Published on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 by Salon.com

The Joint Post/Obama Defense of the Patriot Act and FISA

by Glenn Greenwald

The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut today produces an extreme piece of government-serving, stenographic "journalism," publishing a dubious administration press release masquerading as a lengthy front-page news article on Obama's approach to Terrorism and civil liberties. The Post depicts Obama as heavily and heroically engaged in disrupting the alleged Najibullah Zazi domestic terrorist plot and -- repeatedly highlighting that success -- claims "the White House has been charting a delicate course as it attempts to turn the page on Bush-era anti-terrorism policies," whereby "the Obama administration is increasingly confident that it has struck a balance between protecting civil liberties, honoring international law and safeguarding the country." Here are all of Kornblut's cited sources for the article -- every last one of them -- in the order she cites them:

Obama aides pointed . . . administration officials said . . . a senior administration official said . . . officials said . . . a senior administration official said . . . senior Obama officials stressed . . . a senior administration official said . . . aides said . . . officials said . . . one senior administration official said. . . . one senior official said. . . . The official said . . . a senior administration official said . . . a senior administration official said . . . administration officials said . . . . a senior official said.

Not a single named person is cited, and there's not a syllable of quoted dissent in any of it. Virtually every sentence in the long article does nothing but praise Obama and depict him as stalwartly safeguarding America's civil liberties (unlike Bush did) even as he protects us from the dangerous Terrorists, so why is anonymity needed for that? It's nothing more than what Robert Gibbs is eager to say every day. Nor is there a hint of who these officials are, what the basis is of their knowledge, or why The Post granted anonymity, all of which are flagrant violations of the Post's own so-called "anonymity rules," which its own Ombudsman -- just six weeks -- complained were "routinely ignored":

The Post has strict rules on the use of anonymous sources. . . . But some of those lofty standards are routinely ignored. . . . News organizations can pay dearly if they're not vigilant about sourcing. At minimum, credibility can suffer. At worst, a damaging journalistic transgression can occur. . . .

But anonymity can be overused and abused. Sources can make false or misleading assertions with impunity. That's why The Post has such stringent rules. . . .

The Post also is inconsistent in how it describes unnamed sources and the reasons they were granted anonymity. Post policies say that readers should be told as much as possible about the quality of a confidential source ("with first-hand knowledge of the case," for instance). They also say "we must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence."

But Post stories often say only that an unnamed source "spoke on condition of anonymity."

The Post's article today violates every one of these rules. It doesn't even claim that these anonymous officials have any knowledge at all -- first-hand or otherwise -- of what actually happened (are they national security officials, press people, political advisers?). The article doesn't even pretend to justify why anonymity was granted (there's not a word about that). One doesn't even have any idea how many anonymous officials are dictating all of this to Kornblut -- one, five, ten? Who knows?

That's because what happened here is obvious: the administration watned to issue a Press Release exploiting the fear surrounding the Zazi case to justify Obama's Bush-copying civil liberties policies (including its current demands for full Bush-era Patriot Act renewal and FISA continuation) while depicting Obama as our careful yet forceful protector. So they dispatched an official (or officials) to dictate the sanctioned administration line to Anne Kornblut. She then unquestioningly wrote it all down (after granting them anonymity) and The Post uncritically published it as a "news article." That's what Washington journalists typically mean by "reporting": we dutifully write down what government officials tell us to say -- while letting them hide behind anonymity -- and then we publish it. This morning's Post article is as egregious as it gets.

* * * * *

But far worse than the Post's indiscriminate use of anonymity and exclusive reliance on government sources spouting the official line are the numerous claims it advances which are, at best, highly dubious. The Post claims Obama is "attempt[ing] to turn the page on Bush-era anti-terrorism policies"; that "Obama discarded the term 'global war on terror,' along with some of its most controversial tools"; and "the Obama administration is increasingly confident that it has struck a balance between protecting civil liberties, honoring international law and safeguarding the country." But this is just plainly false. What has characterized the Obama administration's approach to terrorism and civil liberties, far more than anything else, is a full-scale embrace of the defining Bush/Cheney approach. The only two examples Kornblut cites to justify these claims -- that Obama jettisoned "enhanced interrogation techniques and secret prisons" -- prove little, since the formal authorization for such interrogation techniques was already withdrawn when Obama took office and secret prisons were already empty.

But even granting the significance of those first-week measures, the Obama administration has aggressively defended, justified and embraced the overwhelming bulk of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies -- the exact ones that caused liberals and Democrats to object so vehemently over the last eight years: imprisonment with no trials, maintaining a legal black hole at Bagram, military commissions, renditions, warrantless eavesdropping, claims of state secrets to prevent judicial review of presidential lawbreaking, legal immunity for all but the lowest-level war criminals, abuse-guaranteeing Patriot Act powers, impenetrable walls of secrecy in the national security context. The very idea that Obama has been "attempt[ing] to turn the page on Bush-era anti-terrorism policies" is ludicrous: blatant administration propaganda. Even among huge numbers of Obama-supporting progressives, there has long been a consensus that Obama's Terrorism approach is defined by a full-scale embrace of the Bush/Cheney mentality. Civil liberties groups have been astonished and horrified in equal parts by the Obama record in this area. And even the Right has acknowledged that Obama has followed most of the Bush/Cheney Terrorism polices, as illustrated by Charles Krauthammer's comments earlier this week on Fox:

I will give [Obama] credit for continuing the Bush policy of the rendition and detention without trial.

Rendition is handing over a bad guy that you capture abroad over to another country, which was denounced by the left in the Bush years as inhuman. And detention without trial, of course, was attacked by the Democratic left as a rape of the constitution.

So I'm glad Obama is continuing the inhumanity and the constitutional rape of the Bush administration. It shows a certain broadmindedness.

Beyond specific policies, even the arguments made to justify these claims are redolent of the Bush/Cheney approach. With unrecognized irony, The Post article notes that "the White House says it avoided trumpeting either the elevated threat level or the averted [Zazi] crisis." Really? What do you think this whole article is? It's nothing but Obama officials anonymously beating their chest over "the averted crisis" -- just as was true for previous leaks from "officials" claiming the Zazi plot was "the most significant since 9/11." Worse, in this very article, Obama officials are doing exactly what Bush officials spent years doing -- exploiting Terrorist plots and the fears they generate to justify the powers they demand. And they're using the same convoluted, manipulative logic to accomplish that.

Reining in the excesses of the Patriot Act (and, relatedly, of the 2008 FISA law) has long been a top agenda item for civil liberties groups -- and, at least so they claimed, for Democrats generally. In fact, when Obama voted for it last year in the middle of the campaign, he emphatically vowed that he would "fix" the problems with the FISA bill. But right as these reforms are finally being considered, the administration seizes on the Zazi case to insist that no such changes should be made:

At the same time, the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest. . . .

"The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States," a senior administration official said. "It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates."

So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that. And notably, that's exactly the same fear-mongering tactic just used by Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey on the Wall St. Journal Op-Ed page to demand there be no changes to the Patriot Act and FISA:

One would think that the arrests last week of Najibullah Zazi, charged with plotting to bomb New York City subways—and of two others charged with planning to blow up buildings in Dallas, Texas, and Springfield, Ill.—would generate support for the intelligence-gathering tools that protect this country from Muslim fanatics. . . .Nevertheless, there is a rear-guard action in Congress to make it more difficult to gather, use and protect intelligence -- the only weapon that can prevent an attack rather than simply punish one after the fact. . . . Those who indulge paranoid fantasies of government investigators snooping on the books they take out of the library, and who would roll back current authorities in the name of protecting civil liberties, should consider what legislation will be proposed and passed if the next Najibullah Zazi is not detected.

It's the Dick Cheney fear-mongering mantra exactly -- give us the unchecked power we demand unless you want to be killed by Najibullah Zazi -- and it's coming in equal measure from former Bush officials, Senate Democrats like Diane Feinstein, and anonymous Obama officials.

* * * * *

All of that, in turn, is justified by the core Bush/Cheney fallacy: if we have Power X and then prevent a Terrorist attack, it proves Power X is justified. Over and over, that's the formula used by Bush followers to justify everything they did (we tortured/illegally eavesdropped/rendered/detained without trial and used it to stop Terrorist attacks; that proves those powers are necessary). This is exactly the argument anonymous Obama officials are making here: we used Patriot Act and FISA powers to disrupt the Zazi plot, so that proves we need those powers in undiluted form to Stay Safe.

But the central fallacy of the Bush/Cheney claim was always obvious: the fact that certain information was obtained using illegal warrantless eavesdropping doesn't prove it wouldn't have been obtained using legal eavesdropping with a FISA warrant. The same is true for information obtained through torture or trial-free detentions. It was just pure fear-mongering of the most illogical form: if we had Power A and Good Event B then occurred, that proves Power A caused Event B.

That's exactly how Obama officials are exploiting the Zazi case to justify full-scale Patriot Act renewal and FISA preservation. Nobody is advocating that the surveillance and investigative tools authorized by the Patriot Act and FISA be abolished. The argument is that the only way to prevent the long history of serious abuse is to impose more stringent requirements of proof before the government can subject someone to those invasive powers. The Zazi case is an argument against such reforms only if there's some plausible claim that the reforms would have impeded disruption of the Terrorist plot. Without such a claim, citing the Zazi case in opposition to reforms is just unadulterated fear-mongering.

As Marcy Wheeler documents, there is no plausible argument that the Patriot Act and FISA reforms sought by civil libertarians would have impeded the Zazi investigation at all, since the Government had evidence from that start that Zazi was tied to Al-Qaeda and involved in an active terrorist plot, and it used that evidence to obtain court approval. If anything, the well-executed, apparently law-abiding Zazi investigation proves that these surveillance reforms are perfectly consistent with -- not impediments to -- effective Terrorism investigations. Yet here we have the Obama administration anonymously reciting the standard Cheneyite justification for these powers (we stopped a scary Terrorist attack and that proves we need them), and the Post just recites it all uncritically.

* * * * *

What we have here is as obvious as it is familar: just two weeks after "adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies," and in the midst of efforts to fight off limitations on its Patriot Act and FISA powers, the administration dispatches officials to dictate to The Post a picture of the President as a crusading protector against Terrorism and a careful preserver of civil liberties. They exploit fears over a recent Terrorist plot to justify the continuation of these powers (while praising themselves for refraining from doing exactly that). And it's all done anonymously to cast the appearance that we're getting a valuable (though unauthorized) investigative glimpse into super-secret, high-level, dramatic Terrorism deliberations at the highest levels of government. All that's missing is Bob Woodward (though the new one is now clearly on the way).

So, to summarize: why can't we reform the Patriot Act and FISA as Democrats long insisted they would if and when they had power? Because of this:

That doesn't exactly feel like "attempting to turn a page" on the Bush/Cheney approach.

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.

"So Let Us Begin Again"

"So Let Us Begin Again"

Friday 02 October 2009

Bush is out and Obama is in and change has come, and you've probably read or heard this enough times already, so let's move on, because reality must sadly intrude, because change has not in fact come, not really, not nearly enough. We won some elections, and that's great, but the truth of the matter is that we have not won anything, not one thing, except the chance to move that ball down the field.

William Rivers Pitt delivered the keynote address at the Jefferson County Democrats 35th Annual Eleanor Roosevelt Awards Dinner in Colorado on September 19, 2009. Below is a transcript of those remarks.

I got stuck this past week trying to prepare my remarks for this event. I couldn't remember the year I was last here. I remember it was wintertime, because the car I was in got pelted with gravel - I guess the sand and salt craze hasn't caught on here yet. I had to call Mary Patee and ask her to jog my memory: when was the last time I was in Denver? Was it 2003 or 2004? I felt pretty stupid having to ask, but I really couldn't remember. Those years are all kind of a blur for me now. Is that true for anyone else? Good, I'm not alone on this.

It was 2003 when I was last here, as Mary was kind enough to remind me. I went digging through my files to look over some of the things I had written back then. It was not, as you can imagine, a cheerful exercise. People talk about nostalgia and walking down memory lane like they are good things, and plenty of times they are. Sometimes, however, history has teeth, and if you enter into its lair, you're very likely to get bitten.

The last time I was here, I was busy writing stuff like this:

Saddam Hussein, former employee of the American federal government, was captured near a farmhouse in Tikrit in a raid performed by other employees of the American federal government. That sounds pretty deranged, right? Perhaps, but it is also accurate. The unifying thread binding together everyone assembled at that Tikrit farmhouse is the simple fact that all of them - the soldiers as well as Hussein - have received pay from the United States for services rendered. It is no small irony that Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad, the monster under your bed lo these last twelve years, was paid probably ten thousand times more during his time as an American employee than the soldiers who caught him on Saturday night. The boys in the Reagan White House were generous with your tax dollars, and Hussein was a recipient of their largesse for the better part of a decade.

That was six long years ago. Still kind of hard to believe. Even now, eight months into a new presidential administration, this brave new \world, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around everything that happened. The last year of the George W. Bush administration left me paralyzed as a writer, because everything I had to write about was everything I'd already written about a thousand times already. I couldn't do it. It was just too much.

Here's how much I despised George W. Bush, everything he stood for, and everything he did: after the Democratic primaries were over, the GOP threw a bag over George, taped his mouth shut, and threw him into a basement somewhere, to try and keep him from screwing McCain's chances (turns out McCain didn't need any help on that score ... Palin? Really? I mean, thanks, John, that pick made things a whole lot easier in November, but ... really?). June, July and August went by with my television free from the sound of George's grating, dimwitted, nookyalurr voice.

And then the market meltdown kicked into high gear, the economy ate itself, the next Great Depression was upon us ... and dammit dammit dammit, George was back on my television again. Hearing him talk again after that glorious three-month respite was, weirdly enough, the worst part of that whole financial calamity for me. I got screwed along with everyone else, and I'm terrified of how this is all going to shake out, but hearing him blather again after a nice summer off was the last, cruelest twist of the knife ... but I still couldn't write about it. I finally kicked myself out of my funk the only way I knew how: I wrote George W. Bush a love letter.

In it, I tried to explain to him, and to myself, why it is my stomach turns - even to this day - into an iron ball of rage, fear, disgust and loathing at the mere mention of his name. With that letter, I was able to put some kind of a frame around the hideous mess of memory that I still haven't gotten completely straight. Here's a bit of what I wrote to him:

It's funny. I was thinking the other day about when I marched in one of the first large-scale post-inauguration protests against you in Washington, DC. It was May of 2001, it was The Voter's Rights March to Restore Democracy, and it was a few thousand people shouting down the unutterably ruinous Supreme Court decision which unleashed, just as we then feared, everything that has since come to pass. "Not my president!" we bellowed. "Not my president!"
It's funny because that memory seems so very quaint to me now. A stolen election? Pfff. To paraphrase a different president, Americans get scarier stuff than that free with their breakfast cereal nowadays. Thanks to you, governor.My All-Time-Grand-Prize-Bull-Goose-Gold-Medal-Winning list of what you've done, in no particular order, and in my own humble opinion:
Less than a month after those Towers came down, a reporter asked what you thought we should do. "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer," you replied, "by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates." I happened to be watching television and heard you say that live into a camera. The only reason I didn't throw up on myself is because my teeth were clenched too tightly for the vomit to pass my lips. I swallowed hard, grabbed a pen, and wrote down what you said and when you said it. It was October 4, 2001, just after nine in the morning. You'd like people to remember you standing on that pile of rubble in Manhattan, you with the bullhorn and the heroic pose. I, however, will always remember you pitching tax cuts to a devastated nation while a pall of poison smoke still hung in the air over Ground Zero.
A few years later, you wanted hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from other areas of the federal budget and into your war in Iraq. You took more than $70 billion out of the budget used by the Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana, money they needed to fund the repair and maintenance of the New Orleans levee system. Katrina struck not long after you took that money and poured it into the sand, and the levees failed for lack of funded upkeep. Through this, along with your disinterested disinclination to help your own countrymen in their hour of darkest need, you played the very last note for that old, sad, lost American city. Reflected in those actions are the same budgetary priorities that motivated you to turn Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the hospital where I was born, into an abattoir of suffering and neglect for the wounded soldiers you tore apart for a lie.
You let Dick "Crazy-Eyes" Cheney do whatever the hell he wanted to whomever he wanted whenever and wherever he wanted, and be damned to the damned old Constitution anyway. Cheney once said the vice president's office was not part of the same branch of government as the president's office - yes, the VP is not part of the Executive Branch - and he said it with his bare face hanging out the whole time. Why? He didn't want to give any of his official papers over to the National Archives, as mandated by at least two federal laws. Nope, he said, my office is in Congress today, sorry about that, but be sure to come on back after you drop dead. Or words to that effect. That's about one zillionth of a percent of what Cheney did, because you let him pick himself to be your boss.
On July 19, 2006, you vetoed H.R. 810. On June 20, 2007, you vetoed S.5. Both vetoes killed legislation aimed at funding and vastly enhancing the reach and scope of stem cell research in America. The father of someone I know died of bone marrow cancer just after that first veto; he was adopted, no family could be located, so no donor match for a bone marrow transplant could be found. With stem cell therapy, doctors could have taken his own marrow and grown enough healthy, matching marrow to save his life. Two other people I know have diabetes, like millions of Americans. Stem cell research could offer them a cure. The woman I will marry three weeks from today has multiple sclerosis, and stem cell research could very well help her, too. She'd write you a thank-you note for those vetoes, but her right hand doesn't work so well anymore. She's getting better with her left hand, so maybe that note can get written next year.
Also, you defied lawfully issued subpoenas and potentially set a precedent that could shatter the separation of powers. You told the American people Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al-Qaeda connections to 9/11 and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program, even though all of that was a lie. You made a joking video about not being able to find any of it. You outed a deep-cover CIA agent who was running a network designed to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, and you did so because her ambassador husband told the truth about you in the public prints.
You gave away our right to privacy by sending the NSA to spy on us. You turned us all into torturers and butchers in the eyes of the world with your decision to use Abu Ghraib prison the same way Saddam Hussein once did. You tried to appoint Henry Kissinger to lead the investigation into 9/11. You turned the entire Justice Department into a carnival of political hackery. You championed the economic policies and deregulation fantasies that have left the financial stability of millions in ashes. You used the threat of terrorism against your own people in order to give yourself political cover. You killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who did you nor me nor any of us any harm.
You did all this, and so much more.

I would read more of that, but I'm worried I might light the podium on fire. That is our history, and like I said, it has teeth.

But as they say, that was then and this is now. Putting aside any and all grievances you and I may hold regarding the acts and activities of the Obama administration, you have to admit, it is a brighter day. I actually voted for President Obama twice - calm down, once in the primary and once in the general - for a variety of reasons, but none more than this: I don't think Obama can change everything that needs changing.

I don't think any one election or any one president can repair the damage done over the last eight years, not to mention the damage done over the last half-century. I believe Obama has done much good work, and will do much good work in the years to come, but the challenges we face as a nation and planet are so daunting, it is fantasy to believe this president, or any one president, can address everything before us.

"Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards," said German sociologist Max Weber. "It requires passion as well as perspective." My perspective, and the final reason I voted for Obama, is as Mr. Weber said. The process of change takes lifetimes, it is slow, it is grueling, it is excruciating, and it is filled with defeats and setbacks. Especially now, in this degraded age, when only half the country votes, when the vast majority of young adults know all the contestants on "American Idol" but can't name three Supreme Court justices, don't know the name of their representative, don't know the names of their senators, don't know about Vietnam, or the Cold War, or Nixon, or Johnson, or Reagan, don't know history and how it has long, long teeth, don't know those teeth have been sunk into their flesh, and don't have any idea how to do anything about any of it.

People are unbelievably cynical now, as voter turnout statistics can attest to. A lot of people don't believe things can change, so they don't bother trying to try to even dare to imagine it ever could. That's why Obama got my vote: he has that once-in-a-lifetime gift that lets him elevate people, inspire them, fire them up, and make them believe change is possible. Before anything can change, people have to be convinced there is actually hope, that they can make a difference, that a difference can be made.

Obama, to me, is the first step on a very long road. He's not going to fix everything, but he is a good start, the best start I've seen win that office in my life, and even with all the darkness and everything that has gone so horribly wrong, that is a light to absolutely celebrate. He has the power to inspire, to make people believe change is possible, and I am telling you now, no change is possible if people don't believe it can happen ... but all things are possible if people do, and that is what President Obama has the potential to do and to be: the motivating factor that changes doubt to hope. Nothing is possible without that, and everything is possible with it.

Also, and for the record, President Obama has:

Created a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners.

Expanded loan programs for small businesses.

Expanded eligibility for the State Children's Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP).

Expanded funding to train primary care providers and public health practitioners.

Allowed caskets to be photographed when they return from Iraq and Afghanistan to Dover Air Force Base, with family approval.

Granted Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba.

Pushed for enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act, which expands hate crime law to include sexual orientation and other factors.

Increased funding for the NEA.

Funded a major expansion of AmeriCorps.

Banned lobbyist gifts to executive employees.

Invested in all types of alternative energy.

Enacted a tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars.

Provided grants to encourage energy-efficient building codes.

Extended unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspended taxes on these benefits.

Kicked off an explosion of public works repair and construction all across the country with his stimulus bill, which put a whole lot of people back to work and which is changing the face of the nation.

Reversed restrictions on stem cell research.

... and that's just a partial list. Not bad for government work, eh? Not bad, but by orders of magnitude not enough. The number of things that need to be immediately addressed, fixed, changed, altered or done away with entirely is so long, it would take ten times the number of people in this room ten lifetimes each to see them all to completion, and with the risk of utter failure absolutely present every step of the way.

So Bush is out and Obama is in and change has come, and you've probably read or heard this enough times already, so let's move on, because reality must sadly intrude, because change has not in fact come, not really, not nearly enough. We won some elections, and that's great, but the truth of the matter is that we have not won anything, not one thing, except the chance to move that ball down the field.

One matter that remains to be resolved has to do with the survival of the rule of law in America, and the continued applicability of our constitutional form of government. The issue stems from the Bush administration's declared parameters regarding the scope of executive privilege and power. When the scandal surrounding the firing of those United States attorneys erupted some years back, several committees of the House of Representatives decided to investigate the matter. They sent out a number of lawfully drafted and legally produced subpoenas to the White House demanding that Bush administration witnesses, along with any and all relevant documentation, be produced for Congressional hearings looking into how and why the decision to fire these attorneys was reached.

The Bush administration responded to these subpoenas by telling Congress to get bent. They declared everyone and everything requested by the subpoenas to be off-limits due to their definition of executive privilege. In short, and according to Bush's definition of executive powers, not one agency, institution or individual anywhere in America had the power to question or investigate anything done by the White House, ever, period, end of file and thanks very much.

This gets sticky for a couple of reasons. First, of course, is the matter of oversight and separation of powers within the federal government. When one branch of government declares itself above the law and free from meddlesome oversight by other governmental branches, as required by the Constitution, what remains is the absolute annihilation of the rule of law and the end of America's form of government as it has been practiced for the last quarter of a millennium.

This specific issue is all but certain to wind up in the hands of the Supreme Court one of these days. The Congressional committees, whose subpoenas were spurned, decided to hold the White House in contempt, which initiated a legal process whereby the matter of Bush's definition of executive privilege will eventually be decided in the courts ... which brings us to Scary Problem #2.

There is no settled, definitive, black-letter law on the books in America that specifically sets the parameters for the execution of and limitations on executive powers. The United States Constitution contains exactly 15 words in a single sentence explaining the matter, right at the beginning of Article II: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." The Federalist Papers go into far greater detail, but those are documents with no legally binding power, so this one sentence is really all there is.

To be sure, this is not the only gray area left by the founders to be sussed out by future American generations: the right to privacy, the right to bear arms and the right of all citizens to vote were, along with several other issues, not originally settled in the final drafts of our founding documents. Unlike these other issues, however, executive power has never been directly and clearly settled, neither by legislation nor judicial decision, and remains undefined as a matter of law.

The closest we've come was in the 1974 Supreme Court decision in US v. Nixon, which ordered President Richard Nixon to cough up those Watergate tapes after he had refused to do so. While the high court did agree with Nixon's argument that broad executive powers are an absolute necessity for the secure performance of presidential duties, that privilege cannot be deemed absolute.

"To read the Article II powers of the President as providing an absolute privilege as against a subpoena essential to enforcement of criminal statutes on no more than a generalized claim of the public interest in confidentiality of nonmilitary and non-diplomatic discussions," wordily claimed the court in the 1974 decision, "would upset the constitutional balance of 'a workable government' and gravely impair the role of the courts under Article III."

In other words, the Supreme Court decided executive privilege exists, but not completely, and executive powers are broad, but not absolute. Put another way, the court said "Yeah, but also no," and left the issue quite completely unsettled as a matter of law. Therefore, if the case pertaining to those fired US attorneys and Bush's dismissal of those legally-issued subpoenas ever comes up for adjudication by the Supreme Court, their ultimate decision will be binding.

If they rule in favor of Bush's definition of executive privilege, the constitutionally mandated oversight powers, to be executed by separate but equal governmental branches, will be null and void on the spot. That will create an imperial executive branch the likes of which even Cheney couldn't imagine, permanent secrecy, and the end of the rule of law in this country.

So, that's one thing we are going to have to deal with down the road, and never mind the impending departure of more Supreme Court justices, which sets up a whole different conversation about whom to appoint in their place and what those appointments will mean to the future of American law. That's a whole 'nother kettle of crawfish entirely, but one that has everything to do with Senate majorities, filibusters, upcoming midterm elections and so on.

Also, American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are still dying in places like Baghdad and Tikrit, and that whole mess did not resolve itself after Obama's election. Far from it. Afghanistan is even more disturbing, for that matter, because the administration sounds like it is about to make our presence even larger over there, and August was already the deadliest month we've endured over there since the whole thing began eight years ago. The economy is still mostly in shambles, the constitutional abrogation of privacy rights via governmental surveillance programs is ongoing, the environment is still dirty, public schools are still shabby, racism and sexism still hold great sway and even the right of all our citizens simply to marry one another remains very much in the wind, as demonstrated by the passage of California's deplorable Proposition 8.

So, yeah, there's that. And there's more. It does not, in fact, get easier from here.

The challenges before us become even more daunting when you consider the caliber of those arrayed against us. April 9 was a Sunday in 1865, and in the town of Appomattox, Virginia, the sun was shining down on the end of a war. Confederate forces, led by Gen. Robert E. Lee, had finally been brought to bay by Gen. Ulysses Grant after four grueling, blood-sodden years. Lee's surrender at Appomattox was the conclusion of the largest and deadliest armed insurrection in American history.

April 9 was a Thursday in 2009, and there are some lo these 144 years later who would very much like to see another armed insurrection erupt within these United States. The casus belli for today's would-be revolutionaries is not states' rights, slavery or economic independence, but is instead a toxic mix of fundamentalist Christianity, ultra-conservative orthodoxy, a whole lot of gibberish about birth certificates and tea bags and, more than anything else, guns.

The existence of armed and angry insurrectionists in America is nothing new. As Robert Kennedy once observed, "One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time." The militia movement, in one form or another, has been a part of our history literally since the founding of the nation itself, and memories of Waco, Ruby Ridge and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City remain acutely fresh in mind even years later.

Lately, the news has been flooded with reports of citizens arming themselves to the teeth, some of them within proximity of our president, egged on by right-wing media personalities prophesying doom, the rise of socialism, and that a Marxist dictator now sits in the Oval Office. This frenzy has been spilling from talk radio and television out into the streets for months now, and has recently metastasized into acts of outrageous violence. It smells like a new beginning of something this nation has not been forced to endure for nearly a decade.

Last April, a man named Richard Poplawski ambushed and murdered three Pittsburgh police officers and tried to kill nine others. Poplawski's motivations, according to friends and family, centered around his belief in the existence of a vast government conspiracy to destroy American freedoms while establishing a left-wing dictatorship under President Obama. Poplawski came to believe all this after listening to and reading the paranoid rantings of right-wing luminaries like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Last July, a man named Jim Adkisson walked into a Universalist church in Knoxville and began blazing away with a 12-gauge shotgun, killing two people and wounding several others. He had 70 shotgun shells with him, and fully intended to massacre as many people in the church as possible before police killed him, but he was tackled and disarmed by members of the congregation before he could complete his task.

Eric Boehlert, writing for Media Matters on April 7, said, "When investigators went to Adkisson's home in search of a motive, as well as evidence for the pending trial, they found copies of Savage's 'Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder,' 'Let Freedom Ring' by Sean Hannity, and 'The O'Reilly Factor,' by Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. They also came across what was supposed to have been Adkisson's suicide note: a handwritten, four-page manifesto explaining his murderous actions. The one-word answer for his deed? Hate. The three-word answer? He hated liberals."

"The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil," wrote Adkisson, "is kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just Kill yourself. Do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals!"

Describing the Pittsburgh incident, Boehlert wrote, "In the wake of the bloodbath, we learned that Poplawski was something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America. He was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Specifically, Poplawski, as one friend described it, feared 'the Obama gun ban that's on the way' and 'didn't like our rights being infringed upon.' (FYI, there is no Obama gun ban in the works.) The same friend said the shooter feared America was 'going to see the end of our times.'"

"Hysterical warnings of government gun grabs and a socialist takeover of the US are no longer the sole proprietary interest of fringe players like Jones," wrote Max Blumenthal. "In the Obama era, Jones's conspiracy theories have graduated to primetime on Fox News. And radicals like Poplawski are tuning in. Indeed, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the alleged killer posted a YouTube clip to (neo-Nazi web site) Stormfront of top-rated Fox News host Glenn Beck contemplating the existence of FEMA-managed concentration camps allegedly for the detention of conservatives and Christians. Three weeks later, Poplawski posted another YouTube clip to Stormfront, this time of a video blogger advocating 'Tea Parties,' or grassroots conservative protests organized by Beck and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich against President Obama."

There have been more stories like this in recent months, and if history is any guide, there will be more to come. The timing of all this is deeply troubling, and the media players involved are all too familiar. There is something sinister at work here, something malevolent, something sly.

Consider the curious historical synchronicity of all this: after the inauguration of a new Democratic president, there has been a sudden upsurge of right-wing polemicists agitating right-wing citizens into right-wing-motivated acts of violence. The last time things came together like this was back in 1993, after the Waco and Ruby Ridge debacles, combined with the passage of NAFTA and the Brady Bill, detonated into a militia movement that was wildly active, and exceedingly violent, throughout the entirety of President Bill Clinton's two terms.

Dozens of militia-related incidents, including the Oklahoma City bombing, took place during those years. In 2001, however, these incidents stopped almost completely, and for the entirety of George W. Bush's two terms as president, hardly a peep was heard from the militia movement that had been so robustly vigorous during the administration of Bush's predecessor.

A Democratic president takes office in 1993 and the militia movement explodes, egged on by a whole host of right-wing media voices.

A Republican president takes office in 2001 and the militia movement, along with those media voices who sponsored it, all but disappear from the American political landscape.

A Democratic president takes office in 2009, and once again, right-wing media voices begin their clarion call for armed revolution, and once again, a portion of their listeners erupts into violence.

"In Politics," President Franklin Roosevelt once said, "nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." Indeed.

Change will not be easy, and as it stands today, advocating for or trying to enact that change is a potentially deadly endeavor. Now, I'm sure more than a few of you are wondering why someone invited Billy the Bummer to speak tonight, but it is what it is. I'm mortally sure our honored guests, Bob and Marilyn Young, are all too aware of how hard change can be to achieve, how dangerous it can be to body mind and soul, how much effort it requires, and how far we have yet to go.

Marilyn suffered a stroke, but kept on that hard road. Bob went through a bypass surgery, fought for his union, fought in Korea, but kept on that hard road. Both have volunteered, near as I can tell, for pretty much everything that has needed volunteers in Colorado Democratic politics for the last two decades. They licked the stamps, stuffed the envelopes, made the phone calls and held the signs on frigid street corners, they've done everything, and it was all hard work, but it has all borne the fruit that gives us hope. They have made the change we all wish to see in the world, and for doing so, they are heroes.

So for you, our honored guests, I will close with a Boston story about, and bear with me, St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick's Day for most of the country is a day for wearing green and eating corned beef and cabbage and listening to the Pogues and getting really, really, really, really drunk. In Boston, we do things a little differently. Don't get me wrong, it's still St. Patrick's Day there. Every single one of the 500 billion college students who lives there was mumbling, stumbling, barfing-down-their-Flogging-Molly-shirt wrecked by the end of last St. Paddy's Day, just like the one before and all the ones to come, and all wore more scally caps per square inch than anywhere in the world outside of Dublin.

But St. Patrick's Day is also called Evacuation Day in Boston, and that's a really good story. It begins a few miles down Route 2, on the green in Lexington on April 19, 1775, where the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired. The American militiamen chased the British Regulars all the way back to Boston, where they dug in and laid siege to the city for the next eleven months. The British had total control of the city, and the British fleet had fully invested the harbor. The desire by both sides to occupy the heights above the city led to the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, but the engagement proved indecisive, though more costly to the British on balance, and the combatants lapsed into a stalemate that would last through the winter.

The American militias were faced with a dilemma. Within the city, the British were heavily enforced with both men and heavy weapons, and the fleet in the harbor had enough firepower to annihilate the city. The Americans, on the other hand, barely had an army at all. The militias were so light on weaponry, in fact, that they were issued spears at one point to fend off a potential British attack. But then a young bookseller named Henry Knox had an idea. Earlier that spring, Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen had led a successful attack on Fort Ticonderoga, 300 miles northwest near the southern tip of Lake Champlain in the province of New York. The lightly defended fort had fallen, delivering to Arnold and Allen a large number of British cannons.

Knox put the question to Gen. George Washington: What if we brought those cannons to Boston? Washington signed off on the plan, and dispatched Knox and a large force of men to Ticonderoga on December 1. Knox arrived four days later and immediately began disassembling the guns - 43 heavy cannons, six coehorns, eight mortars and two howitzers - to be loaded onto specially made flat-bottomed boats. They had to make the 30-mile trip across the lake before it froze, and rowing into a howling gale, barely made it before ice took hold. By Christmas, several feet of snow lay over the hundreds of miles standing between the guns and the city. Using 80 oxen, Knox and his men dragged 42 sleds weighing more than 5,000 pounds each past Albany, across the frozen Hudson and across Massachusetts, finally arriving in Boston on January 24, 1776.

Six weeks later, British General Howe looked up at Dorchester Heights above the harbor and was flabbergasted to discover American gun batteries trained down on the precious British fleet. The militias had distracted British forces with a skirmish in Cambridge the night before, and had quietly sneaked the cannons onto the heights, constructing emplacements right under the British force's nose. They had even piled logs in next to the actual cannons in order to make it seem as if they were even more heavily armed. "The rebels did more in one night," Howe said, "than my whole army would have done in one month."

For a while, the British tried to clear the rebels off the heights with tremendous barrages fired from the fleet. Exactly four Americans were killed, and the rebels happily collected more than 700 cannonballs that had fallen harmlessly around them. Finally, the British sent word to Washington that they would not destroy the city if they were allowed to withdraw unmolested. Boston was emptied of British forces as the troops were loaded onto the ships in the harbor. On March 17, 1776, the winds became favorable, and the fleet put to sea. The British were gone, never to return. It was, and has been ever since, Evacuation Day in Boston.

So, what does this have to do with everything I've been talking about? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Henry Knox dragged more than 200,000 pounds of gunmetal across a frigid lake, a frozen river and 300 snowy miles of New York and Massachusetts. With this one unimaginable act of leadership, Knox freed the city of Boston from British control, and began the downhill run towards the Declaration of Independence and national liberation. The entire enterprise proved to be a long and grueling slog, but nothing better represents the ordeals of that age than Henry Knox, his oxen, his sleds, his men and his journey.

The moral? Hard times require true patriots, audacity, courage, strength and endurance ... one step at a time. This country was forged by men and women daunted by the seeming impossibility of their situation, but who never wavered, and who eventually prevailed. Men and women like Bob and Marilyn Young. Thank you for all you have done, and for all you will do, for all of us.

And for the rest of you, I leave you with a poem from the astonishing activist, Daniel Berrigan. A friend of Berrigan's, Mitchell Snyder, who worked long and hard as an activist for the homeless in Washington, DC. Berrigan penned these lines in memory of Mitchell Snyder, and it is in these lines that I find my hope and strength when I feel like quitting, when I feel overwhelmed, overmatched or undone.

Some stood up once, and sat down
Some walked a mile, and walked away
Some stood up twice, then sat down,
"I've had it" they said.
Some walked two miles, then walked away.
"It's too much," they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
They were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked.
They walked the earth,
They walked the waters,
They walked the air.
"Why do you stand," they were asked, "and why do you walk?"
"Because of the children," they said,
"And because of the heart,
"And because of the bread,
"Because the cause is the heart's beat,
"And the children born
And the risen bread."

For all of you who stand, and for all of you who walk, the cause is the heart's beat. It is hard, it is daunting, but this is the simple truth of all great works and endeavors. We have won nothing, not really, not yet, but we can, if you will stand with me and each other, and if you walk.

So let us begin again. Thank you.

»

---

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

The Fight for the Public Option Hits Home Stretch -- Is Obama Hiding?

The Fight for the Public Option Hits Home Stretch -- Is Obama Hiding?

By Adele Stan, AlterNet. Posted October 6, 2009.

Pressure from progressives led the White House back to the public option. But will it be in name only?

For months, as Congress has debated health-care reform, President Barack Obama's tepid rhetoric about the importance -- but not the necessity -- of a public health-care plan has caused anxiety among progressives. Indeed, even in his health-care speech last month before a joint session of Congress, Obama seemed less than committed to a fight-to-the-finish on behalf of the public option.

Then the left got serious. Groups like Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched television ads targeting senators -- including Democrats -- who stand in the way of the public option. Progressives began raising campaign funds for pro-public option legislators, and the Accountability Now PAC promised primary challenges to those who fell out of step with progressive priorities like a public health insurance plan.

Lo and behold, the ground seemed to shift with this weekend's news that President Obama and members of his administration have been quietly talking with reluctant lawmakers, trying to cut a deal for a public option.

It's hard to say whether Obama is responding to pressure from the left, or was always inclined to step back publicly from the public option while quietly cutting a back-room deal for its survival. But it's safe to say that the pressure from the left hasn't hurt, even if one Democratic senator, a public-option advocate, contends it has. But the senator in question, Chuck Schumer of New York, almost has to say that: He's deeply involved in getting fence-sitting Democrats to come his way on the public plan when it's time for a vote.

This week, Senate leadership will begin the work of hammering out that body's final health-care bill, a combination of the legislation drafted by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which contains a public option, and the one expected to be offered by the Finance Committee (the committee will vote on its bill today), which does not. If the final Senate bill does not include the public plan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has signaled that he will carry the issue to the Senate floor in the form of an amendment. Failing that, the public plan could still survive via a budget maneuver when the House and Senate bills are reconciled in the conference committee.

Republicans, seeing that they may have to concede defeat on their attempt to derail the public option, are now looking to scuttle health-care reform with an attack on the mandate included in all the bills -- a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance (some with government help). In the mark-up session for the Finance Committee bill, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., made his argument that the mandate equals a tax on people making less than $150,000 per year -- a violation, he says, of Obama's campaign promise not to increase taxes on working families.

And the assault on the mandate doesn't end with the Senate. In more than a dozen states, efforts are currently under way to pass legislation that would declare the mandate unconstitutional under state law. Once the health-care reform bill is signed by the president, a state with a mandate ban in place will likely try to force a constitutional challenge to the insurance requirement. While leading constitutional scholars contend that federal law would trump state law in such a contest, the challenge could gum up the health-care works, possibly delaying the implementation of health-care reform in the state that posed the challenge. And with a heavy roster of right-wingers occupying the bench of today's Supreme Court, a surprise could be in order should a challenge to the mandate find its way to the high court.

So why not strip the mandate out of the bill? Because the public option can't really work without it. The mandate is what keeps the public plan remotely affordable; it provides a pool that includes young, healthy people. Without them, you wind up with a public plan populated by otherwise uninsurable people, most of them uninsurable because they are already quite sick. And health-insurance reform without a mandate will allow insurance companies to continue to cherry-pick the healthiest consumers for their rolls.

Back in Washington, support appears to be coalescing around the prospect of a health-care reform bill that contains a public option. In the House, Greg Sargent reports, there are 170 firm votes for a bill that contains a public option. That leaves 48 more to get, which insiders contend is do-able.

The Senate is a much tougher game. There it takes 60 vote to shut down a filibuster, one maneuver likely to be employed by opponents of reform. The Democratic caucus comprises exactly 60 senators, but not all are on board with a public option. That's why progressives have targeted television advertising on Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, both of whom seem to defy popular opinion in their states with their reluctance to embrace the public plan. (Coincidentally, both also receive a major portion of their campaign funding from the health-care sector.) Other reluctant Dems include Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

Still, Schumer contends that at least 54 Senate Democrats are ready to vote for a bill that contains a public insurance plan. That leaves six more to get, which Schumer says can be done.

If Obama is to get his public-option deal, however, he will likely need to win over heel-dragging lawmakers with some weakened version of the plan -- something either administered by the states, and perhaps not even launched until insurance companies fail to provide affordable insurance according to some benchmark built into the bill as a "trigger." (There's some belief that, if they go that route, Senate Democrats could win a single Republican -- that of Maine's Olympia Snowe.) However, many experts, including former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, say that triggers don't work.

As the health-care reform bill wends its way through Congress, there's only one thing worth betting on: Some sort of health-care bill will pass into law. It looks like the bill will contain something called a public option. But whether it will represent true reform is anybody's guess.

See more stories tagged with: health care, arkansas, public option, healthcare reform, senate health care reform, house health care reform

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.

Obama in Your Face: White House: Leaving Afghanistan Not An Option

Published on Monday, October 5, 2009 by Associated Press

White House: Leaving Afghanistan Not An Option

by Ben Feller

WASHINGTON - The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama is not considering a strategy for Afghanistan that would withdraw U.S. troops from the eroding war there.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that walking away isn't a viable option to deal with a war that is about to enter its ninth year.

"I don't think we have the option to leave. That's quite clear," Gibbs said.

The debate over whether to send as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan is a major element of a strategy overhaul that senior administration policy advisers will consider this week as they gather for top-level meetings on the evolving direction of the war.

Obama has invited a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to confer about the war. He said the administration would brief leaders from both parties and key committee chairmen and would seek their opinions.

"They're an important part of this and the president wants to hear from them," Gibbs said.

© 2009 Associated Press

Activists Arrested: Ask Obama to Halt Wars, Close Overseas Prisons

Published on Monday, October 5, 2009 by WJLA News - ABC News (Washington)

Protesters Try to Influence Afghanistan Policy

In the wake of terrible news out of Afghanistan, there is renewed debate at the Pentagon and White House over the future of the war.

As the US led war in Afghanistan begins its ninth year this week, activists brought a strong message to the White House that war, torture and drone bombing are outrageous, unacceptable and must end immediately. Sixty-one people were arrested during the protest. (Image source: Flckr by mike.benedetti)

In the first five days of the month, there have been more deaths of U.S. service members than in all of October in 2008. And the calls for an end to the war were increasingly loud outside the White House Monday afternoon.

In a defiant display with hopes of influencing the president's plan on Afghanistan, hundreds of people marched from McPherson square chanting and holding signs. Some chained themselves to the White House fence, demanding we leave Afghanistan now and wondering aloud, where's the "change" they were promised.

"I hope he's not in the business of ignoring us because if he's about the business of ignoring, it's going to spell his downfall," said Bill Dyson of Connecticut.

Wayne Young and his wife came all the way from Denver.

"We shouldn't be the world policemen. We're not authorized to do that, that's what the U.N. is for."

Their pleas, and cheers fro group leaders like Cindy Sheehan, come amid increased violence in Afghanistan. Eight U.S. service members were killed over the weekend, 16 so far this month. And now, the White House must consider General McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops.

Monday morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, "With violence levels up some 60 percent from last year I believe the decisions the president will make for the next stage of the Afghanistan campaign will be among the most important of his presidency."

Late Monday afternoon, insight from White House spokesman Robert Gibbs: "No part of the conversation involved leaving Afghanistan. That's not something that's ever been entertained."

The White House will hold several top-level meetings on the direction of the war this week with officials from the Pentagon and Congress. Meanwhile, there's also concern the insurgency is intensifying.

"Americans are infidels," one rebel recently told ABC News in Afghanistan. "My house is destroyed, my father and two nephews killed. God willing, I will fight to the last."

But so, too, will protesters; more than 50 today, willing to be arrested if it can help their voices be heard.

"We haven't been successful in the past you know," said Cindy Sheehan. "We've been out here with hundreds of thousands of people. That was a different time. We're hoping if we do create a mass movement that we can affect policy."

Moments later, she was handcuffed and carted off with a bus load of other protesters.

© 2009 ABC News

Who Is the Decider or Who Are They?

Published on Friday, October 2, 2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Who Are the 'Deciders'?

by David Sirota

The war in Afghanistan poses two important questions: What should be done and who should be "the deciders"?

Congressional Republicans say the answer to the first query is military escalation. But according to polls, most Americans disagree. At the same time, many experts wonder "whether or not we know what we're doing," as President George W. Bush's former deputy national security adviser said last week.

One thing's for sure: The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says he wants more troops. His new memo calling for a bigger Afghanistan deployment prompted President Obama to begin carefully considering different ways forward. Republicans lambasted Obama for letting "political motivations ... override the needs of our commanders," as Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said. Likewise, the Washington Post insisted that Obama's failure to promptly back McChrystal's surge proposal could "dishonor" America, while the New York Times said no matter what the president wants, "It will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal."

The coordinated assault sharpens that question about who "the deciders" should be - elected officials or the military?

The Washington Establishment clearly believes the latter. In the purest articulation of the argument, Ronald Reagan asserted in 1980 that Vietnam was lost not because of flaws in mission or strategy, but because politicians allegedly forced soldiers to fight "a war our government (was) afraid to let them win."

Avoiding another Vietnam, says this school of thought, requires a figurehead government - one that delegates all military decision-making power to generals and effectively strips it from elected civilians who will supposedly be too "politically motivated" (read: influenced by voters). This authoritarian ideology explains not only today's vitriolic reaction to the president's Afghanistan deliberations but also some of the most anti-democratic statements ever uttered by American leaders. It explains, for instance, Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that public opinion "doesn't matter" when it comes to military policy. Of course, the Constitution deliberately gives "political figures in Washington" final say: Article I empowers Congress to declare and finance wars; and Article II states that while the White House "may require the opinion" of military officers, ultimately "the President shall be Commander in Chief."

Those provisions were no accident. By separating political from military power, and vesting our elected representatives with ultimate authority, the Founders purposely constructed a democracy that seeks to prevent the dictatorial juntas that often arise when no such separation exists.

The Constitution views "political motivations" and a "disconnect" as democratic forces guaranteeing that public opinion, via elected "deciders," is somewhat involved in military policy.

Certainly, Obama and Democratic congressional leaders may still end up defying public will by making the lamentable choice to escalate the Afghanistan War. But after recent quagmires justified by knee-jerk subservience to military prerogative, America should at least applaud these lawmakers for refusing to immediately rubber stamp that course of action. In exploring all options, they are honoring the Constitution's separation of powers - and our nation's most democratic principles.

Copyright 2009 Creators.com

David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book is "The Uprising." He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network-both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.

Mission Not Accomplished: Operation a Marginal Success But Patient Still on Life Support

Published on Friday, October 2, 2009 by The New York Times

Mission Not Accomplished

by Paul Krugman

Stocks are up. Ben Bernanke says that the recession is over. And I sense a growing willingness among movers and shakers to declare “Mission Accomplished” when it comes to fighting the slump. It’s time, I keep hearing, to shift our focus from economic stimulus to the budget deficit.

No, it isn’t. And the complacency now setting in over the state of the economy is both foolish and dangerous.

Yes, the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration have pulled us “back from the brink” — the title of a new paper by Christina Romer, who leads the Council of Economic Advisers. She argues convincingly that expansionary policy saved us from a possible replay of the Great Depression.

But while not having another depression is a good thing, all indications are that unless the government does much more than is currently planned to help the economy recover, the job market — a market in which there are currently six times as many people seeking work as there are jobs on offer — will remain terrible for years to come.

Indeed, the administration’s own economic projection — a projection that takes into account the extra jobs the administration says its policies will create — is that the unemployment rate, which was below 5 percent just two years ago, will average 9.8 percent in 2010, 8.6 percent in 2011, and 7.7 percent in 2012.

This should not be considered an acceptable outlook. For one thing, it implies an enormous amount of suffering over the next few years. Moreover, unemployment that remains that high, that long, will cast long shadows over America’s future.

Anyone who thinks that we’re doing enough to create jobs should read a new report from John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute, which describes the “scarring” that’s likely to result from sustained high unemployment. Among other things, Mr. Irons points out that sustained unemployment on the scale now being predicted would lead to a huge rise in child poverty — and that there’s overwhelming evidence that children who grow up in poverty are alarmingly likely to lead blighted lives.

These human costs should be our main concern, but the dollars and cents implications are also dire. Projections by the Congressional Budget Office, for example, imply that over the period from 2010 to 2013 — that is, not counting the losses we’ve already suffered — the “output gap,” the difference between the amount the economy could have produced and the amount it actually produces, will be more than $2 trillion. That’s trillions of dollars of productive potential going to waste.

Wait. It gets worse. A new report from the International Monetary Fund shows that the kind of recession we’ve had, a recession caused by a financial crisis, often leads to long-term damage to a country’s growth prospects. “The path of output tends to be depressed substantially and persistently following banking crises.”

The same report, however, suggests that this isn’t inevitable: “We find that a stronger short-term fiscal policy response” — by which they mean a temporary increase in government spending — “is significantly associated with smaller medium-term output losses.”

So we should be doing much more than we are to promote economic recovery, not just because it would reduce our current pain, but also because it would improve our long-run prospects.

But can we afford to do more — to provide more aid to beleaguered state governments and the unemployed, to spend more on infrastructure, to provide tax credits to employers who create jobs? Yes, we can.

The conventional wisdom is that trying to help the economy now produces short-term gain at the expense of long-term pain. But as I’ve just pointed out, from the point of view of the nation as a whole that’s not at all how it works. The slump is doing long-term damage to our economy and society, and mitigating that slump will lead to a better future.

What is true is that spending more on recovery and reconstruction would worsen the government’s own fiscal position. But even there, conventional wisdom greatly overstates the case. The true fiscal costs of supporting the economy are surprisingly small.

You see, spending money now means a stronger economy, both in the short run and in the long run. And a stronger economy means more revenues, which offset a large fraction of the upfront cost. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the offset falls short of 100 percent, so that fiscal stimulus isn’t a complete free lunch. But it costs far less than you’d think from listening to what passes for informed discussion.

Look, I know more stimulus is a hard sell politically. But it’s urgently needed. The question shouldn’t be whether we can afford to do more to promote recovery. It should be whether we can afford not to. And the answer is no.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Paul Krugman is professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and a regular columnist for The New York Times. Krugman was the 2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is the author of numerous books, including The Conscience of A Liberal, and his most recent, The Return of Depression Economics.

More Obama Administration Witch-Hunt Targets

by Stephen Lendman / October 1st, 2009 / Dissident Voice

The FBI’s top six news stories for the week ending September 25 were about arrests and/or indictments of suspected Muslim terrorists. Combined, they became the latest national security targets in America’s war on Islam.

Waged relentlessly since 9/11, it continues unabated under Obama for the same political advantage George Bush sought by stoking fear to be used as a pretext to wage imperial wars and crack down ruthlessly at home with police state efficiency — today against Muslims, Latino immigrants, environmental and animal rights activists, and street protestors, tomorrow against anyone voicing dissent.

Najibullah Zazi: The FBI’s Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, an FBI press release announced the indictment of Najibullah Zazi, an Aurora, CO-based legal US resident from Afghanistan on a conspiracy charge “to use weapons of mass destruction (explosive bombs) against persons or property in the United States” based on allegations that he “received bomb-making instructions in Pakistan, purchased components of improvised explosive devices, and traveled to New York City on September 10 in furtherance of his criminal plans.”

He was also charged with knowingly and willfully making false statements to the FBI regarding international and domestic terrorism. In addition, the indictment alleges that he and others traveled in interstate and foreign commerce and used email and the Internet to carry out his “criminal plans.” If convicted, Zazi faces a potential life sentence even though he’s likely another victim of police state justice in Washington’s war on Islam.

New York Times writers David Johnston and Scott Shane called it “One of the Most Serious (Cases) in Years based on documents filed against Zazi that “he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb – hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid — and in doing so, Mr. Zazi took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects.” He made his purchases at a beauty shop, hardly the sort of venue for terrorist supplies.

Hydrogen peroxide is a common bleaching agent and mild disinfectant. Acetone is an inflammable organic solvent used in nail polish remover, making plastics and for cleaning purposes in laboratories. Hydrochloric acid is used in oil production, ore reduction, food processing, pickling, and metal cleaning. It’s also found in the stomach in diluted form.

Zazi’s indictment alleges that he learned explosives techniques at a Pakistani Al-Queda training camp, that he stored nine pages of “formulations and instructions” on his laptop regarding the chemicals he bought for “the manufacture and handling of initiating explosives, main explosives charges, (and) explosives detonators and components of a fuzing system,” and that he planned to attack New York commuter trains or another major target on the eighth 9/11 anniversary, even though he built no bombs and the chemicals he bought can be freely purchased over-the-counter by anyone.

Nonetheless, Jarret Brachman, author of Global Jihadism and a government terrorist consultant, said despite more details to be learned, the case was “shaping up to be one of the most serious terrorist bomb plots developed in the United States,” one resembling the London July 2005 underground attacks.

On July 7, 2005, multiple mock terror drills occurred at the same time as the transit system attack. In addition, other UK and American mock drills took place on the same day and exact time as actual “terror” attacks. On the 9/11 morning, in fact, at the same time the twin towers were struck, the CIA in Virginia was running “a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.” Described by the administration as “a bizarre coincidence,” the media never mentioned it. The story was buried and forgotten, and no investigation followed,

Karen Greenberg, executive director of New York University’s Center on Law and Security called other post-9/11 prosecutions “fantasy terrorism cases,” yet, citing scary ingredients, preemptively sees Zazi as “the case the government kept claiming it had but never did,” even though conclusive evidence is absent, Zazi denies involvement in a terror plot, and by law he’s innocent until proved guilty.

Even the Times acknowledges that:

– veteran counterterrorism investigators admit that important facts remain unknown, including whether Zazi selected a specific target, date, and recruited others to help;

– no operational bomb exists, according to DOJ officials; and

– it’s unclear why a Colorado-based man drove to New York without the chemicals he bought at home, perhaps indicating they were for another purpose, not terrorism.

Yet US prosecutor Tim Neff told a Denver federal judge that Zazi “was intent on being in New York on 9/11 (and that he) was in the throes of making a bomb and attempting to perfect his formulation.” He called circumstantial evidence a “chilling, disturbing sequence of events” pointing to a possible terror attack, but where’s the bomb and what’s the motive?

Others Arrested and Charged with Zazi: The FBI’s Second Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

An earlier September 20 FBI press release announced two others arrested with Zazi “on charges of making false statements to federal agents in an ongoing terror investigation” — his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi and Ahmad Wais Afzali.

“Each of the defendants has been charged by criminal complaint with knowingly and willfully making false statements to the FBI in a matter involving international and domestic terrorism.” If convicted, Afzali and Zazi’s father face up to eight years in prison. His son may be incarcerated for life, yet the FBI admits that:

“It is important to note that we have no specific information regarding the timing, location or target of any planned attack,” nor can they find a bomb.

In other words, none exists nor evidence of a motive or plan to detonate one, yet the FBI arrested and charged three men on dubious suspicions and got highly-charged media reports to suggest “a big one” was imminent.

It’s typical of how the Justice Department operates — shoot, ready, aim. In other words, first arrest, charge, and generate fear through the media, then invent a plot, concoct evidence to prove it, indict suspects, bring them to trial, and intimidate juries to convict because no one wants terrorists in their neighborhood even though the likelihood is virtually nil.

The September 20 press release merely added that:

On August 28, 2008, “Najibullah Zazi flew to Peshawar, Pakistan from Newark International Airport via Geneva, Switzerland and Doha, Qatar. CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) records further reflect that (Zazi) traveled from Peshawar to John F. Kennedy International Airport on or about Jan. 15, 2009.”

“On September 10, 2009, New York City Police Department (NYPD) detectives met with defendant Afzali (a Flushing, NY resident), whom the NYPD had utilized as a source in the past,” suggesting that the DOJ will use him against the younger Zazi and offer leniency if he cooperates — a familiar tactic to frame other innocent victims and show how law enforcement is removing “bad guys,” targeted for political advantage.

Zazi’s Background

According to the New York Times, he was born on August 10, 1985 in a small Eastern Afghanistan village. In 1991 or 1992, his family moved to the Peshawar area of Pakistan — “ground zero in the US jihadist war and home to many Al-Queda operatives,” according to the DOJ.

In the early 1990s, Mohammed Zazi, his father, came to Flushing, New York, drove a cab, worked 12-hour shifts, lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and prayed at the nearby Hazrat Abu Bakr Mosque. The younger Zazi was much like others in his high school, but he did poorly in his studies and dropped out before graduating. According to his step-uncle, Mr. Rasooli, “He was a dumb kid, believe me,” but tried to make enough money to help his father.

He worked as a coffee cart vendor on New York streets, and said he drove back to New York to clear up related issues. According to an old customer, Imran Khan, he was back at his regular spot on the morning of September 11, 2009. Khan and others saw him joking and laughing with some old regulars, not heading off to detonate bombs.

In addition, an acquaintance named Rahul recalled Zazi saying about the 9/11 attacks: “I don’t know how people could do things like this. I’d never do anything like that.” Other friends agreed that he abhorred violence and called terrorism at odds with the teachings of Islam. He was a devout Muslim, grew his beard long, and occasionally wore tunics instead of more Western-style clothes.

On a 2006 trip to Pakistan, he married and hoped later to be able to afford to bring his new wife to America. Each year, he flew back to see her, including on August 28, 2008, the FBI-announced trip in its press release. Two months after he returned the following January, he filed for bankruptcy and moved to Colorado to live more cheaply and be close to an aunt and uncle in Aurora.

He worked as a shuttle van driver at Denver International Airport, applied for a limousine license, underwent an airport background check, then drove a van for the Big Sky Company and later ABC Transportation. In July, 2009, his parents left New York and joined him.

On September 25, New York Times writer Michael Wilson headlined his story, “From Smiling Coffee Vendor to Terror Suspect,” and said:

“according to federal investigators, (Zazi worked on bomb materials) in a hotel suite he rented in Aurora,” but unexplained was how he could afford it on his small income along with his regular apartment. Yet, investigators “say chemical residue they found in the kitchen there indicates he tried to heat up the beauty supplies (he bought) to help convert them in a bomb.” But unexplained was how someone called “dumb” would be smart enough to make bombs for potentially the “biggest terror case since 9/11,” according to CBS News. In federal court on September 29, he pleaded not guilty to all charges, but was held without bail pending trial

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi: The FBI’s Third Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, an FBI press release “announced today that Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19, (was arrested in downtown Dallas) and charged in a federal criminal complaint with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction… after he placed an ‘inert/inactive’ car bomb” near a 60-story office tower. “Smadi, a Jordanian citizen in the US illegally… repeatedly espoused his desire to commit violent jihad and has been the focus of an undercover FBI investigation.”

He “made clear his intention to serve as a soldier for Usama Bin Laden and al Qaeda, and to conduct violent jihad. Undercover FBI agents, posing as members of an al Queda ’sleeper’ cell, were introduced to Smadi, who repeatedly indicated to them that he came to the US for the specific purpose of committing ‘Jihad for the sake of God’… against those he deemed to be enemies of Islam.”

On September 27, James C. McKinley, Jr. headlined his New York Times story, “Friends’ Portrait of Texas Bomb Plot Suspect at Odds With FBI.” They called him an extremely outgoing young man, who smoked marijuana and drank beer with his friends in the complex where he lived. He did endless favors for them, held barbecues, and baby-sat for neighborhood children.

He also went to local dance clubs featuring Arabic techno music, and at home, had friends over to watch action movies on his widescreen TV. A Ms. Deloach said He “came here because it was really strict out there in Jordan. He wanted freedom.” According to McKinley:

“That no one here suspected (him) of hating Americans suggests he was either an extremely talented undercover terrorist or a troubled young man at war with himself, going out of the way to befriend Americans he lived with while, the authorities say, plotting to kill thousands of people when he surfed radical Islamic chat rooms online.” Or perhaps he’s neither of the above, just an ordinary person justifiably angry about Washington’s war on Islam but not plotting a terror bombing to retaliate.

According to his father in Jordan:

The charges against his son are “completely fabricated and in our family we never condoned terrorism.” He added that his other son Hussein, aged 18, was also arrested in California, apparently related to Hosam’s case. They both entered the country legally in 2007 on student visas.

The Smadi case is a typical FBI sting, much like others designed to entrap unwitting victims, this time with undercover agents, other times with paid informants usually charged with crimes and offered leniency for their cooperation.

One of many earlier cases involved the “Fort Dix Five” — innocent Muslim men convicted of conspiracy and other charges related to plans to kill as many soldiers as possible on the Army base, a ludicrous charge but it stuck. Described as “radical Islamists,” the media played along and the result was predictable even though there was no plot and no crime, just a familiar FBI sting operation to entrap them, then intimidate a jury to convict.

According to Anthony Barkow, former federal prosecutor and current executive director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University’s School of Law:

“A person (often) is entrapped when he has no previous intention to violate the law and is persuaded to commit the crime by government agents.”

Further, US conspiracy law prosecutions can be based on such thin evidence that former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once said it “constitutes a serious threat to fairness in our administration of justice.” According to other legal experts, it let’s prosecutors target people they don’t like, want to convict to set an example, or simply show government is removing dangerous terror threats. Today, most often they’re Muslims or environmental or animal rights activists, and virtually never is a charged suspect guilty. Yet they’re usually convicted and sentenced to hard time in federal prisons — the fate now awaiting Smadi and the others when their cases come to trial.

Daniel Patrick Boyd: The FBI’s Fourth Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, the FBI announced a “Superseding Indictment in Boyd Matter Charg(ing) Defendants with Conspiring to Murder US Military Personnel (and) Weapons Violations.

Last July 27, dozens of heavily armed Swat and hostage rescue team members arrested Boyd and six other men (the so-called North Carolina 7) on terrorist-related charges, claiming they “conspir(ed) to provide material support to terrorists (and to) murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad” plus other related charges.

The DOJ also alleged that “Boyd is a veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan who, over the past three years, has conspired with others in this country to recruit and help young men travel overseas in order to kill.” No evidence was cited, just baseless accusations then trumpeted by the media and others on the far right.

The new indictment includes “all of the charges alleged in the original indictment of July 22, 2009 (plus) new (ones) against three defendants, Daniel Patrick Boyd, aka ‘Saifullah,’ Hysen Sherifi, and (Boyd’s son) Zakariya Boyd, aka ‘Zak.’” New accusations claim the three men:

conspir(ed) to murder US military personnel (and to do it) Boyd undertook reconnaissance of the Marine Corp Base located in Quantico, Va., and obtained maps of the base in order to plan an attack on Quantico. (He) possessed armor piercing ammunition, stating it was ‘to attack the Americans.’

It’s the same ludicrous charge made against the Fort Dix Five defendants — the preposterous idea that a few men planned to wage war on the US Army. For Boyd and the others, to do it against the Marines, especially at a time of heightened awareness about possible terrorist attacks with military police alerted to prevent suspicious individuals, notably civilians, from getting through base security. Yet, that’s precisely what the new indictment charges, and, if convicted, the men face potential life sentences for offenses they don’t plan to commit.

But according to Attorney General Eric Holder:

“These additional charges hammer home the grim reality that today’s homegrown terrorists are not limiting their violent plans to locations overseas, but instead are willing to set their sights on American citizens and American targets, right here at home,” including the Army and Marines.

Michael C. Finton: The FBI’s Fifth Top Story for the Week Ending September 25

On September 24, an FBI press release announced that “Michael C. Finton, aka., ‘Talib Islam,’ has been arrested on charges of attempted murder of federal employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) in connection with a plot to detonate a vehicle bomb at the federal building in Springfield, Ill.”

Another FBI sting was involved, again with undercover agents in a scheme now all too familiar, yet the public seems none the wiser.

According to the FBI:

Finton “dealt with undercover FBI agents and confidential sources who continuously monitored his activities up to the time of his arrest. Further, in his alleged efforts, Finton drove a vehicle containing inactive explosives to the Paul Finley Federal Building and Courthouse in Springfield and attempted to detonate them. (He’s) charged… with one count of attempted murder of federal officers or employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction (aka, an inert, FBI-supplied explosive device).” If convicted, he faces possible life imprisonment.

On September 27, New York Times writer Dirk Johnson headlined “Suspect in Illinois Bomb Plot ‘Didn’t Like America Very Much,’” so he planned to blow up part of it. He worked as a fry cook at Seals Fish & Chicken in Springfield, IL and is described by co-workers, according to Johnson, as “cheerful and polite, but unwavering when it came to religion and politics.” So are many people, but that doesn’t make them “terrorists.”

Neighbors in his apartment building called him “mild-mannered” in expressing shock about the charges. A Brandon Jackson said they played chess, card games and watched soccer on television, after which Finton took him out for pizza. Vivian Laster was “baffled” that this “nice young man” was charged with such a plot. Others said he was excited to be a Muslim and occasionally he wrote articles for the Richland Community College student newspaper about campus-related entertainment activities, not the usual topic for a jihadist.

He took the nickname Talib Islam (student of Islam) after converting to the Islamic faith while in prison from 2001 – 2006 on charges of aggravated robbery and battery. The FBI claimed it found a document he wrote about “awaiting a return letter from John Walker Lindh.” Called an “American Taliban,” he was captured, held and tortured in Afghanistan in 2001 based on false charges that he was a Taliban terrorist fighting US forces. In fact, he only arrived in the country four weeks before 9/11 to help the Taliban against the Afghan warlords supported by Washington.

FBI agents arranged a sting to entrap Finton and succeeded like against the Fort Dix Five and many others. Yet according to prosecutors, he “hope(d) that (his alleged attack) would cause American troops to be pulled back out of Afghanistan and Iraq,” said the bombing would be a “historic occasion (to achieve his) biggest dream (of) bringing down the US government,” and that he would be “rewarded for his intentions.”

Yet court papers said he was suspicious about being “set up,” but apparently not clever enough to avoid being manipulated to carry out the alleged plot he’s now charged with. An employee at the federal building in question, a Mr. Meng, was “remind(ed that) there are evil people out there.” True enough, but not the ones he imagines.

Betim Kaziu: The FBI’s Sixth Top Story for the Week Ending September 25, 2009

On September 24, an FBI press release announced “An indictment… charging Betim Kaziu, a US citizen and resident of Brooklyn, with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.”

Allegedly, “in early January 2009, (he) devised a plan to travel abroad for the purpose of joining a radical foreign fighter group and to take up arms against perceived enemies of Islam. Kaziu allegedly boarded a flight at John F. Kennedy Airport on Feb. 19, 2009, and traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where he took steps to continue on to Pakistan to obtain training and other support for violent activities…. (He) also attempted to join Al-Shabbab, a radicalized, militant (pro-Al-Queda) insurgency group (now) designated as a terrorist organization by the United States Department of State.”

In addition, “Kaziu made efforts to travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans to fight against US armed forces (and on multiple occasions attempted) to purchase weapons in Egypt. Untimately, Kaziu traveled to Kosovo where he was arrested by Kosovar law enforcement authorities in late August 2009.” Afterwards, he told his family that he was visiting a friend when the house was raided, and the weapons seized belonged to his friend’s father.

On September 24, Ray Rivera headlined his New York Times article, “Brooklyn Man Is Accused of Trying to Aid Terrorists,” according to an indictment unsealed in Federal District Court. Yet family members expressed shock, his sister, Sihana saying “This is totally unlike him. (He) has a big heart” and was never violent.

Kaziu’s case is similar to the first indictment against Daniel Patrick Boyd and the other North Carolina 7 defendants. The DOJ indictment claimed that from 1989-1992, Boyd got “violent jihad” training abroad and “allegedly fought in Afghanistan” against the Soviets. Then from November 2006 through July 2009, he and the others “conspired to provide material support and resources to terrorists, including currency, training, transportation and personnel” plus other charges.

Federal authorities accused them of “loving jihad, fighting for Allah, and loathing a US military presence at Muslim holy sites.” Self-styled terrorism expert and notorious Islamophobe Steven Emerson highlighted the charges and claimed the FBI “found a fatwa, or religious edict, in Boyd’s house saying Muslims have ‘an individual duty to kill Americans and their allies.’”

Of course, Emerson, others on the far right, and the DOJ are notorious for manipulating, doctoring, or inventing evidence to target innocent Muslims, incite fear, and intimidate juries to convict. The charges against Kaziu are as likely bogus as the ones above and against numerous other victims targeted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence and charity. It’s the wrong time to be Muslim in America and vital to know that we’re all equally vulnerable.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM-1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening. Read other articles by Stephen, or visit Stephen's website.

This article was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 9:00am and is filed under Discrimination, Justice, Police, Terrorism.