"The Legal Avenger," an interview of Marjorie Cohn

Covers illegality of Iraq and Afghanistan wars, prosecuting war crimes, the duty to disobey unlawful orders - See:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8498

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Obama’s Guantánamo Appeasement Plan

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama pledged to close Guantánamo within one year. The Republicans, led by Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts, immediately launched a concerted campaign to assail the new president. They claimed his plan would release dangerous terrorists into U.S. communities and allow released terrorists to resume fighting against our troops. Fox News agitator Sean Hannity and Bush team players like torture-memo lawyer John Yoo filled the airwaves and print media with paranoia.

The Republican attacks were bogus. A 2008 McClatchy investigation revealed that the overwhelming majority of Guantánamo detainees taken into custody in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent of wrongdoing or bit players with little intelligence value. A substantial number of those prisoners were literally sold to U.S. officials in exchange for bounty payments offered by the U.S. military. A Seton Hall Law Center report has debunked Pentagon claims that many released detainees have “returned to the fight.” And no one has ever escaped from one of the U.S. super-max prisons, which house hundreds of people convicted of terrorist offenses.

The Republicans have continued to oppose the effort to close Guantánamo. In an attempt to burnish his image and forestall war crimes charges, Dick Cheney now leads the charge, making ubiquitous attacks on Obama. Keeping Guantánamo open is “important,” Cheney declares. He claims that closing Guantánamo would endanger Americans, and warns that if detainees are brought to the United States, they would “acquire all kinds of legal rights.” Obama is also taking heat from the intelligence community. Those officials, like Cheney, seek to justify what they did under the Bush regime.

And now even the Democrats are piling on the bandwagon. Reacting defensively to the Republican attack campaign, the Senate voted 90 to 6 to deny Obama funds to close Guantánamo until he comes up with a “plan” for relocating the detainees there. “We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions on Guantánamo to try these cases,” said Democratic Senator Jim Webb on ABC News. “I do not believe they should be tried in the United States,” he added.

The pressure has caused Obama to buckle. Timed to coincide with a Cheney speech to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Obama announced an appeasement plan to deal with the 240 remaining Guantánamo detainees. Parts of his plan would threaten the very foundation of our legal system – that no one should be held in custody if he has committed no crime. These are Obama’s five categories for disposition of detainees once Guantánamo is closed:

1) Those who violated the laws of war will be tried in military commissions.

Obama's plan would backtrack on an early promise to shut down the military commissions. Obama now claims that such commissions can be fair because they will no longer permit the use of evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods. He fails to mention, however, that the Pentagon is using “clean teams” to re-interrogate people who were previously interrogated using the prohibited methods. When they once again give the same information, it miraculously becomes untainted. Obama also fails to acknowledge that those tried in the military commissions are forbidden from seeing all the evidence against them, a violation of the bedrock principle that the accused must have an opportunity to confront his accusers.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court has disagreed with this part of Obama's proposed plan of action. In Ex parte Milligan, the Supreme Court declared military trials of civilians to be unconstitutional if civil courts are available.

Prisoners falling in this category should be tried in the courts of the United States, because the laws of war are actually part of U.S. law. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. The Geneva Conventions and the Hague Convention, which the United States has ratified, contain the laws of war.

2) Those who have been ordered released from Guantánamo will remain in custody.

Seventeen Uighurs from China were ordered released after they were found not to be enemy combatants. But they continue to languish in custody because they would be imperiled if returned to China, which considers them enemies of the state. Suggestions that they be brought to the United States have been met with paranoid NIMBY (not in my backyard!) protestations. So, under Obama's plan they will remain incarcerated in a state of legal limbo.

3) Those who cannot be prosecuted yet “pose a clear danger to the American people” will remain in custody with no right to legal process of any kind.

These are people who have never been charged with a crime. Obama did not say why they cannot be prosecuted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates claims as many as 100 people may fall into this category. Included in this group are those who have “expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.” They will suffer “prolonged detention.”

Obama's plan for "prolonged detention" is nothing more than a newly-coined phrase for “preventive detention,” a policy that harks back to the bad old days of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the internment of people of Japanese extraction in the 1940’s. If Obama succeeds in convincing Congress to legalize “prolonged detention,” the United States will continue to be a pariah state among justice-loving nations. The U.S. Congress, still rendered catatonic by post-9/11 rhetoric, will probably capitulate along with Obama.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that Obama’s new system of preventive detention will just “move Guantánamo to a new location and give it a new name.”

4) Those who can be safely transferred to other countries will be transferred.

Obama noted that 50 men fall into this category. It is unclear what will happen to them when they reach their destinations.

5) Those who violated U.S. criminal laws will be tried in federal courts.

Obama cited the examples of Ramzi Yousef, who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was identified as the 20th 9/11 hijacker. Both were tried and convicted in U.S. courts and both are serving life sentences.

This is the only clearly acceptable part of Obama's plan. All detainees slated to remain in custody should be placed into this category. The federal courts provide due process as required by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which does not limit due process rights to U.S. citizens: “No person . . . shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

The federal courts are well suited to deal with accused terrorists. Indeed, federal judges who have presided over such cases say that the Classified Information Procedures Act can effectively protect classified intelligence in federal court trials.

If Mr. Obama proceeds with the plan he announced this week he will empower those who point to U.S. hypocrisy on human rights as a justification to do us harm. Obama’s capitulation to the intelligence gurus and the right-wing attack dogs will not only imperil the rule of law; it will actually make us more vulnerable to future acts of terrorism.

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Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.

Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a newly released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That link was never established.

The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding on July 17, 2002 “subject to a determination of legality by the OLC.” She got it two weeks later from Jay Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.

Team Bush claimed - and still claims - that it had to use harsh techniques to protect us from the terrorists. They really sought to create evidence to rationalize an illegal, unnecessary, and tragic war.

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War Criminals, Including Their Lawyers, Must Be Prosecuted

Since he took office, President Obama has instituted many changes that break with the policies of the Bush administration. The new president has ordered that no government agency will be allowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will be shuttered, and that the CIA’s secret black sites will be closed down. But Obama is non-committal when asked whether he will seek investigation and prosecution of Bush officials who broke the law. “My view is also that nobody's above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen,” Obama said. “But,” he added, “generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” Obama fears that holding Team Bush to account will risk alienating Republicans whom he still seeks to win over.

Obama may be off the hook, at least with respect to investigating the lawyers who advised the White House on how to torture and get away with it. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has written a draft report that apparently excoriates former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury, authors of the infamous torture memos, according to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff. OPR can report these lawyers to their state bar associations for possible discipline, or even refer them for criminal investigation. Obama doesn’t have to initiate investigations; the OPR has already launched them, on Bush’s watch.

The smoking gun that may incriminate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al., is the email traffic that passed between the lawyers and the White House. Isikoff revealed the existence of these emails on The Rachel Maddow Show. Some maintain that Bush officials are innocent because they relied in good faith on legal advice from their lawyers. But if the president and vice president told the lawyers to manipulate the law to allow them to commit torture, then that defense won’t fly.

A bipartisan report of the Senate Armed Services Committee found that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

Cheney recently admitted to authorizing waterboarding, which has long been considered torture under U.S. law. Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Colin Powell, and John Ashcroft met with Cheney in the White House basement and authorized harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, according to an ABC News report. When asked, Bush said he knew about it and approved.

John Yoo wrote in a Wall Street Journal oped that Bush “could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.”

A representative of the Justice Department promised that OPR’s report would be released sometime last November. But Bush's attorney general Michael Mukasey objected to the draft. A final version will be presented to Attorney General Eric Holder. The administration will then have to decide whether to make it, and the emails, public and then how to proceed.

When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, we promised to extradite or prosecute those who commit, or are complicit in the commission, of torture. We have two federal criminal statutes for torture prosecutions – the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act (torture is considered a war crime under U.S. law). The Torture Convention is unequivocal: nothing, including a state of war, can be invoked as a justification for torture.

Yoo redefined torture much more narrowly than U.S. law provides, and counseled the White House that it could evade prosecution under the War Crimes Act by claiming self-defense or necessity. Yoo knew or should have known of the Torture Convention’s absolute prohibition of torture.

There is precedent for holding lawyers criminally liable for giving legally erroneous advice that resulted in great physical or mental harm or death. In U.S. v. Altstoetter, Nazi lawyers were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for advising Hitler on how to “legally” disappear political suspects to special detention camps.

Almost two-thirds of respondents to a USA Today/Gallup Poll favor investigations of the Bush team for torture and warrantless wiretapping. Nearly four in 10 favor criminal investigations. Cong. John Conyers has introduced legislation to establish a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties. Sen. Patrick Leahy advocates for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission; but this is insufficient. TRC’s are used for nascent democracies in transition. By giving immunity to those who testify before them, it would ensure that those responsible for torture, abuse and illegal spying will never be brought to justice.

Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials including lawyers like John Yoo who gave them “legal” cover. Obama is correct when he said that no one is above the law. Accountability is critical to ensuring that our leaders never again torture and abuse people.

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Cheney Throws Down Gauntlet, Defies Prosecution for War Crimes

Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.” He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.

U.S. courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone’s nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture. Our federal War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, enshrined in U.S. law, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief can be held liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and they did nothing to stop or prevent it.

Why is Cheney so sanguine about admitting he is a war criminal? Because he’s confident that either President Bush will preemptively pardon him or President-elect Obama won’t prosecute him.

Both of those courses of action could be illegal.

First, it is not clear that a president can immunize himself or his subordinates from prosecution for committing crimes that he himself authorized. During the Constitutional convention, George Mason expressed concern that a president could abuse his pardon power to ‘pardon crimes which were advised by himself’ or, before indictment or conviction, ‘to stop inquiry and prevent detection.’

On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a memo erroneously stating that the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment, did not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But the Supreme Court made clear that Geneva protects all prisoners. Bush also admitted that he approved of high level meetings where waterboarding was authorized by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey says there’s no need for Bush to issue blanket pardons since there is no evidence that anyone developed the policies “for any reason other than to protect the security in the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful.” But noble motives are not defenses to the commission of crimes.

Lt. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, said, “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Second, the Constitution requires President Obama to faithfully execute the laws. That means prosecuting lawbreakers. When the United States ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, thereby making them part of U.S. law, we agreed to prosecute those who violate their prohibitions.

The bipartisan December 11 report of the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

Lawyers who wrote the memos that purported to immunize government officials from war crimes liability include John Yoo, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, David Addington and Alberto Gonzales. There is precedent in our law for holding lawyers criminally liable for participating in a common plan to violate the law.

Committee chairman Senator Carl Levin told Rachel Maddow that you cannot legalize what’s illegal by having a lawyer write an opinion.

The committee’s report also found that “Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.” Those techniques migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan, where prisoners in U.S. custody were also tortured.

Pardons or failures to prosecute the officials who planned and authorized torture would also be immoral. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”

During the campaign, Obama promised to promptly review actions by Bush officials to determine whether “genuine crimes” were committed. He said, “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” but “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

Two Obama advisors told the Associated Press that “there’s little-if any – chance that the incoming president’s Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.”

When he takes office, Obama should order his new attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who ordered and authorized the commission of war crimes.

Obama has promised to bring real change. This must be legal and moral change, where those at the highest levels of government are held accountable for their heinous crimes. The new president should move swiftly to set an important precedent that you can’t authorize war crimes and get away with it.

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Center for Constitutional Rights Supports National Lawyers Guild Call for Dismissal and Prosecution of John Yoo

On April 1, a secret 81-page memo written by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo in March 2003 was made public. In that memo, Yoo advised the Bush administration that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel would not enforce U.S. criminal laws, including federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. The week after the publication of Yoo's memo, the National Lawyers Guild issued a press release calling for the Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California to dismiss Yoo, who is now a professor of law there. The NLG also called for the prosecution of Yoo for war crimes and for his disbarment.

Two days later, the Center for Constitutional Rights released a letter supporting the NLG's call for Yoo’s dismissal and prosecution. CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren wrote, "The 'Torture Memo' was not an abstract, academic foray. Rather, it was crafted to sidestep U.S. and international laws that make coercive interrogation and torture a crime. It was written with the knowledge that its legal conclusions were to be applied to the interrogations of hundreds of individual detainees... And it worked. It became the basis for the CIA’s use of extreme interrogation methods as well the basis for DOD interrogation policy... Yoo’s legal opinions as well as the others issued by the Office of Legal Counsel were the keystone of the torture program, and were the necessary precondition for the torture program’s creation and implementation."

The day after the NLG issued its press release, Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley, Jr. posted a statement on the Boalt Hall website, responding to "the New York Times (editorial April 4), the National Lawyers' Guild, and hundreds of individuals from around the world" who had criticized or questioned Yoo's continuing employment at Boalt Hall.

Dean Edley cited the University of California's Academic Personnel Manual sec. 015, which lists under "Types of unacceptable conduct: ... Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty." Edley said he was not convinced Yoo had engaged in "clear professional misconduct - that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney - material to Professor Yoo's academic position." Edley was likewise not convinced "the writing of the memoranda, and [Yoo's] related conduct, violate[d] a criminal or comparable statute."

Edley felt Yoo's conduct was not "morally equivalent to that of his nominal clients, Secretary Rumsfeld, et al., or comparable to the conduct of interrogators distant in time, rank, and place." Edley wrote, "Yes, it does matter that Yoo was an adviser, but President Bush and his national security appointees were the deciders."

Indeed, ABC News reported last week that Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft met in the White House and micromanaged the torture of terrorism suspects by approving specific torture techniques such as waterboarding. George W. Bush, the decider-in-chief, admitted, "yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

These top U.S. officials are liable for war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act, and for violation of the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, which are all part of U.S. law. They ordered the torture which was carried out by the interrogators.

But John Yoo and the other Justice Department lawyers, including David Addington, Jay Bybee, William Haynes and Alberto Gonzales, are also liable for the same offenses. They were an integral part of a criminal conspiracy to violate U.S. laws. In U.S. v. Altstoetter, Nazi lawyers were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for advising Hitler on how to "legally" disappear political suspects to special detention camps. The United States charged that since they were lawyers, "not farmers or factory workers," they should have known their technical justifications for circumventing the Hague and Geneva Conventions were illegal.

The cases of Altstoetter and those of the Bush lawyers share common aspects. Both dealt with people detained during wartime who were not POWs; in both, it was reasonably foreseeable that the advice they gave would result in great physical or mental harm or death to many detainees; and in both, the advice was legally erroneous. More than 108 people have died in U.S. detention since 9/11, many from torture. And the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel later withdrew the memoranda, an admission that the advice in them was defective.

Furthermore, the Bush lawyers have engaged in ethical violations which should result in their disbarment. As New York University School of Law Professor Stephen Gillers wrote in The Nation, H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, who is examining the legal advice these lawyers provided, "should find that this work is not 'consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.'"

Even Dean Edley appears to recognize that the case of John Yoo is not a simple issue of academic freedom, such as "merely some professor vigorously expounding controversial and even extreme views."

As CCR President Michael Ratner wrote in the forthcoming book, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld, "Had these various opinions been written as a law school or academic exercise, they could be merely condemned and their authors would fail their class, but they would not be held criminally accountable. But they were not an academic exercise. They were written by high-level attorneys [such as John Yoo] in a context where the opinions represented the governing law and were to be employed by the President in setting detainee policy. This was more than bad lawyering; this was aiding and abetting their clients’ violation of the law by justifying the commission of a crime using false legal rhetoric."

It is inconceivable that Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who has served as a rubber stamp for Bush's illegal policies, will bring any of these leaders or lawyers to justice. There is a chance that a future Attorney General will do so. Barack Obama has pledged to have his Justice Department and Attorney General "immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued . . . if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated . . . Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law." Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give these deciders and lawyers immunity from prosecution for torture and other mistreatment committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005.

In addition to criminal prosecutions, disbarments, and the dismissal of John Yoo from the Boalt Hall faculty, Jay Bybee, who was rewarded for his illegal advice with a federal judgeship, should be removed from the bench by impeachment.

It is time for the impunity enjoyed by the Bush administration to come to an end.

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Injustice at Guantanamo: Torture Evidence and the Military Commissions Act

The Bush administration has announced its intention to try six alleged al Qaeda members at Guantánamo under the Military Commissions Act. That Act forbids the admission of evidence extracted by torture, although it permits evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment if it was secured before December 30, 2005. Thus, the administration would be forbidden from relying on evidence obtained by waterboarding, if waterboarding constitutes torture.

That's one reason Attorney General Michael Mukasey refuses to admit waterboarding is torture. The other is that torture is considered a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act. Mukasey would be calling Dick Cheney a war criminal if the former admitted waterboarding is torture. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, has said on National Public Radio that the policies that led to the torture and abuse of prisoners emanated from the Vice President's office.

The federal government is working overtime to try and clean up the legal mess made by the use of illegal interrogation methods. In a thinly-veiled attempt to sanitize the Guantánamo trials, the Department of Justice and the Pentagon instituted an extensive program to re-interview the prisoners who have undergone abusive interrogations, this time with "clean teams." For example, if a prisoner implicated one of the defendants during an interrogation using waterboarding, the government will now re-interrogate that prisoner without waterboarding and get the same information. Then they will say the information was secured humanely. This attempt to wipe the slate clean is a farce and a sham.

In Brady v. Maryland, the US Supreme Court held that a prosecutor has a duty to give criminal defendants all evidence that might tend to exonerate them. Yet the CIA admitted destroying several hundred hours of videotapes depicting interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Ramin al-Nashiri, which likely included waterboarding. The administration claims Abu Zubaydah led them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the defendants facing trial in the military commissions. So the government has destroyed potentially exonerating evidence. Moreover, the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" are classified so they can be kept secret from the defendants, and CIA agents cannot be compelled to testify or produce evidence of torture.

A report just released by Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research reveals more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantánamo since 2002 and every interrogation was videotaped. Many of these interrogations were abusive. "One Government document, for instance, reports detainee treatment so violent as to 'shake the camera in the interrogation room' and 'cause severe internal injury,'" the report says.

The Military Commissions Act contains other provisions that deny the defendants basic due process. It allows a trial to continue in the absence of the accused, places the power to appoint judges in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, permits the introduction of hearsay and evidence obtained without a warrant, and denies the accused the right to see all of the evidence against him. Defense attorneys are not allowed to meet their clients without governmental monitoring, and all of their notes and mail must be handed over to the military.

Will the U.S. Supreme Court be able to rectify the situation of abusive interrogations if and when a case comes before it? Not if Justice Antonin Scalia has his way. Once again, Scalia is acting as a loyal foot soldier in the President's "war on terror." In a BBC interview that aired this week, Scalia defended the use of torture to extract information from prisoners in some cases.

Scalia's remarks mean he has prejudged the issues in future cases in which the Constitution might dictate the suppression of evidence because of illegal police interrogation techniques, or the right to compensation of a person whose civil rights have been violated. Justice Scalia should recuse himself from any case that presents these issues.

Bush is meanwhile threatening to veto a bill Congress passed that would forbid the CIA from subjecting prisoners to interrogation techniques banned by the U.S. Army Field Manual. John McCain, the tortured POW who led the charge in 2005 against cruel treatment, has now hitched his wagon to Bush's star. Presidential candidate McCain voted to allow the CIA to continue to ply its cruelty.

When Bush vetoes the bill, Congress should stand firm for the rule of law and basic standards of human decency and override his veto. Dick Cheney and other officials who participated in formulating the abusive interrogation policies should be investigated under the U.S. War Crimes Act. And the Democratic-controlled Congress should repeal the Military Commissions Act that Bush rammed through the Republican-controlled Congress.

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The National Lawyers Guild Condemns Senate Grant of Immunity to Lawbreaking Telecommunications Companies

Responding to fear-mongering by the Bush administration, the Senate voted on February 12 to give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that have turned over our telephone and Internet communications to the government. These companies have violated several laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Title III, the Communications Act, and the Stored Communications Act, as well as the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution.

The Bush administration has been illegally engaging in warrantless surveillance since early 2001, through its "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Over 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies challenging the legality of the program are pending.

On the eve of Congress's Labor Day recess last year, the Bush administration had rammed that the "Protect America Act" through a Congress still fearful of appearing soft on terror. It was a 6-month fix to the 1978 FISA, which didn't anticipate that foreign intelligence communications would one day run through Internet providers in the United States. But the temporary law went further than simply fixing that glitch in FISA; it granted immunity to telecommunications companies that provided consumer telephone and computer data to the government.

The day before the Senate took up this issue, Vice President Dick Cheney invoked the memory of September 11, 2001 twelve times in his address to the Heritage Foundation, and urged Congress to make the Act permanent. In the face of lawsuits against the telecom companies, Attorney General Michael Mukasey described the need for the companies to defend against litigation as "an enormous burden." Indeed, defending these lawsuits has likely cut in to their enormous profits.

Although President George W. Bush claims that making the Act permanent was critical to keeping us safe, he threatens to veto the bill unless it includes the immunity provision. Apparently protecting corporate profits trumps national security.

The House of Representatives passed a bill without immunity for the telecoms. The two bills will have to be harmonized. The National Lawyers Guild urges Congress to adopt the House version that omits immunity. Litigation against the telecommunications companies is the only remaining avenue of accountability for the administration's lawbreaking.

Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

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Senate Poised to Capitulate to Cheney's Fear-Mongering

After a January 24 debate in the Senate on amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Senate appears ready to capitulate once again to the Bush administration's agenda of sacrificing liberty for questionable security.

On the day before Congress was slated to take up this issue, Dick Cheney addressed the Heritage Foundation, the most influential right-wing think tank. He was given a thunderous reception, to which he quipped, "I hold an office that has only one constitutional duty - presiding over the Senate and casting tie-breaking votes." But the most powerful vice president in this nation's history was about to strong-arm Congress into doing the administrations' bidding.

Invoking the memory of September 11, 2001 twelve times, Cheney said it was "urgent" that Congress update the FISA law immediately and permanently. Notwithstanding the administration's well-known violations of FISA months before 9/11, Cheney claimed they had used "every legitimate tool at our command to protect the American people against another attack." He omitted the illegal tools the administration has admitted using, that is, Bush's so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and a massive data mining program. FISA makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, for the executive to conduct a wiretap without statutory authorization. The TSP has been used to target not just the terrorists, but also critics of administration policies, particularly the war in Iraq.

Although Cheney repeatedly linked amending FISA with protecting America, there is no evidence Bush's secret spying program has made us any safer. Indeed, in 2006, the Washington Post reported that nearly all of the thousands of Americans' calls that had been intercepted revealed nothing pertinent to terrorism. About the same time, the New York Times quoted a former senior federal prosecutor, who described tips from intelligence officials involved in the surveillance. "The information was so thin and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up," he said.

In his speech to the Heritage Foundation, Cheney aimed to bully Congress into making the so-called "Protect America Act of 2007" permanent. On the eve of Congress's Labor Day recess last year, the Bush administration had rammed that act through a Congress still fearful of appearing soft on terror. It was a 6-month fix to the 1978 FISA, which didn't anticipate that foreign intelligence communications would one day run through Internet providers in the United States. But the temporary law, which expires February 1, went further than simply fixing that glitch in FISA; it granted immunity to telecommunications companies that turned over our telephone and Internet communications to the government.

Permanent immunity, retroactive to 9/11, for the telecommunications companies is apparently the most critical concern of the Bush administration, whose primary constituency has been the mega-corporations. Although Cheney touted these companies as patriotic partners in the administration's "war on terror," they are breaking several U.S. laws, including FISA itself, Title III, the Communications Act, and the Stored Communications Act, as well as the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. Indeed, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation put it, "the real heroes are the companies that refused to help [the administration], like Verizon Wireless" and Quest Communications.

Cheney quoted Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who described the need for these companies to defend against litigation as "an enormous burden." What he really meant is that defending the roughly 40 pending lawsuits is cutting into their enormous profits.

The House of Representatives passed a bill without immunity for the telecoms. But in a 60-36 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal from the Senate Judiciary Committee that omitted immunity and contained important limits on wiretapping powers. Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were not present for the vote.

Senator Christopher Dodd has indicated his intent to filibuster, or prevent a Senate vote, on a version of the bill that includes immunity. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently now supports the filibuster. The Senate is scheduled to vote on whether to proceed to a final Senate vote on this issue on January 28. Three of the Democrats who voted against the SJC proposal must be persuaded to change their votes, and Clinton and Obama must follow suit in order to maintain the filibuster and prevent the Senate from adopting a bill that includes immunity and omits vital civil liberties safeguards.

Here are the Democrats who voted against the SJC proposal:

Bayh (202) 224-5623
Carper (202) 224-2441
Inouye (202) 224-3934
Johnson (202) 224-5842
Landrieu (202)224-5824
McCaskill (202) 224-6154
Mikulski (202) 224-4654
Nelson (FL) (202) 224-5274
Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551
Pryor (202) 224-2353
Salazar (202) 224-5852

John Edwards, the only Democratic presidential candidate willing to effectively take on the corporations, should weigh in against immunity for the telecoms and challenge his competitors to do the same. This is a golden opportunity for Clinton and Obama to exercise leadership on a crucial issue. Our civil liberties and privacy rights are at stake.

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Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction in House Judiciary Committee

Nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice-President Dick Cheney. Six of the nine are co-sponsors of H.R. 799, which contains three articles of impeachment.

Articles I and II of H.R. 799 accuse Cheney of purposely manipulating intelligence to deceive Congress and the American people about a fabricated threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, respectively. Article III charges Cheney with openly threatening aggression against Iran absent any real threat to the United States. All three articles say Cheney's actions have damaged our national security interests.

Three of the nine Judiciary Committee Democrats who advocate launching impeachment hearings against Cheney, Reps. Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.), co-authored an op-ed that appeared on December 27 in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

They wrote, "The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that, if proven, may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution. The allegations against Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens."

There is also credible evidence that policies set in Cheney's office authorized the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, in violation of three treaties the United States has ratified, as well as the U.S. Torture Statute and War Crimes Act. The policies on the treatment of prisoners emanating from Cheney's office triggered the abuse and torture, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff.

"It was clear to me that there was a visible audit trail from the Vice President's office through the Secretary of Defense down to the commanders in the field," Wilkerson, a former colonel, said on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."

In November, the House of Representatives sent the impeachment resolution to the House Judiciary Committee for further proceedings. However many Democrats oppose impeachment, citing the year and a half of testimony about Bill Clinton's personal relations. They think impeachment will detract from Congress's other pressing business.

Yet, the three congresspersons noted, the Clinton impeachment "must not be the model for impeachment inquiries. A Democratic Congress can show that it takes its constitutional authority seriously and hold a sober investigation, which will stand in stark contrast to the kangaroo court convened by Republicans for Clinton."

And, they argue, the hearings would "involve the possible impeachment of the vice president - not of our commander in chief - and the resulting impact on the nation's business and attention would be significantly less than the Clinton presidential impeachment hearings."

Seventy percent of American voters think Cheney has abused his powers and 43 percent say he should be removed from office, according to a Nov. 13 poll by the American Research Group. Organizations, including the National Lawyers Guild, have called for the impeachment of Dick Cheney.

Impeachment hearings against Cheney would not only fulfill the Constitution's command that high officials who commit high crimes and misdemeanors be brought to justice. It would also deter the vice president from committing additional crimes that threaten the national security of the United States.

Any impeachment proceeding would have to start in the House Judiciary Committee. The nine Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee who favor impeachment hearings are: Robert Wexler, Fla.; Luis Gutierrez, Ill.; Anthony Weiner, N.Y.; Tammy Baldwin, Wisc.; Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas; Steve Cohen, Tenn.; Keith Ellison, Minn.; Maxine Waters, Calif.; and Hank Johnson, Ga.

Here is a list of the entire House Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.house.gov/CommitteeMembership.aspx.

For information about the campaign to impeach Dick Cheney, see http://impeachcheney.org.

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Preventing the Impending War on Iran

Rhetoric flowing out of the White House indicates the Bush administration is planning a military attack on Iran. Officials in Saudi Arabia, a close Bush ally, think the handwriting is on the wall. "George Bush's tone makes us think he has decided what he is going to do," according to Rihab Massoud, Prince Bandar ben Sultan's right-hand man. Saudi Social Affairs Minister Abdel Mohsen Hakas told Le Figaro, "We are getting closer and closer to a confrontation."

As Bush and Cheney try to whip us into a frenzy about the dangers Iran poses, their argument comes up short. They say Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says there is "no evidence" of this. They say Iran is sending deadly weapons into Iraq to kill U.S. troops, but those devices can be manufactured in any Iraqi machine shop. Now the New York Times reports most of the foreign fighters in Iraq come, not from Iran, but from two Bush allies - Saudi Arabia and Libya. An estimated 90 percent of suicide bombings are carried out by foreign fighters. And senior U.S. military officials believe the financial support for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia comes primarily from Saudi Arabia.

Yet the Bush/Cheney polemics about Iran continue to escalate. In light of the lack of evidence Iran is actually developing nukes, Bush equated Iranian "knowledge" to make nuclear weapons with World War III. "If you’re interested in avoiding World War III," he said recently, "it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." This substantially lowers the bar for a U.S. attack on Iran.

A few days after Bush warned of World War III, Cheney called Iran “the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism,” adding, "The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences . . . We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” These threats are eerily reminiscent of his rants in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In an unprecedented move, the Bush administration labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. It appears the administration applied that label in an effort to trigger language in the 2002 Congressional authorization for the use of military force in Iraq. That authorization says, "The President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States."

Like Bush's invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran would violate international and U.S. law. The U.N. Charter prohibits the use of military force except in self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council. Iran, which has not attacked any country for 2,000 years, hasn't threatened to invade the United States or Israel. Rather than protecting Israel, U.S. or Israeli military force against Iran will endanger Israel, which would invariably suffer a retaliatory attack.

In making its case against Iran, the administration points to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's alleged comment that Israel should be wiped off the map. But this is an erroneous translation of what he said. According to University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and Farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, who said the "regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Cole said this "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all." Journalist Diana Johnstone points out the quote is not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the Zionist "regime" occupying Jerusalem. "Coming from a Muslim religious leader," Johnstone wrote, "this opinion is doubtless based on objection to Jewish monopoly of a city considered holy by all three of the Abramic monotheisms."

It seems significant that support for Ahmadinejad may be waning among the real power brokers in Iran, particularly the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Jomhouri Eslami daily in Iran, which has close ties to Khamenei, has denounced Ahmadinejad's characterization of those opposed to his nuclear program as traitors.

If the United States attacks Iran, the results would be catastrophic. Three Europeans, including former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard and Yehuda Atai, a member of the Israeli Committee for a Middle East without Weapons of Mass Destruction, wrote in Libération, "We are being warned about it from all sides: The United States is at the brink of war, ready to bombard Iran. The only thing lacking is the presidential order." Drawing parallels with the U.S. war in Iraq, they caution, "An attack against Iran, whatever its targets, its methods and its initial scope, will significantly aggravate the situation, achieving similar results, without even talking about the disastrous impact on the global economy." They add, "It would be still worse if the insane idea of using tactical nuclear weapons - which exist - to prevent Iran from building, in spite of its denials, the nuclear weapons that recent IAEA inspections have found no trace of, were implemented."

The threats against Iran appear to be politically motivated. Seymour Hersh's extensive research has convinced him that Bush/Cheney will invade Iran. They likely think embroiling us in Iran will ensure a GOP victory in 2008. It will certainly make it harder for the next President to withdraw from Iraq once we are mired in Iran.

If Hillary Clinton becomes that next President, she will likely continue Bush's foreign policy. Clinton, who favors leaving a large contingent of U.S. troops in Iraq, says nothing about disbanding the huge U.S. military bases there. Clinton is also rattling the sabers in Iran's direction. She voted to urge Bush to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and she, too, misquotes Ahmadinejad about Israel.

As we go to the polls in the coming months, it is imperative we scrutinize the candidates' positions on Iraq and Iran. The security of the United States, as well as the Middle East, is hanging in the balance.

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Pursue Diplomacy, Not War, With Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the United States has prompted an outcry, including protests and tabloid headlines calling him “evil” and a “madman.” As Juan Cole says, "The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state." The Bush administration, which maintains that “all options” remain on the table with Iran, should vigorously pursue the diplomatic option, instead of moving inexorably toward the military option.

Ahmadinejad said in a “60 Minutes” interview, “It’s wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing.” Iran has not threatened to attack the United States, or Israel for that matter, except if it is attacked first. Iranian authorities sent a proposal to the United States in May 2003 offering negotiations on a deal for Iran to freeze its nuclear program if the United States would end its hostility against Iran. The Bush administration thumbed its nose at the Iranian proposal, then tried to cover up the story, according to Trita Parsi, in his new book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.

Bush has conducted a belligerent policy toward Iran ever since he inaugurated it into his “axis of evil” in January 2002. General David Petraeus and Bush both menacingly mentioned Iran five times in their respective August speeches touting how well things are going in Iraq. Petraeus referred to “malign actions” by Iran; Bush discussed Iran and al-Qaeda in the same breath even though Iran has never attacked us.

U.S. plans for war with Iran continue to escalate. Centcom (U.S. Central Command) has engaged in detailed contingency planning for an attack on Iran for more than two years. In June, the U.S. Air Force established Project Checkmate tasked with “fighting the next war.” The Pentagon is building a military base near the Iran-Iraq border. Earlier this month, British forces, at the request of the Americans, were sent from Basra to the Iranian border. Two aircraft carrier groups (USS Nimitz and USS Truman) are reportedly en route to the Persian Gulf to join the USS Enterprise.

Philip Giraldi wrote last month in The American Conservative that Dick Cheney ordered the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a “contingency plan” for a large-scale air assault on Iran using both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. “As in the case of Iraq,” according to Giraldi, “the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”

Bush will likely provoke a confrontation with Iran, then strike back in “self-defense.” The Sunday Telegraph reported, “A strike will probably follow a gradual escalation. Over the next few weeks and months the U.S. will build tensions and evidence around Iranian activities in Iraq . . . Under the theory – which is gaining credence in Washington security circles – U.S. action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.”

Steve Clemons likewise wrote on Salon that David Wurmser, a member of Cheney’s national security staff, allegedly discussed convincing Israel to launch a low-yield cruise missile strike against the Natanz nuclear reactor in Iran, to “hopefully” prompt a military reaction by Iran against U.S. forces in Iraq and the Gulf.

Former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistrano, now a security analyst, stated, “The decision to attack was made some time ago. It will be in two stages. If a smoking gun is found in terms of Iranian interference in Iraq, the U.S. will retaliate on a tactical level, and they will strike against military targets. The second part of this is: Bush has made the decision to launch a strategic attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, although not before next year. He has been lining up some Sunni countries for tacit support for his actions.”

Patrick Cronin, director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, concurs. “Washington is seriously reviewing plans to bomb not just nuclear sites, but oil sites, military sites and even leadership targets. The talk is of multiple targets,” he said. “In Washington there is very serious discussion that this is a window that has to be looked at seriously because there is only six months to ‘do something about Iran’ before it will be looked at as a purely political issue.”

The United Nations’ chief nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, warned against an “out of control” drift to war with Iran. “I would not talk about any use of force,” he said. “There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.” The UN Charter only permits the use of force in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council. “Many of the potential targets are in populated places, endangering civilians both from errant bombs and the possible dispersal of radioactive material,” cautioned Peter Galbraith in the New York Review of Books. The failure to protect civilians violates the Geneva Conventions.

Yet Bush continues his march to war. In an end run around the UN Security Council, “Washington and its allies are developing a parallel track to the UN effort in the event that a third resolution ends up only modestly increasing pressure on Iran,” according to the Washington Post. “We’ll continue on the UN track, but we also have the track of the U.S.-E.U.,” a State Department official said.

Former General Wesley Clark is a likely presidential running mate for Hillary Clinton, who also intends to keep the military option against Iran on the table. In Sunday’s Washington Post, Clark laid out a detailed military plan to ensure that we “win” the next war. “Today, the most likely next conflict will be with Iran,” he wrote, while cautioning that war is the last resort.

Senators Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl just introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would authorize Bush to attack Iran. Here is the language from the amendment:

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat,
contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing
influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its
indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of
United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic,
intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy
described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.

If the Congress adopts this amendment, U.S. policy would be to "combat" Iran with "all . . . military instruments." It is imperative that this amendment be defeated.

As Bush and Cheney once again go through the motions of diplomacy as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq, they move steadily toward war. They would do well to heed the sentiments of the Bipartisan Security Group, which advocates the Middle Powers Initiative. That statement says, “Resolution of differences between the United States and Iran through diplomatic means has become imperative. The catastrophe of Iraq should inform us that the use of force under present circumstances will bring even greater tragedy to the war-torn Middle East. Any threat to unilaterally use overwhelming force is irresponsibly hazardous. There is no imminent threat posed by Iran. There is a practical, legal and moral obligation to obtain security through peaceful and law abiding means.”

The initiative points to the United States’ hypocrisy of condemning Iran for seeking nuclear weapons while maintaining the right to use nukes against Iran. “The United States and other nuclear weapon states can more credibly insist on Iranian compliance with its international obligations if they meet their own. To decry the Iranian potential of developing nuclear weapons while brandishing arsenals of unimaginable destructive capacity on launch-on-warning status is inconsistent . . . Accordingly, the United States is required to renounce the use of nuclear weapons against Iran rather than to maintain that ‘all options are on the table.’”

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Bush Plans War on Iran

The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, told a meeting of The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal, that the military did not intend to carry out "pinprick strikes" against Iranian nuclear facilities. He said, "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military."

Bush has already set the wheels in motion. With Rovian timing, Alberto Gonzales' resignation was sandwiched between two Bush screeds - one aimed at ensuring Congress scares up $50 billion more for the occupation of Iraq, the other designed to scare us into supporting war on Iran. As Gonzales rides off into the sunset, the significant questions are who will take his place and how that choice will facilitate Bush's occupation of Iraq and attack on Iran.

One name that's been floated for Bush's third attorney general is Joe Lieberman, the "independent" senator from Connecticut. Lieberman, who advocates the use of military force against Iran, was the only person Bush quoted in his August 28 speech to the American Legion. Bush called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism" and pledged to "confront Tehran's murderous activities."

Gonzales greased the Bush/Cheney wheels for torturing in violation of the Geneva Conventions, illegally spying on Americans, and purging disloyal Bushies.

Similarly, Lieberman would ensure the Justice Department mounts a vigorous defense of a war of aggression against Iran. And Bush would get a two-fer: Connecticut's Republican governor would appoint a Republican to fill Lieberman's seat, returning control of the Senate to the GOP. A Republican-controlled Senate would direct the agenda, thereby furthering the Bush/Cheney plan.

Lieberman is closely affiliated with American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. "AIPAC leverages its power by an alliance with the Christian Right, which has adopted a bizarre ideology of 'Christian Zionism,'" according to University of Michigan professor Juan Cole. "It holds that the sooner the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, the sooner Christ will come back. Without millions of these Christian Zionist allies," Cole added, "AIPAC would be much less influential and effective."

During the 2004 election, a 100% "AIPAC voting record" was Lieberman's litmus test for an acceptable presidential candidate. As the House of Representatives was on the verge of passing a resolution that would've required Bush to consult Congress before attacking Iran, the AIPAC lobby stopped it in its tracks.

Bush's WMD-hyping against Iran is déja vu in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Disaster, where he played loose and fast with the truth about Iraq's alleged WMDs. His statement that a nuclear Iran could put the region "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust" conjures up his images of a "mushroom cloud" in the hype-up to Iraq.

How inconvenient for Bush that the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) just found Iran's uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is nowhere near producing significant amounts of nuclear fuel. The IAEA report says that Iran "has been providing the agency with access to declared nuclear materials, and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and facilities."

Iran and IAEA agreed on a plan with a step-by-step timetable of cooperation to settle unresolved issues. The agreement said there were "no other remaining issues and ambiguities regarding Iran's past nuclear program and activities," and characterized the accord as "a significant step forward."

"This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all the outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence," said IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei. "I'm clear at this stage you need to give Iran a chance to prove its stated goodwill. Sanctions alone, I know for sure, are not going to lead to a durable solution"

In 2003, when Dr. ElBaradei reported there was no evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, the White House was not pleased. And as Saddam Hussein became more cooperative with the weapons inspectors, Bush became "infuriated," according to Bob Woodward.

Bush's vow, "We will confront this danger before it is too late," is the Iran incarnation of his illegal preemptive war doctrine, which he inaugurated in Iraq. In a clear signal he is seeking regime change in Iran, Bush called for "an Iran whose government is accountable to its people, instead of leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons."

Barnett Rubin reported on Global Affairs blog that one of the leading neo-conservative institutions has "instructions" from Dick Cheney's office to "roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this - they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is 'plenty.'"

Bush/Cheney created the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) to lead a propaganda campaign to bolster public support for war with Iraq. The White House decided to wait until after Labor Day of 2002 to kick off WHIG's mission. Chief of staff Andrew Card explained, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Five years later, they're marketing a new and even more dangerous product - war with Iran. British military historian Corelli Barnett says "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."

Our military spending has reached $1 billion every 2-1/2 days and we are borrowing $2-1/2 billion per day. Bush is mortgaging our children's future security and wealth. We have lost more than 3,700 soldiers in Iraq and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died.

We have already seen how easily Congress caves in to AIPAC. It's up to the people. As Noam Chomsky said, "The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war [on Iran] is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam."

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Iraqis Will Be the Deciders

As Congress debates whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, George Bush is trying to buy time. He and Dick Cheney have no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq.

Cheney commissioned a 2000 report by the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which said “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” A document for Cheney's secret energy task force included a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a “Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oil Contracts.” It was dated March 2001, six months before 9/11.

On April 19, 2003, shortly after U.S. troops invaded Baghdad, the New York Times quoted senior Bush officials as saying the United States was "planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region.” They discussed "maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future.”

Indeed, Bush is building mega-bases In Iraq. Camp Anaconda, which sits on 15 square miles of Iraqi soil, has a pool, gym, theater, beauty salon, school and six apartment buildings. To avoid the negative connotation of “permanent,” Bush officials call their bases “enduring camps.” Our $600 million American embassy in the Green Zone will open in September. The largest embassy in the world, it is a self-contained city with no need for Iraqi electricity, food or water.

The motive for a permanent presence in Iraq has been obvious from day one. It’s the oil. The oft-mentioned benchmark for Iraqi progress, touted by Bush and Congress alike, is the so-called Iraqi oil law. The new law would turn over control of most oil production and royalties to foreign oil companies. The Iraqi people are opposed to the oil law.

The biggest impediment to the privatization of Iraq’s oil is the unions. Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, told U.S. photojournalist David Bacon, “It will undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and our people … If the law is ratified, there will be no reconstruction. The U.S. will keep its hegemony over Iraq.”

In early June, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions shut down the oil pipelines. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki capitulated to the union’s demand that implementation of the oil law be postponed until October so the union could propose alternatives.

Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam said, “War makes privatization easy: First you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it.” After Halliburton entered Iraq in 2003 and tried to control the wells and rigs by withholding reconstruction aid, the union went on strike for three days. Exports stopped and government revenue was cut off. Halliburton shut down its operations.

Iraqis overwhelmingly oppose a permanent U.S. presence in their country. A group of Iraqi nationalists, including Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, have formed a pan-Iraqi coalition to topple al-Maliki. They represent a vast majority of rank-and-file Iraqis outside of Parliament. Their primary basis of unity is opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq; they also strongly oppose Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranian influence in Iraq.

“All the problems come from the occupation," Umara observed "… The occupation fosters the enormous corruption ... As long as we have an occupation, we’ll have more sabotage and killing. But when people from the local tribes control the security, they have expelled the al-Qaeda forces and those others who are terrorizing people. This means we can protect ourselves and bring security to our nation, with no need of the U.S. forces. To those who believe that if the U.S. troops leave there will be chaos, I say, let them go, and if we fight each other afterwards, let us do that. We are being killed by the thousands already.”

The Iraqi unions want the occupation to end. Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Workers Union of Iraq, told Bacon, "If it was up to Bush, he'd occupy the world. But that's not what the nations of the world want. Would they accept occupation, as we have had to do? Our nation does not want to be occupied, and we'll do our best to end it."

Nationalists in the Iraqi Parliament recently passed a bill calling for the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, and another demanding the Iraqi government present any plan to extend the occupation past 2007 to Parliament. They will not accept a proposal that includes permanent U.S. bases on Iraqi soil. Our national discourse must include a discussion of U.S. intentions for Iraq after a troop withdrawal. But ultimately, as in Vietnam, it will be the Iraqi people who are the deciders.

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The Opportunistic Commuter-in-Chief: The use and misuse of presidential clemency power

When he announced the commutation of Scooter Libby's 30-month sentence, George W. Bush cited the ways Libby has and will suffer: damage to his reputation, the suffering of his wife and children, large fines, and the "long-lasting" consequences of being a convicted felon.

When he was governor of Texas, however, Bush showed no compassion for the 152 people whose death sentences he refused to commute. One was Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man executed for murdering a restaurant manager. The jury was never told about Washington's mental condition. Bush was unmoved.

When Bush's Department of Justice recently convinced the Supreme Court to affirm the 33-month sentence of Victor Rita, a decorated war hero who was charged with the same crimes as Libby, Bush expressed no concern for Rita's family or future.

And when his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, argued just last month that the Justice Department would advocate legislation to make federal sentences longer, Bush was unconcerned about how those long prison sentences would impact the family and future of the prisoners. Yet Bush found Scooter Libby's sentence to be "excessive." But instead of reducing the prison sentence of this convicted felon, Bush let him off without a day in jail.

By commuting Libby's sentence, Bush signaled his complicity in the obstruction of justice of which Libby was convicted. Bush and Cheney had initiated the smear campaign to discredit and punish Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, after Wilson publicly debunked the centerpiece of the administration's lies about WMD in Iraq.

During Libby's trial, he subpoenaed Cheney and other top Bush officials to support his defense that he was the fall-guy for his superiors. But Libby ultimately backed down and presented almost no defense to the charges. The only logical explanation is that Bush promised Libby he would never see the inside of a prison cell. The quid pro quo: Libby keeps his mouth shut about Bush's and Cheney's involvement in the conspiracy. With the commutation, Bush made good on his promise.

Why didn't Bush simply pardon Libby and wipe his record clean? Because then Libby would be precluded from claiming the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in any future criminal or congressional proceeding, and he would be susceptible to depositions in the Wilson/Plame civil lawsuit. This calculated commutation preserves his appeal rights (and thus his Fifth Amendment claim). It is a continuation of the cover-up.

James Madison warned, "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

Rep. John Conyers Jr. has scheduled a hearing next week to investigate "the use and misuse of presidential clemency power." Responding to the Libby commutation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Bush "abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his administration accountable." Maybe now they will put impeachment back on the table.

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The Unitary King George

As the nation focused on whether Congress would exercise its constitutional duty to cut funding for the war, Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution.

If a "catastrophic emergency" - which could include a terrorist attack or a natural disaster - occurs, Bush's new directive says: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."

What about the other two co-equal branches of government? The directive throws them a bone by speaking of a "cooperative effort" among the three branches, "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers." The Vice-President would help to implement the plans.

"Comity," however, means courtesy, and the President would decide what kind of respect for the other two branches of government would be "proper." This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive."

A seemingly innocuous phrase, the unitary executive theory actually represents a radical, ultra rightwing interpretation of the powers of the presidency. Championed by the conservative Federalist Society, the unitary executive doctrine gathers all power in the hands of the President and insulates him from any oversight by the congressional or judicial branches.

In a November 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, then Judge Samuel Alito said the Constitution "makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that. The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power -- the whole thing."

These "unitarians" claim that all federal agencies, even those constitutionally created by Congress, are beholden to the Chief Executive, that is, the President. This means that Bush could disband agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve Board, etc., if they weren't to his liking.

Indeed, Bush signed an executive order stating that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee. Consumer advocates were concerned that this directive was aimed at weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The unitary executive dogma represents audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province of the other two branches of government.

This doctrine took shape within the Bush administration shortly after 9/11. On September 25, 2001, former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo used the words "unitary executive" in a memo he wrote for the White House: "The centralization of authority in the president alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch." Six weeks later, Bush began using that phrase in his signing statements.

As of December 22, 2006, Bush had used the words "unitary executive" 145 times in his signing statements and executive orders. Yoo, one of the chief architects of Bush's doctrine of unfettered executive power, wrote memoranda advising Bush that because he was commander in chief, he could make war any time he thought there was a threat, and he didn't have to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

In a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles.

The unitary executive theory has already cropped up in Supreme Court opinions. In his lone dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Justice Clarence Thomas cited "the structural advantages of a unitary Executive." He disagreed with the Court that due process demands an American citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decision maker. Thomas wrote, "Congress, to be sure, has a substantial and essential role in both foreign affairs and national security. But it is crucial to recognize that judicial interference in these domains destroys the purpose of vesting primary responsibility in a unitary Executive."

Justice Thomas's theory fails to recognize why our Constitution provides for three co-equal branches of government.

In 1926, Justice Louis Brandeis explained the constitutional role of the separation of powers. He wrote, "The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy."

Eighty years later, noted conservative Grover Norquist, describing the unitary executive theory, echoed Brandeis's sentiment. Norquist said, "you don't have a constitution; you have a king."

One wonders what Bush & Co. are setting up with the new Presidential Directive. What if, heaven forbid, some sort of catastrophic event were to occur just before the 2008 election? Bush could use this directive to suspend the election. This administration has gone to great lengths to remain in Iraq. It has built huge permanent military bases and pushed to privatize Iraq's oil. Bush and Cheney may be unwilling to relinquish power to a successor administration.

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Alberto Gonzales: Tip of the Iceberg

As Democratic and Republican leaders alike pile on to demand Alberto Gonzales' resignation, only George W. Bush is singing his praises. Deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Bush was happy with Gonzales' testimony. "The attorney general continues to have the president's full confidence," she said.

It's not surprising that Bush would be pleased. Like a good soldier, Gonzales, who claimed a faulty memory 70 times, was careful not to incriminate his bosses.

Bush and Cheney hired Gonzales as attorney general to carry out their plan to amass governmental power in the hands of the Executive. They knew they could count on him.

Gonzales' bona fides were well-known to his bosses. When he was counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush from 1995 to 1997, Gonzales provided his boss with "scant summaries" on capital punishment cases that "repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence," according to the Atlantic Monthly.

Gonzales prepared 57 such summaries, including one regarding the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man executed for murdering a restaurant manager. The jury was never told about his mental condition. Gonzales's three-page summary of the case for Bush mentioned only that Washington's defense counsel's 30-page plea for clemency (which covered the mental competency issue) was rejected by the Texas parole board. Bush refused to stay executions in 56 of the 57 cases in which Gonzales wrote abbreviated memos.

The attorney general was central to the Bush-Cheney-Yoo illegal domestic surveillance program. When he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the New York Times uncovered the secret spying program, attorney general Gonzales walked in lockstep with his bosses. Gonzales would not tell the senators whether Bush had authorized other secret programs. He refused to say whether the government could wiretap purely domestic calls without a warrant, or whether he had the authority to search the first class mail of American citizens or to examine people's medical records. When Republican Senator John Cornyn asked him whether law enforcement could shoot down a plane with drugs, Gonzales said, "I'd have to think about that."

At Gonzales' confirmation hearing for attorney general, he said he wasn't sure whether torturing prisoners could be lawful. The former Texas Supreme Court justice surely knew the terms of the Convention Against Torture, a treaty ratified by the United States and therefore part of the supreme law of the land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The convention says, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture."

Yet, as White House counsel, Gonzales had advised Bush that the Geneva Conventions, which mandate humane treatment for all captives, were "quant" and "obsolete." Gonzales' advice facilitated the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo and secret CIA prisons around the world. Gonzales had evidently done his homework. The Nazi lawyers at Nuremberg also advised their clients that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and "obsolete."

Gonzales' confirmation testimony led the New York Times to opine, "Mr. Bush had made the wrong choice when he rewarded Mr. Gonzales for his loyalty," and the Washington Post to say, "The message Mr. Gonzales left with senators was unmistakable: As attorney general, he will seek no change in practices that have led to the torture and killing of scores of detainees and to the blackening of U.S. moral authority around the world." The Post concluded, "Those senators who are able to reach clear conclusions about torture and whether the United States should engage in it have reason for grave reservations about Mr. Gonzales."

In 2005, Bush said, "Al Gonzales is a great friend of mine. I'm the kind of person, when a friend gets attacked, I don't like it." Eventually, however, Bush will have to unload Gonzales the way he unloaded his friend Donald Rumsfeld. Loyal Republican senators trying to paint Gonzales as incompetent don't want the finger to point higher to the real culprits - Karl Rove, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

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Mistrial at Court Martial: Watada Beats the Government

When the Army judge declared a mistrial over defense objection in 1st Lt. Ehren Watada's court martial, he probably didn't realize jeopardy attached. That means that under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution, the government cannot retry Lt. Watada on the same charges of missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer.

Lt. Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. He claimed those orders were unlawful because the war is illegal and he would be an accomplice to war crimes if he followed them.

The judge refused to allow me and others to testify as expert defense witnesses on the illegality of the Iraq war and the war crimes the Bush administration is committing there.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice sets forth the duty of military personnel to obey only lawful commands. Article 92 says: "A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the law of the United States "

Lt. Watada said at a June 6, 2006 press conference in Tacoma, Washington, "The war in Iraq is in fact illegal. It is my obligation and my duty to refuse any orders to participate in this war." He stated, "An order to take part in an illegal war is unlawful in itself. So my obligation is not to follow the order to go to Iraq."

Citing "deception and manipulation and willful misconduct by the highest levels of my chain of command," Lt. Watada declared there is "no greater betrayal to the American people" than the Iraq war.

The "turning point" for Lt. Watada came when he "saw the pain and suffering of so many soldiers and their families, and innocent Iraqis." He said, "I best serve my soldiers by speaking out against unlawful orders of the highest levels of my chain of command, and making sure our leaders are held accountable." Lt. Watada felt he "had the obligation to step up and do whatever it takes," even if that means facing court martial and imprisonment.

Lt. Watada did face court martial, and four years in prison, until the judge declared a mistrial.

This is what I would have said had I been allowed to testify at Lt. Watada's court martial:

The United States is committing a crime against the peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Iraq.

A war of aggression, prosecuted in violation of international treaties, is a crime against the peace. The war in Iraq violates the Charter of the United Nations, which prohibits the use of force. There are only two exceptions to that prohibition: self-defense and approval by the Security Council. A pre-emptive or preventive war is not allowed under the Charter.

Bush's war in Iraq was not undertaken in self-defense. Iraq had not attacked the US or any other country for 12 years. And Saddam Hussein's military capability had been effectively neutered by the Gulf War, 12 years of punishing sanctions, and nearly daily bombing by the US and UK over the "no-fly-zones."

Bush tried mightily to get the Security Council to sanction his war on Iraq. But the Council refused. Bush then cobbled together prior Council resolutions, none of which, individually or collectively, authorized the use of force in Iraq. Although Bush claimed to be enforcing Security Council resolutions, the Charter empowers only the Council to enforce its resolutions.

Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions constitute war crimes, for which individuals can be punished under the US War Crimes Act. Willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment are grave breaches.

The torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq are grave breaches of Geneva, and therefore, war crimes. The execution of unarmed civilians in Haditha and other Iraqi cities are also war crimes.

Commanders in the chain of command, all the way up to the commander in chief, can be prosecuted for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates were committing war crimes and failed to stop or prevent them. The torture policies and rules of engagement were set at the top. It is George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell who should be on trial - for the commission of war crimes.

Inhumane acts against a civilian population are crimes against humanity and violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. The targeting of civilians and failure to protect civilians and civilian objects are crimes against humanity.

The dropping of 2,000-pound bombs in residential areas of Baghdad during "Shock and Awe" were crimes against humanity. The indiscriminate US attack on Fallujah, which was collective punishment in retaliation for the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries, was a crime against humanity. The destruction of hospitals in Fallujah by the US military, its refusal to let doctors treat patients, and shooting into ambulances were crimes against humanity. Declaring Fallujah a "weapons-free" zone, with orders to shoot anything that moved, was a crime against humanity.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. He wrote:

"No political or economic situation can justify the crime of aggression. If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

Lt. Ehren Watada was correct when he said the war is illegal and he would be party to war crimes if he deployed to Iraq. The orders to deploy were unlawful and Lt. Watada had a duty to disobey them. Although he faces the possibility of a dishonorable discharge, the judge's grant of a mistrial precludes retrial on the same criminal charges.

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What's Going On?

In 1971, singer Marvin Gaye raised hackles when he tried to make sense of the madness of the Vietnam War by asking, "What's Going On?" He sang:

Mother, mother/ There's too many of you crying/ Brother, brother, brother/ There's far too many of you dying/ You know we've got to find a way/ To bring some lovin' here today -- Ya/ Father, father/ We don't need to escalate/ You see, war is not the answer/ For only love can conquer hate/ You know we've got to find a way/ To bring some loving' here today.

The song, told from the perspective of a returning Vietnam veteran, was inspired by Gaye's brother who had recently returned from that disastrous war.

Gaye would be asking the same question if he were alive today. Nearly 3,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. A brutal civil war continues to escalate, aggravated by intense opposition to the U.S. occupation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, General John Abazaid - commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East who just resigned - and the vast majority of the American people oppose sending more U.S. troops to Iraq. Yet George W. Bush is planning to do just that.

Even staunch Republicans like MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough, who supported the war and voted twice for Bush, is asking what's going on. On his December 20 show, Scarborough was appalled by Bush's statement, "I encourage you all to go shopping more." MSNBC analyst Mike Barnacle noted that "this President is isolated, delusional, and stubborn." Bush's "delusion," according to Barnacle, is going to result in the deaths and carnage of our troops and people throughout the Middle East. "I don't think [Bush] knows what he's saying . . . He is totally isolated from reality," Barnacle added. "The deaths of American soldiers now verges on the criminal."

So what is going on? Former Nixon counsel John Dean recently told a San Diego audience he doesn't think Bush is in charge - Cheney is running the government. "One of Dick Cheney's geniuses is that he lets Dubya wake up every morning and think he's President," Dean noted. Cheney has set up his own National Security Council in the Vice President's office, according to Dean. Decisions about budgets, personnel, etc., never get to the Oval Office. Cheney decides the important matters before they ever reach Bush's desk, Dean said.

The report of the Iraq Study Group was not prepared by a bunch of radicals. It even recommended privatizing Iraq's oil. But the group of 10 saw that more troops and shunning Iran and Syria is not the answer. What did Bush do? He dismissed the ISG report out of hand in favor of Cheney's agenda.

Why would Dick Cheney and the neocons who convinced Bush to start this war decide to pull out now? They created the war to achieve their imperial dream of privatizing Iraqi oilfields and building permanent U.S. military bases nearby to protect them. They are willing to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers and the Iraqi people in pursuit of their dream.

Cheney is undoubtedly telling the evangelical Dubya to hang in there, God is testing him. Remember Bush said he consulted with his heavenly father before starting the war. If Bush thinks God told him to start this war, what will it take to make him stop?

And it could get worse. Cheney-Bush has sent our battleships to the Persian Gulf to "warn" Iran that we mean business. And the White House blacked out parts of a New York Times op-ed on negotiating with Iran written by two former U.S. government advisors. This means, in all likelihood, that Cheney has decided it's time to pick off the next member of the Axis of Evil. They're following the same strategy they used on the way to Iraq: convince the American people that Iran is building weapons of mass destruction, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Attacking Iran would cause a disaster of epic proportions.

Now that the Democrats are taking over the reins in Washington, we have a golden opportunity to set things right. But incoming Senate majority leader Harry Reid's first instinct was to align himself with the 12 percent of Americans who support sending more troops to Iraq. And new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lost no time in declaring that they would not cut funding for the war.

It seems more likely the Republicans, not the Democrats, will try to derail the Cheney-Bush war express. Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore) declared last week on the Senate floor: "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore."

Ultimately, it is up to the American people to step up to the plate and stop this war. It's fine to tell the pollsters we want our troops out of Iraq. But that's not doing the trick. The Vietnam War ended after thousands of people marched in the streets. We may not have the draft to get the college kids off their duffs. But we do have our consciences. And that should be enough.

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Bush Fears War Crimes Prosecution, Impeachment

With great fanfare, George W. Bush announced to a group of carefully selected 9/11 families yesterday that he had finally decided to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other alleged terrorists to Guantánamo Bay, where they will be tried in military commissions. After nearly 5 years of interrogating these men, why did Bush choose this moment to bring them to "justice"?

Bush said his administration had "largely completed our questioning of the men" and complained that "the Supreme Court's recent decision has impaired our ability to prosecute terrorists through military commissions and has put in question the future of the CIA program."

He was referring to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which the high court recently held that Bush's military commissions did not comply with the law. Bush sought to try prisoners in commissions they could not attend with evidence they never see, including hearsay and evidence obtained by coercion.

The Court also determined that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to al Qaeda detainees. That provision of Geneva prohibits "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment."

Bush called on Congress to define these "vague and undefined" terms in Common Article 3 because "our military and intelligence personnel" involved in capture and interrogation "could now be at risk of prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

Congress enacted the War Crimes Act in 1996. That act defines violations of Geneva's Common Article 3 as war crimes. Those convicted face life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

The President is undoubtedly familiar with the doctrine of command responsibility, where commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief, can be held liable for war crimes their inferiors commit if the commander knew or should have known they might be committed and did nothing to stop or prevent them.

Bush defensively denied that the United States engages in torture and foreswore authorizing it. But it has been well-documented that policies set at the highest levels of our government have resulted in the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of U.S. prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

Indeed, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act in December, which codifies the prohibition in United States law against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners in U.S. custody. In his speech yesterday, Bush took credit for working with Senator John McCain to pass the DTA.

In fact, Bush fought the McCain "anti-torture" amendment tooth-and-nail, at times threatening to veto the entire appropriations bill to which it was appended. At one point, Bush sent Dick Cheney to convince McCain to exempt the CIA from the prohibition on cruel treatment, but McCain refused.

Bush signed the bill, but attached a "signing statement" where he reserved the right to violate the DTA if, as commander-in-chief, he thought it necessary.

Throughout his speech, Bush carefully denied his administration had violated any laws during its "tough" interrogations of prisoners. Yet, the very same day, the Pentagon released a new interrogation manual that prohibits techniques including "waterboarding," which amounts to torture.

Before the Supreme Court decided the Hamdan case, the Pentagon intended to remove any mention of Common Article 3 from its manual. The manual had been the subject of revision since the Abu Ghraib torture photographs came to light.

But in light of Hamdan, the Pentagon was forced to back down and acknowledge the dictates of Common Article 3.

Bush also seeks Congressional approval for his revised military commissions, which reportedly contain nearly all of the objectionable features of his original ones.

The President's speech was timed to coincide with the beginning of the traditional post-Labor Day period when Congress focuses on the November elections. The Democrats reportedly stand a good chance of taking back one or both houses of Congress. Bush fears impeachment if the Democrats achieve a majority in the House of Representatives.

By challenging Congress to focus on legislation about treatment of terrorists - which he called "urgent" - Bush seeks to divert the election discourse away from his disastrous war on Iraq.

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