Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 192        Today’s News and Views     Saturday, July 8, 2006

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Flanigan, 37, was piloting the two-man craft and served as a Guard training instructor. He had flown since he was a teenager, his father, William Thomas Flanigan, said.

"He probably knew (the Apache) better than the guys who built them," William Flanigan said.

His son's love of flying was paralleled only by his love of service, he said.

William Timothy Flanigan, who was known as Tim, had served 10 years in the Army and three years in the Tennessee National Guard.

"The guy's just tremendously devoted to his country. He loves it, and he's one of these guys who said if you didn't sacrifice for it, you didn't love it," his father said.

Flanigan didn't have to look far for role models. His father served in the Air Force, while his mother was an Army nursing officer.

"He had super integrity," William Flanigan said of his son. "You could always go to the bank with what he told you. He was a very straightforward guy, even if it indicted him."

Flanigan, who had spent time overseas in Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina while in the Army, was a member of Company R, 4-278th Armored Calvary Regiment, out of Jackson, Tenn. He was deployed to the Middle East in January.

He enlisted in the Army in 1993, soon after he graduated from Indiana State University with a degree in aerospace technology and a professional piloting license.

Survivors include his wife, Cassie; daughter, Meghan, 11; and son, Brodie, 9.

Pabla, a resident of Fort Wayne, was a member of the Kempton-based 139th Field Artillery but was deployed in Iraq with the 150th Field Artillery from Bloomington.

A 2000 graduate of Huntington North High School, Pabla was remembered fondly by Cheryl Walker, his senior-year English teacher.

"He was soft-spoken but very goal-oriented, and he had a really good sense of humor," Walker said.

Pabla enlisted in the National Guard in November 1999, during his senior year at Huntington.

"I think he was doing something he felt really strongly about (by enlisting). Without question, he knew what he was getting into. He was really a young man with a sense of purpose," Walker said.

Pabla was killed Monday, the same day a car bomb explosion aimed at a police patrol in Mosul killed at least seven people and wounded 28, according to The Associated Press.

An artilleryman, Pabla also helped train police officers in Iraq.

He had volunteered for deployment to Iraq and for assignment to the Air National Guard's security mission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Maj. Gen. R. Martin Umbarger, the Indiana adjutant general.

"It is always hard to hear the news of one of Indiana's finest giving his life in the defense of freedom," Gov. Mitch Daniels said in a prepared statement.

"It is particularly difficult when we mourn the loss of such a young man. . . . Let us not forget that it is because of people like Staff Sgt. Pabla we continue to remain free."

Pabla's family was not available for comment.

Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com.

July 8, 2006

G.O.P. Agenda in House Has Moderates Unhappy

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 7 — Moderate Republicans say a planned summer push by the House leadership on conservative causes like gun rights and new abortion restrictions threatens the re-election prospects of embattled centrists, who are key to the party's drive to hold Congress.

Frustrated and angry, they say the leadership's new American Values Agenda, a list of initiatives heavy on ideological themes, seems short-sighted and ill-timed considering that few conservatives are at serious risk in November.

"It was stupid and gross," said Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut. "They have this obsession to satisfy conservative Republicans who will probably be re-elected no matter what happens. They get job satisfaction, but they are making it more difficult for me to win my race."

Mr. Shays and others said the announcement of the agenda took them by surprise, particularly after House Republicans seemed to be back on track after a few strong weeks of emphasizing new fiscal controls and a push on national security issues. House moderates have also been supportive of the leadership's hard line against the idea of potential citizenship for illegal immigrants, saying that reflects public sentiment.

But they fear that this new agenda could backfire by stirring independent voters to reject centrist candidates even if they do not totally embrace the party leadership's conservative tilt.

"I don't think it is a good agenda to go into the election cycle with," said Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware, another moderate Republican.

Republican leaders disputed the idea that the values agenda could harm centrists, saying the lawmakers could establish their independence by voting against select initiatives if they choose. They say that members will be judged on their own records and that even Democratic-leaning seats held by Republicans have core groups of conservative voters who need to be motivated. And they know that the votes will also be difficult for Democratic incumbents in conservative locales.

"I don't mind people having to make tough votes," said Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, Republican of New York and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The unrest among House moderates reflects a seeming contradiction in the campaign strategy being mapped out by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and at the White House: While the emphasis is being placed on rallying conservatives, many of the must-win races are in more moderate regions of the Northeast, Midwest and suburban South and West.

In the latest review of House races by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, more than 20 of the 35 Republican seats considered most threatened were closely divided areas of Connecticut, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and districts in Arizona, Colorado and Florida where independents could be crucial. Thirteen of the 35 were carried by the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.

"If you took the top 10 to 20 targeted races, it probably helps about three of them," said Mr. Shays, who said he was so upset by the leadership's agenda that he skipped a meeting of House Republicans rather than risk losing his temper over the initiatives.

In announcing the agenda, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois said that it would allow lawmakers to vote on basic values like the "sanctity of life" while defending the nation's founding principles.

Besides a potential series of votes on family tax breaks, the legislative lineup for the weeks ahead included initiatives that would prohibit any government from using federal money to confiscate guns during emergencies; ensure that local governments do not have to pay damages or lawyer fees in court battles over public expressions of religion, and protect the Pledge of Allegiance from being found unconstitutional.

The agenda also includes a measure to ban human cloning and one requiring that those performing late-term abortions inform women seeking the procedure that the fetus could feel pain and could receive anesthesia. House Republican leaders also plan a vote on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, even though it could not be adopted in this Congress because it has already been rejected by the Senate.

"There are no surprises here," said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader. "We have members who want to vote on a number of these provisions, and we are going to vote. It is part of our job."

Democrats say the ideologically tinged votes could benefit their candidates in areas where they hope to defeat Republicans.

"It reminds people that the Republican Party is the party of Terri Schiavo," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, referring to Republican intercession this year in the case of the Florida woman whose husband wanted her removed from a feeding tube.

Critics of the agenda said the leadership acted with little fanfare in unveiling it, which they interpreted as a sign that it was undertaken mainly to appease conservatives and that the leadership was not committed to making it a centerpiece of the remaining weeks of Congress.

There are no guarantees that all the proposals will even reach the floor. The measure regarding the Pledge of Allegiance temporarily stalled in committee when too few Republicans showed up to vote, but the leadership said it planned to bring that bill and another piece of the agenda — a ban on Internet gambling — before the full House when lawmakers return next week.

Other Republicans are pushing the House to emphasize what advocates are calling a "suburban agenda," a series of bills pertaining to issues like online and school safety, health care and education savings. And moderates were cheered by a new Senate agreement to allow debate on expanded stem cell research.

But with Congress scheduled to be in session only for July and September before adjourning, moderates say that lawmakers need to be selective about where they put their energy and that the values issues could eat up scarce time.

"I am not going to disparage these particular initiatives," said Jonathan Stevens, policy director at the Republican Main Street Partnership, a moderate group. "I understand what they are trying to do. But what my members are much more concerned about are the more tangible, everyday major issues such as health care, the budget and defense."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

July 8, 2006

Bush Says U.S. May Have Been Able to Intercept North Korean Missile

By DAVID E. SANGER

CHICAGO, July 7 — President Bush said Friday that he believed the nation's nascent missile defense system would have had a "reasonable chance" of shooting down a long-range missile launched by North Korea had it come close to the United States, and he said he was determined to use the United Nations to set "some red lines" for future behavior by the North Koreans.

Mr. Bush said the launching of a prototype long-range missile that tumbled into the Sea of Japan showed why missile defenses were needed, but he acknowledged that the abilities of the unproven missile defense system based in Alaska and California were "modest," and he said it was "hard for me to give you a probability of success."

"I think we had a reasonable chance of shooting it down; at least that's what the military commander has told me," he said at a news conference in Chicago.

Although defensive sensors and missiles, while not fully tested, are theoretically available for use in an emergency, Pentagon officials have said there was little reason to think they would have been used this week, as the North Korean test missile was not thought to carry a live warhead.

In an hourlong news conference here that was part of a new White House strategy to bolster Mr. Bush's sagging popularity around the country, the president sounded mildly frustrated that diplomacy to disarm North Korea and halt Iran's nuclear program was so "slow and cumbersome." But he sidestepped questions about conditions under which he might be tempted to use military force, saying he was determined to find diplomatic solutions.

And, in a sharp contrast to the kind of less cautious statements he made about Iraq before the invasion in 2003, which were based on sometimes contradictory intelligence reports, he cast doubt on North Korea's claim that it possesses what it calls a "nuclear deterrent."

Mr. Bush challenged a reporter who, in posing a question, asserted that the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had increased the size of his nuclear arsenal during Mr. Bush's presidency. "I don't think we know that," the president shot back. But, in what may have been a sign of his wariness about intelligence assessments of opaque nations, he pointedly declined to say what assessment he believed was correct.

"Maybe you know but you're not telling," one reporter said. Mr. Bush said, "That's an option," and then, to laughter, added, "Or maybe I don't know and don't want to tell you I don't know."

A new national intelligence estimate of North Korea's capabilities was completed earlier this year, but the administration has declined to publish a declassified version of it. According to officials who are familiar with its contents, it concludes that North Korea probably produced enough fuel for six or more nuclear weapons, from a supply of 8,000 spent reactor fuel rods that the country boasts it reprocessed after throwing inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency out of the country three years ago.

"What we don't know is whether they turned those into weapons," said one senior intelligence official in a recent interview who asked not to be named because he was discussing intelligence issues. "You can assume it, but it is just an assumption."

Mr. Bush's discussion of "red lines" — a term drawn from the cold war limits over steps the United States and Soviet Union agreed not to take for fear they could spiral into outright war — was important because until now his aides have said such limits do not work in North Korea's case. Three years ago, one of Mr. Bush's senior aides said it would be useless to tell North Korea that turning its spent fuel into plutonium was a "red line" because the United States had no effective way to enforce the threat. The North Koreans went ahead anyway, lines or no lines.

It was the ambitious North Korean program to extend the reach of its missiles — along with its work on producing nuclear warheads — that many proponents of the missile defense plan cited to justify the Pentagon's huge expenditures on the new defensive system, which is costing about $9 billion a year and is still in the early stages of a long and complex development process.

After deciding to field a first batch of interceptors without fully testing them, in what commanders have called a "thin line" of defense against a small-scale attack, the Pentagon interrupted its testing for more than a year after a series of failures. The testing of missiles and radars has now resumed, with an important set of test shots expected to begin as early as this summer. If they succeed, officials have told Congress, there will be better ground for confidence that the system would be able to intercept a missile launched from North Korea or from Iran.

As things stand now, though, there is considerable uncertainty over both sides of the technology race: How long it will take North Korea to produce a missile capable of posing a serious risk to the United States, and how long it will take to build a reliable defensive system?

Though North Korea and the struggle over responding to the missile tests dominated the news conference, Mr. Bush denied that the United States was trimming back on its search for Osama bin Laden by disbanding a unit within the Central Intelligence Agency that focused on that hunt.

"We got a lot of assets looking for Osama bin Laden," Mr. Bush said. "So whatever you want to read in that story, it's just not true, period." He added later: "In my judgment, it's just a matter of time, unless we stop looking. And we're not going to stop looking so long as I'm the president, not only for Osama bin Laden, but anybody else who plots and plans attacks against the United States of America."

He repeated his conviction that the United States would prevail in Iraq, but also seemed intent on dampening speculation about significant reductions of forces in coming months. "An artificial timetable of withdrawal and early withdrawal before this finishes sends the message to the enemy: 'We were right about America,' " Mr. Bush said, repeating his argument that Al Qaeda seeks to turn Iraq into a haven for training.

But when the subject turned back to North Korea, Mr. Bush by turns argued that Mr. Kim was untrustworthy — he cited the country's violation of a 1994 accord with the Clinton administration — and that the only path was to negotiate with him. But he rejected conducting one-on-one negotiations, insisting that he needed China and other neighbors at the table so that Mr. Kim did not make the United States to appear the blockade to an agreement.

"One thing I'm not going to let us do is get caught in the trap of sitting at the table alone with the North Koreans," Mr. Bush insisted, rejecting the criticism by Democrats who say such talks would be the only way to break the logjam.

"If you want to solve a problem diplomatically, you need partners to do so," Mr. Bush said, adding later that his worry about "handling this issue bilaterally is that you run out of options very quickly."

But in citing anew the need to team up with China and South Korea, Mr. Bush was skipping past the warnings of members of his own administration that neither country would agree to sanctions. Both are worried about a North Korean collapse, and both have continued supplying North Korea with food, energy and investment — even while Japan and the United States try to turn off the spigot.

Mr. Bush has been careful never to criticize either country publicly. But he seemed to do so obliquely when he said, with some frustration in his voice: "The problem with diplomacy, it takes a while to get something done. If you're acting alone, you can move quickly. When you're rallying world opinion and trying to, you know, come up with the right language at the United Nations to send a clear signal, it takes a while."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

July 8, 2006

Justices Tacitly Backed Use of Guantánamo, Bush Says

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, July 7 — In his most detailed comments to date on the Supreme Court's rejection of his decision to put detainees on trial before military commissions, President Bush said Friday that the court had tacitly approved his use of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"It didn't say we couldn't have done — couldn't have made that decision, see?" Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. "They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made."

Mr. Bush's remarks put a favorable spin on a ruling that has been widely interpreted as a rebuke of the administration's policies in the war on terror. The court, ruled broadly last week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commissions were unauthorized by statute and violated international law.

The question of whether Mr. Bush had properly used Guantánamo Bay to house detainees was not at issue in the case. At issue was whether the president could unilaterally establish military commissions with rights different from those allowed at a court-martial to try detainees for war crimes.

Mr. Bush has said since the ruling that he will work with Congress to figure out how to use military commissions to try detainees, a promise he repeated on Friday in Chicago.

"I am willing to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court," the president said.

The Chicago news conference, which featured local reporters asking the president questions alongside the regular members of the White House press corps, was designed by the White House to give the president more exposure in the country at a time when his poll numbers are declining and Americans are uneasy with his leadership on the economy and the war in Iraq.

But members of the Chicago press did not serve up softball questions. The issue of Mr. Bush's polls came up when a reporter asked about a fund-raiser the president planned to attend for Judy Baar Topinka, the Republican candidate for Illinois governor.

"An aide to Judy Topinka was quoted as saying that given your low approval ratings in the polls, they prefer you to come here in the middle of the night," the reporter said.

"Didn't work," Mr. Bush replied. "I'm coming to lunch."

The president also gave an endorsement of sorts to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who handled a leak investigation involving Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser.

Mr. Bush said Mr. Fitzgerald, who is also the United States attorney in Chicago, had done a "very professional job" in handling the leak investigation, which resulted in the indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Rove was not indicted.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Not Just Another Abuse Scandal

By Colbert I. King
Saturday, July 8, 2006; A15

Please don't lump what happened in Mahmudiyah with the alleged attacks by U.S. troops on unarmed Iraqi civilians in Fallujah, Haditha, Qaim or Salahuddin province. True, the murders of innocent noncombatants, and the humiliation and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, are deplorable acts deserving condemnation and swift and severe punishment. But the event that occurred in Mahmudiyah, a village south of Baghdad, deserves a category all to itself.

Mahmudiyah wasn't a case of soldiers exceeding their orders or authority in the interrogation of prisoners -- or an example of war-weary, stressed-out troops mistakenly assuming a villager was a member of the insurgency. Neither was it a situation in which U.S. service members, grief-stricken over the loss of a comrade, decided to take out their anguish on people who looked like the enemy.

Mahmudiyah, if the charges are true, was a case of something else; a vile event made all the more disgusting because a soldier, afforded the opportunity to serve his country, chose instead to indulge his private need to hurt, degrade and murder.

Twenty-one-year-old Steven D. Green, honorably discharged from the Army in May for a "personality disorder," is charged with entering an Iraqi home near Mahmudiyah in March and raping a young woman (Iraqis say she was 15 years old; the U.S. military says 20), shooting her in the head and setting her body aflame -- after he was done using it.

But first, it is alleged, he herded the young woman's mother, father and 5-year-old sister into a bedroom, where he shot and killed them. Arrested by the FBI this week, Green has pleaded not guilty.

The young woman's body and those of her family were found burned in an effort to cover up what happened. And Green, according to an FBI affidavit, wasn't the only rapist; another soldier in his unit is said to have taken part in the assault.

Some might call that a tactic of war. It was nothing of the sort. Yes, there are numerous cases of mass rape that were methodically carried out during times of war. Look no farther than Darfur and Kosovo.

But if the reporting out of Iraq is accurate, Mahmudiyah is a tale of sadism and degradation and of the desire of one man and possibly others to display mastery over the weak for reasons having nothing to do with why America is in Iraq.

The Post's Ellen Knickmeyer reports that the young woman had told her mother she was afraid because of the unwelcome attention of the American soldiers stationed at a checkpoint she had to pass through almost daily. She told her mother that the soldiers had been sexually aggressive toward her. Her mother feared the soldiers would come for her daughter at night.

Green and other soldiers, it has been reported, went to the young woman's house with the intent to rape her. That, if true, represents a premeditated use of power and intimidation to achieve gratification.

That's not a tactic of war; that is an act of tyranny.

They set out to devastate that young woman. Her family had been shot and killed in the next room before she was raped. Knowing that, she was already in agony when Green and the other soldier came for her.

Much is being made of the impact of this sex crime in Iraq and the Arab world and the backlash it could have on U.S. forces because of Islamic culture.

It's hard, at least for me, to get past the impact of this crime on the victims, and thoughts of the young woman's distress, and knowledge that in our civilized world she is not alone.

Her disgust with the harassment, her anxiety about her movements being studied and her fear of being raped are not peculiar to women living in Islamic cultures. Thinking twice about how to dress, when to go out, where to walk and how to speak are not a thing of the Middle East. Many women all over the world have to live with that. On the other hand, the men most able to relate to those concerns are those who themselves are prey behind prison walls.

Mahmudiyah was about murder. It was also about the deliberate, calculated violation of a woman. Such malevolence should never find its way into a U.S. military uniform.

kingc@washpost.com

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

July 6, 2006

Go To Venezuela, You Idiot!

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Jeff Cohen

I don't usually take the advice of rightwingers. But I did this time. After receiving inflamed email messages from dozens of angry rightists that I should get the hell out of the USA and go to Venezuela, I accepted their challenge and flew to Caracas.

"Would you like me to start a fund to ship your ass down there, Comrade Cohen?"

What had provoked the often-abusive emailers was my widely-circulated 2005 Internet column urging U.S. residents to buy their gasoline at Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state oil company. I called for a Citgo BUY-cott, to protest Bush's interventionist foreign policy while supporting innovative anti-poverty programs in Venezuela. (Last winter, Citgo started a program that provided discounted home-heating oil to low-income families in the U.S.)

"Hey moron, if you hate America so much and love Venezuela, why don't you go there?"

I'm glad I listened to the conservative chorus. In late June, I headed to Venezuela with a fact-finding delegation sponsored by the respected U.S. human rights group, Witness for Peace. The grueling trip covered much ground and all sides of Venezuela's social/political landscape. It is a complex country, headed by sometimes volatile President Hugo Chavez, a leftist and harsh Bush critic who was first elected in 1998.

As soon as I returned home, I headed to the nearest Citgo to fill up my tank -- more committed than ever to send a few dollars toward Venezuela's poor.

"You, sir, are as un-American as they come."

For decades, Venezuela's vast oil wealth had been squandered and hoarded by its light-skinned elite, while most Venezuelans -- largely of indigenous, African and mixed descent -- lived in dire poverty. Today, oil revenue from Citgo and elsewhere is funneled into social programs (called "missions") to benefit the country's poor majority. They're reminiscent of FDR's New Deal programs. . .born of our economic bust. But Venezuela's missions are fueled by a boom -- a boom in oil prices that is likely to persist for years.

"Because of Chavez, communism is thriving in South America."

From what I could see, capitalism is thriving. Foreign oil interests continue to profit handsomely from Venezuelan petrol, but they now pay a fairer share of taxes and royalties. So do the 80 McDonald's restaurants in Venezuela, which were briefly shut down last year over alleged tax cheating.

Multinational companies and the old elite are doing fine in today's Venezuela. So well that some Venezuelan leftists denounce Chavez -- despite his talk of building "21st century socialism" -- as a tool of corporate imperialism.

Like other oil-exporting countries, Venezuela in the past allowed its domestic productive economy to atrophy. Besides oil, it produced little -- with food largely imported. Today, people in poor areas are organizing themselves into productive and agricultural co-ops, supported by low-interest government loans. We visited a federal bank that underwrites women-run businesses nationwide.

My guess is that if Chavez succeeds in Venezuela -- a big "if" in a country of endemic corruption, poverty and crime, in the backyard of the U.S. superpower -- its economic system will end up looking more like Sweden than Cuba.

What's not debatable is that the poor have found hope in the Chavez administration -- which is why he's perhaps the most popular president in our hemisphere. So popular that Chavez critics in the U.S. government and Venezuelan opposition concede that they won't be able to defeat him in December when he seeks reelection.

"The trouble with all you liberals is that you're anti-American and hate democracy."

Participation in democracy is booming in Venezuela under Chavez. That's partly due to polarization, but also because so many poor people feel empowered enough for the first time to get active in politics. A massive 2005 Latinobarometro poll conducted in 18 Latin American countries showed that Venezuelans are among the top in preference for democracy over all other forms of government, in satisfaction with how their democracy is functioning, and in belief that their country is "totally democratic."

"The oil money never gets to the poor. . . . You must have been paid by Chavez to write what you wrote."

Across Venezuela, it's hard to miss the new investment in public education. Schools are being upgraded in urban and rural areas and are required to offer free breakfasts and lunches, arts, music and after-school activities. Unlike the U.S., these are well-funded mandates. Illiteracy has been virtually wiped out, according to UNESCO, thanks to adult education that has penetrated the poorest neighborhoods.

In poor communities, federally-subsidized stores called "mercals" sell food at half the market price. In the capital of Caracas, thousands of government-funded soup kitchens offer free lunches every weekday to the indigent; our delegation was headquartered in a church that served 150 free lunches per day. Across the country, new housing is being built to replace shantytown "ranchos" that so many Venezuelans live in.

Thousands of free ("Barrio Adentro") medical clinics have been built inside neighborhoods that never had doctors before -- so many clinics that you can spot them from the highway. These are staffed largely by doctors from Cuba; in return, Cuba receives Venezuelan oil. When we asked a community leader how local residents reacted to the Cuban doctors, he explained that most Venezuelan doctors won't serve in poor barrios: "People in our community don't care whether the doctors are French, German, Canadian, Mexican or Cuban -- as long as they're here to help."

"Go to Venezuela and kiss up to the anti-American dictator."

If Venezuela is a dictatorship, it must be the first in world history in which the opposition controls most of the media. And the first in which demonstrations occur regularly outside the presidential palace (organized by various groups, especially low-income activists complaining about broken promises and government inefficiency).

Dissent is alive and well in Venezuela. Any casual viewer can see anti-Chavez criticism all over TV, the country's dominant medium and largely in the hands of conservative business interests. The opposition used its power on TV to support a short-lived military coup in 2002 (strike 1), an employers' oil lockout in 2002-3 (strike 2) and a failed recall election in 2004 (strike 3). Chavez won nearly 60% in the recall vote -- which was monitored closely by international observers.

Efforts to bring down Chavez -- through democratic and undemocratic means -- have been supported by the Bush administration. Which makes it ironic that the American Family Association, a U.S. religious ultra-right group, has organized a Citgo boycott on the basis of its Internet hoax: "Venezuela Dictator Vows to Bring Down U.S. Government." The headline tends to reverse reality; Chavez has made no such vow. But AFA true believers have bombarded my email inbox for months with the hoax.

"Try Jesus. If you don't like Him, the devil will always take you back.. . . .What terrorist group are you affiliated with?"

If you think the U.S. is politically polarized, you haven't been to Venezuela. Clinton's impeachment by the religious right over sex is child's play compared to what's gone on in Venezuela, where Chavez has survived near-death experiences at the hands of a conservative opposition that has never accepted his presidency.

Columnist Paul Krugman talks of a "New Class War" in our country. In Venezuela, it's old-fashioned class war. Political and media confrontation between Chavez and the opposition is vicious, personal and bare-knuckled. While independent human rights monitors in Venezuela complain about isolated cases of government intimidation of opposition figures and journalists, they scoff at claims that democracy is in jeopardy or that dictatorship is coming.

Today, Chavez is popular (his approval ratings dwarf Bush's), rambunctious in whipping up his base against both domestic opponents and Bush, and prone to hyperbole in his hours of extemporaneous speaking each day. He has waged a war of words against U.S. Empire and Bush, whom he calls "Mr. Danger." But that's polite in light of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld having compared Chavez to Adolph Hitler. Or Rev. Pat Robertson having called for Chavez to be assassinated.

"You can write your articles about how great he [Chavez] is, but I know, as well as other true Americans, that he is not a good man and he does need to be taken out of power as soon as possible."

To me, the issue is less about Chavez than about the social initiatives his government has unleashed. When I first wrote about Venezuela 14 months ago, I urged a simple economic action: filling up at Citgo so that our money at the pump helps Venezuela's poor instead of Middle East oiligarchs. That remains a good idea.

Nowadays, I also urge political action: that we contact Congress to demand that the U.S. stay out of Venezuela's political contest. That's up to Venezuelans to decide. Not us. The U.S. should stop its efforts to back the conservative opposition and cease all ("National Endowment for Democracy") funding of Venezuelan groups.

And finally, I want to join my rightwing critics in one recommendation: Go to Venezuela. If you can arrange it, examine the social transformations for yourself. Study Spanish there. See the decades of poverty, neglect and corruption that led to the election of Hugo Chavez -- and whether his government is improving things.

There's an added bonus for anyone who can get down there: gasoline at 18 cents per gallon. Expect to hear Venezuelans complaining that the price is too high.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Jeff Cohen is a media critic and former TV pundit. His new book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, can be pre-ordered at http://jeffcohen.org/.

© BuzzFlash.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

The thug and intimidation tactics of the Far Right go mainstream

As is true for many lawyers who have defended First Amendment free speech rights, I have represented several groups and individuals with extremist and even despicable viewpoints (in general, and for obvious reasons, it is only groups and individuals who espouse ideas considered repugnant by the majority which have their free speech rights threatened). Included among this group were several White Supremacist groups and their leaders, including one such group -- the World Church of the Creator -- whose individual members had periodically engaged in violence against those whom they considered to be the enemy (comprised of racial and religious minorities along with the "race traitors" who were perceived to defend them).

One of the favorite tactics used by such groups is to find the home address and telephone number of the latest enemy and then publish it on the Internet, accompanied by impassioned condemnations of that person as a Grave Enemy, a race traitor, someone who threatens all that is good in the world. A handful of the most extremist pro-life groups have used the same tactic. It has happened in the past that those who were the target of these sorts of demonization campaigns that included publication of their home address were attacked and even killed.

But these intimidation tactics work even when nothing happens. Indeed, these groups often publish the enemy's home address along with some cursory caveat that they are not encouraging violence. The real objective is the same one shared by all terrorists -- to place the person in paralyzing fear. The goal is to force the individual, as they lay in bed at night, to be preoccupied with worry that there is some deranged individual who read one of the websites identifying them as the enemy and which provided their address and who believes that they can strike some blow for their Just Cause by visiting their home and harming or killing them. The fear that they are vulnerable in their own home lurks so prominently and relentlessly in a person's mind that it can be as effective as a physical attack in punishing someone or intimidating them.

This thuggish tactic of intimidation -- publicly railing against someone's grave crimes and then publishing their home address -- has been creeping out of the most extremist precincts on the Right and is becoming increasingly common among mainstream right-wing individuals and organizations.

This weekend, prominent neoconservative David Horowitz proclaimed that the United States is fighting a war and "the aggressors in this war are Democrats, liberals and leftists." In particular, he cited the now infamous NYT Travel section article on Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld's vacation homes as evidence that the employees of the NYT are among the enemies in this war, and he then linked to and recommended as a "proposal for action" this post from his associate, Front Page contributor Rocco DiPippo. The post which Horowitz recommended was entitled "Where Does Punch Sulzberger Live?" and this is what it said:

I issue a call to the blogosphere to begin finding and publicly listing the addresses of all New York Times reporters and editors. Posting pictures of their residences, along with details of any security measures in place to protect the properties and their owners (such as location of security cameras and on-site security details) should also be published.

DiPippo published the home address of NYT Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, along with directions to his home, and linked to a post by right-wing blogger Dan Riehl which contained directions to Sulzberger's home along with photographers of it. In a now-deleted post, DiPippo also published the home address of Linda Spillers, the NYT photographer who took the photograph of Don Rumsfeld's vacation home (with Rumsfeld's express permission), and he urged everyone to go (presumably to the home address he provided) and confront Spillers about her actions.

That was not an isolated incident. This week, Bartholomew's Official Notes on Religion reported on the new "project" implemented by the group StopTheACLU.org. As that group describes it, the project is called "Expose the ACLU Plaintiffs," and promises to publish the home addresses of all individuals who are "using the ACLU" in any First Amendment lawsuit based on the Establishment clause which challenges the constitutionality of governmental promotion of Christianity. The first such enemy targeted for this treatment is a Jewish family in Delaware who sued their local school district over its alleged promotion of Christianity in the public schools. StopTheACLU published their home address and telephone number on its website, and the family -- due to all sorts of recriminations and fear of escalating attacks -- was forced to leave their home and move to another town, which was one of the apparent goals of StopTheACLU in publishing their home address.

Stop the ACLU is not some fringe, isolated group. To the contrary, the "official blog" of StopTheACLU.org is StopTheACLU.com (h/t Hunter), a very prominent player in the right-wing blogosphere. That blog is the 14th most-linked-to blog on the Internet, and is often promoted and approvingly cited to as a source by numerous right-wing bloggers such as Instapundit and Michelle Malkin. The blog Expose the Left (which aspires to be the C&L of the Right), yesterday condemned the "nutcases on the left side of the blososphere" who "are sending unfounded attacks" against StopTheACLU for this plainly despicable thug behavior.

These self-evidently dangerous tactics are merely a natural outgrowth of the hate-mongering bullying sessions which have become the staple of right-wing television shows such as Bill O'Reilly's and websites such as Michelle Malkin's (who, unsurprisingly, has become one of O'Reilly's favorite guests). One of the most constant features of these hate fests is the singling out of some unprotected, private individual -- a public school teacher here, a university administrator there -- who is dragged before hundreds of thousands of readers (or millions of viewers), accused of committing some grave cultural crime or identified as a subversive and an enemy, and then held out as the daily target of unbridled contempt, a symbol of all that is Evil.

Malkin frequently includes contact information for the identified Enemies, and O'Reilly often shows photographs or video of them on multiple programs. These bullying tactics of intimidation -- whereby people who are often just private individuals and who have no defenses (as opposed to, say, prominent politicians or media figures) are singled out for widespread public rituals of contempt -- have quite foreseeable consequences, chief among them placing those targets in fear of retribution. Publishing the home addresses of such individuals is not some wholly different approach, but is merely the next small and foreseeable step, an obvious outgrowth of the hate sessions on which many leading representatives of the Right now heavily rely.

And it is not only those who engage in the tactics themselves who bear responsibility for the consequences, but also those who offer coldly bureaucratic indifference towards these tactics, or even an implicit defense of them. While numerous right-wing bloggers commented this weekend on the truly inane attacks against the NYT Travel article, none (at least that I read) condemned Horowitz for promoting the campaign to publish the home addresses of editors and reporters of the Times. They had much to say about the Evil that is the NYT, but nothing to say about this extraordinary and despicable campaign perfected by extremist groups on the Right and now promoted by Horowitz and groups such as StopTheACLU, to intimidate and endanger journalists and private individuals by collecting and publishing their home addresses.

Beyond merely failing to condemn these tactics, Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds yesterday deliberately defended them by arguing that they are no different than what the NYT did in its Travel article. Reynolds attacked a post written this weekend by Reason's Dave Weigel, in which Weigel condemned publication of the home address of the NYT photographer. Reynolds -- who pointedly avoided condemning Horowitz and publication of Spiller's home address -- quoted and then attacked Weigel's condemnation as "incoherent":

As so often happens with these things, angry bloggers have struck back and posted the addresses and phone numbers of the Times' photogs. (No link.)

No link? Why not? By Weigel's standards, a link wouldn't contribute to invasion of privacy. Anybody can find that stuff, right?

And if anybody can find that stuff, why's he so upset about publishing office phone numbers of public officials?

In order to avoid criticizing his comrades on the Right who are engaging in thug tactics, Reynolds actually equates discussion of the vacation homes of top government officials (who enjoy the most extensive and high-level security on the planet) with publication of the home addresses of private individuals and journalists (who have no security of any kind). By his reasoning, mentioning that the Vice President has a vacation home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland is no different than publishing the home address of private individuals who are publicly identified as traitors.

And, lo and behold, the Right's tactics of intimidation against private individuals are reduced by the conniving Reynolds into nothing more than a common and innocuous invasion of privacy of which the NYT and many others are also guilty. And with that corrupt equivalency established, Reynolds is able to posts on these matters without condemning the Right's thug tactics, and in fact, implicitly defends them by suggesting that they are rather innocuous and common and nothing to get excited about.

And revealingly, in choosing which villains to criticize from this weekend's treason accusations against the NYT and the thug tactics they inspired, Reynolds chooses Weigel for attack. But he has nothing to say about Horowitz and company for their newly announced campaign "to begin finding and publicly listing the addresses of all New York Times reporters and editors."

As people like Horowitz, Malkin and Reynolds well know -- and just as my most extremist former White Supremacist clients well knew -- if you throw burning matches at gasoline enough times, an explosion is inevitable. The rhetoric of treason -- accusing individuals and organizations of aiding and abetting our nation's enemies and even waging war on this country -- is a lit match. After all, the widely accepted penalty for traitors is execution, which is why it is such an inflammatory yet increasingly common accusation being hurled by the Right against their domestic "enemies" (for precisely the same reason, the favorite accusation of the World Church of the Creator was to label someone a "race traitor," since everyone knows what should be done with traitors).

Openly speculating about whether journalists and politicians are guilty of treason has become unbelievably common of late. And when those accusations are paired with publication of the traitor's home address, the intended result is both obvious and inevitable. Anyone who endorses those tactics in any way -- or who plays cute, coy games in finding ways to justify or minimize them -- knows exactly what they are doing.

As the Bush movement collapses, it is only to be expected that its more fevered adherents will resort to increasingly extremist rhetoric and tactics, out of frustration and anger, if for no other reason. The penetration of these thug tactics into increasingly mainstream venues on the Right is one of the more glaring, and more disturbing, developments of late.

UPDATE: In response to several comments here, let me be clear that I do not believe that the despicable statements referenced in this post can or should be grounds for criminal or civil liability. For reasons I set forth in comments here, here and here, the First Amendment should bar (and the Supreme Court has held it does bar) the imposition of liability based on the consequences flowing from the expression of protected political speech. The point is that these statements are despicable and dangerous, not illegal. The persons who engage in such tactics, or who defend them, bear the ethical and moral responsibilites -- but not legal liability -- for what they spawn.

posted by Glenn Greenwald | 6:24 AM