Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 137             Today’s News and Views         Sunday, May 14, 2006

Donle's Daily Dispatches RSS News Feeds

Latest news and opinion headlines from NPR, BBC, NY Times, etc.

See the cost in your community

The Gross National Debt

Update of US Casualties in Iraq: 2437

Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 295

Figures provided by the Iraq Coalition Causality website

Listen to Air America Radio while reading today's news and views

Today's News and Views

Free Society Collective

Disentangling the Antiwar Movement from the American Flag

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government’s ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.

— Leo Tolstoy

Peace is the continuation of war by other means. — Hannah Arendt

Since September 11, 2001, many antiwar activists in the United States have wrapped their dissent in the American flag. In an increasingly constrictive political climate, they are anxious to find ways to appear more legitimate. For some, carrying the flag celebrates the Bill of Rights, particularly the rights to free speech and public assembly. For others, it recalls foundational events for this country such as the Boston Tea Party and Ameri­can Revolution that symbolize the struggle against the tyranny of colonial rule. People of conscience raise the stars and stripes to assert that “peace is patriotic,” and that they are the real Americans. The U.S. government, by contrast, claims to be waging war in order to uphold America’s core values, or as Bush puts it, precisely because “we are a peace-loving nation.”

Who will prevail in this contest to define the true patriots?

It is vital to ensure that U.S. opposition is clearly visible alongside the strength and solidarity of antiwar demonstrations around the globe. As activists in the United States, we need to distinguish our views from the actions and aims of “our” government, and build a strong movement. But we can only do that if our arguments against war are in line with our intentions.

The stark fact is that dissenters, no matter how noble, do not get to determine the meaning of patriotism. Although popular conceptions of U.S. history suggest that patriotism is about freedom, democracy, and creating a better world, in reality it has largely been used by the state to thwart the realiza­tion of these ideals. Patriotism, in essence, asks citizens to put aside their concerns and disagreements with the government, and to get behind the sentiment of “my country, right or wrong.”

Historically, patriotism was used in the 1920s to back up efforts to deport “undesirables” during the Red scare. Later, during the time of the Second World War, it justified interning Japanese Americans in camps on U.S. soil. In the 1950s, patriotism was used to repress the Left through such vehicles as the House Un-American Activities Committee, and during the Vietnam War period, to silence resistance through slogans such as “love it or leave it.” Patriotism has been employed to rationalize military excursions and state-sponsored violence, from the invasion of Grenada and Panama to illegally arming the Nicaraguan Contras.

Patriotism, in the past and present, is predominantly defined by those in power to bolster support for their agendas. Consider the ubiquity of American flags since 9-11. Immediately after the tragedy, millions of Americans expressed their sadness and solidarity with the families of the deceased in a variety of ways, from displaying wreaths and firefighters’ helmets to lighting candles. Shortly thereafter, Bush called for a day of prayer and for Americans to fly their country’s flag. While some had turned to the flag prior to Bush’s urging, the change was unmistakable after his plea. Alternate expressions of mourning persisted, yet the American flag became the main indication of one’s grief. It was soon difficult to find a house, automobile, or public space unadorned with the stars and stripes.

As the Bush administration rapidly manipulated grief into retribution, the meaning of this powerful symbol also shifted. Today, the same flags flown after September 11 stand for much more than sorrow. The flag has largely become representative of unquestioning allegiance to national security, a faith in government, and a willingness to strike at unknown enemies. This process of redefining patriotism facilitates the state’s ability to exercise power for its own ends.

For more than a year, the Bush administration has been crafting a spurious dichotomy between patriotism and terrorism. Having initiated an unending and ill-defined “war against terror,” the U.S. government claims free license to do whatever it wishes. Anything that promotes “security” for America—such as eroding civil liberties, dramatically increasing the military budget, or insisting on a war on Iraq—is now seen as justifiable.

In the name of patriotism, the Bush administration devised the overtly racist policy of registering citizens whose national heritage is Middle Eastern. The aptly named USA PATRIOT Act limits movement across borders, forces registration of foreign-born citizens, vastly expands investigative powers even where no crime is alleged, and labels dissenters as potential “terrorists.” To question or oppose these policies is deemed unpatriotic, and disagreement is consequently silenced. What politician, after all, would have willingly chosen to vote against a piece of legislation with this acronym and risk being seen as un­American? And now, a second PATRIOT Act is in the works to further undo the freedoms that the government is purportedly marshaling its troops to protect.

Not only does the attempt to articulate dissent in the language of patriotism take on meanings that are out of our control, it also rings of parochial­ism in an increasingly interdependent and global world. Such language estab­lishes a false distinction between “us” and “them.” To return to September 11, victims from the twin towers included citizens of nearly every country. Almost more than any single event in recent memory, it should have been understood as a global trauma, binding numerous peoples and cultures in a shared grief. Yet once the American flags went up in large numbers, 9-11 became re-scripted as a national tragedy by those in power. “Good” America was now compelled to fight a shadowy “evil,” thus laying the groundwork for future conflict and wars.

If appeals to patriotism are actually counter to the aims of even the most modest antiwar position, the other half of the equation in “peace is patriotic” proves to be just as inadequate. To merely object to a war against Iraq suggests that there has been peace all along, even though the United States and Britain have been bombing Iraq repeatedly since the 1991 Gulf War. More than a million Iraqi children have already died at the hands of the U.S.-driven UN economic embargo against Iraq, according to the World Health Organization. Such “peacetime” practices demand a movement concerned with more than just preventing a U.S. invasion and subsequent military occupation. As antiwar demonstrators in Munich recently declared, “Your war kills off what your peace leaves standing.”

The Bush administration speaks of peace too, but as the ultimate justification for war, much in the same way that it contemplates using nuclear weapons in Iraq to free the world from the dangers of weapons of mass destruc­tion. Whether in the form of overt military action or less direct interventions, U.S. foreign policy practices a peace that is really war, but by other methods. The goal today appears to be nothing less than increasing America’s dominance on a global scale in order for a tiny elite to have disproportionate political and economic influence.

In the end, the attempt to mainstream dissent through claims of “patriotism” or “peace” unwittingly ties our nascent antiwar movement to the policies and institutions that create war. These two words are inextricably bound to the actions of the state, whether we agree with them or not. At a time when the United States has become thoroughly unilateralist, it is disconcerting that many antiwar activists would still focus on appeals to the U.S. government, which has made it perfectly clear that it will not be constrained by the United Nations, much less world opinion. Why would this same government be any more responsive to its own citizens?

As part of this unilateralism, Bush has demanded a regime change in Iraq and is posturing against North Korea. Many activists, in turn, have called for a “regime change at home.” While both the Iraqi and U.S. regimes are impediments to a free and safer world, a change of leadership in these two specific cases will not alter the conditions that give rise to systemic violence in both societies. Nor are these problems exclusive to Iraq and the United States. In dictatorships or nation-states, when the few attempt to govern the many, coercion—either through warfare or subtler methods— is the only recourse to sustain centralized power. Statecraft of any kind is not the answer. We need a reconstruction of society that places power in accountable, directly democratic institutions instead.

To say that “peace is patriotic” ultimately buries demands for genuine freedom for all beneath a misplaced desire for legitimacy. If we want to invoke the liberatory dimensions of U.S. history, however limited by their own times, then let’s look to the New England tradition of town meetings, experiments in worker self-management, the community self-help programs of the Black Panthers, and the movements to contest and redefine notions of sexuality and gender, among others. Let’s forget about appearing patriotic. Rather, let’s insist on the ability of all people and communities to self-determine and control their own destinies in a global society premised on cooperation and mutual aid. As the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta once proclaimed, “Everything depends on what people are capable of wanting.”

* * *

We hope that this essay will spark a constructive dialogue among antiwar activists, and challenge our allies’ ideas regarding patriotism and social change. In today’s political climate, those of us who are willing to speak out against the rising tide of militarism need each other more than ever. Let’s work together to demand a world where direct democracy, freedom, and diversity prevail.

— Free Society Collective, Central Vermont February 2003

info@freesocietycollective.org

May 13, 2006

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

As the blog Firedog Lake so ably reports, the Washington Post spying. The problem is that when you read the poll closely, they only support it when it might lead to apprehending terrorists. As we know, that is the discredited and highly dubious claim being used by the Busheviks to implement their domestic spying program -- and the dismantling of the Constitution in general. So, it is an extremely incompetent, even propagandistic poll.

Why is this Washington Post poll important?

Because the Democrats retreat at the slightest indication that their principled position might not be supported by the American public (although we are dumbfounded that with a president at 29% approval ratings that wouldn't be sufficient proof that the public wants the Democrats to stand up for the Constitution and competency, as well as the rule of law.)

So, as Firedog Lake astutely observes, the Post poll quickly became the "conventional wisdom" benchmark of the mainstream media and Democratic conventional leadership, even though it never emphasized the real pertinent questions, such as: "If the Bush Administration was using domestic spying for purposes other than tracking Al Qaeda suspects, would you support it?" or "If it was highly unlikely that the kind of domestic spying being used by NSA, including records of virtually every call being made in the U.S. -- including your own, could effectively be used to stop much terrorism, would you support its use?"

Such questions would probably yield the exact opposite of the Post poll. In fact anecdotal information indicates that a landslide of Americans would oppose the current NSA lawbreaking -- authorized by Bush and implemented by General Hayden -- under such circumstances. And, remember, these ARE the circumstances.

Furthermore, the more that is revealed about the NSA wiretapping, the more it is revealed that Bush, Gonzales and Hayden lied about its extent and the illegal nature of the activities. These men broke the law: period. They engaged in criminal behavior, according to Congressional statue. This is what people are tried and go to jail for.

Congress set up procedures, through the secret FISA court, for obtaining eavesdropping and spying warrants -- and the Bush Administration intentionally broke the law and bypassed FISA. And they aggressively broke the law, as the USA Today story on May 12 reveals.

But the timid Democratic leadership in Congress gets brushed back by such faulty polls and stops counter-messaging the Bush lies. Now, Hayden is going around Congress as if business were usual, continuing to lie, and the illegal Domestic spying continues. Senator Dick Durbin, normally a shining star among the Democrats, even appeared to accept that Hayden "might consider" asking Congress to make legal what the Bush Administration is now illegally doing to violate the Constitutional right of privacy.

That's not a concession, that's an invitation to codify the Politburo tactics of domestic police powers control implemented by the Busheviks.

We have long criticized the Washington Post, despite its occasional exposes, for being a tool of the White House. Their infamous recent editorial, "A Good Lie" not only justified Bush leaking classified information to retaliate against Joe Wilson, but also ignored and misstated facts printed in the news section of the paper on the same day.

Editorial pages should -- the tradition goes -- be independent of the news section, but they shouldn't be blind to facts reported by their journalists. Anyone who still continues to think that the Washington Post is a liberal political party paper as far as partisan politics is dearly misled.

Despite supporting Kerry, it is, on a day to day basis, an enabler of Bush, from the Karl Bernstein hagiographies of Bush and his covering up for their crimes -- to the editorial pages -- to the burying of significant stories on Bush illegalities and failures to the back pages of the front section. The editorial pages may indeed take shots, now and then, at Bush on individual issues -- and it is liberal on gay rights and abortion, but it is politically aligned with keeping Bush in power, because the Republicans are necessary for giving the Washington Post the media consolidation regulations, tax breaks, and regulatory relief that it needs.

Furthermore, the editors and publishers of the Washington Post are of the clubby insider D.C. social/political crowd. They don't want to get their Bushevik dinner mates at socialite events riled up. It's like a country set.

But, back to the NSA illegal spying -- which is said to be much more extensive than we currently know about. When newspapers across the nation had headlines on Friday such as, "Bush: No Laws Were Broken" (an actual six column headline, above the fold in the Chicago Tribune), then the Bush lie is getting out to millions upon millons of Americans with no strong counterattack of the truth by the Democrats.

That's a damn shame and a betrayal of America.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

© BuzzFlash.

Moreover, as Media Matters for America has noted, the Post reported on February 5 that according to "current and former government officials and private-sector sources," intelligence officers used the program to eavesdrop "on thousands of Americans in overseas calls" but "dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat."

Both the Post and ABC News posted the results of the poll online (here and here, respectively). A May 12 ABC News online article on the poll reported that it lends "support to the administration's defense of its anti-terrorism intelligence efforts," and the May 12 edition of ABC News' online political newsletter, The Note, proclaimed:

Senators [Arlen] Specter [R-PA] and [Olympia] Snowe [R-ME], Sunday morning pundits, reporters from the Nation's Newspaper and the nation's newspapers, and all MOCs [members of Congress] with "(D)"s after their names want to know more about the domestic telephone record harvesting that the Bush Administration apparently has engaged in.

The American people and [White House press secretary] Tony Snow, however, just might know as much as they want to know about it.

On the May 12 edition of MSNBC News Live, Washington Post polling director Richard Morin, when asked to compare the results of this poll to polling conducted in December 2005 on the domestic surveillance program, responded:

MORIN: Actually, these are a little more positive in favor of the program than the survey we first did on the NSA eavesdropping investigation. Americans seem to be more willing to accept this because it doesn't involve people reading their e-mails or listening in to their telephone calls. Just collecting their phone records.

— S.S.M.

Posted to the web on Friday May 12, 2006 at 1:05 PM EST

© 2006 Media Matters for America.

Town council backs impeaching Bush

Matt Dees, Staff Writer

CHAPEL HILL - President Bush should be impeached, Town Council members unanimously decided Monday night.

The vote was the local body's latest foray into national politics. A local Republican dismissed it as a "move of desperation."

Council members supported a petition from the grass-roots Elders for Peace group, which laid out three charges to justify impeachment:

* Bush "lied to Congress and the American people to launch an illegal war of aggression";

* Bush violated human rights by torturing prisoners at home and abroad and detaining suspects with no due process;

* Bush "unleashed a massive unconstitutional wiretap and spying operation against the people of the United States."

"I think this compels us -- you and all thinking people in the United States -- to move for impeachment," said Nancy Elkins, an Elders for Peace member. "If we don't, what are future citizens of our country going to think we were doing when we were allowing all of this?"

With little discussion, the council passed a resolution that said, in part, that Bush "'has acted contrary to law, and violated his oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States."

They had also passed a resolution in October calling for an end to the war in Iraq. And previously they had lodged a protest resolution against the war before it was launched in 2003.

Council member Mark Kleinschmidt thanked the group Monday for "so eloquently distilling what so many people in our community think."

Dan Cote, a Chapel Hill resident and chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, isn't one of the many.

Referring to lobbying investigations involving Rep. Jim Black and others, he said North Carolina Democrats are hoping to distract attention from "corruption in Raleigh."

"Chapel Hill, of course, is leading the charge to do that," Cote said when reached by phone after the meeting.

Cote dismissed the charges made Monday. He thinks the president made the right decision to go to war in Iraq and acted constitutionally in his use of domestic wiretaps.

He also said that the Bush administration does not condone torture.

"I think President Bush has the interest of the nation foremost in his mind at all times," Cote said. "History will look favorably upon this president and record that he did what needed to be done to make this a safe nation."

Robert Gwyn, Elders for Peace chairman, said it was important for local governments to go on record opposing Bush.

"You are the closest government body to the people," he said. "The people are very, very angry."

Staff writer Matt Dees can be reached at 932-8760 or matt.dees@newsobserver.com.

© Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company

Was author dropped for opposing No Child law?

May 13, 2006

BY MONIFA THOMAS Staff Reporter

A popular children's book author said she was dropped as a speaker for an international reading conference this month in Chicago over her criticism of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Patricia Polacco has written and illustrated more than 50 children's books, including Thank You, Mr. Falker and The Keeping Quilt. She's also an outspoken critic of the No Child Left Behind Act, which carries stiff penalties for teachers and schools whose students score poorly on standardized achievement tests.

Polacco says the law hurts students and handicaps teachers by fostering a "teach to the test" mentality in schools.

Asked for outline for speech

But Polacco was asked to give a more upbeat message to the 22,000 educators and librarians who attended the International Reading Association convention in Chicago on May 2 and 3.

Polacco was hired by textbook publisher SRA/McGraw-Hill for a series of speeches and book signings at the convention. The company is a subset of McGraw-Hill Education, which is a leading supplier of standardized tests for the nation's schools.

Months before the convention, a public relations firm working for McGraw-Hill requested that Polacco provide a detailed outline of what she intended to discuss. Polacco, having spoken at thousands of schools, thought it was unusual to give so much information about her speeches in advance, so she contacted Ohio-based public relations firm Buchanan and Associates.

That's when she was told by the firm that its client, SRA/McGraw-Hill, "wanted to make sure that I would not discuss my deep concern about No Child Left Behind ... as well as my concern that there is a link between this mandate and the SRA/McGraw Hill Company who manufactures, prints and profits from the sale of these tests to school systems all over our country," Polacco posted on her Web site.

Polacco followed up with a letter to Buchanan and Associates, stating that she would not change her remarks in any way.

"I told them, 'If you find this so offensive, then uninvite me,' fully expecting them to back down," Polacco said by phone from Union City, Mich. "Instead, they fired me within the hour."

Not a 'platform' for her views

A representative for McGraw-Hill Education said the company canceled Polacco's speaking engagements only after officials learned she wasn't willing to keep her remarks limited to the subjects covered in her contract. Polacco signed a contract with McGraw-Hill in February, documents show.

"We respect her right to express her ideas, but it's not really fair for her to try to use our exhibit as a platform for her personal views," said McGraw-Hill spokesman Steven Weiss. "We were very clear about what we wanted her to speak about."

Weiss also took issue with Polacco's claim that she thought it was the International Reading Association, not McGraw-Hill, that had invited her to speak.

"Our name is on the top of the contract that she signed months ago," Weiss said.

The IRA tried to distance itself from the controversy.

"IRA neither exercises nor condones censorship. However, we also have nothing to do with private contracts between children's authors and the companies with whom they choose to work," IRA executive director Alan E. Farstrup said in a statement.

Convention attendees, meanwhile, expressed a mix of disbelief and outrage.

"I think McGraw-Hill's assumption is that if they pay people, they can control what they do and say. They put Patricia Polacco in a very untenable position ... [by] making it seem as if her integrity was up for sale," said Ken Goodman, a former president of IRA who teaches at the University of Arizona.

Polacco said she hopes what happened at the convention doesn't draw attention away from the bigger problem, No Child Left Behind.

"I just wanted it made known to all of the thousands of teachers who came to hear me speak that I did not cancel on them. It was canceled out from under me," she said.

mjthomas@suntimes.com

Copyright © The Sun-Times Company

George W. Bush’s warrantless phone data collection may not only violate the U.S. Constitution but expend so much money and manpower that America is made less safe – by diverting resources away from more practical steps, like inspecting cargo and hiring translators.

Yet, because the operation is wrapped in layers and layers of secrecy – based on the dubious argument that al-Qaeda might not realize it’s being spied on – the public doesn’t know how much the project costs, who’s getting contracts and whether it does any good.

So far, however, what administration officials and computer experts have been willing to describe shouldn’t give Americans much confidence that their trade-off of Fourth Amendment freedoms for a little extra safety is a particularly good deal.

The project’s designers say the National Security Agency’s electronic warehousing of trillions of phone records from calls made by some 200 million Americans is intended to seek out “patterns” from conversations involving alleged terrorists and then to apply the digital outline to the stockpiled records.

That search, presumably, then spits out the phone numbers of other callers in the United States who fit into the “patterns.” These computer-generated tips then go to the FBI, which may question the suspects or use other investigative strategies.

There are, however, logical flaws to this “Big Brother” computer scheme, especially the idea that the project is likely to discern many usable “patterns” of phone calls that if applied to the population would detect much suspicious activity.

The 9/11 hijackers, for instance, made very few substantive calls about their plot, recognizing the risk of electronic surveillance and preferring face-to-face meetings as a way to avoid detection, according to the 9/11 Commission Report.

Most of the calls cited by the report relate to personal matters, such as contacting friends or searching for housing. For instance, Flight 93 hijacker Ziad “Jarrah made hundreds of phone calls to [his girlfriend] and communicated frequently by e-mail,” the report said.

On Jan. 20, 2001, Flight 173 hijacker Marwan al “Shehhi telephoned [his family in the United Arab Emirates] and said he was still living and studying in Hamburg,” Germany, the report said. The cell-phone records of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta showed him calling about lodging in Florida on April 6, 9, 10 and 11, 2001.

Meaningful communications about the 9/11 plot almost always occurred in direct meetings between participants, often in foreign countries. According to the 9/11 report, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden passed on his final instructions to Atta through intermediary Ramzi Banalshibh in Spain.

Little Advantage

So, even with the most expensive computers, it’s hard to see how a “social-network analysis” would likely lead to revealing a terrorist plot, unless the analysis was aided by effective human intelligence. In other words, old-fashioned intelligence-gathering, not new-fangled gimmicks, still would be the key to stopping terrorism.

That seems to be the conclusion, too, of a Washington Post source who helped develop the technology.

“Let’s say lots [of data] comes in and we don’t see anything interesting,” the source said. “Tomorrow we find out someone is communicating with a known terrorist. When you go back and look at the past data, there may be information that you missed. A pattern that was meaningless suddenly makes sense.”

That information would then guide the NSA in selecting which telephones in the United States to bug, the Post reported. [Washington Post, May 12, 2006]

But that example could be handled almost as easily while complying with constitutional requirements and getting a warrant. The case also presumes that there was a break in the investigation elsewhere that identified one of the contacts as a terrorist.

Once there is “probable cause” of terrorist activity, a secret warrant could be obtained from a special court under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – or a wiretap could be started 72 hours before the request is made. The terrorist’s contacts then could be traced lawfully.

According to other published accounts, Bush’s warrantless surveillance operation also has had negative consequences, sending FBI investigators off on too many wild goose chases. The warrantless wiretapping generated thousands of tips each month, the New York Times reported..

“But virtually all of [the tips], current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans,” the Times wrote. “FBI officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. … Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.” [NYT, Jan. 17, 2006]

Perhaps the best that can be said for storing trillions of American phone records – as disclosed in a May 11 article by USA Today – is that the NSA could move a bit faster in checking out leads that might arise from identifying a terrorist.

The FISA law allows the government to start immediate wiretaps, but the NSA would probably save some time in not having to get the data from the phone companies, since it would already be stored.

To get that slight advantage in speed, however, large sums of money is spent, funds that might be better used for training counter-terrorism agents, hiring more translators and inspecting more than five percent of the cargo containers entering U.S. ports.

‘Big Brother’

An even more troubling trade-off is the possibility that Bush or some future President could exploit the stockpiled data for political ends.

The Founders enacted the Fourth Amendment because they considered freedom from unreasonable search and seizure an “unalienable” right of all citizens. The principle has been largely upheld over more than two centuries of American constitutional history, including moments of danger arguably far more extreme than what is presented today by a small band of al-Qaeda terrorists.

But after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush quickly assembled a system of secrecy and snooping that may have been unprecedented in U.S. history. While some of Bush’s supporters cite prior suspensions of constitutional rights during the Civil War and World War II, those eras lacked today’s technology to pry into the most personal details of the lives of Americans.

Even in the late 1960s and early 1970s, President Richard Nixon had relatively crude means for invading the privacy of Americans. Bugs were placed on phones; agents were infiltrated into political organizations; and burglars were sent into homes and offices searching for embarrassing or incriminating information.

By contrast, today’s modern technology would let the government collect and analyze trillions of bytes of data from transactions and communications. Indeed, in 2002, the Bush administration did explore the creation of a system for capturing the electronic footprint of just about everybody as they move through everyday life.

The concept, called Total Information Awareness, would have pulled together data on virtually every action that is connected to a computer: books borrowed from a library, fertilizer bought at a farm-supply outlet, movies rented at a video store, prescriptions filled at a pharmacy, sites visited on the Internet, tickets reserved for travel, borders crossed, rooms rented at a motel, and hundreds of other examples.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s top research and development arm, commissioned a comprehensive plan for electronic spying that would track everyone in the world who is part of the modern economy.

“Transactional data” would be gleaned from electronic data on every kind of activity – “financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, critical resources, government, communications,” according to DARPA’s Information Awareness Office.

The program would then cross-reference this data with the “biometric signatures of humans,” data collected on individuals’ faces, fingerprints, gaits and irises. The project sought to achieve what it called “total information awareness” as a way to fight the War on Terror.

The Information Awareness Office even boasted a logo that looked like some kind of clip art from George Orwell’s 1984. The logo showed the Masonic symbol of an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid peering over the globe, with the slogan, “scientia est potentia,” Latin for “knowledge is power.”

Heading the office was Ronald Reagan’s former national security adviser, John Poindexter, who had been a leading figure in the Iran-Contra scandal. Poindexter was convicted of five felonies in 1990, but his case later was overturned by a conservative-dominated three-judge appeals court panel.

After the Information Awareness Office came under public scrutiny in 2002, Poindexter resigned and the project was supposedly shut down. What’s now clear, however, is that elements of “total information awareness” survived in other forms.

Indeed, given the disclosures about the NSA collecting the phone records of some 200 million Americans, a logical extension for the Bush administration would be to factor in more of Poindexter’s ideas.

The argument could be made that if phone records were merged with credit card purchases and other electronic data, the chances of locating a terrorist actually might be increased. For Americans who put their personal safety over the nation’s “unalienable rights,” that might be trade-off they would find acceptable.

But for Americans who believe that fear should never be allowed to trump liberty, a voluntary surrender of the freedoms that have defined the United States – in exchange for some questionable assurances of a little more safety – would be unthinkable.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

BACK FROM IRAQ

Sunday, May 14, 2006; A01

Bad stuff happened in Iraq, stuff Adam Reuter doesn't want to talk about. Not with his friends, not with the line cooks in the burger joint where he worked when he first came home or the tenants in the apartment complex he manages now.

He doesn't even want to talk about it with his wife, who worried because he was jumping out of bed in the middle of the night.

But when he agrees to talk about the war -- really talk about it -- he goes right to how the insurgent crumpled after he pulled the trigger. How later, during the firefight, he ended up just a few feet from the corpse. Bullets buzzed by, and he was supposed to keep an eye on the alley, but he couldn't help but glance over.

"He just lay there," Reuter remembers. His eyes and mouth open. His whiskers a few days old. The bullet had gone in his neck cleanly, just to the right of his Adam's apple, but had come out ugly from the back of his head. He was maybe 25, a little older than Reuter. And his blood was pooling, thick and almost black in the darkness.

How can you describe what that was like? Who would understand it?

Nobody. So Reuter keeps his mouth shut. His army uniform is packed in a box in the garage. He hasn't looked at it in months. Instead, he kisses his baby boy every night. He gets on with his life, because that's what everyone else is doing.

At home in Newnan, Ga., there is no war.

"It doesn't cross their minds," Reuter said. "To them, everything is fine."

* * *

After three years, there are at least 550,000 veterans of the Iraq war. The Washington Post interviewed 100 of them -- many of whom were still in the service, others who weren't -- to hear about what their war was like and how the transition home has been.

Their answers were as varied as their experiences. But a constant theme through the interviews was that the American public is largely unaffected by the war, and, despite round-the-clock television and Internet exposure, doesn't understand what it's like.

You can't understand unless you were there.

It's a timeless refrain sounded by generation after generation of soldiers returning from combat. But what sets Iraq war veterans apart is not just the kind of war they are fighting but the mood of the country they are coming home to. It is not a United States unified behind the war effort, such as in World War II. There's no rationing, no sacrifice, no Rosie the Riveter urging, "We Can Do it!" Nor is it the country that protested Vietnam and derided many vets as baby killers.

The United States that Iraq veterans are returning to is relatively indifferent, many said. One that without fear of a draft seems more interested in the progression of "American Idol" than the bombings in Baghdad. Sure, there are the homecoming parades, the yellow-ribbon bumper stickers, the pats on the back -- they continue as troops arrive back home.

But for many vets, those moments of gratitude were short-lived or limited to close friends and family. Soon they were joined by bitter impressions of a society that seems to forget that it is living through the country's largest combat operation in more than 30 years.

When Army Reserve Warrant Officer Mark Rollings got home to Wylie, Tex., he didn't expect anyone to treat him any differently because he was a vet. But he couldn't help but notice that the only one to say anything about the newly installed Purple Heart license plate on his Chevy Blazer was the kid who changed his oil at the Wal-Mart.

"For having a global war on terrorism," he said, "everything looks like business as usual to me."

* * *

Coming home was like one big party.

They were welcomed with parades, with family members waving signs and flags and waiting with open arms. World War II vets greeted them at the airport, making sure to shake all of their hands. Thanking them. There were firetrucks on the tarmac, their lights twirling, a celebratory fountain spraying from their hoses.

"People cheering, handing me their cellphones and telling me to call my family," Army Capt. Fred Tanner remembered. "Random people coming up and shaking my hand."

Greg Seely came home on leave in October 2004 with 200 fellow soldiers. They were walking through the Atlanta airport, when, one by one, travelers dropped their bags and started clapping. Soon there was a spontaneous crescendo. The applause of strangers. A moment he will never forget.

"The media talked so much about how the American people don't support us," he said. "But they do."

People may not understand the war, but that doesn't mean they're not grateful, said Master Sgt. Shawn Peno of the Air National Guard. "The support, the comments," he said, "that's real."

They met generals and were thanked by congressmen. Some even shook hands with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and President Bush. Waitresses and gas station attendants refused their money.

Army Reservist Chris Bain threw out the first pitch of the Little League World Series.

On the airplane home, wearing his Navy uniform, Clint Davis sat in the same row as a 5-year-old boy who got out his crayons and drew a picture of the American flag. "It says, 'Thank you for fighting for our country,' " Davis said."I'll hang it up on my refrigerator till I die."

They came home grateful for their country, for their freedom, for hot showers, flushing toilets and blissful quiet. When Chris Arndt's plane touched down, it was 3 in the morning. A slight drizzle was falling, and the air just felt different.

"You could smell the grass," the Army reservist said. "I hadn't smelled that smell for a year. It hit me and made me realize I was home."

* * *

When they were out of uniform, everything was different.

One day they were in a war zone. Then, suddenly, they weren't. Home for the first time in a year, Dan Ward woke up in his bed, went to the kitchen and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. And that's when the Marine Reservist realized: His war was over. It was almost surreal how something so familiar could seem so strange.

"Almost the most nerve-wracking thing was how normal it was when I came back," he said. "I'd been gone for 11 months, and it's like I've been gone for 11 hours. Then it hit me: This is so normal."

They came home driving scared, scanning the interstates and the back roads of their home towns, looking for bombs that weren't there. They got jumpy in crowded public places and let the war go little by little, like muscle spasms after an intense workout.

Jeramey James "Jay" Lopez was working under the hood of his car with his dad in New Mexico when one of the noisemakers designed to scare the birds out of the nearby pecan orchard went off. It sounded "just like a round coming out of a tank," he said. Lopez's head snapped up and smacked the inside of the hood.

"My dad put his hand on my back, and he just said, 'Son, you're okay. You're home.' "

They came home bent on making good on the promises they had made while fearing death. Army medic Ernesto Haibi, in the thick of the battle of Fallujah, vowed that after he got home he was going to fulfill a childhood dream:

"I told myself, if I get back without any more holes in me, I'm buying myself a piano and learning to play," he said. "You learn what you can live with and what you can live without. And you learn to appreciate the things that are necessary."

What was necessary, he decided, was being able to play "Isn't It Romantic?" -- the first song he learned on his new piano.

They came home haunted, carrying heavy memories that will take years to sort out. "I was taken out of my normal habitat and put in a crazy dream -- a nightmare, really," said Army Spec. Cheyenne Cannaday. "I think about it every day still, and I'm not sure if it's gonna go away."

Jon Powers came home and "swore I would never go back to Iraq until they build a Disney World in Baghdad." But then he thought about how he and his soldiers used to deliver toys and clothing to the orphanage. He thought about how the children had given them something back: a respite from the war. The soldiers would take off their gear, put down their weapons and join the children's soccer matches.

Not long after coming home, the former Army captain knew his work in Iraq was not finished. So he helped start a nonprofit, War Kids Relief, that helps Iraqi children. That's his new career.

Thousands came home wounded, scars fresh; some even with shrapnel in them. Kevin Whelan, who was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to his Humvee, has so much metal embedded under his skin that it set off a security detector at the airport. "In case it goes off," he warned the guard, "I do have shrapnel in me." The wand beeped as it passed over his shoulder.

Nearly 400 of them returned as amputees and had to learn to open doors with metal fingers, walk on prosthetic legs. Senior Airman Brian Kolfage came home to sad, strange stares and spontaneous charity. As he sat in a wheelchair after having lost both legs and his right arm when a mortar exploded outside his tent, a stranger handed him $250 in cash.

Another just stared at him and then "just started crying right in front of me."

* * *

The questions people ask about the war usually don't probe too far, the sort that can be satisfied with rote responses that keep the truth at a safe distance.

But sometimes, people push. What was it like?

"You just try to give a softball answer," said Garett Reppenhagen, who has been out of the Army for a year. "Yeah, it was horrible -- whatever. Or you don't answer the question. You say it was hot. You don't tell them what it's like to kill a man or to have one of your buddies blown up. You just don't go there."

But if they were not sated by the polite demurral and continued to press, he would go there, sparing no detail. Then he'd look up and see an expression that made him think they didn't really want to know after all.

"The look on their face: This is not the light conversation I want to hear at a party," he said.

Sometimes people would say maddening things, antagonistic things, even if they had never set foot in Iraq or been in combat. They didn't have to leave their spouses, miss the births of their children or see their best friend blown to pieces.

Civilians. After the war, they seemed so different, no matter how many war movies or how much CNN they had watched.

Sometimes, they'd ask something so crazy there just wasn't any way to respond, such as when a friend asked Monika Dyrcakz, "Did you go clubbing in Iraq?"

"Some people have no idea," she said.

Sometimes they said: I support the troops but not the war. Or: Do you think we should be over there?

Which is such a dumb question, Tanner, the Army captain, would think. Soldiers don't make those decisions. They do what they're told. They bitch and moan, sure. But when the call comes, they pack their bags and go, knowing they may not come back.

But Tanner doesn't say all that. Instead, he responds this way: "Oh, so you were over there? Because you said, ' We .' Because, I mean, I know I was over there."

* * *

But perhaps the worst is when they don't say anything at all and just go on living their lives, oblivious to the war.

Which is exactly what Army Capt. Tyler McIntyre was trying to explain to some family members while eating at an Italian restaurant when he was home on leave a couple of years ago.

He looked across the restaurant and saw everyone stuffing their faces with pasta and drinking wine. "And everyone's kind of just sitting there doing it," he said.

Which is really sort of extraordinary, he said. The country is at war. People are fighting at this very moment. Don't these people know what's going on? Don't they care?

No, he decided. They have no appreciation for their easy, gluttonous lives and don't deserve the freedom, prosperity and contentment he was fighting to protect.

He wanted to yell, "You don't know what you have! You don't appreciate it! You don't care!"

But he didn't. He kept his mouth shut. He was only home on leave. Soon, he would be going back to the war.

This report is based on interviews conducted by staff writers Cameron W. Barr, Christian Davenport, Jennifer Frey, Sonya Geis, Bradley Graham, Mary Hadar, Rosalind S. Helderman, Pablo Izmirlian, Tamara Jones, Kari Lydersen, Renae Merle, Evelyn Nieves, Don Oldenburg, Lois Romano, Jackie Spinner, Jacqueline Trescott, Ann Scott Tyson, Jose Antonio Vargas, Jonathan Weisman, Josh White, Clarence Williams and Griff Witte. It was written by Christian Davenport.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Kevin Barrett: Media hide truth: 9/11 was inside job

By Kevin Barrett
May 12, 2006

Last Saturday, former Bush administration official Morgan Reynolds drew an enthusiastic capacity crowd to the Wisconsin Historical Society auditorium. It is probably the first time in Historical Society history that a political talk has drawn a full house on a Saturday afternoon at the beginning of final exams.

Reynolds, the former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the ex-top economist for George W. Bush's Labor Department, charged the Bush administration with gross malfeasance, and proposed the prosecution of top administration officials.

Normally, if a prestigious UW alumnus and ex-Bush administration official were to come to the Wisconsin Historical Society to spill the beans about a Bush administration scandal, it would make the news. The local TV stations would cover it, and it would merit front page headlines in The Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal.

Reynolds' indictment of the administration he worked for was a stunning, life-changing event for many of those who witnessed it. As the event's organizer, I have received dozens of e-mails about it from people who were deeply affected.

Despite the prestigious speaker and venue, and the gravity of the charges aired, for most Americans indeed most Madisonians the event never happened. Why? Because it was censored, subjected to a total media blackout. Not a word in the State Journal. Not a word in The Capital Times. Not a word on the local TV news. Not a word on local radio news. And, of course, not a word in the national media.

Why the blackout? Because Reynolds violated the ultimate U.S. media taboo. He charges the Bush administration with orchestrating the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for launching a preplanned "long war" in the Middle East, rolling back our civil liberties, and massively increasing military spending.

When a former Bush administration insider makes such charges, how can the media ignore them? Is Reynolds a lone crank? Hardly. A long list of prominent Americans have spoken out for 9/11 truth: Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Sen. Barbara Boxer, former head of the Star Wars program Col. Robert Bowman, ex-Reagan administration economics guru Paul Craig Roberts, progressive Jewish author-activist Rabbi Michael Lerner, former CIA official Ray McGovern, author-essayist Gore Vidal, and many other respected names from across the political spectrum have gone on the record for 9/11 truth.

Are the media ignoring all these people, and dozens more like them, because there is no evidence to support their charges? Hardly. Overwhelming evidence, from the obvious air defense stand-down, to the nonprotection of the president in Florida, to the blatant controlled demolition of World Trade Center building 7, proves that 9/11 was an inside job. As noted philosopher-theologian and 9/11 revisionist historian David Griffin writes: "It is already possible to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, one very important thing: the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own government."

A growing list of scientists has lined up behind BYU physicist Steven Jones and MIT engineer Jeff King in support of Griffin's position, as evidenced by the growth of Scholars for 9/11 Truth (st911.org) and Scientific Professionals Investigating 9/11 (physics911.net).

As a Watergate-era graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism, I was taught that exposing government lies and corruption is the supreme duty of the Fourth Estate. I simply cannot fathom the current situation. I do not understand the 9/11 truth blackout. I wish someone would explain it to me.

It is time to break the 9/11 truth blackout. Please put pressure on your local media through letters to the editor, call-ins to talk radio, and phone calls to local and national journalists.

And come see Peter Phillips, director of the media watchdog group Project Censored, who will lead a strategy session on breaking the blackout at the upcoming international 9/11 truth conference in Chicago: 9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future, to be held June 2-4 at the Embassy Suites Hotel, Chicago-O'Hare Rosemont. Go to http://911revealingthetruth.org for more information.

The event will feature presentations from dozens of 9/11 truth luminaries, from scientists like Steven Jones to intelligence agency whistle-blowers like David Shayler, and promises to be a historic, watershed event. Be there, or resign yourself to a future of endless war, lost liberty, and a craven media that cannot bring itself to breathe a single word of truth.

Copyright ©2006, Capital Newspapers.

Comment

Chávez is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society

Venezuela's president is using oil revenues to liberate the poor - no wonder his enemies want to overthrow him

John Pilger
Saturday May 13, 2006
The Guardian

I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios of Caracas, in streets and breeze-block houses that defy gravity and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog. Caracas is said to be one of the world's toughest cities, yet I have known no fear; the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who, in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts long emptied of their meaning in the west: "reform", "popular democracy", "equity", "social justice" and, yes, "freedom".

The other night, in a room bare except for a single fluorescent tube, I heard these words spoken by the likes of Ana Lucia Fernandez, aged 86, Celedonia Oviedo, aged 74, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two young children. Until about a year ago, none of them could read and write; now they are studying mathematics. For the first time in its modern era, Venezuela has almost 100% literacy.

This achievement is due to a national programme, called Mision Robinson, designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mision Ribas is giving everyone a secondary school education, called a bachillerato. (The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century.) Named, like much else here, after the great liberator Simon Bolivar, "Bolivarian", or people's, universities have opened, introducing, as one parent told me, "treasures of the mind, history and music and art, we barely knew existed". Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor.

Mavis Mendez has seen, in her 95 years, a parade of governments preside over the theft of tens of billions of dollars in oil spoils, much of it flown to Miami, together with the steepest descent into poverty ever known in Latin America; from 18% in 1980 to 65% in 1995, three years before Chávez was elected. "We didn't matter in a human sense," she said. "We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn't afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. In the east of the city, where the mansions are, we were invisible, or we were feared. Now I can read and write my name, and so much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy, and I am full of joy that I have lived to witness it."

Latin American governments often give their regimes a new sense of legitimacy by holding a constituent assembly that drafts a new constitution. When he was elected in 1998, Chávez used this brilliantly to decentralise, to give the impoverished grassroots power they had never known and to begin to dismantle a corrupt political superstructure as a prerequisite to changing the direction of the economy. His setting-up of misions as a means of bypassing saboteurs in the old, corrupt bureaucracy was typical of the extraordinary political and social imagination that is changing Venezuela peacefully. This is his "Bolivarian revolution", which, at this stage, is not dissimilar to the post-war European social democracies.

Chávez, a former army major, was anxious to prove he was not yet another military "strongman". He promised that his every move would be subject to the will of the people. In his first year as president in 1999, he held an unprecedented number of votes: a referendum on whether or not people wanted a new constituent assembly; elections for the assembly; a second referendum ratifying the new constitution - 71% of the people approved each of the 396 articles that gave Mavis and Celedonia and Ana Lucia, and their children and grandchildren, unheard-of freedoms, such as Article 123, which for the first time recognised the human rights of mixed-race and black people, of whom Chávez is one. "The indigenous peoples," it says, "have the right to maintain their own economic practices, based on reciprocity, solidarity and exchange ... and to define their priorities ... " The little red book of the Venezuelan constitution became a bestseller on the streets. Nora Hernandez, a community worker in Petare barrio, took me to her local state-run supermarket, which is funded entirely by oil revenue and where prices are up to half those in the commercial chains. Proudly, she showed me articles of the constitution written on the backs of soap-powder packets. "We can never go back," she said.

In La Vega barrio, I listened to a nurse, Mariella Machado, a big round black woman of 45 with a wonderfully wicked laugh, stand and speak at an urban land council on subjects ranging from homelessness to the Iraq war. That day, they were launching Mision Madres de Barrio, a programme aimed specifically at poverty among single mothers. Under the constitution, women have the right to be paid as carers, and can borrow from a special women's bank. From next month, the poorest housewives will get about £120 a month. It is not surprising that Chávez has now won eight elections and referendums in eight years, each time increasing his majority, a world record. He is the most popular head of state in the western hemisphere, probably in the world. That is why he survived, amazingly, a Washington-backed coup in 2002. Mariella and Celedonia and Nora and hundreds of thousands of others came down from the barrios and demanded that the army remain loyal. "The people rescued me," Chávez told me. "They did it with all the media against me, preventing even the basic facts of what had happened. For popular democracy in heroic action, I suggest you need look no further."

The venomous attacks on Chávez, who arrives in London tomorrow, have begun and resemble uncannily those of the privately owned Venezuelan television and press, which called for the elected government to be overthrown. Fact-deprived attacks on Chávez in the Times and the Financial Times this week, each with that peculiar malice reserved for true dissenters from Thatcher's and Blair's one true way, follow a travesty of journalism on Channel 4 News last month, which effectively accused the Venezuelan president of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd fantasy. The reporter sneered at policies to eradicate poverty and presented Chávez as a sinister buffoon, while Donald Rumsfeld was allowed to liken him to Hitler, unchallenged. In contrast, Tony Blair, a patrician with no equivalent democratic record, having been elected by a fifth of those eligible to vote and having caused the violent death of tens of thousands of Iraqis, is allowed to continue spinning his truly absurd political survival tale.

Chávez is, of course, a threat, especially to the United States. Like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who based their revolution on the English co-operative moment, and the moderate Allende in Chile, he offers the threat of an alternative way of developing a decent society: in other words, the threat of a good example in a continent where the majority of humanity has long suffered a Washington-designed peonage. In the US media in the 1980s, the "threat" of tiny Nicaragua was seriously debated until it was crushed. Venezuela is clearly being "softened up" for something similar. A US army publication, Doctrine for Asymmetric War against Venezuela, describes Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution as the "largest threat since the Soviet Union and Communism". When I said to Chávez that the US historically had had its way in Latin America, he replied: "Yes, and my assassination would come as no surprise. But the empire is in trouble, and the people of Venezuela will resist an attack. We ask only for the support of all true democrats."

· John Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, is published next month by Bantam Press www.johnpilger.com

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Gibson also noted that Europe is "not having enough babies to sustain their population," adding that "[c]onsequently, they are inviting in more and more immigrants every year to take care of things and those immigrants are having way more babies than the native population, hence 'Eurabia'."

From the May 11 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson:

GIBSON: Now, it's time for "My Word." Do your duty. Make more babies. That's a lesson drawn out of two interesting stories over the last couple of days.

First, a story yesterday that half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic. You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic. Why is that? Well, Hispanics are having more kids than others. Notably, the ones Hispanics call "gabachos" -- white people -- are having fewer.

Now, in this country, European ancestry people, white people, are having kids at the rate that does sustain the population. It grows a bit. That compares to Europe where the birth rate is in the negative zone. They are not having enough babies to sustain their population. Consequently, they are inviting in more and more immigrants every year to take care of things and those immigrants are having way more babies than the native population, hence Eurabia.

Why aren't they having babies? Because babies get in the way of a prosperous and comfortable modern life. Peanut butter fingerprints on the leather seats in the BMW. The Euros are particular -- in particular can't be bothered with kids. Underscore that second point.

A second story, today, reports that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is so concerned about the declining and imploding population of Russia, he is paying couples to have babies. Imagine, procreating for cash in Mother Russia. Putin has taken this step because at the rate things are going, Russia will lose close to 45 million in population in the next 45 years. Russia will be two thirds of today's population.

This is not a good trend for Russia and it won't be here either if that should happen. To put it bluntly, we need more babies. Forget about that zero population growth stuff that my poor generation was misled on. Why is this important? Because civilizations need population to survive. So far, we are doing our part here in America but Hispanics can't carry the whole load. The rest of you, get busy. Make babies, or put another way -- a slogan for our times: "procreation not recreation." That's "My Word."

— B.A.

Posted to the web on Friday May 12, 2006 at 2:05 PM EST

© 2006 Media Matters for America.

Frank Rich in 'NYT' Defends Newspapers, Rips 'Traitors' in Washington

By E&P Staff

Published: May 13, 2006 10:45 PM ET

NEW YORK In his Sunday opinion column for The New York Times, Frank Rich, who returned from book leave just last week, shook off the cobwebs to launch a vigorous defense of newspapers -- and an attack on the real "traitors," including top officials.

Rich opens by recalling charges of treasons against the late New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal when he published the Pentagon Papers in 1971. "Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes," Rich observes.

Now history is repeat itself, as the Bush administration and tis defenders "are desperate to deflect blame" for the Iraq fiasco, "and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret 'black site' Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism....

"When reporters at both papers were awarded Pulitzer Prizes last month, administration surrogates, led by bloviator in chief William Bennett, called for them to be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.

"We can see this charade for what it is: a Hail Mary pass by the leaders who bungled a war and want to change the subject to the journalists who caught them in the act. What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude. It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press's exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security. That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin."

Rich also suggests that perhaps the recently exposed NSA database on phone records "may have more to do with monitoring 'traitors' like reporters and leakers than with tracking terrorists. Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent."

He closes with a denunciation of Gen. Michael Hayden for new CIA chief, based on his leadership at NSA. "If Democrats — and, for that matter, Republicans — let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A.," Rich declares, "someone should charge those senators with treason, too. "

© 2006 VNU eMedia Inc.