment.

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.

Death squads were a brutal feature of Latin American politics of the time. In Argentina in the 1970s and Guatemala in the 1980s, soldiers wore uniform by day but used unmarked cars by night to kidnap and kill those hostile to the regime or their suspected sympathisers.

In the early 1980s President Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras with the aim of ousting Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime. The Contras were equipped using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal that could have toppled Mr Reagan.

It was in El Salvador that the United States trained small units of local forces specifically to target rebels.

The thrust of the Pentagon proposal in Iraq, according to Newsweek, is to follow that model and direct US special forces teams to advise, support and train Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shia militiamen to target leaders of the Sunni insurgency.

It is unclear whether the main aim of the missions would be to assassinate the rebels or kidnap them and take them away for interrogation. Any mission in Syria would probably be undertaken by US Special Forces.

Nor is it clear who would take responsibility for such a programme — the Pentagon or the Central Intelligence Agency. Such covert operations have traditionally been run by the CIA at arm’s length from the administration in power, giving US officials the ability to deny knowledge of it.

The Pentagon refused to be drawn on the issue yesterday. “We don’t discuss specific future operations or specific tactics,” a spokeswoman said.

This week Gary Luck, a retired four-star general, will arrive in Iraq to review American policy in the country, looking particularly at the recruitment and training of Iraqi forces. The key to Washington’s exit strategy is the ability of Iraqi forces to take over security roles. The general has been asked by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, to deliver an “ open-ended” review of how US aims can better be met.

His visit comes after two weeks of increased violence in Iraq in which scores of Iraqis and more than a dozen Americans have been killed in the run-up to the country’s elections.

Journalist Killed after investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq

Journalist killed after investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq
By James Cogan
1 July 2005

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On June 24, Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for the news agency Knight Ridder, was killed by a single bullet to the head as he approached a checkpoint that had been thrown up near his home in western Baghdad by US and Iraqi troops. It is believed that the shot was fired by an American sniper. According to eyewitnesses, no warning shots were fired.

The US military has announced it is conducting an investigation into Salihee’s killing. Knight Ridder has already declared, however, that “there’s no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work”. In fact, his last assignment gives reason to suspect that it was.

Over the past month, Salihee had been gathering evidence that US-backed Iraqi forces have been carrying out extra-judicial killings of alleged members and supporters of the anti-occupation resistance. His investigation followed a feature in the New York Times magazine in May, detailing how the US military had modeled the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, known as the Wolf Brigade, on the death squads unleashed in the 1980s to crush the left-wing insurgency in El Salvador.

The Wolf Brigade was recruited by US operatives and the US-installed interim government headed by Iyad Allawi during 2004. A majority of its officers and personnel served in Saddam Hussein’s special forces and Republican Guard—veterans of killings, torture and repression. The unit has been used against the resistance in rebellious cities such as Mosul and Samarra, and, over the past six weeks, has played a prominent role in the massive crackdown ordered by the Iraqi government in Baghdad codenamed “Operation Lightning”.

On June 27, Knight Ridder published the results of its inquiry in an article jointly written by Salihee and correspondent Tom Lasseter. The journalists “found more than 30 examples in less than a week” of corpses turning up in Baghdad morgues of people who were last seen being detained by the police commandos.

The men, according to the central Baghdad morgue director Faik Baqr, had “been killed in a methodical fashion”. The article reported: “Their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind their backs, their eyes were blindfolded and they appeared to have been tortured. In most cases, the dead men looked as if they’d been whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks or beaten with a blunt object and shot to death, often with single bullets to their heads.”

A grocer in west Baghdad told Salihee that he had been detained by police with a man named Anwar Jassim on May 13. “When we were in detention, they put blindfolds and handcuffs on us. On the second day the soldiers were saying ‘He’s dead’. Later we found out it was Anwar.” According to the medical reports at the Yarmuk morgue where police dumped his body, Jassim had a “bullet wound in the back of his head and cuts and bruises on his abdomen, back and neck.”

Police commandos reportedly told the morgue director to leave the corpse “so that dogs could eat it, because he’s terrorist and he deserves it”.

In a second case, a brigadier-general in the Iraqi interior ministry related that his brother had been detained during a raid on May 14, in a working class Sunni suburb in Baghdad’s west. His body was found the next day bearing signs of torture. Witnesses told the general that the abductors “came in white police Toyota Land Cruisers, wore police commando uniforms, flak vests and helmets” and were armed with 9mm Glock pistols.

Glock sidearms are used by many US law enforcement agencies and have been supplied to Iraqi security forces by the US military.

The article also cited a third case. The body of Saadi Khalif was brought to Yarmuk morgue by police commandos several days after he was taken from his home by police on June 10. Saadi’s brother told Knight Ridder: “The doctor told us he was choked and tortured before they shot him. He looked like he had been dragged by a car.”

An article in the British Financial Times on June 29 provided further evidence of police commando atrocities. Mustafa Mohammed Ali, from the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, told the newspaper he was detained by the Wolf Brigade on May 22, during the build-up to Operation Lightning. He alleged that he was held for 26 days.

The article reported: “He spent the first day in a barbed wire enclosure with hundreds of other detainees, without food, water or toilet facilities... On the fourth day, the interrogations began. Mr Ali says Wolf Brigade commandos attached electrical wires to his ear and his genitals, and generated a current with a hand-cranked military telephone.”

According to the figures given to the Financial Times, only 22 of the 474 people seized from their homes during the Wolf Brigade sweep in the Abu Ghraib area are still being held. Those released allege they suffered systematic abuse. “Mass detentions and indiscriminate torture seem to be the main tools deployed to crush an insurgency that could last ‘five, six, eight, 10, 12 years’ according to Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary,” the newspaper commented.

In light of the evidence gathered by Salihee, significant discrepancies in the official figures for Operation Lightning in Baghdad raise further concerns about the fate of detainees. In early June, the Iraqi government reported that 1,200 had been detained. Just days later on June 6, this was revised downward to just 887, with no explanation. Some of the deaths referred to in the Knight Ridder article coincide with this period.

Suspicions of wholesale killings

The revelations about the conduct of the Wolf Brigade lend credibility to the claims made by Max Fuller, in a feature headlined “For Iraq, ‘The Salvador Option’ Becomes Reality” and published by the Centre for Research on Globalisation.

Over the past nine months, a terrifying new development in Iraq has been the discovery of dozens of bodies dumped in rubbish heaps, rivers or abandoned buildings. In most cases, the people had suffered torture and mutilation before being killed by a single shot to the head. The US military has consistently reported that the victims were members of the Iraqi army or police. The media has universally reported the mass killings as the work of anti-occupation terrorists.

Fuller noted, however: “What is particularly striking is that many of those killings have taken place since the police commandos became operationally active and often correspond with areas where they have been deployed.”

In Mosul, for example, dozens of men were detained by the commandos last November, as part of a US-led operation to bring the city back under occupation control. Over the following weeks, more than 150 tortured and executed bodies were found. In Samarra, dozens of bodies appeared in nearby Lake Thartar in the wake of operations by the commandos in that city.

From February through to late April, more than 100 bodies were recovered from the Tigris River south of Baghdad—one of the most rebellious areas of the country. The Iraqi government initially claimed they were villagers who had been kidnapped by insurgents in the village of Maidan. This has since been discredited. The victims are from a range of towns and villages, including Kut in the north and Basra in the south. Police in the area told the San Francisco Chronicle that many of the dead had been “motorists passing through the area when stopped by masked men bearing Kalashnikov rifles at impromptu checkpoints”.

Other killings have been discovered in Baquaba and the Syrian border town of Qaim in the aftermath of counter-insurgency operations by US forces and their Iraqi allies. Fuller also noted the suspicions surrounding the assassination of well over 200 university academics, most of whom were opponents of the US occupation of Iraq.

Dozens of bodies have been found over the past two months in Baghdad. In May, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS)—the main public Sunni organisation opposed to the occupation—directly accused the Wolf Brigade of having “arrested imams and the guardians of some mosques, tortured and killed them, and then got rid of their bodies in a garbage dump in Shaab district” of Baghdad. AMS secretary general Hareth al-Dhari declared at the time: “This is state terrorism by the Minister of the Interior.”

The very existence of the Wolf Brigade underscores the criminality of the US occupation and the utter fraud of the Bush administration claims to be bringing “liberation” and “democracy” to Iraq. Many of the commandos would have been involved in murder and torture on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The American military deliberately recruited them in order to make use of their experience in mass repression and has directly modeled their operations on those of right-wing death squads in Central America.

The main US advisor to the Wolf Brigade from the time of its formation until April 2005 was James Steele. Steele’s own biography, promoting him for the US lecture circuit, states that “he commanded the US military group in El Salvador during the height of the guerilla war” and “was credited with training and equipping what was acknowledged to be the best counter-terrorist force in the region”. In a 12-year campaign of murder and repression, the Salvadoran units, trained and advised by people like Steele, killed over 70,000 people.

In his speech on June 28, George Bush declared his administration was working with the Iraqi interior and defence ministries to “improve their capabilities to coordinate anti-terrorist operations” and “develop their command and control structures”. The evidence is beginning to emerge that this means paying and equipping former Baathist killers to terrorise, torture and murder Iraqis who are believed to have links to the popular resistance, which an unnamed US analyst estimated for the June 27 edition of Newsweek had “as many as 400,000 auxiliaries and support personnel”.

The killing of journalists seeking to document or expose allegations of state-organised murder has accompanied every dirty war against a civilian population. Since the US occupation of Iraq began, dozens of reporters, cameramen and other media workers have been killed by American-led forces in suspicious circumstances that were never independently investigated.

Two more Iraqi journalists have been killed in the days since Yasser Salihee’s death. On June 26, Maha Ibrahim, a news editor with a television station operated by the anti-occupation Iraqi Islamic Party, was shot dead when US troops opened fire on her car as she and her husband drove to work. Two days later, Ahmad Wail Bakri, a program director for Iraqi al-Sharqiya television was killed by American troops as he reportedly tried to drive around a traffic accident in Baghdad.

See Also:
Washington in crisis over opposition to Iraq war
[28 June 2005]
US imprisons Iraqi journalists without charges
[7 May 2005]
Iraq: Reporters Without Borders condemns US report on killing of journalists
[27 November 2004]