Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 205        Today’s News and Views     Friday, July 21, 2006

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Today's News and Views

Domestic Detainee From 9/11 Released

By Anushka Asthana
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 21, 2006; A09

Benamar Benatta, believed to be the last remaining domestic detainee from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was released yesterday after negotiations involving Canada, the United States and his attorneys ended his captivity at nearly five years.

Benatta crossed the border from the United States to Canada, where he will be allowed to resume the bid for political asylum that resulted in his detention shortly before the terrorist attacks.

The Algerian air force lieutenant spent more than 58 months behind bars even though the FBI formally concluded in November 2001 that he had no connection to terrorism.

He was among more than 1,200 mainly Muslim men who were arrested after the attacks and held under tight security while authorities scoured their backgrounds for links to terrorist groups. It is believed that Benatta was the last to be released, though it is difficult to be certain because of the secrecy that surrounded some of the cases.

"This is the result of an individual being labeled a terrorist and the government treating him as such," Benatta's attorney Catherine Amirfar said yesterday. "He was fully cleared by the FBI of any connection to terrorism . . . but the label stuck, so a man with no previous criminal record was detained for a visa overstay."

Benatta came to the United States in 2000 for military training and then overstayed a six-month visa. He arrived at the Peace Bridge near Buffalo seeking political asylum in Canada on Sept. 5, 2001. Officials there detained him while investigating his claim. Benatta's background -- an Algerian Muslim and an avionics technician without proper immigration papers -- prompted Canada to turn him over to the United States after the terrorist attacks. He was placed in solitary confinement in a New York City jail.

He was initially charged with carrying fraudulent papers until a federal magistrate called those accusations a "sham." Since then, he has been held for overstaying his visa as he waged a multiyear battle for political asylum in the United States or Canada, alleging he would be killed if he were returned to Algeria.

Government officials have been repeatedly criticized about Benatta's treatment. In 2003, federal Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. found that Benatta had been "undeniably deprived of his liberty." Keeping him in prison any longer "would be to join in the charade that had been perpetrated," he wrote.

Despite the findings, Benatta was kept in jail while he made a claim for U.S. asylum that was ultimately refused. At one point, he was offered release on a $25,000 bond but was unable to pay. Later, when his attorneys sought his release on bond, the government declined.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in New York declined to comment, and a press officer for Canadian immigration officials said privacy laws prohibited her from discussing the case.

An order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, issued Tuesday, confirmed that Canada had issued Benatta a temporary resident permit "for the purpose of allowing petitioner to enter into Canada to pursue a claim for refugee status in that country."

Yesterday, Benatta was questioned in Canada and released. Canadian officials have essentially agreed to turn the clock back to Sept. 5, 2001. His attorneys contend that it was unlawful for Canadian officials to hand Benatta over to the United States, and they say this week's action is an acknowledgment that mistakes were made in 2001.

"Obviously, there is enormous relief," said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, who got involved in the case a year ago and has been negotiating with Canadian officials. "But I am extremely bitter that five years of a person's life can be taken away."

Dench said Benatta deserves compensation, but that his first thoughts will be asylum. "There is no guarantee he will be accepted," she said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Nicholas F. Benton

The President’s Personal Demon

In the on-going saga of the Worst President in the History of the United States, two catastrophes of almost equal import in recent days showcased the fanatical, apocalyptic personal world view that informs George W. Bush.

The current deepening crisis in the Middle East and Bush’s veto yesterday of a stem cell bill passed by Congress belie an integrated, if frighteningly insane, internal mental map. It’s one that as maintained by an otherwise dysfunctional street corner bum with a bullhorn and sandwich sign proclaiming the imminent end of the world is relatively harmless. But as it instructs the most powerful leader in the world, it’s truly scary. People had better start to look at this more seriously.

First of all, with regard to the Middle East, no one is more responsible for the escalating violence in Lebanon and Israel than Bush. Contrary to decades of U.S. diplomacy dating almost from the establishment of the State of Israel after World War II, this administration has practiced five years of stubborn, malicious neglect.

Now, as thousands of innocent civilians on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border are being killed, maimed, uprooted and rendered homeless, the Bush administration continues to sit on its hands, refuses to step in and insist on a cease-fire, and while standing on the sidelines, cheers on one side against the other.

What we are witnessing is not passive disregard by the Bush administration. It is the exercise of a kind of “passive aggression” that advances a vicious and dangerous agenda. This is another step in the Bush Armageddon policy.

There is no viable solution, no viable outcome, to approaching a conflict with the notion of promoting absolute and final victory of one side over the other. Not now, not in the world we live in today. If one’s only eventual solution to a conflict is to have one side blow the other to smithereens, to achieve the complete and total destruction and submission of the other side, then the only way that will be result is by the eventual escalation toward all-out, global conflagration.

This is an unnerving common sense observation of how U.S. foreign policy is now postured. It is not positioned to achieve global concord and mutual cooperation. The opposite is the case. It wants conflict and chaos, and wants it to escalate.

It does not want one side to vanquish the other. It wants escalation for escalation’s sake. At some point, as the mindless violence and destruction swells, a bright light is supposed to show up and descend from the heavens, the righteous raptured up to eternal glory while the rest of humanity is pitted in a thousand-year Armageddon that will end with a mighty cosmic intervention plunging most into the bowels of hell and introducing peace and concord once and for all.

It’s one thing for such smoky visionary images to be the subject of religious contemplation. It’s another for it to be the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.

You think that’s a little extreme, even for President Bush? Then try to square it with the President’s completely fanatical rejection of the tenants of modern science and of the pleas for healing from countless human beings, present and future, that was exercised with his veto of the stem cell legislation yesterday.

If that doesn’t tell you just how nuts this man is, then you are every bit as much in denial as he is.

It is becoming clear that the hidden forces driving the policies of this administration come not in the form of some conspiracy of crafty, self-serving politicians led by Vice President Cheney or Karl Rove. It may be the case that the crowd hunkered around the Washington, D.C., water cooler known as the Project for a New American Century thinks it can ensure that its interests are served by the decisions of President Bush. They may, in turn, represent the powerful, invisible captains of corporate America, its international allied counterparts, and their vested interest in controlling the flow of the globe’s natural resources as they have for generations.

But the secret to George Bush is that, at some point, his door is closed to all these sorts and he sits alone with some very private, very special religious counselor. For Ronald Reagan, this personal Rasputin took the form of wife Nancy’s astrologer: dipping into the supernatural for practical decisions on running the country.

But that astrologer did not have a personal agenda, much less a hard and fast script for how the future will unfold.

Not so for President Bush’s secret friend. This particular demon tells our president exactly what he must do to bring about enough global chaos to present the almighty with his cue. As our president stares into this force’s dark eyes, all thoughts of human tragedy are dismissed. As he looks deeper, he seeks only a sign of that light he so desperately wants to descend.

You can e-mail Nicholas F. Benton here.

The vote in the Senate on Tuesday in favor of federal support for medical research using embryonic stem cells, which have the potential to cure many diseases and disabilities, while short of the two-thirds required to override a veto, was an overwhelming break with Bush, 63 to 37. The administration has struck back with false claims made by Karl Rove (assuming the role of science advisor) that adult stem cells are equivalent to embryonic ones, and with the accusation, made by White House press secretary Tony Snow, that using the thousands of routinely discarded embryos for research would amount to "murder." On Wednesday, Bush declared that the bill "crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it."

One-party congressional rule has been indispensable to Bush's imperial presidency. Its faltering reflects Republican panic in anticipation of the midterm elections, the disintegration of Bush's authority and of his concept of a radical presidency. As the consequences of Bush's rule bear down on the Republicans, the right demands that he recommit to the radicalism that has entangled him in one fiasco after another. Bush's latest crisis is also a crisis of the paranoid style that has been instrumental in sustaining Republican ascendancy.

The first principle underlying the Bush presidency was never more succinctly articulated than at the July 12 hearing called by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Supreme Court had ruled two weeks earlier, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that the administration's detainee policy was in violation of the Geneva Conventions and without a legal basis. Steven Bradbury, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, appeared to defend not only the discredited policy but also the notion that as commander in chief Bush has the authority to make or enforce any law he wants -- the explicit basis of the infamous torture memo of 2002. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Bradbury about the president's bizarre claim that the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision in fact "upheld his position on Guantánamo."

"Was the president right or was he wrong?" asked Leahy. "It's under the law of war--," said Bradbury. Leahy repeated his question: "Was the president right or was he wrong?" Bradbury then delivered his immortal reply: "The president is always right."

Bradbury meant more than that Bush personally is "always right." He had condensed into a phrase the legal theory of presidential infallibility. In his capacity of commander in chief, the president can never be wrong, simply because he is president. Despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan that presidential powers in foreign policy do not override or supplant those that the Constitution assigns to Congress, Bradbury instinctively fell back on the central dogma of the Bush White House. According to the doctrine, the rule of law is just an expression of executive fiat. He can suspend due process of detainees, conduct domestic surveillance without warrants, and decide which laws and which parts of laws he will enforce by appending signing statements to legislation at will. The president becomes an elective monarch who should be above checks and balances.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he reiterated his belief in presidential infallibility. Under questioning, he admitted that Bush himself had denied security clearances to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, thereby thwarting its investigation into whether government lawyers had acted properly in approving and overseeing the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance, ordered by the president to evade the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Never before in its 31-year history has the OPR been denied clearances, much less through the direct intervention of the president. But Gonzales insisted that the president cannot do wrong. "The president of the United States makes decisions about who is ultimately given access," he said. And he is always right. Case closed.

Bush's coverup, legitimate because he says it is, and Gonzales' defense, smug in his certitude, are only the latest wrinkles in his radical presidency. "The president and vice president, it appears," writes John W. Dean, the former counsel to President Nixon, in his new book, "Conservatives Without Conscience," "believe the lesson of Watergate was not to stay within the law, but rather not to get caught. And if you do get caught, claim that the president can do whatever he thinks necessary in the name of national security."

The metastasizing of conservatism under Bush is a problem that has naturally obsessed Dean. His part in the Watergate drama as the witness who stepped forward to describe a "cancer on the presidency" has given him an unparalleled insight into the roots of the current presidency's pathology. He recalls the words of Charles Colson, Nixon's counselor and overseer of dirty tricks: "I would do anything the president of the United States would ask me to do, period." This vow of unthinking obedience is a doctrinal forerunner of Bush's notion of presidential infallibility.

Dean, moreover, was close to Barry Goldwater, progenitor of the conservative movement and advocate of limited government. Dean was the high school roommate of Barry Goldwater Jr. and became close to his father. In his retirement, the senator from Arizona, who had been the Republican presidential nominee in 1964, had become increasingly upset at the direction of the Republican Party and the influence of the religious right. He and Dean talked about writing a book about the perverse evolution away from conservatism as he believed in it, but his illness and death prevented him from the task. Now, Dean has published "Conservatives Without Conscience," whose title is a riff on Goldwater's creedal "Conscience of a Conservative," and intended as an homage.

Conservatism, as Dean sees it, has been transformed into authoritarianism. In his book, he revives an analysis of the social psychology of the right that its ideologues spent decades trying to deflect and discourage. In 1950, Theodor Adorno and a team of social scientists published "The Authoritarian Personality," exploring the psychological underpinnings of those attracted to Nazi, fascist and right-wing movements. In the immediate aftermath of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's rise and fall, the leading American sociologists and historians of the time -- Daniel Bell, David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, Richard Hofstadter, Seymour Martin Lipset and others -- contributed in 1955 to "The New American Right," examining the status anxieties of reactionary populism. The 1964 Goldwater campaign provided grist for historian Hofstadter to offer his memorable description of the "paranoid style" of the "pseudo-conservative revolt."

While Dean honors Goldwater, he picks up where Hofstadter left off. "During the past half century," he writes, "our understanding of authoritarianism has been significantly refined and advanced." In particular, he cites the work of Bob Altemeyer, a social psychologist at the University of Manitoba, whose studies have plumbed the depths of those he calls "right-wing authoritarians." They are submissive toward authority, fundamentalist in orientation, dogmatic, socially isolated and insular, fearful of people different from themselves, hostile to minorities, uncritical toward dominating authority figures, prone to a constant sense of besiegement and panic, and punitive and self-righteous. Altemeyer estimates that between 20 and 25 percent of Americans might be categorized as right-wing authoritarians.

According to Dean's assessment, "Nixon, for all his faults, had more of a conscience than Bush and Cheney ... Our government has become largely authoritarian ... run by an array of authoritarian personalities," who flourish "because the growth of contemporary conservatism has generated countless millions of authoritarian followers, people who will not question such actions."

But it is Bush's own actions that have produced a political crisis for Republican one-party rule. In their campaign to retain Congress, Republicans are staking their chips on the fear generated by the war on terror and the culture war, doubling and tripling their bets on the paranoid style. To that end, House Republicans have unveiled what they call the "American Values Agenda." Despite the defeat of key parts of the program -- constitutional amendments against gay marriage and flag burning -- and the congressional approval of embryonic stem cell research, the Republicans hope that these expected setbacks will only inflame the conservative base. Their strategy is to remind their followers that enemies surround them and that the president is always right.

-- By Sidney Blumenthal

Copyright ©2006 Salon Media Group, Inc.

The next piece from Limbaugh's montage was Mitchell's July 17 statement on NBC's Nightly News that "Hezbollah's charismatic leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has become Lebanon's best known and most controversial politician. Nasrallah provides social services." But Mitchell's statement was a lead-in to a comment by Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, who said of Hezbollah, in a comment that Limbaugh did not air: "It has developed a terrorist cadre, an international terrorist infrastructure and a powerful militia with weapons and capabilities provided by Iran and Syria."

Limbaugh's third piece of purported evidence was a report by O'Brien on the July 18 edition of CNN's American Morning, in which O'Brien interviewed Trofimov for background information on Hezbollah. Limbaugh accused Trofimov of "describing the greatness and the kindnesses engaged in by Hezbollah" when Trofimov stated that "Hezbollah doesn't just fight, but it also runs a construction branch." But in addition to noting "another dimension" of Hezbollah -- that the group provides social services to people in Lebanon -- O'Brien noted that Hezbollah is "made up of Lebanese Shiites with the stated goal of destroying Israel. The U.S. and Israel call Hezbollah a terror group." Trofimov later said that "Hezbollah's main reason, its only reason [for existing], is resistance, and once they secure south Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said Jerusalem is next."

From the July 18 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: There's also an effort under way to humanize Hezbollah, which is not surprising. Bush is the real enemy. You know, if it weren't so serious, it would be comical. The drive-by media -- let's go to audio sound bite number one -- the drive-by media doing everything to humanize Hezbollah. They run social welfare programs in Lebanon, midnight basketball plans for the poor, and they're socially active. It sort of reminds me of when Senator Patty Murray from Washington, after 9-11, talked about Osama bin Laden and about how the reason he had so much support from people was he built them roads and he built them schools and stuff. People were pulling their hair out. We have a little montage from John King at CNN, Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, and Miles O'Brien from CNN, and Yaroslav Trofimov, wherever he's from -- or her, whatever, she's from -- describing the greatness and the kindnesses engaged in by Hezbollah.

KING [audio clip]: Hezbollah is a significant political force in Lebanon, holding seats in parliament and running cabinet ministries and building public support by running social welfare programs.

MITCHELL [audio clip]: Hezbollah's charismatic leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has become Lebanon's best known and most controversial politician. Nasrallah provides social services.

O'BRIEN [audio clip]: We see the militant side of Hezbollah, but Hezbollah derives support from its civilian component, its ability to deliver services.

TROFIMOV [audio clip]: Hezbollah doesn't just fight, but it also runs a construction branch, which is called the Construction Jihad, which builds houses for its members --

LIMBAUGH: Hold it! Hold it! Stop the tape! Construction Jihad? Do you know what a jihad is? Jihad is a holy war. Construction Jihad. All right, resume tape.

TROFIMOV [audio clip]: -- runs a social service for the veterans, for the wounded in these battles, with a match-making branch. It finds wives, for example, for these veterans who marry them out of a sense of jihad, without even meeting them first.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: I know how this PR works, and it's amazing. The media, if they want to -- drive-by media will fall for the slickest PR campaign, depending on who puts it out. And it's clear that there's an effort now to humanize and to soften the image of a bunch of terrorists. Hezbollah -- do you know how long they have been around? They are terrorists! These are the clowns that blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut. These are the clowns that participated in the Khobar Towers bombing. These clowns are -- have been terrorists for a long time. But all of a sudden, now that they're engaged with a U.S. ally, why, they're just poor little wife-finders, construction workers, doctors and nurses, water sanitation experts, schoolteachers. It never gets easy, doing the right thing, and being the big guy is never an easy thing, particularly when so many of the members of your club resent you, and I would say that that represents the drive-by media.

[...]

CALLER: No, I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but I wanted to go back to my point. When I was watching today, they spent about 10 seconds talking about Hezbollah doing the social services, and that was just explaining how Hezbollah has infiltrated the Lebanon's government and how -- what they are doing. The left is in no way trying to say that they weren't a murderous terrorist group. I mean, I just think you're totally blowing it out of proportion. They are terrorists and they need to be stopped. But that was not the left's point of trying to humanize them and sympathize with them at all.

LIMBAUGH: Well, I think it is, and I think it's part of a pattern. It's not just Hezbollah. Bin Laden has been praised for some of the great social work he has done, and they do this -- you can't take the context out of it, [caller].

[...]

LIMBAUGH: If you look at the coverage -- and this is something, [caller], you cannot take out of the equation, it's part of the context -- you look at the way the United States drive-by media treats its own members in the U.S. military, its own citizens, and the prison guards and so forth and the president, you compare it with that montage that I just played for you about Hassan Nasrallah and how wonderful he is and what great social services this terrorist group operates; I guarantee you, if you landed here from Mars and you watched the drive-by coverage of U.S. military personnel in Iraq versus the coverage of Hezbollah in the last couple of days, you would conclude Hezbollah is the good guys, according to the drive-by media. Don't forget, Reuters doesn't even allow terrorists to be called terrorists in their news stories.

From the July 17 edition of CNN Live Today:

KING: Beirut, 1983, the suicide bombings that killed more than 200 Marines. Perhaps the first time most Americans became familiar with the work of Hezbollah.

McLAUGHLIN: Hezbollah is often called the A team in the terrorist world. Prior to September 11, they had killed more Americans than any other terrorist group in the world.

KING: "Hezbollah" means "Party of God," and the radical Shiite group wants to eliminate Israel and develop a Muslim fundamentalist state modeled on Iran. Hezbollah is blamed by Israel and others for more than 200 attacks and more than 800 deaths since its founding a quarter-century ago.

McLAUGHLIN: It really is, in many respects, a creature of Iran. Iran gives it a lot of money. It's been estimated at least $100 million a year. It shares Iran's aims strategically.

KING: But it is more than a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is a significant political force in Lebanon, holding seats in parliament and running cabinet ministries and building public support by running social welfare programs.

McLAUGHLIN: About 250,000 of Lebanon's 3.8 million people benefit in some way from the schools, hospitals and other social institutions that Hezbollah sponsors.

KING: It was just a year ago that Syria bowed to international pressure and withdrew its troops from Lebanon, raising hopes at the White House of a democratic example in the troubled region. But Hezbollah has ignored a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding it disarm and effectively controls much of southern Lebanon. So, for the president, it is yet another Middle East setback. Traveling in Europe, Mr. Bush blamed Syria for the escalating tensions in Lebanon and in Gaza.

BUSH: Syria's housing the militant wing of Hamas. Hezbollah has got an active presence in Syria.

KING: But most regional and intelligence experts say the far bigger worry is Iran, who is already accused of stirring the insurgency in Iraq. And now some see Tehran as using Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies to stoke tensions just as the president tries to win support for sanctions against Iran for refusing to curtail its nuclear program.

INDYK: There's a direct connection between Iran and Hezbollah that is very strong and well established, and an interest that Iran has in creating a diversion from its nuclear program.

RICHARD MURRAY (former U.S. ambassador to Syria): I'm concerned by the evidence that that suggests of the Iranian capabilities to push and prod the diplomatic scene throughout the region. I think -- I think it's a nervous time.

KING: Whatever its motivation, the daring capture of two Israeli soldiers reopened southern Lebanon as a military battleground and reasserted Hezbollah's influence on the already volatile Middle East stage. John King, CNN, Washington.

From the July 17 edition of NBC's Nightly News:

MITCHELL: As Hezbollah rockets reach farther into Israel, what is Hezbollah and what is its endgame? Experts say to prove it can damage Israel in ways Arab countries couldn't. Since Syria was forced out of Lebanon a year and a half ago, Hezbollah's charismatic leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has become Lebanon's best-known and most controversial politician. A Shiite populist, Nasrallah provides social services where Lebanon's weak new government cannot, has ministers in the cabinet, and operates militias.

INDYK: It has developed a terrorist cadre, an international terrorist infrastructure, and a powerful militia with weapons and capabilities provided by Iran and Syria.

MITCHELL: What does Iran get out of this fight? It gets a proxy war that damages Israel and tells the world, "Don't get too aggressive in the nuclear showdown."

DANIEL BENJAMIN (terrorism analyst, Center for Strategic and International Studies): I think that's very clearly one of the messages we're getting here: "Don't mess with us, you'll pay a big price."

MITCHELL: Syria also has an endgame: to reassert control through Hezbollah of Lebanon's fledgling democracy. But what does Israel get out of this conflict?

BENJAMIN: They need to show that this cannot stand. Israel simply can't leave its citizens undefended in the face of all these missiles.

MITCHELL: And why has the U.S. given Israel a green light? Experts say since the administration won't deal with Iran or Syria, having Israel fight Hezbollah is the only way to control the terror group and indirectly strike a blow at its chief sponsor, Iran. The risk? Instead of helping Lebanon's government crack down on Hezbollah, Israel's barrage could cause that government to collapse, creating even more danger for Israel. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News at the State Department.

From the July 18 edition of CNN's American Morning:

O'BRIEN: Hezbollah, or the "Party of God," was born during Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon -- excuse me -- 24 years ago. It is made up of Lebanese Shiites with the stated goal of destroying Israel. The U.S. and Israel call Hezbollah a terror group. But like many groups that are branded that way, it also has another dimension. Yaroslav Trofimov spent time with members of Hezbollah and traveled in southern Lebanon for his book Faith at War [Henry Holt, 2005]. He's a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and he joins us now from Rome. Yaroslav, good to have you with us this morning.

TROFIMOV: Glad to be on the program.

O'BRIEN: We see the militant side of Hezbollah, but Hezbollah derives support from its civilian component, its ability to deliver services and act as a de facto government in southern Lebanon. Give us a sense of the breadth and depth of the kind of services they provide there.

TROFIMOV: Well, Hezbollah's goal was not just to combat Israel on the battlefield, but also to create a resistant society, that is to transform the entire Shiite community, both in south Lebanon and in south Beirut and the Bekaa Valley into a pot of support and sustainment for the fighters. So this means Hezbollah doesn't just fight, but it also runs a construction branch, which is the called the Construction Jihad, which builds houses for its members. It runs an agricultural outfit which provides livestock and seeds for the farmers along the border. And it even runs a social service for the veterans, for the wounded in its battles, with a matchmaking branch. It finds wives, for example, for these veterans, who marry them out of a sense of jihad, without even meeting them first.

O'BRIEN: So it really has become, in many respects, a government within a government, and, of course, the Lebanese government apparently does not have the power to reckon with this force, does it?

TROFIMOV: Well, militarily, Hezbollah is the only militia that has been allowed to keep its weapons once the civil war there ended. So the government doesn't have the military muscle, obviously, to take on Hezbollah at this time. On the other hand, socially, the difference between Hezbollah and the other Lebanese parties is that Hezbollah has a direct line to Tehran. It's receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid from Iran, which it then disburses to its communities, something that other communities in Lebanon cannot do.

O'BRIEN: So Hezbollah is very careful to spread the largesse from Iran, and that, of course, ensures that it has devoted followers?

TROFIMOV: Well, absolutely, absolutely. In the areas of south Beirut that are now being bombarded so heavily, which is a virtual Hezbollah stronghold, everything is run by Hezbollah. Even the drinking water is provided to this tower, apartment blocks, by Hezbollah, and if you walk the streets there, these drinking water containers are decorated with the portraits of the Iranian leader, [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, and with the Iranian flags.

O'BRIEN: All right, well, let me ask you this. In spite of all of that, in spite of the fact they have gained political force, and they now have 14 seats in the parliament, could Hezbollah exist without its opposition to Israel? In other words, does it need to be fighting in order to survive?

TROFIMOV: Well, in its present form, absolutely. Hezbollah's main reason, its only reason, is resistance, and once they secure south Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said Jerusalem is next. So once he spoke to the Muslim and the Arab world in his latest speech a couple days ago, he didn't even bother referring or mentioning the existence of the Lebanese government. He spoke of himself as the sword of the entire arm of the Muslim nation. So he sees himself as far more than just a Lebanese faction. And in conditions of peace, obviously, this tremendous stranglehold that Hezbollah exercises over large parts of Lebanon would not exist.

O'BRIEN: Yaroslav Trofimov with The Wall Street Journal, author also of Faith at War, thanks very much for your insights.

TROFIMOV: Great to be here.

— R.D. & B.F.

Posted to the web on Wednesday July 19, 2006 at 7:07 PM EST

© 2006 Media Matters for America.

Article Last Updated: 7/19/2006 04:33 PM

Pentagon cultivating culture of violence against women

By Andrea Lewis

Salt Lake TribuneRecent allegations of sexual abuse by U.S. military personnel should make us wary of the culture of sexist violence that the Pentagon is fostering.
    More than 500 U.S. servicewomen who have been or are stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan or other countries say they have been assaulted by fellow soldiers since 2003, according to the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps victims of violence associated with the military.
    The Defense Department says that reports of sexual assaults involving members of the armed forces rose 40 percent in 2005, and 65 percent in the last two years.
    Sexual harassment of female soldiers is often blatant, and harassment and assault often go hand in hand.
    One recent case involves Army Spc. Suzanne Swift. She is among the estimated 4,400 U.S. troops who have refused to continue serving in Iraq. Swift alleges that three of her superior officers sexually harassed her, and that military officials have ignored her efforts to report the incidents.
    The 22-year-old military policewoman says the sexual harassment from her superior officers began almost immediately after she enlisted. When she asked one sergeant where she should report to duty, she says he responded: "In my bed, naked." Another is alleged to have said, "You want to have sex with me, don't you, Swift?" Swift reported the actions to her equal opportunity officer, but was told that her story wasn't believable and that nothing was going to happen.
    According to Swift, she was then coerced into having a sexual relationship with one of her sergeants - something her mother refers to as a "command rape." The sergeant reportedly tried to sabotage Swift in various ways, and would show up in her room, drunk, in the middle of the night.
    Swift's repeated attempts to report the harassment went nowhere, she says, and while on leave in Eugene, Ore., she made the decision to not return to her unit in Iraq in December.
    She sought psychological counseling and legal representation and went into hiding, but was eventually arrested by military police and returned to her unit. Shockingly, she was placed under the direct supervision of one of the same sergeants she says harassed her.
    Swift, who is thought to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder from her experiences, has been confined to the base at Fort Lewis, Wash., since her arrest in June. She has been transferred to another military police unit.
    Swift's family and supporters are urging the military to immediately implement the recommendations of the Pentagon's 2004 Joint Task Force on Sexual Abuse in the Military, which include providing increased confidentiality and protections for victims, and aggressive training and education for every service member.
    Swift's charges, and similar ones by other servicewomen, are plaguing a military that is facing growing criticism for the rape, murder and mutilation of teenager Abeer Qassim Hamza, allegedly at the hands of a group of U.S. servicemen on March 12.
    Military officials too frequently dismiss accusations of violence against female soldiers or civilians as isolated events, or excuse them with a "boys will be boys" attitude of acceptance.
    Until our leaders take specific actions to change the culture of the military, more female soldiers like Suzanne Swift and more civilians like Abeer Qassim Hamza will pay an intolerable price.
    ---
    Andrea Lewis is co-host of "The Morning Show" on KPFA Radio in Berkeley, Calif. The writer wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.

© Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune.

Ms. Axsmith, a computer security expert with a law degree, posted the message this month, shortly after the Bush administration decided to grant some protections of the Geneva Conventions to suspected terrorists in American custody. She said that her message began, “Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong.”

Ms. Axsmith’s firing was earlier reported on several blogs including Wonkette.com on Thursday, and in Friday’s Washington Post.

“I wanted an in-house discussion,” Ms. Axsmith said in an interview on Thursday in her home in Washington. “Something where I would be educating people on the background of the Geneva Conventions.”

Instead, Ms. Axsmith was fired by her employer, B.A.E. Systems, which has an information technology contract with the C.I.A.

Ms. Axsmith said C.I.A. officials had confronted her and told her that the agency’s senior leadership was angry about the blog, which was housed on Intelink, the classified server maintained by the American intelligence community to aid communication among its employees.

Besides losing her job, Ms. Axsmith also lost her top-secret security clearance, which she had held since 1993 and used for previous work for the State Department and National Counterterrorism Center.

She said she feared that her career in the intelligence world was over. “It was like I was wiped out,” she said.

A spokesman for B.A.E. Systems, Bob Hastings, said privacy issues prohibited him from commenting on Ms. Axsmith’s firing. But Mr. Hastings said that company policy prohibited employees from using computers for non-official purposes.

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said that the blogs were intended to “encourage collaboration” on business issues but that postings “should relate directly to the official business of the author and readers of the Web site.”

The C.I.A. denies that it uses torture to extract information from prisoners, although a 2004 report by the agency’s inspector general concluded that some of its interrogation practices appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

In waterboarding, the interrogation technique that Ms. Axsmith criticized, a prisoner is strapped to a board and then made to feel as if he is drowning.

In March 2005, Porter J. Goss, who was then the C.I.A. director, described waterboarding as a “professional interrogation technique”; American military pilots and commandos are known to have been subjected to it during highly classified training regimes designed to prepare them to live in captivity.

The use of the practice, along with the agency’s detention of approximately three dozen “high value detainees” in secret jails, has made some C.I.A. employees uneasy and has prompted a debate within the intelligence community.

Ms. Axsmith said she believed that the “vast majority” of people working for the C.I.A. were opposed to torture.

And, she said that she believed that the classified blogs could be a critical tool to allow C.I.A. employees — who are often prohibited from discussing their work even with other agency officials — to vent frustrations.

“The blogs are a safety valve for people to discuss controversial topics,” she said. “It reduces the chances that people may leak to the press.”

In April, the C.I.A. fired Mary O. McCarthy, a longtime employee, for having unauthorized contacts with the news media.

Though stripped of her security clearance, Ms. Axsmith still maintains her public, unclassified blog: econo-girl.blogspot.com. On that Web site on Friday, there were several messages supporting her, including postings from anonymous intelligence officials who said that they would miss her “Covert Communications” blog.

Ms. Axsmith acknowledges that the posting that got her fired was deliberately provocative, and she said that if she had another chance she might have toned down the language.

“I guess I’m just too much of a big mouth for that organization,” she said.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

July 20, 2006 at 13:19:31

How American conservatives became dangerous radicals

by Len Hart

According to John Dean in his new book Conservatives Without Conscience, Ric Santorum said: "Conservatism is common sense; liberalism is ideology". Therein lies the crux of the problem. Conservatives cannot think clearly about themselves, let alone "liberals" whom they've irrationally demonized over a period of some 30 to 40 yeas. Santorum is most certainly not the first self-confessed "conservative" to get it wrong; he is, however, among a radical elite who often get it 180 degrees the wrong way 'round.

Historically, conservatives have always criticized "liberals" from their ideological biases, primarily religious and economic. Liberals were too pragmatic, they said, and were lacking ethics based upon religious conviction. It's a fair question: when did those godless pragmatists suddenly become ideologues? My cynical response is: godless pragmatists and empiricists suddenly become ideological when Santorum's focus group told him that ideological was a better word with which to tar his opponents. Certainly the term liberal is by now a golden-oldie epithet so overused as to be a self-inoculating cliche. It doesn't even seem to be working for Rush Limbaugh who has a worse problem than drugs. Ratings!

The radical right is running out of red flag words. Liberal was so worn out that Ann Coulter had to call her book Slander and then: Treason! Now she's reduced to attacking the widows of 911 victims. What's next? Either it is true that Rush and Ann have not gotten that memo or it is true that you can't teach old dogs new tricks. It'll be interesting to see what the focus groups come up with. Easy livings depend upon something good ...or should I say evil?

Dean also quotes former Reagan aide, Michael Deaver who wrote of conservatives that they favor:

...limited government, individual liberty, and the prospect of a strong America. -Michael Deaver, as quoted by John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience

If conservatives are claiming now to be empirical and pragmatic, how is Deaver's comment to be taken seriously? Verifiable facts disprove Deaver's thesis. Let's take Deaver's three points in turn.

• Conservatives believe in limited Government.

Oh Really? Let's start with Ronald Reagan, whom conservatives have all but deified. Reagan tripled the national debt and ran up historically high deficits. Despite a respite in the 90's the bad old days are back under Bush, a fact not lost on some fiscal conservatives:

From 2000-2003, Washington had a rare opportunity to save the average household nearly $2,500 in taxes without reducing any federal services. After 50 years of steady increases, interest payments on the national debt declined by $247 billion from 2000 to 2003, thanks to the balanced budgets of the 1990s. Like the post-Cold War "peace dividend," Congress and the president got a once-in-a-lifetime "interest dividend" of $247 billion.

And they squandered every penny.

-Capitol Magazine, Washington's $782 Billion Spending Spree

That was published in 2002. It's only gotten worse since then.

Conservatives would also have us believe that it's liberal entitlements that account for the sorry state of the US budget. That's not so either. From the same conservative source:

Others finger big-ticket entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, claiming that they're growing uncontrollably. However, these program's budgets haven't grown any faster over the last four years than they did over the past two decades.

-Capitol Magazine, Washington's $782 Billion Spending Spree

James Carville charged that Ronald Reagan significantly increased the Federal Bureaucracy in We're Right, They're Wrong; typically and unfortunately, however, Carville will be summarily dismissed by partisan Republicans and especially when he's absolutely correct and on target. He's both on this point. I have other sources for that information:

When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the popular belief was that the size of government would be cut and that some of the regulatory excesses of the prior decade would be rolled back. However, the growth of the federal government continued throughout the Reagan presidency and no agencies were phased out.

-Regulation and the Reagan Era: Politics, Bureaucracy and the Public Interest, Roger E. Meiners, Bruce Yandle (Editors)

In fact, Reagan increased the federal bureaucracy by 68,000 workers even as he very nearly tripled the national debt.

Reagan's legacy is clear in the budget deficit neighborhood. He entered the White House in January 1981-after winning the presidency by campaigning that tax cuts and massive increases in defense spending could co-exists with a balanced budget. The budget deficit was $74 billion when he entered the White House; it grew to $231 billion in Reagan's final year. The trade deficit was even worse, nearing $200 billion per year when Reagan left office. The national debt rose to $2 trillion.

-Michael Fauntroy, Reconsidering Reagan

These are facts that Republicans will deny to this day.

• Conservatives believe in individual liberty

Is that so? Not if they support George W. Bush. Nowhere has Bush attacked the separation of powers more strenuously than with his so-called unitary executive concept. At stake are regulatory agencies, independent since the Great Depression. Control has been shared between President and Congress. Bush would tip the balance of power by putting the agencies under his sole control and authority.

Elsewhere, Bush strikes at the very heart of individual liberties: the Bill of Rights. Many people seem to be unconcerned about their phone calls and their bank records, objects of Bush's program of widespread domestic surveillance. But, alas, it's not about bank records; it's not about phone calls. It's about probable cause -two words that stand between us and tyranny.

• Conservatives are stronger on national defense

Are they really? In fact, terrorism increased during Reagan's administration. We were less safe and even less safe now under Bush! During a period some two years in which Ronald Reagan waged a so-called "war on terrorism", terrorist attacks against the United States very nearly tripled. [Source: Total Acts of Terrorism in the U.S. 1980-98, America's Response to Terrorism, The Brookings Institute (Based on FBI Statistics)]

Typically, Reagan announced his "War on Terrorism" to a meeting of evangelicals on March 8, 1983. Reagan warned terrorists: "You can run but you can't hide"! A statistical analysis would seem to indicate that Reagan's War on Terrorism was as much a cause as a cure for terrorism. There are two possible explanations. One, Reagan's war -not well thought out -was simply impotent and ineffective. It may even have been counter-productive, a rallying cry to legitimate critics of US imperialism as well as terrorists.
Or -the raison d'etre may have been to rally a disparate GOP base. Typically, wars are easily exploited to stir feelings of patriotism and false pride.

Just as Reagan's war made Americans less safe, Bush's war is increasingly perceived as making the world a more dangerous place. According to Pew, American skepticism about the war in Iraq has increased steadily from its inception; it is increasingly seen as harming the "war on terrorism".

A plurality (47%) believes that the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism, up from 41% in February of this year. Further, a plurality (45%) now says that the war in Iraq has increased the chances of terrorist attacks at home, up from 36% in October 2004, while fewer say that the war in Iraq has lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in the U.S. (22% now and 32% in October). Another three-in-ten believe that the war in Iraq has no effect on the chances of a terrorist attack in the U.S.

-Pew Research Center, Iraq Hurting War on Terror

The level of vituperative rhetoric has dangerously divided and radicalized the right wing. John Dean, whose book I have previously referenced, still thinks himself a Barry Goldwater conservative though he has been among George Bush's most vocal critics. That he looks like a liberal now, he says, is only a measure of how far right the right has become. In fact, many so-called "conservatives" who support Bush are not conservative at all by Deaver's definition. They favor big and intrusive government; many, like Dick Cheney, believe deficits no longer matter; and, others -neocons in particular -openly pine for another Pearl Harbor that might be exploited for political purposes. [See: Project for a New American Century] Radical authoritarians, they have little in common with "conservatives".

Barry Goldwater may have been the last conservative. Indeed, he may have been the first -a short-lived movement of one. Certainly, contemporary conservatives have little in common with anyone who would tell John Dean that the conscience of a conservative was pricked by "any action or anything that debases human dignity". Dean asked: "Doesn't poverty debase human dignity?" Of course it does," Goldwater replied. He went on to tell Dean that if the family, friends, and private charities cannot handle the job, then the government must.

It sounds like FDR.

That Goldwater and Eisenhower would be called liberal today reveals the polarization that has taken place in this country. A radicalized right wing is a cancer upon the body politic; its roots are found in the left overs of Nixon's utterly failed administration. This is something about which Dean can write authoritatively. It was Dean, after all, who warned a President of a cancer on the Presidency.

Tragically - our enemy within takes the form of an increasingly authoritarian right wing which exemplifies what Sartre called mauvaise foi -bad faith! I've rarely believed what conservatives say about liberals, but even less of what they say about themselves. It is not unusual for a politician to lie to others. Conservative lies to themselves, however, are especially pernicious and destructive. Another word is delusion; delusion is a symptom of psychosis.

Sadly, many conservatives do not see themselves as subversives even as they support Bush assaults on the Constitution. The biggest lie yet told is that Bush took us to war to bring Democracy to Iraq. Perhaps, then, when he has done so, we should all move to Iraq so that we might enjoy the blessings of Democracy. We've all but lost them here at home. It was Jay Leno, as I recall, who asked: Why don't we let Iraq have our Constitution. We don't have any use for it anymore!

Thom Friedman recently asked: What does being right have to do with anything? Let him go to Iraq where he will learn what being dead wrong and lying about it has to do with everything!

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/

Len Hart is a Houston based film/video producer specializing in shorts and full-length documentaries. He is a former major market and network correspondent; credits include CBS, ABC-TV and UPI. He maintains the progressive blog: The Existentialist Cowboy

Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2006

Joke may be on us in these tough times

Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist based in Austin, Texas: Creators Syndicate
Published July 21, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas -- Never let it be said our president does not provide laughs, even as we wobble on the rim of war in the Middle East.

Look what a good time Vladimir Putin had with him. Bush, responding to questions from the international press corps on his conversation with Putin during the Group of 8 summit, said, "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq, where there is a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country, you know, would hope that Russia would do the same thing."

Putin, with a fairly straight face, replied, "We certainly would not like to have the same of kind of democracy they have in Iraq, I'll tell you that quite honestly." Don't you hate it when the international press corps laughs at what a stoop Bush is? Bush, who fancies himself something of a fast-reply artist, said, "Just wait." Heh, heh.

Another citizen looking a bit nonplussed at the G8 summit was Tony Blair, listening as Bush, noisily chewing with his mouth open, said, "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop ... I feel like telling [UN General Secretary Kofi Annan] to get on the phone with [Syrian President Bashar Assad] and make something happen [in resolving the Middle East conflict]."

Could he possibly believe that? You could probably suggest unleashing Israel on Syria, except that the Israelis don't seem interested in the program. One, they don't know who would replace President Assad. And two, it could get them stuck there for years --kind of like, oh, you know, that great democracy "what'sitsname."

Meanwhile, the nation needs to take a break from Fox News Channel and get a grip--the 24/7 drumbeat for war is silly.

Back to politics. Providing comic relief these days is Holy Joe Lieberman, Democratic senator from Connecticut, Al Gore's 2000 running mate and the most annoyingly sanctimonious person in politics. Lieberman has more than miffed Connecticut Democrats by backing the war in Iraq and other Bush policies, setting off a big primary fight. Lieberman now threatens to run as an independent if he loses the primary, thus opening the seat to a Republican and further alienating Democrats.

Brother Ralph Reed, alas, tanked in Georgia. Do you think he knows Baptists don't approve of gambling? Meanwhile, in Texas, we're all excited about the possibility of having former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay back on the ballot in his old district. You must admit the Republicans have lost their moral compass since DeLay quit. Now, if we could just have a free press and free religion like Iraq!

E-mail: info@creators.com

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

"We are different from our enemy and we must remain so."

— Elisa Massimino

The United States had complete command of the moral and ethical high ground in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the world was with us.

For some reason, the Bush administration deliberately abandoned those heights to pursue policies that were not just morally questionable, but reprehensible. Administration officials have fought like tigers to retain the right to torture. They have imprisoned people willy-nilly, without regard to whether they had actually committed offenses against the United States. They set up a system of kangaroo courts at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that was such an affront to the idea of justice that it should have sent shudders of shame down the spines of decent Americans.

In fact, most Americans never bothered to notice.

The administration's descent into barbarism hit a speed bump last month when the Supreme Court ruled that the kangaroo courts, otherwise known as military commissions, were an unmitigated outrage. They were patently illegal. They had not been authorized by Congress. They violated the Geneva Conventions. They stomped all over the rights of the defendant.

The inquisitors of the Middle Ages would have smiled knowingly at Guantánamo.

Elisa Massimino is the Washington director of Human Rights First. She testified yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has held hearings as part of the effort by Congress and the White House to come up with a system for trying prisoners at Guantánamo that would replace the outlawed commissions.

"Part of the problem," she told me in an interview, "is that we've got these detainees in custody, and the rhetoric about them for four years now has been so elevated that people want to create a system that will guarantee their conviction. But that's not worthy of this country. That's not how justice is done. That may be how other countries do it, but that's never been how we've done it."

In her testimony, Ms. Massimino discussed some of the requirements of the Supreme Court ruling. Among other things, she said, "We cannot have rules permitting one person or branch of government to be the judge, jury and prosecutor." She said, "Defendants must have the right to be present at trial." She said, "A defendant must have the right to know the evidence being used against him, to respond to it, and to challenge its credibility or authenticity."

Americans are used to taking these sorts of things for granted. How is it possible that the president of the United States could set up a system in which these kinds of fundamental rights were held in complete contempt?

But there's more. The administration was not satisfied with rigging the system against the defendant. As she continued discussing the requirements of the Supreme Court ruling, Ms. Massimino said: "Testimony cannot be compelled. ... This means not only that a person cannot be forced to testify, but also that information or witness statements obtained through torture, cruelty or other coercion cannot be used as evidence."

That rumbling you hear is the sound of the founding fathers spinning in their graves. Incredibly, under the trials originally authorized by President Bush, prosecutors would have been allowed to introduce evidence obtained through torture and other forms of coercion. The Bush administration didn't just leave the moral and ethical high ground. It sped away with great enthusiasm.

What is interesting is the common ground on this issue that is being found by human rights groups and the highest-ranking lawyers of America's armed forces. Testifying last week before the same committee that Ms. Massimino addressed yesterday, top lawyers from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all endorsed proceedings that would give more rights and protections to detainees than the administration had been willing to give.

In her testimony, Ms. Massimino urged the committee to use the existing Uniform Code of Military Justice as the basic system for trying detainees. In his appearance before the committee last week, Brig. Gen. Kevin Sandkuhler, the top lawyer for the Marines, described that code as "the gold standard."

After a while you get the sense that real progress could be made, if only the Bush administration would get out of the way.

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Americans are being whipped into a new war frenzy with simplistic visions of evil villains, much like occurred four years ago before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Just as Saddam Hussein was cast as the monster whose elimination would transform Iraq into a democratic oasis, Hezbollah and its allies in Syria and Iran are presented now as the crux of all evil in the Middle East whose military defeat will bring a new day.

Inside the United States, many of the same politicians and pundits who stampeded the nation into Iraq are back again urging the application of even more violence. While George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers may be leading the herd, influential Democrats – like Hillary Clinton and Alan Dershowitz – are running with this pack, too.

But the ease with which these Middle East hawks tolerate the slaughter of Arabs in Lebanon – as well as in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories – has a flavor of racism that has poisoned U.S. policy as far as many Muslims are concerned and indeed has strengthened popular support for Islamic extremists on the Arab street.

On July 17, New York Sen. Clinton shared the stage in a pro-Israel rally with Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations who has espoused anti-Arab bigotry in the past and now proudly defends Israel’s “disproportionate” violence against Lebanese civilians.

“Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah. Responding to international concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force by bombing Lebanon and killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006]

In other public statements, Gillerman has been even more disdainful of Muslims. At the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington on March 6, Gillerman virtually equated Muslims with terrorists.

“While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim,” Gillerman quipped to the delight of the AIPAC crowd. [Washington Post, March 7, 2006]

Despite Gillerman’s professed