The US government can be compared to a woman with a horribly disfigured – indeed, a downright grotesque – face, who, nonetheless, manages to hide her increasingly ugly mug with such an array of near-miraculous cosmetics, roseate lighting, and diversionary tactics that the casual observer is fooled into beholding what he believes is a great beauty. But every once in a great while the mask slips at a moment when the lighting is cruelly revealing, and we get a glimpse of the horror that lurks beneath. In the wake of 9/11, federal law enforcement agencies have indeed been seen in a new – and especially cruel – light. Where were they when Osama bin Laden and fellow ghouls were plotting the destruction of the WTC and the Pentagon right here under our noses? The picture that has emerged, at least up until very recently, is one of incompetence on the level of the Keystone Kops, a tragi-comedy of errors – but now, it appears, that is the very least of it….
The mask is slipping badly, now, and the spotlight is shining brightly, revealing not just stupidity, bureaucratic ineptitude, and inter-departmental competition, but also – treason. For nothing less than treason is the reason yet another FBI whistle-blower is making headlines with revelations that make Coleen Rowley's charges of high-level obstructionism in the Zacarias Moussaoui case look relatively innocuous. "2 FBI Whistle-Blowers Allege Lax Security, Possible Espionage," the Washington Post headline modestly avers, but that is putting it rather too mildly. Not since Whittaker Chambers exposed a Stalinist nest high in the topmost branches of the US government has the light been shone on such a deep – and dangerous – penetration of the nation's high security innards. Sibel Edmonds, 32, a former wiretap translator in the FBI's Washington field office, has stepped forward with a shocking narrative of official obstructionism and high-level espionage that breaks down into four stunning accusations:
1) One of her fellow FBI translators, a so-far-unidentified woman, "belonged to the Middle Eastern organization whose taped conversations she had been translating for FBI counterintelligence agents," according to the Post. "This person told us she worked for our target organization," Edmonds says. "These are the people we are targeting, monitoring." This other translator also met with "a foreign official subject to the surveillance." Furthermore, says Edmonds, this woman (and her husband, a military officer) "tried to recruit her to join the targeted foreign group."
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Friday, June 21, 2002
Summary
The Saudi Arabian government recently announced the capture of
suspected al Qaeda members, while simultaneously publicizing its
release of Saudi citizens who fought in Afghanistan. Egyptian
intelligence about al Qaeda's presence in Saudi Arabia is forcing
the kingdom to act publicly to appease Washington. However, it
must balance this with contrasting announcements at home -- or
risk domestic opposition boiling over.
Analysis
London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat reported June 17
that 160 Saudi citizens who were arrested in January after
returning home from Afghanistan have been released. According to
Saudi security sources, the men had carried out military
operations in Afghanistan against U.S. and Northern Alliance
forces. Nevertheless, they were judged not to have engaged in
"any activity threatening to the security of Saudi Arabia or
other countries," the paper reported.
Only one day later, Saudi officials announced that they had
arrested seven suspected members of al Qaeda several months ago.
The group, consisting of six Saudis and a Sudanese, were accused
of planning to attack "key installations" -- including the Prince
Sultan air base used by U.S. troops -- with explosives and
surface-to-air missiles, Agence France-Presse reported. Discarded
firing tubes from missiles have been found near U.S. bases in
Saudi Arabia.
Both the al Qaeda arrests and the prisoners' release were well
known to U.S. intelligence. Therefore, the most interesting
question is not only why the Saudis made the announcement, but
also why now? It appears the Saudis are feeling the heat from an
Egyptian investigation into al Qaeda's presence in Saudi Arabia,
and they must therefore make a reluctant public show of support
to the United States. However, they also must be careful to avoid
being seen as Washington's puppet.
The Saudis are playing to two different audiences, the first of
which is domestic. There are elements in the country, including
influential Saudis, that are sympathetic to al Qaeda, and there
are many more who are profoundly uncomfortable with the U.S.
military's continuing presence. The Saudi government must move
cautiously to placate these factions.
On the other hand, the Saudis also must play to the United
States, which not only is a superpower capable of destabilizing
the entire region, but also has military forces inside the
kingdom. The Saudis use the Americans to protect the regional
balance of power. They cannot afford a complete breach with the
United States, and so are moving along a tightrope. They must
convince the United States that they are cooperating against al
Qaeda, while at the same time demonstrating to the domestic
factions that they are not cooperating too much. Balance is
everything.
For obvious reasons the Saudis are more willing to work with the
United States secretly than in public. The United States,
however, needs public indications of support backed by effective
action to bolster the domestic American opinion of the Saudis --
which is not particularly positive right now -- and to generate
the sense that the Saudis are part of an effective operating
coalition.
While the Americans need the Saudis to give them something
public, Riyadh cannot do so unless it can also demonstrate its
independence. Thus we have the virtually hand-in-hand
announcements of al Qaeda operatives captured and Afghan
combatants released.
That explains the why but not the reason making the announcement
now. Apart from the general pressure being applied by the United
States, an interesting incident occurred in Egypt late last week:
Security forces arrested Salah Hashem, a co-founder of the
radical Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya Islamic organization, which is
blamed for the massacre of tourists at Luxor, Egypt, in 1997.
Hashem has been considered a moderate in Al-Gama'a and supports a
cease-fire agreement between the group and the government.
Speculation surrounding his arrest did not necessarily imply that
he was a threat, only that he knew a great deal about close links
between Al-Gama'a and al Qaeda. Many of al Qaeda's members are
Egyptians who were originally Al-Gama'a members.
The Egyptians have been cooperating actively with U.S.
intelligence, and Hashem's detention is important because it
indicates two things. First, the willingness to arrest him shows
that the Egyptians are confident that they have Al-Gama'a under
control. Second, it exhibits the fact that the Egyptians are
reaching a level of clarity about the structure of al Qaeda that
was not available before. They would not arrest Hashem on a vague
fishing expedition -- but only if they felt that he knew
critically important things about al Qaeda.
One of the things he likely has knowledge of is the relationship
between the two most important elements in al Qaeda: Egyptian and
Saudi members. Hashem worked in Saudi Arabia from 1982 to 1985
and could therefore have information on people and activities
there. This is a critically important addition to the
intelligence Egypt has gathered about al Qaeda in general and the
presence and structure of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia in particular.
Such information also disallows the Saudis plausible deniability.
The intelligence that the Egyptians have gathered through this
and many other arrests has put the Saudi government in a position
wherein Washington would regard failure to act on this
information as a refusal to cooperate. The Saudis cannot afford
this.
Therefore, not only must they act; they must act publicly. This
is why the arrests of the al Qaeda suspects that occurred months
ago have been announced now, and it is safe to assume that
further arrests that have not yet been announced are being made.
At the same time, the Saudis can't just "cooperate." For every
action, there will be a local reaction. Hence, linked with the
announcement of the al Qaeda arrests is the announcement of the
release of Saudis who fought in Afghanistan. For the U.S.
government, a much more important al Qaeda cell has been taken
down publicly while a much less critical group of operatives have
been released to appease domestic critics and assure them that
the kingdom remains independent.
This may achieve the balance between the needs of the Saudis and
the United States, but if the Egyptians create problems for the
Saudis with their investigation into al Qaeda, then some sort of
conflict is sure to erupt between Riyadh and Cairo. Saudi Arabia
is increasing contact with Sudan -- Sudanese President Omar
Bashir traveled to the country June 17 -- which the Saudis could
possibly use as a proxy against Egypt.
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Stanley Hilton, a San Francisco attorney and former aide to Senator Bob Dole, filed a $7 billion lawsuit in U.S. District Court on June 3rd. The class-action suit names ten defendants, among whom are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Norman Mineta.
Hilton's suit charges Bush and his administration with allowing the September 11th attacks to take place so as to reap political benefits from the catastrophe. Hilton alleges that Osama bin Laden is being used as a scapegoat by an administration that ignored pressing warnings of the attack and refused to round up suspected terrorists beforehand. Hilton alleges the ultimate motivation behind these acts was achieved when the Taliban were replaced by American military forces with a regime friendly to America and its oil interests in the region.
Hilton's plaintiffs in this case are the families of 14 victims of 9/11, numbering 400 people nationwide. These are the same families that rallied in Washington recently to advocate for an independent investigation into the attacks. The current 9/11 hearings are being conducted by Congress behind closed doors, a situation these families find unacceptable.
Mr. Hilton, by filing his lawsuit, has joined the ranks of an ever-increasing body of Americans who subscribe to what they call the LIHOP Theory. LIHOP stands for Let It Happen On Purpose. The LIHOP Theory puts forward the accusation that Bush and his people allowed the September 11th attacks to take place, despite the fact that they had been repeatedly warned of an impending strike.
The LIHOP Theory is straightforward: In the months before 9/11, American intelligence agencies received ominous warnings from the intelligence services of nations like Israel, Russia, Egypt and Germany. These warnings were pointed - an attack involving hijacked aircraft and prominent American landmarks was imminent, our security forces were told. Bush himself was briefed of these warnings weeks before they happened. Instead of responding vigorously to these warnings, the Bush administration and its security apparatus did nothing.
Thursday, June 20, 2002
I grew up in the Washington, D.C., area and live here now, and I no longer feel safe. In addition, I'm angry, because our government seems to be doing everything it can to make this place as widely and fiercely hated as possible. The debate over global politics, the environment, and the bombing of other countries is not just about others' misery, owl species, or the world of our great-grandchildren anymore. It's about the safety of this country today or next week, and about whether magnanimity or machismo is the best course to ensure that safety.
For certain war- and cold-war-promoters every country we've attacked for decades has been attacked to protect this country, but I never believed that justification or felt that threat. Now the Pentagon has been attacked, and the people left inside it seem intent on amplifying the policies that seem most likely to lead to more attacks. Now I feel the threat, but believe that the justification for attacking other countries is more misguided than ever.
Ask the six participants in three current wars or near-wars what motivates them and you'll get little variety in the responses. Indian and Pakistani "leaders" will each say that the other started it, that their side is defending the better way of life, that God agees with them, and that they are -- through their flirtation with mutual self-destruction -- standing up to U.S. nuclear power. The Israeli and Palestinian "leaders" will each say that the other started it, that their side is defending the better way of life, that God agrees with them, and that they are the true victim of a broad conspiracy.
Monday, June 17, 2002
European Union foreign ministers have agreed to open trade and political talks with Iran, a country still branded by the US as part of a global "axis of evil".
EU Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten will meet Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Brussels on Tuesday to start the process that the EU hopes will bolster the reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
The European foreign ministers who met in Luxembourg said closer trade and economic links would have to be matched by Iranian efforts to stop terrorism and the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of CNN, accuses Israel today of engaging in "terrorism" against the Palestinians, in comments that threaten to lead to a further decline in the news network's already poor relations with the Jewish state.
"Aren't the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other?" says Turner, who is vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner, which owns CNN, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.
"The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that's all they have. The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism."
His remarks were last night condemned by Ariel Sharon's government, which called them "stupid". Andrea Levin, director of the American pro-Israeli media watchdog Camera, said the comments were a "reprehensible" attempt to "blur the line between perpetrator and victim".
In his first British interview since the September 11 attacks, Mr Turner - who broke philanthropic records in 1997 when he donated $1bn to the UN - argues that poverty and desperation are the root cause of Palestinian suicide bombings.
(YellowTimes.org) – Listening to all the incendiary rhetoric, accusations and finger pointing by Washington towards other nations these days, I can't help but be constantly reminded of the age-old adage that warns us: Beware of the finger that you point towards others, for indeed, in that very act, three other fingers point directly back at you. Buddhism and other worldly philosophies and religious disciplines teach us to weigh our criticisms of others in light of our own human condition. Truly, how can we pass judgment on someone else's words, behaviors, or character unless we have seen these things somewhere before, namely, in ourselves?
On a personal level, there is a small but significant exercise one is encouraged to perform whenever one finds oneself in judgment of another. After whatever statement you make about someone else, simply add the words, "Just like me."
This practice is based on the principle that none of us is perfect and that the flaws we recognize in others can be found within some aspect of ourselves. The beauty of this technique is that it tears away the veils of illusion of our alleged perfection, superiority and self-righteous vindication over others.
It reminds us of our own fallibility and endows us with a sense of humility, two concepts that seem to be utterly lacking within the hallowed halls of the U.S. government in general, but most noticeably within the ranks of the current Bush administration.
If you listen carefully to what our leaders are telling us about other dangerous, "evil" nations, terrorist groups, and "inferior" systems of government, while keeping in mind and adding the phrase "just like us" to everything they say, you will begin to discern just how all this finger- pointing is being utilized to obscure the sins of our own national inadequacies, guilt, failings, and outright evil transgressions.
Shortly after September 11, Bush went on the offensive against the "axis of evil" and other so-called "rogue" nations claiming they were a threat to the world as they were developing and amassing weapons of mass destruction, "just like us."
In fact, the United States has the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear warheads, in the world. The United States is the only nation in the world to have ever actually used nuclear weapons against civilian populations, not just once, in Hiroshima, but unconscionably a second time in Nagasaki, killing millions of innocent, unarmed people. The U.S. is also guilty of killing millions more in the fire-bombings of Dresden and other major German cities during World War II.
(YellowTimes.org) – June 8 marked 35 years since Israel attacked the USS Liberty without warning in international waters, killing 34 Americans and wounding 172 more. The Israelis lied about it and persuaded our Congress to look the other way, and they are still lying about it today. But the Liberty will not go away. Every attempt to hide this story seems to bring more attention.
This past year brought a 60-minute documentary produced by CBS News Productions that was broadcast by The History Channel on Aug. 9 - much to the dismay and over the heated objections of the Israeli Embassy and various spokesmen for Israel who did all in their power to block it.
CAMERA, a leading pro-Israel propaganda arm, produced an extended and angry critique of the film, accusing survivors and CBS News itself of producing a "propaganda-laden bogus history" that is deliberately distorted and anti-Semitic.
In a personal attack directed on me, CAMERA unearthed a 1990 Internet newsgroup in which I made what they consider a damning comment. In response to a claim that Israel was "surrounded by enemies," I replied that Israel would have no enemies if it didn't steal its neighbors' land and water and shoot its neighbors' children.
CAMERA cited that remark as evidence of bias and anti-Semitism; I would defend it even today as a truism that might well be engraved in stone.
The History Channel's report was aired as scheduled and rebroadcast this past March 14. Although CAMERA urged The History Channel not to sell a video version, it was made available anyway. In fact, the video temporarily sold out and was described by some retailers as their best selling such product ever. CAMERA, it seems, convinced only the choir.
GUSH KATIF, Gaza Strip -- The four-hour wait at an Israeli roadblock had left Wafa Ashur exhausted and enraged--again.
In her arms, she held her 8-month-old daughter, Rawiya. Wedged between her and another passenger in the stifling taxi was her 5-year-old son, Saado, his eyes dulled with boredom and fatigue. And as far as the eye could see ahead and behind them were hundreds of other Palestinian mothers, fathers, children, workers and students, caught in what for thousands of Palestinians is a daily ritual.
Roadblocks have become the most hated and ubiquitous symbol of Israel's military intrusion into Palestinian lives in the last 20 months. And no roadblock is more tortuous than the one here at Gush Katif, where the only north-south artery of the Gaza Strip intersects a road that connects a cluster of 15 Jewish settlements to pre-1967 Israel. On this desolate and dusty stretch of roadway, Israel's stated policy of sparing Palestinian civilians in its fight against militants has broken down. Here, and at dozens of other roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the endless waits at checkpoints that the army says are vital security measures have created the sort of mass misery for Palestinians that successive Israeli governments tried for decades to avoid.
In the last two years, Palestinian militants have repeatedly attacked civilian and military convoys traveling to and from Gush Katif, killing and wounding Jewish settlers and soldiers in suicide bombings and drive-by shootings. All told, the militants have killed about 20 Israeli civilians and 35 soldiers in Gaza since hostilities erupted in September 2000, according to the army.
In response to the attacks, the army has imposed what it acknowledges are draconian measures designed to separate the two peoples. They are steps that the army says it knows exact a heavy toll.
"This pressure we are putting on them is no good for us," said Brig. Gen. Zvi Fogel, chief of staff for the army's southern command. "When normal civilians are kept here for hours, they become angry and frustrated. We know that if the situation goes on like this for a few more months, the potential for suicide bombers will be much greater."
Irish documentarian Jamie Doran says he has evidence of American complicity in a massacre in Afghanistan, and he's been showing his rough footage to European leaders in the hope of preventing a coverup.
Doran, who worked at the BBC for more than seven years and has made documentaries about human rights abuses throughout the world, screened 20 minutes of his unfinished feature documentary, "Massacre at Mazar," to the European parliament and the German parliament on Wednesday. After witnessing the screening, Andrew McEntee, former head of Amnesty International in the U.K., called for an independent investigation.
Doran has yet to release the footage to the public because he says his eyewitnesses' identities need to be obscured for their own protection. But Doran felt he had to get some of the information out immediately because the mass graves he secretly filmed are in danger of being tampered with, which would make an independent inquiry into his film's allegations of Northern Alliance and American war crimes impossible.
According to Doran, of the approximately 8,000 Taliban prisoners taken after the fall of Kunduz in late November 2001 to Gen. Rashid Dostum, around 5,000 are unaccounted for. He says he's filmed eyewitnesses testifying that many of those prisoners suffocated in the metal containers used to transport them between Qala-I-Zeini fortress and Sherberghan prison, and that Northern Alliance troops fired into the containers, killing and wounding other prisoners. One witness claims that an American officer ordered the bodies dumped in the desert of Dasht-I-Leili, and that living people were taken there as well and executed. Furthermore, Doran says he has witnesses claiming to have seen American special-forces soldiers torturing prisoners who made it to Sherberghan.
In all, six witnesses appear in the film: two truck drivers who drove the trucks filled with corpses and living men to Dasht-I-Leili; a taxi driver who saw the blood-dripping trucks; two soldiers, including one who admits he shot into the containers; and a Northern Alliance general. Doran says other witnesses may be ready to come forward as well.
Doran says that his sources had no agendas and in fact were putting their lives at risk by appearing in the film. He said that one of his collaborators on the film, as well as one of the witnesses, have had their lives threatened.
The Pentagon didn't return calls for comment, but an official was quoted in the U.K. Guardian Thursday saying that "U.S. Central Command looked into it a few months ago, when allegations first surfaced when there were graves discovered in the area of Sherberghan prison. They looked into it and did not substantiate any knowledge, presence or participation of U.S. service members."
Doran's claim that there is a mass grave in Dasht-I-Leili has been echoed by Physicians for Human Rights, though the group doesn't know anything about American involvement. PHR seconds Doran's demand that the evidence be preserved. "The reconstruction of Afghanistan should include whatever accountability mechanism the Afghans decide to use. Therefore it's urgent that these mass graves are protected, or else they will be disturbed and evidence will not be as credible," says PHR consultant John Heffernan. (Besides the grave near Sherberghan, PHR found a mass grave near Mazar-I-Sharif).
Heffernan was in Afghanistan in January with PHR board member Dr. Jennifer Leaning when they heard rumors about the grave near Sherberghan. Someone from an international NGO told them they were driving by Dasht-I-Leili when "they witnessed three large container trucks backed into a site that was being bulldozed," Heffernan says.
Heffernan and Leaning went to the site and observed "skeletal remains, clothing and a significant odor." Two PHR forensic pathologists later determined the remains were from the previous two or three months.
A month ago, a U.N. investigative team exhumed 15 bodies from the site. Autopsies were performed on three of them; all had suffocated to death. Heffernan says that forensics suggest the area is dense with corpses.
Heffernan says that PHR had speculated that the bodies were of those unaccounted for after the surrender at Kunduz. Doran says the evidence in his film is the missing link connecting the fall of that city and the grave in the desert.
You believe there was a massacre. How did it happen?
First, the history. The Taliban was surrounded at the town of Kunduz. One man, Amir Jhan, agreed to negotiate their surrender. He had fought alongside the Taliban and was trusted by both sides. He was respected even by people like Dotsum. In the process of negotiating the surrender, Jhan counted the number of prisoners. He says there were 8,000. Now there are only 3,015 left. Where are the rest?
Four hundred seventy of the prisoners were suspected al-Qaida members. They were taken to Qala Jangi, and that was where the press focused attention. That's where the prison revolts started and where CIA agent Johnny Spann was killed.
What no one was aware of was that the other 7,500 prisoners were being processed through another fort, Qala-I-Zeini. They were transported to Sherberghan in shipping containers -- one of my witnesses said that 200 to 300 people were loaded into each container. The Taliban were suffocating. They cried out for air. In the film it says the answer came quite swiftly when Northern Alliance soldiers fired into the containers. One witness implicates himself by admitting to shooting into containers and killing prisoners. He was ordered by his commanders.
The containers were loaded onto trucks and moved towards Sherberghan. On that road, a taxi driver saw them in a makeshift gas station. He smelled something horrific and asked the attendant about it. The attendant said look behind you, and he turned around to see blood pouring out of three containers on the back of a truck.
When they arrived, one witness -- another soldier -- talks about how an American officer, on seeing the carnage, told them to get [the bodies] out of the town of Sherberghan. Two drivers who were interviewed separately talk of being forced to take container loads of the dead, wounded and unconscious into the desert of Dasht-I-Leili, where the bodies were taken from the containers. Some of them were alive. One of the drivers described some of them as being perfectly healthy. Others were wounded. They were lined up and summarily shot by machine-gun fire by the Northern Alliance.
Do you have other evidence of American complicity?
Crucially, one of the drivers was asked, "Were there any American soldiers present at Dasht-I-Leili?" He says yes. He was asked, "Do you mean right here where the killing took place?" He says, "Yes, here." He was asked how many, and he says lots of them, 30 to 40. He's saying that 30 to 40 American soldiers were witness on at least one occasion to these events.
Why did you come forward with the footage before your documentary was finished?
There is a mass grave with very many bodies in it at this moment, and I had received the word from Afghanistan that there was possibly tampering going on. By breaking the story, my hope is that this evidence is not removed and that an independent inquiry of some kind can take place. What do innocent people have to fear from an inquiry?
In your documentary, there are allegations that American soldiers tortured Taliban prisoners. When did that happen?
The torture took place after those prisoners that were left arrived at Sherberghan. According to eyewitnesses, these were fairly isolated instances. They included the breaking of necks, the cutting of tongues, the cutting of beards -- a great insult in the Islamic faith -- and the cutting of fingers.
I read that your film also claims that one prisoner had acid poured on him.
Yes, that's an allegation from one of the eyewitnesses.
You said before that some of your witnesses implicated themselves. How did you get them to talk to you?
The most important thing in this is that these witnesses have absolutely nothing to gain. They don't get a single cent and they put themselves in immense danger by agreeing to take part in this.
So what were their motives?
With the soldiers, I spent hours talking to them, negotiating and cajoling. They did not want to do interviews. They were happy to tell me things, they just did not want to do interviews [on camera]. I spent hours persuading them.
As for the drivers, it was perfectly clear from the way they talked and the expressions on their faces: They were frankly disgusted by what they'd been forced to do.
salon.com
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About the writer
Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon based in New York.
BILL MOYERS: With me now is a man who has been tracking the political and economic history of American wealth for a long time. Kevin Phillips and I were both young men in Washington in the 60s. We were on different sides but had a mutual interest in politics that reached workaday people. He was the chief political strategist for Richard Nixon's victory in 1968 and wrote the bombshell book on the emerging republican majority. Ten years ago his best-selling book on the politics of rich and poor influenced the 1992 elections. In his new book, WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY, he is writing about how big money and political power are the invisible hand in the hidden story of the American experience. Good to see you again.
Good to see you again.
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Nice to be here.
BILL MOYERS: You keep referring in "Wealth and Democracy" to a plutocracy. What do you mean by that?
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, the plutocracy ... and I think we have one now and we didn't, uh, 12 years ago when I wrote THE POLITICS OF RICH AND POOR is when money has ceased just entertaining itself with leveraged buyouts and all the stuff they did in the '80s, and really takes over politics, and takes it over on both sides when money not only talks, money screams. When you start developing philosophies in which giving a check is a First Amendment right. That's incredible. Uh, but what you've got is that this is what money has done. It's produced the fusion of money and government. And that is plutocracy.
BILL MOYERS: But hasn't money always held politics hostage?
KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, it's usually been very influential. And sometimes it really hasn't been too influential,
But what we've seen in the, uh ... the '80s and '90s is that it's taken control of both parties, pretty much taken control of the culture, and controls the whole dynamics of politics. And that is ...
MONTEREY, Calif. (Reuters) - The case of a suspended Air Force officer who accused President Bush of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen to prop up his presidency has been resolved and military experts said on Thursday he would likely avoid a court-martial.
Lt. Colonel Steve Butler could face nonjudicial punishment such as a fine or a letter of reprimand for accusing Bush of knowing about the attacks but doing nothing to stop them, Air Force spokeswoman Wendy Varhegyi said.
She declined to say exactly what will happen to Butler, who friends say had planned to retire before his letter sparked the storm of controversy.
``The investigation is over and the matter has been resolved,'' she said.
Butler, a 24-year Air Force veteran who served as a navigator in the 1990 Gulf War and was most recently posted at Monterey's Defense Language Institute, was not immediately available for comment and has said nothing publicly since his letter was published on May 26 in the local newspaper.
The letter accused Bush -- the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces -- of ``sleazy and contemptible'' conduct aimed at boosting his political ends.
``Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America,'' Butler said in his letter. ``He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama.
ANCHOR POINT, Alaska, June 13 — To live in Alaska when the average temperature has risen about seven degrees over the last 30 years means learning to cope with a landscape that can sink, catch fire or break apart in the turn of a season.
In the village of Shishmaref, on the Chukchi Sea just south of the Arctic Circle, it means high water eating away so many houses and buildings that people will vote next month on moving the entire village inland.
In Barrow, the northernmost city in North America, it means coping with mosquitoes in a place where they once were nonexistent, and rescuing hunters trapped on breakaway ice at a time of year when such things once were unheard of.
From Fairbanks to the north, where wildfires have been burning off and on since mid-May, it means living with hydraulic jacks to keep houses from slouching and buckling on foundations that used to be frozen all year. Permafrost, they say, is no longer permanent.
It's the most polluted state in the planet's most powerful country. Ed Vulliamy goes into George Bush's backyard to reveal how big oil got in bed with big politics and the price paid by the little people
There is a perverse beauty to the landscape arraigned below the iron bridge where Highway 255 strides the Houston Ship Channel: great towers of light and fire as far as the eye can behold; sinewy steel piping, plumes of smoke and flame twinkling into a Texas twilight coloured by a shroud of pollution hanging from the sky. The awesome prepotency of this smokescape is no illusion, for this is an epicentre of power, oil capital of the Western world and the most industrialised corner of the United States. It is also the capital of a power machine perfected in Texas, elevated to rule the nation and now unchallenged across the planet. A machine that operates in perpetual motion - an equilibrium of interests - between industry and politics. LaNell Anderson, former Republican voter, businesswoman and real-estate broker who lived many years in this land of smokestacks and smog, calls it 'vending-machine politics: you puts your money in and you gets your product out'.
'We don't see ourselves as a dynasty,' said George Bush Sr as his son launched the election campaign that won him the current presidency, raiding father's Rolodex to do so. 'We don't feel entitled to anything.' And yet at no point in the past 50 years - the half-century since 1952 which defines the modern age - has there not been a Bush in a governor's mansion (in Texas or Florida), on Capitol Hill or in the White House - and usually more than one of those at a time. The 'vending machine' is a single family whose tango with the powers which illuminate this endless horizon of light and flame is a dance around every corner in the labyrinth of Texan and now national - indeed global - politics. 'Everything they learned when they started out in west Texas,' says Dr Neil Carman, once a regulator of pollution in the state, 'they applied to the governor's mansion, the nation and the world... Power in America is not so much about George W Bush, it's about the people from Texas who put him there.'
Israeli airforce planes roar overhead as Brigadier Usama el-Ali the head of Gaza's "regional security committee" surveys the destruction which previous sorties have wrought on the ground.
"Arafat City," the main Palestinian police compound in Gaza City, lies in ruins after extensive Israeli aerial bombardments in 2001 and early 2002.
Blue uniforms poke out of the rubble of the building which used to house the women's police department with its adjoining kindergarten.
Flattened too are the offices of the tourist police and the police band, as well as a forensic laboratory put in by the European Union.
A few sniffer dogs, trained to detect drugs and explosives, bark furiously at the edge of what one of the generals calls "a ghost city." Most of the dogs died in the bombing raids.
And most of the Palestinian police in Gaza now sleep in tents, rented buildings and football grounds.
Usama el-Ali describes American and Israeli pressure to "reform" the Palestinian security forces to prevent further suicide bombings as "a bad joke" in the current circumstances.
"The Israelis attack our security forces at the very same time as they and the Americans ask us to exert control," he shouts.
"I want the world to tell me with whom and with what? Our police are now hiding under the trees."
The complex and often uneasy relationship between Israel's Mossad and the U.S. intelligence community is emerging as a prime reason for the catastrophic failure of the CIA and FBI to act on advance warnings of an impending attack on America.
Eight days before the September 11 attack, Egypt's senior intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, informed the CIA station chief in Cairo that "credible sources" had told him that Osama bin-Laden's network was "in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target."
Prior to that, the FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley had revealed, there was a similar warning from French intelligence.
Both warnings, Globe-Intel has established, originally came from Mossad.
The Israeli intelligence service chose to pass on its own intelligence to Washington through its contacts in French and Egyptian intelligence agencies because it did not believe its previous warnings on an impending attack by the bin-Laden network had been taken seriously enough in Washington.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may be playing the role of a budget hawk these days, advocating the Army abandon its highly-touted $11 billion Crusader artillery program. But that doesn't necessarily mean the Pentagon is being pushed to tighten its belt.
Embracing a policy trend initiated during the Clinton administration, the Bush White House has advocated the use of civilian contractors to fill scores of government needs. "Only those functions that must be performed by the [Department of Defense] should be kept in the DoD," Rumsfeld wrote in a state-of-the-military review just seven months ago. "Any function that can be provided by the private sector is not a core government function."
For one defense contractor in particular, that approach is proving staggeringly fruitful. Kellog Brown and Root Services, a division of Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton Companies, has provided the bulk of logistics services for the Army since 1992. Whenever US troops venture abroad, Brown and Root builds the barracks, cooks the food, mops the floors, transports the goods and maintains the water systems before and after the soldiers arrive.
Israel has begun building a controversial new security fence to try to stop Palestinian militants crossing into its territory.
It is the latest effort by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to halt the wave of suicide attacks in Israeli cities and towns.
The move has angered Palestinians, who accuse Israel of seizing more of their land, and also Jewish settlers who oppose any boundary between Israel and territory it occupied in the 1967 war.
In the latest violence Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint near the West Bank town of Nablus.
Israeli tanks are also reported to have moved back into Jenin, on the West Bank, after nightfall on Sunday.
Bulldozers began digging up ground at a ceremony attended by Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
The fence "will provide a defensive answer to the... infiltration of terrorists," said Amos Yaron of the Israeli Defence Ministry.
Few details of its exact route have been revealed.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - In its uphill battle against a new global criminal court, the Bush administration wants the U.N. Security Council to exclude all peacekeeping operations from the tribunal's jurisdiction, diplomats said.
No resolution has emerged, but the United States last month vowed to propose some action before the court's statutes come into force on July 1, which means a draft is expected this week or next.
British and French officials, among others, have been sounded out by U.S. envoys about the International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent tribunal to try the most heinous crimes -- genocide, war crimes and systematic, gross human rights abuses. One such encounter took place recently on the fringe of the recent Group of Eight industrial nations foreign ministers meeting in western Canada.
Both Britain and France, who have veto power in the 15-member Security Council, have ratified the treaty creating the court as have all other European Union members. So far no council member believes Washington even has the minimum nine votes needed to bring such a resolution to the floor.
"But they will make a strong effort, even though the French have already give them a blunt, stern 'no,"' said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Afghan commander laughed at the way the Americans were going about their work. U.S. troops, he said, were obsessed with finding caches of Taliban documents to help track down their fugitive enemies. The commander's friend explained the mirth by pulling out his own identification card: a small passport-like book made by the Taliban and authorized with a Taliban stamp. It was issued April 16, long after the fall of that regime. It's a legitimate document, and the man isn't an enemy—the local government doesn't have money for stationery, so decrees and papers are still being printed on leftover Taliban stock.
That's one, tiny example of how every encounter, from simple visa checks to complicated special ops, is fraught with the potential for misunderstanding, confusions and, in military parlance, snafus. Take the raid on the village of Band Taimore, 80 kilometers west of Kandahar. On the night of May 24, helicopters raining machine-gun fire descended onto the village wheat fields. The mission was a success. U.S. forces killed Haji Bajet, 70, a supporter of Taliban leader Mullah Omar since 1994, who also had links with Akhter Mohammed Usmani, the probable heir to the still-fugitive Omar.
But it wasn't a whistle-clean success—if such a thing is imaginable in Afghanistan—and in the raid's aftermath, anti-U.S. sentiment is rising around strategically important Kandahar.
IN HAMLET, Shakespeare wrote that there was Providence in the fall of a sparrow. I’m not much of an expert in falling sparrows, but I do know a bit about the way in which American politics works. And when it comes to major bone-chilling announcements about the prospect of a "dirty bomb" attack on the American capital, then it is worth taking a step or two back and asking what exactly we are being told - and why are we being told it? We’ll get to the hype in a minute, but first, the facts.
An American citizen and small-time gangster with a violent past, Jose Padilla, converted to Islam, changed his name, and - according to the FBI - became involved in a plot with al-Qaeda terrorists to explode a bomb filled with radioactive material in an American city. Padilla has been held for a month without charge and has been declared an "enemy combatant" by the US authorities. This means they can interrogate him without offering him legal representation, and - pending challenges from civil liberties groups - they can do so more or less indefinitely.
President Bush has already acted as judge and jury. "This guy Padilla’s a bad guy," was how Mr Bush put it.
Now, Padilla may be the devil incarnate for all I know. But usually in democracies even Satan would get the right to legal representation, a hearing in court, and a fair trial. In the current mood in America, such sentiments are not very popular. Most Americans want to congratulate their intelligence services for averting a terrorist attack of indescribable horror.
But what has Padilla actually done that is illegal? If he has done something illegal - conspiracy to cause explosions, perhaps - why not bring him to trial? And if he merely thought about doing something illegal, is the US government going to make a habit of arresting its own citizens for Thought Crimes?