As the war becomes more deadly, costly and counter-productive each day, a growing majority of citizens want to see a change of course in Iraq and U.S. foreign policies that better reflect American values.

With mid-term elections approaching, Peace Action's Peace Voter 2006 campaign will bring the occupation of Iraq and other key foreign policy issues to the forefront of the electoral debate.

We will put our elected officials on record on critical peace and security issues and demand their commitment to a more responsible foreign policy for our country.

By making peace the top priority in 2006, you can make a big impact at the local level, helping to build a powerful movement of people willing to organize for peace on Election Day, and beyond. This November, let's hold Congress accountable to the rising tide of public opinion that's urging an end to the war in Iraq and a new direction for U.S. relations with the world.

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Today's News and Views

July 7, 2006

Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts

By JOHN KIFNER

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

"We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, www.splcenter.org. "That's a problem."

A Defense Department spokeswoman said officials there could not comment on the report because they had not yet seen it.

The center called on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to appoint a task force to study the problem, declare a new zero tolerance policy and strictly enforce it.

The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote "The Turner Diaries," the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.

The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the Army, to meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq.

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

Mr. Barfield said Army recruiters struggled last year to meet goals. "They don't want to make a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military," he said, "because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they'll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists."

The 1996 crackdown on extremists came after revelations that Mr. McVeigh had espoused far-right ideas when he was in the Army and recruited two fellow soldiers to aid his bomb plot. Those revelations were followed by a furor that developed when three white paratroopers were convicted of the random slaying of a black couple in order to win tattoos and 19 others were discharged for participating in neo-Nazi activities.

The defense secretary at the time, William Perry, said the rules were meant to leave no room for racist and extremist activities within the military. But the report said Mr. Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, Wash., had said that he had provided evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year, but that only two had been discharged. He also said there was an online network of neo-Nazis.

"They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military," he said. "Several of these individuals have since been deployed to combat missions in Iraq."

The report cited accounts by neo-Nazis of their infiltration of the military, including a discussion on the white supremacist Web site Stormfront. "There are others among you in the forces," one participant wrote. "You are never alone."

An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identified the author as Steven Barry, who it said was a former Special Forces officer who was the alliance's "military unit coordinator."

"Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war," he wrote. "It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.' "

He concluded: "As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood."

In Conn., Lieberman Defends Seat, War Stance

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 7, 2006; A01

HARTFORD, Conn., July 6 -- Shunned by many in his own party because of his vigorous support for the war in Iraq, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman clashed in a debate Thursday with a well-financed challenger who has roiled Connecticut politics and turned the Democratic primary into a national test of the antiwar movement.

In a hard-hitting 30-minute exchange about the war, Lieberman sought to portray his opponent, Ned Lamont, as a fringe candidate with little grasp of the military and geopolitical stakes in Iraq. Lamont assailed the incumbent for ignoring reports of rising violence and instability, and for cheering on President Bush "when he should have been asking the tough questions."

Lieberman defended the conflict as "a lot better, different" than a year ago. "They're on the way to building a free and independent Iraq," he asserted. "The question is, are we going to abandon them while they are making that progress?"

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, with wife Hadassah, intends to file as an independent for the November ballot if he loses the primary.
Photo Credit: By Bob Child -- Associated Press

Lieberman headed into the night with vastly diminished party support after a nearly four-decade political career that included a turn as his party's 2000 vice presidential nominee. Earlier this week, he signaled that he will run as an independent this fall if he loses the Aug. 8 primary -- a possibility, according to recent polls. Lieberman's agreeing to debate Lamont on television was interpreted by some political analysts here as evidence that he is worried about the primary.

Connecticut, with its large pool of Democrats and independents, has become a focal point for the opposition to the war in Iraq. Just as Republicans are feeling heat throughout the country for supporting an increasingly unpopular war, Lieberman and moderate Republicans from the Northeast are finding that backing the president's Iraq policy can cost them substantial support within their traditional base.

Three House members from Connecticut -- Nancy L. Johnson, Christopher Shays and Rob Simmons -- are considered among the most endangered GOP incumbents on the ballot in November.

Lieberman, 64, a three-term senator, once was praised by party leaders for his independent thought and civility of spirit. But he has become a lightning rod for Democratic animosity because of his unflinching support for the war, and his rebuke last month of Senate Democrats' calls for either setting a deadline for withdrawing troops or reducing troop levels beginning later this year.

Lamont has relentlessly hammered Lieberman as a rubber stamp for the president's war policies. One well-circulated image of the Lamont campaign, featured on buttons and in a television ad, shows Bush embracing Lieberman after the 2005 State of the Union address and appearing to kiss him on the cheek.

Lieberman used his opening remarks in Thursday's hour-long debate to complain that Lamont "seems to be running against me based on my stand on one issue, Iraq, and he is distorting who I am and what I have done."

"Let me tell you some things that may surprise at least Ned but shouldn't," he added. "I know George Bush. I've worked against George Bush. I've even run against George Bush, but I'm not George Bush."

Lamont disputed Lieberman's charges that he has equivocated on the war and has avoided taking tough stands, at one point snapping, "You're the only person in Connecticut who's confused by my position on the war."

Although Lieberman accused Lamont of frequently altering his views, the challenger declared that the administration should "absolutely" set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, a view shared by only a small number of Democrats in the Senate. "We have 135,000 of our bravest troops stuck in the middle of a bloody civil war," he said. "And I say that those who got us into this mess should be held accountable."

Lieberman and Lamont took turns lecturing each other. The veteran Democrat told Lamont, "When you're a senator, you've got to make decisions."

Lamont, recalling events that led to the invasion of Iraq, said: "President Bush rushed us into this war. He told us it would be easy, we'd be welcomed as liberators, that [we would find] weapons of mass destruction. And Senator Lieberman cheered on the president every step of the way."

Lieberman was asked by a panelist why he decided to make an issue of Lamont's personal wealth, which is being tapped to fuel his campaign. "We really don't know who this man is," Lieberman declared. "I don't have that kind of money. I have to work hard" to raise millions of dollars to campaign.

As for Lieberman's decision to run as an independent if he loses the primary, Lamont said: "If you're going to run as a Democrat, play by the rules. You can't have it both ways."

Lieberman cast his decision as a bid to save the seat for Democrats. "I believe this man can't be elected in November," the senator said of Lamont. "He's a single-issue candidate who is applying a litmus test to me."

Lieberman's decision to run as an independent if necessary has led some national party leaders to distance themselves. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) took the unusual step of declaring before the primary that she would not support him as an independent candidate this fall.

Some analysts believe Lieberman would be well-positioned to win a three-way race in the fall, if it comes to that, but that is a prospect Democrats in Connecticut and throughout the country are not relishing. Lieberman was booed while he walked in a Fourth of July parade this week -- even as Lamont, marching behind a float depicting the Lieberman-Bush "kiss," was cheered.

Lieberman broke into politics as a reformist who opposed the war in Vietnam, and he won a state Senate seat in New Haven in 1970 with the help of, among others, Bill Clinton, who was a student volunteer at Yale Law. Lieberman was elected state attorney general in 1982. He challenged and beat maverick Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in 1988, and went on to make his mark in foreign policy.

He was one of the leaders in the fight for the Persian Gulf War resolution in January 1991, and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he strongly backed Bush's terrorism fight in Afghanistan. That December, he joined nine members who signed a letter urging Bush to target Iraq next.

The primary battle offers a stark contrast between the two candidates: Lieberman, the stubbornly independent party veteran who denounced Clinton from the Senate floor during impeachment proceedings; and Lamont, the great-grandson of a J.P. Morgan chairman and a fresh face in Connecticut politics who is strongly critical of the war.

A major problem for Lieberman is timing. Turnout probably will be light for the primary, which would benefit Lamont and his highly motivated supporters, analysts said. Moreover, Lieberman would have to submit 7,500 signatures the day after the primary to qualify to appear on the November ballot as an independent.

Lamont served as a Greenwich selectman years ago but is a neophyte in a statewide race. Lieberman has tried to depict him as a pawn of the left, and in particular as a tool of his political nemesis Weicker, who helped to lure Lamont into the race. One Lieberman ad revives the image of a fat, lazy bear that the senator used to evoke Weicker in 1988. This time, the bear has a cub -- Lamont.

Ari Melber

Lieberman Channels Bush in Debate 07.07.2006

"I believe it was the right thing for us to overthrow Saddam Hussein," said Senator Joe Lieberman last night, explaining his support for the Iraq War during the heated primary debate with Ned Lamont. Lieberman's stubborn defense sounded eerily similar to another unpopular politician under pressure for the war. Last night President Bush assured Larry King "the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision."

Lieberman actually channeled Bush throughout the debate. He echoed the White House spin on Iraq, arguing the only "choice is between helping the Iraqis achieve a free and independent Iraq or abandoning them and letting the terrorists take over." He trotted out baseless flip-flop charges, accusing Lamont of taking five different positions on the war. And when all else failed, Lieberman deployed the classic Bush-Rove tactic: project your own weakness on to your opponent. So he accused Lamont of the top grievances voters have against Lieberman: voting too often with Republicans, acting out of touch and prioritizing power over principle. (He claimed Lamont's war position only changed when he decided there was an "opportunity to become a United States senator").

It got so fierce, MSNBC's Tom Curry noted that Lieberman was "super-aggressive and sometimes rude," a stark contrast from his mild debate with Dick Cheney in 2000. Several bloggers observed that Liebeman seemed angry and contemptuous at even having to converse with a challenger. Last night I raised these points with Sean Smith, Lieberman's campaign manager, and this was his reply:

"Laughable. This is always what the supporters of losing candidates claim. Lieberman was aggressive and on the offensive. After months of distorting our record and hiding from his own, Lamont finally had to own up to both - and he failed."

Yet Reuters tells a different story, reporting that Lamont delivered a "hammering" against Lieberman that put him "on the defensive for much of the debate." The Washington Post also noticed some banging; today's front page article reports that "Lamont has relentlessly hammered Lieberman as a rubber stamp for the president's war policies." And Lamont made his case clearly last night: "President Bush rushed us into this war. He told us it would be easy, we'd be welcomed as liberators, that [we would find] weapons of mass destruction. And Senator Lieberman cheered on the president every step of the way."

Lieberman can keep cheering and channeling Bush, but the hammering will continue. And as luck would have it, Bush is no longer cheering (or kissing) back. Last night, when Larry King pressed him on whether he supports Lieberman, Bush said he would not give Lieberman "a political kiss, which could be his death." But as Connecticut voters know, that kiss was already planted a long time ago.

Article Launched: 7/06/2006 04:56 AM

Fairfax council votes to oust Bush and Cheney

Tad Whitaker
Marin Independent Journal

Fairfax officials voted unanimously Wednesday night to endorse a local petition calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Only a dozen or so people turned out at the Town Council meeting, but those who did railed against the administration for going to war in Iraq, violating constitutional rights and fouling up a host of other issues.

Those sentiments were shared by all four council members at the meeting. Councilman David Weinsoff is on vacation.

"I'm going for this resolution with all of my heart," Councilwoman Mary Ann Maggiore said.

Fairfax's move follows a similar one in Berkeley, where the City Council voted unanimously last week to spend $10,000 and put an impeachment measure on the Nov. 7 ballot. The Fairfax resolution will not go on the ballot.

Millie Barrett, a 33-year Fairfax resident, spearheaded the local impeachment drive against Bush by collecting hundreds of signatures on a petition because she said she wanted to do something more than just attend peace rallies.

"This is a movement spreading throughout the country," Barrett said.

Barrett withdrew her petition Wednesday night in favor of another one penned by Fairfax resident David Glick that included Cheney.

Glick spent five minutes reading the entire resolution, which attacked Bush and Cheney for misleading the country about Iraq, spying on Americans without warrants, torturing prisoners and holding them indefinitely without charges, and deploying national guard troops who could have been used during the Dec. 31 floods that washed through the Ross Valley.

"George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, warrant impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States," the resolution reads.

Mayor Susan Brandborg, who put the resolution on the agenda, said there are rumors going around town that she tried to upstage more liberal residents. Brandborg denied the allegation, saying she merely supported Barrett's goal.

"I didn't intend to grandstand," Brandborg said.

Resident Bill Parker said he signed the original petition, but questioned whether the town's vote is worth anything.

He said he called U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey's office and an aide told him Fairfax's resolution wouldn't help the congresswoman. He said the resolution only documents emotion.

"I don't think it helps at all," he said.

Councilman Lew Tremaine defended the town's right to take a stand by saying numerous residents have requested it.

"I don't think there's any question we should vote yes," he said.

Contact Tad Whitaker via e-mail at twhitaker@marinij.com

News From Underground

Rollin Riggs for The New York Times
At a megachurch in Memphis, the Statue of Liberation Through Christ was consecrated Tuesday. The statue, says the church's pastor, is a way of "letting people know that God is the foundation of our nation."

posted by MCM permalink

AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

President Bush with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) at the NCAA winter sports champions presentation at the White House in 2003.

Robert Scheer: Will the Real Democrats Please Stand Up?

Posted on Jul 4, 2006

By Robert Scheer

Time for yet another Bush Iraq photo op. Heck, the last one—when the president popped into the liberated Green Zone to once again proclaim a turning point in his obviously endless war—worked so well that he went up five points in some opinion polls.

No matter that the government in Baghdad is as dysfunctional and powerless as ever, that the rate of U.S. and Iraqi deaths has climbed since Bush’s visit, that the war is on a trajectory to cost significantly more than $1 trillion, and that the American flag is desecrated by examples of rape, murder and torture. Most of the world acknowledges that the U.S. presence in Iraq is part of the problem, not the solution, but the facts on the ground matter not at all to the Bushites for whom “staying the course” in Iraq is perceived as a winning electoral strategy at home.

Victory in Iraq is a secondary, and more elusive, goal. The most recent source of optimism was the much ballyhooed death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq whom the White House had systematically built up in importance to frame our occupation of Iraq as part of the “war on terror.”

The reality, however, always has been that so-called “foreign fighters” play a small part in the virulent Iraqi civil war. For most Iraqis, we are the main foreign fighters in Iraq, and our occupation strengthens the hand of extremists, exacerbates sectarian tensions and impedes the development of a unity government based on compromise.

Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised that Zarqawi’s death has not brought any diminution of violence, as was admitted by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in a recent interview with the BBC: “[I]n terms of the level of violence, it has not had any impact at this point. As you know, the level of violence is still quite high.” In the past few days alone, we have seen the abduction of a top Sunni female legislator, a blast in a Shiite market that killed 66, and a rise in violence against British forces in the once-pacified south.

Yet, as Bush’s slight rise in the polls indicates, there are still many naïve Americans eager to be convinced that we have turned some magical corner in Iraq, despite all evidence to the contrary. In fact, the Karl Rove-led campaign to retain GOP control of Congress now is trying to spin the war as an asset, and all too many Democrats are willing to play along. Chief among those Bush fellow travelers is Sen. Joe Lieberman, who on Monday announced his intention to run as a ticket-splitting independent, should Democrats in Connecticut reject his Senate reelection bid because of his cheerleading for the war.

“I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party,” said the former vice presidential candidate, who last December made the anti-democratic claim that “We undermine the president’s credibility at our nation’s peril.”

Less overt is the waffling of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), but her confusion is arguably more damaging to the Democrats, given her position as the party’s front-running presidential aspirant. At least Lieberman stands exposed as a true believer in the Bush crusade, whereas Clinton continues to support a war that her confidants tell us she knows is wrong.

If Clinton does indeed know better than to support the war, let her say it out loud—and clearly. Why is it so difficult for the Democrats to grasp that waffling doesn’t work as a form of leadership? The public takes it as a sign of moral disarray. Does anyone doubt that John Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election when he whiffed on Bush’s curveball question: Knowing what you know now, would you have supported the Iraq invasion? He should have instantly said, “Hell no, you lied to Congress and the American people and deserve to be defeated precisely for that betrayal of the public trust.”

Instead, as he ruefully insisted last month when I questioned him on this, he allowed a campaign spokesperson to say that he still supported an invasion that most Democrats had long since realized was a terrible mistake. In the following weeks of the race, he attempted to regain some footing on the issue, but it was too late—the inept Bush had once again been allowed to seem Churchill-like by comparison.

It is high time the folks who make up the base of the Democratic Party took a page from the playbook of the Republican right and backed candidates willing to stand up for their values, rather than wasting their money, time and votes on those who won’t.

Sen. Graham’s Strategy To Restore Bush’s Detainee Policy Is Unconstitutional

In an interview with the National Review, Sen. Lindsey Graham strongly objected to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the Geneva Conventions applied to enemy combatants. Graham suggested that Congress should reverse the Supreme Court’s interpretation:

We’ve got to put a fence around this decision by the Court to grant Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention rights to terrorists. In 2002, Bush said that enemy combatant terrorists will be treated humanely within the spirit of the Convention but not given Convention status. I think he was right. You don’t want to erode the Convention.

What Graham is sugesting is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has the final say on how treaties should be interpreted. The Court explained in another case, Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, issued the same day has Hamdan:

Under our Constitution, “[t]he judicial Power of theUnited States” is “vested in one supreme Court, and insuch inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Art. III, §1. That “judicialPower . . . extend[s] to . . . Treaties.” Id., §2. And, as Chief Justice Marshall famously explained, that judicial power includes the duty “to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). If treaties are to be given effect as federal law under our legal system, determining their meaning as a matter of federal law “is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department,” headed by the “one supreme Court” established by the Constitution.

It’s difficult for Graham and other loyal supporters of the Bush administration to accept that their legal approach to combating terrorism is dysfunctional. The Hamdan decision spelled this out. And it’s not a problem they can rubber stamp their way out of.

Posted by Judd July 6, 2006 10:17 am

35 corpses found across Baghdad

Thursday July 06, 2006 11:37 - (SA)

BAGHDAD - Thirty-five corpses have been discovered in different areas of the Iraqi capital over the past 24 hours, most of them showing signs of torture, police reported.

Five of the corpses were found in the insurgent-dominated western district of Amiriyah, while the rest were scattered throughout the capital, with the majority showing signs of torture and killed with a bullet to the head.

Since the destruction of a major Shiite shrine in the northern town of Samarra in February, sectarian-linked killings have been spiralling, especially in Baghdad, resulting in corpses being found each day.

Sapa-AFP

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