Norman Lear: Letter to God
Norman Lear Fri Dec 16, 3:15 AM ET
From: Norman Lear, Earth -- To: The Creator, Deity, Supreme Being, Et al
Dear God,
You are in the news so much lately, I figure you must be thinking a lot about what’s going on down here. Not that I need the news to remind me of you, I think of you more often than you know - - well maybe not more than you know - - but a lot. A whole lot. I’m Jewish, as you also know, but I don’t do the synagogue or church thing. I hope you think I’m as religious as the next guy, because I certainly feel I am, even though I approach you so informally. I grope for understanding through the tradition I was born in and every other tradition. Because I don’t belong to a congregation, I think of myself as an Unaffiliated Groper. Okay, so here’s a bit of understanding you may be willing to help me with:
Sometime after 9/11 the President and Commander-In- Chief (sometimes I think of him as your Evangelist-In-Chief) appointed a bipartisan 9/11 Commission to investigate that event and make recommendations for preventing such tragic occurrences in the future. It’s almost two years since they issued their report and just a couple of weeks ago the panel issued a “report card” about how well the administration and Congress has been doing with their recommendations. So what did we learn? To this date the Evangelist-In-Chief and the United States Congress have virtually ignored the 41 anti-terrorism recommendations made by the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission. On nearly half the most important actions needed to protect America’s safety the Administration and Congress earned a “D” and “F” or an incomplete grade.
Now you probably understand that, Dear Creator, because you made us and you know us inside out. But what must perplex even you is how these very clear anti-terrorist measures have yet to be taken, while at the same time the administration pushes hard to renew and expand the Patriot Act to protect us from the very same terrorists by limiting our rights to privacy along with other civil rights and liberties.
This is driving me nuts. Our leaders would like the FBI to have the right to know what books we’re reading, check out our medical records without our knowledge, monitor our telephone calls and emails, and continue to imprison anyone suspected of terrorism and hold them for indeterminate amounts of time without charging them with a crime. At the same time cargo ships are still entering our harbors with unchecked cargo; our nuclear plants are as unprotected as they ever were; the police are still unable to reach firemen attending the same emergency; and billions of dollars are being doled out based not on risk of attack but on Congressional spending formulas, generally recognized by the Congress as pork barrel spending.
So tell me Lord: In the Bible, you were known to test societies by forcing them to endure tribulations for seven years. Does this mean that we have only two more years to go? Our leaders seem so certain they are right about everything, even suggesting they are doing your will. Are they? I realize my questions will only be answered in the fullness of time. In the meantime, I offer you this ecumenical prayer which has its roots in what certain among us think of as your country, Texas: Dear Lord, please grant me strength, patience, wisdom, and humility. Help me always to search for the truth, but spare me the company of those who have found it. Amen.
P.S. Unlike others we know, some in high places, I have no problem with the words
Merry Christmas and wish you the very merriest.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Friday, December 09, 2005
RICE: The Iron Maiden of Lies
Condi's Trail of Lies
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com
Thursday 08 December 2005
Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the US and torture have taken America's moral standing - and her own - to new depths.
The metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice from the chrysalis of the protégé into the butterfly of the State Department has not been a natural evolution but has demanded self-discipline. She has burnished an image of the ultimate loyalist, yet betrayed her mentor, George H.W. Bush's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. She is the team player, yet carefully inserted knives in the back of her predecessor, Colin Powell, climbing up them like a ladder of success. She is the person most trusted on foreign policy by the president, yet was an enabler for Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives. Now her public relations team at the State Department depicts her as a restorer of realism, builder of alliances and maker of peace.
On her first trip to Europe early this year she left the sensation of being fresh by listening rather than lecturing. The flirtation of power appeared to have a more seductive effect than arrogance. So the old face became a new face. But on this week's trip the iron butterfly emerged.
Rice arrived as the enforcer of the Bush administration's torture policy. She reminded the queasy Europeans that their intelligence services, one way or another, are involved in the rendition of hundreds of suspected terrorists transported through their airports for harsh interrogation in countries like Jordan and Egypt or secret CIA prisons known as "black sites." With her warnings, Rice recast the Western alliance as a partnership in complicity. In her attempt to impose silence, she spread guilt. Everybody is unclean in the dirty war and nobody has any right to complain. "What I would hope that our allies would acknowledge," she said, "is that we are all in this together."
For the European leaders, facing publics hostile to U.S. policy in Iraq and torture, Rice's visit was disquieting. In Italy, prosecutors have issued indictments of 22 current and former CIA operatives for their "extraordinary rendition" of an Egyptian suspect; among those indicted is the former Rome CIA station chief, whom an Italian judge has ruled has no immunity from prosecution. Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, asked about renditions, said, "We know absolutely nothing. We have not one single piece of knowledge." If the Italian government knew the facts, it would investigate, he added.
In Britain, the Foreign Office released a diplomatic disclaimer that it has "no evidence to corroborate media allegations about the use of UK territory in rendition operations." But upset members of the House of Commons have launched a parliamentary inquiry into whether the U.K. has violated the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Foreign Minister Jack Straw sent Rice a letter requesting any "clarification the U.S. can give about these reports in the hope that this will allay parliamentary and public concerns."
When the Washington Post reported on the eve of Rice's trip that CIA prisons holding U.S. detainees exist in Romania, Poland and other Eastern European nations, it triggered an explosion. Even though Romania and Poland denied the report, the European Commission and the Council of Europe began investigations. The E.C. declared that for any member state to harbor a CIA prison would be "extremely serious" and bring down sanctions upon it.
In Germany, Rice was greeted by the new chancellor, Angela Merkel, eager to repair relations with the Bush administration made awkward by former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's opposition to the Iraq war. Rice's visit was supposed to smooth over the conflicts of the past, but instead it surfaced new ones that indicated that the divisions between Germany - and Europe - and the U.S. are rooted in the Bush administration's fundamental policies.
Rice arrived in Berlin on the heels of a Washington Post report about the rendition, to a secret CIA jail in Afghanistan called the Salt Pit, of a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who was tortured and imprisoned for five months in a case of mistaken identity. After meeting with Rice, Merkel announced that Rice had acknowledged that the U.S. had made a "mistake" in the case. But Rice countered with a statement denying she had said that at all. The reconciliation with Germany was botched; Merkel was embarrassed; and Rice's credibility, at least in the German press, was left in tatters.
Rice had hoped to quell the controversy before she landed. On Monday, as she boarded her plane at Andrew Air Force base in Washington, she delivered a lengthy statement on torture. Her speech was remarkable for its defensive, dense and evasive tone. It was replete with half-truths, outright falsehoods, distortions and subterfuges.
Her remarks can never sway or convince any European leader, foreign ministry or intelligence service, which have the means to make their own judgments. In her effort to persuade world opinion and reassure the American public, she raised the debate over torture to greater prominence and virtually invited inspection of her claims.
Rice has made memorable statements in the past. There was her appearance before the 9/11 Commission, in which she had trouble recalling the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," and dismissed its significance. There were her many assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." There was her attack on Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief on the National Security Council, for his disclosure that both she and the president did not regard al-Qaida as an urgent threat before Sept. 11, 2001, as a "scurrilous allegation." But her remarks on torture may turn out to be her most unforgettable full-length speech, tainting her tenure as secretary of state as indelibly as Colin Powell's speech making the case for the Iraq war before the United Nations blotted him.
"Torture is a term that is defined by law," said Rice. "We rely on our law to govern our operations." She neglected to explain that "torture" as she used it has been defined by presidential findings to include universally defined methods of torture, such as waterboarding, for which U.S. soldiers were court-martialed in 1902 and 1968 specifically on the basis of having engaged in torture.
But the Bush administration has rejected adherence to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," in the term of then White House legal counsel and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; rejects torture as it is defined in the United Nations Convention Against Torture (although the U.S. is a signatory); and rejects torture as it is interpreted by other international expert bodies, including the European Human Rights Court, whose judgments are binding on the nations of the Council of Europe.
"The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances," Rice insisted in her statement. "Moreover, in accordance with the policy of this administration: The United States has respected - and will continue to respect - the sovereignty of other countries." But was the kidnapping of the Egyptian suspect in Italy that has resulted in the 22 indictments of CIA operatives a fiction? Have the Italian prosecutors been made aware that the event was a figment of their imaginations? Was holding el-Masri, the innocent German, not a violation of the sovereignty of another country?
Rice continued: "The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured." But the German government was reported to have a list of 400 flights over European airspace for the purpose of renditions. And Amnesty International reports that there have been 800 such flights. Once again, Rice relies upon her own definition of "torture" to deny it.
She went on: "The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured." In fact, the U.S. receives assurances from those countries that it would be unlikely that the suspects will be tortured, a technical loophole that provides for a washing of hands. Everybody on all sides understands that there will be torture, as there has been.
Rice's legal interpretations were authoritative, bland and bogus. It is hard to say whether they should be called Orwellian for their intentional falsity or Kafkaesque for their unintentional absurdity.
"International law allows a state to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities," she said. But the administration has vitiated international law with its presidential findings. The "global war on terror" is a conflict without end; its time limit extends into perpetuity. So long as terror is used as a tactic, or the threat of terror exists, which it always does, a state of war, such as it is, justifies indefinite detention.
Then, Rice presented as the administration's position precisely the position it opposes: "Detainees may only be held for an extended period if the intelligence or other evidence against them has been carefully evaluated and supports a determination that detention is lawful. The U.S. does not seek to hold anyone for a period beyond what is necessary to evaluate the intelligence or other evidence against them, prevent further acts of terrorism, or hold them for legal proceedings." But the Bush administration has refused to place detainees within the criminal justice system. Instead, they have been kept in a legal limbo, denied the protections of both the U.S. justice system and the Geneva Conventions. The administration has hid "ghost detainees" from the International Red Cross. If the suspects are criminals, they have not been tried as criminals.
Rice cited two cases to make her point: Carlos the Jackal, the international terrorist captured in Sudan in 1994, and Ramzi Youssef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber. But, unlike current detainees, both were put on public trial, Carlos in France, Youssef in the United States. And the European Commission on Human Rights issued a report that Carlos' rights were not violated. Both cases refuted in their particulars the larger argument Rice was making.
One case Rice did not cite was that of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a captured al-Qaida operative, whose claims about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD were used by the administration to build the case for the Iraq war. "We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," President Bush said on Oct. 7, 2002, drawing on al-Libi's information. Al-Libi also provided the basis for a dramatic high point of Secretary of State Powell's U.N. speech: "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate to you now, as he himself, described it." But al-Libi had been tortured and repeated to his interrogators what they had suggested to him. The Defense Intelligence Agency reported in February 2002 that al-Libi's information was dubious, and the CIA also questioned its credibility in a report in January 2003 - both reports made before the war. Rice's various statements created a pandemonium across Europe that she tried to quiet with a clarification Wednesday in Ukraine. The policy she had just declared we did not follow she announced we would no longer pursue. "As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT [U.N. Convention Against Torture], which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment - those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," Rice said at a press conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
Rice's erratic journey also raises the question of her own part in the policy. The Washington Post story on el-Masri reports that Rice intervened on the side of informing the German government, a disclosure that resulted in el-Masri's release. This fact suggests that Rice has a degree of authority and knowledge in the realm of detainees and "black sites."
Since 2003, Rice has repeatedly told representatives of Human Rights Watch and other similar organizations that the U.S. does not torture. There is no trail of memos tracing her involvement in the titanic struggle over U.S. torture policy between Powell and the senior military on one side and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft's Justice Department on the other. Was the national security advisor completely out of the loop? On Nov. 19., ABC News reported, "Current and former CIA officers tell ABC News there is a presidential finding, signed in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, approving the [harsh interrogation] techniques, including waterboarding."
That technique has its origin in the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, in 1490, a baptized Christian who was a secret Jew, a converso named Benito Garcia, was subjected to water torture. The process drew out of him a confession of the ritual murder of a Christian child by crucifixion to get his blood for a magic ceremony to halt the Inquisition and bring about Jewish control. The incident greatly helped whip up the fear that led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, as described by James Reston Jr. in his new book, "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors."
Since the Inquisition, the method of waterboarding has been little refined. But Rice, like Bush, says we did not and will not torture anymore.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com
Thursday 08 December 2005
Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the US and torture have taken America's moral standing - and her own - to new depths.
The metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice from the chrysalis of the protégé into the butterfly of the State Department has not been a natural evolution but has demanded self-discipline. She has burnished an image of the ultimate loyalist, yet betrayed her mentor, George H.W. Bush's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. She is the team player, yet carefully inserted knives in the back of her predecessor, Colin Powell, climbing up them like a ladder of success. She is the person most trusted on foreign policy by the president, yet was an enabler for Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives. Now her public relations team at the State Department depicts her as a restorer of realism, builder of alliances and maker of peace.
On her first trip to Europe early this year she left the sensation of being fresh by listening rather than lecturing. The flirtation of power appeared to have a more seductive effect than arrogance. So the old face became a new face. But on this week's trip the iron butterfly emerged.
Rice arrived as the enforcer of the Bush administration's torture policy. She reminded the queasy Europeans that their intelligence services, one way or another, are involved in the rendition of hundreds of suspected terrorists transported through their airports for harsh interrogation in countries like Jordan and Egypt or secret CIA prisons known as "black sites." With her warnings, Rice recast the Western alliance as a partnership in complicity. In her attempt to impose silence, she spread guilt. Everybody is unclean in the dirty war and nobody has any right to complain. "What I would hope that our allies would acknowledge," she said, "is that we are all in this together."
For the European leaders, facing publics hostile to U.S. policy in Iraq and torture, Rice's visit was disquieting. In Italy, prosecutors have issued indictments of 22 current and former CIA operatives for their "extraordinary rendition" of an Egyptian suspect; among those indicted is the former Rome CIA station chief, whom an Italian judge has ruled has no immunity from prosecution. Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, asked about renditions, said, "We know absolutely nothing. We have not one single piece of knowledge." If the Italian government knew the facts, it would investigate, he added.
In Britain, the Foreign Office released a diplomatic disclaimer that it has "no evidence to corroborate media allegations about the use of UK territory in rendition operations." But upset members of the House of Commons have launched a parliamentary inquiry into whether the U.K. has violated the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Foreign Minister Jack Straw sent Rice a letter requesting any "clarification the U.S. can give about these reports in the hope that this will allay parliamentary and public concerns."
When the Washington Post reported on the eve of Rice's trip that CIA prisons holding U.S. detainees exist in Romania, Poland and other Eastern European nations, it triggered an explosion. Even though Romania and Poland denied the report, the European Commission and the Council of Europe began investigations. The E.C. declared that for any member state to harbor a CIA prison would be "extremely serious" and bring down sanctions upon it.
In Germany, Rice was greeted by the new chancellor, Angela Merkel, eager to repair relations with the Bush administration made awkward by former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's opposition to the Iraq war. Rice's visit was supposed to smooth over the conflicts of the past, but instead it surfaced new ones that indicated that the divisions between Germany - and Europe - and the U.S. are rooted in the Bush administration's fundamental policies.
Rice arrived in Berlin on the heels of a Washington Post report about the rendition, to a secret CIA jail in Afghanistan called the Salt Pit, of a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who was tortured and imprisoned for five months in a case of mistaken identity. After meeting with Rice, Merkel announced that Rice had acknowledged that the U.S. had made a "mistake" in the case. But Rice countered with a statement denying she had said that at all. The reconciliation with Germany was botched; Merkel was embarrassed; and Rice's credibility, at least in the German press, was left in tatters.
Rice had hoped to quell the controversy before she landed. On Monday, as she boarded her plane at Andrew Air Force base in Washington, she delivered a lengthy statement on torture. Her speech was remarkable for its defensive, dense and evasive tone. It was replete with half-truths, outright falsehoods, distortions and subterfuges.
Her remarks can never sway or convince any European leader, foreign ministry or intelligence service, which have the means to make their own judgments. In her effort to persuade world opinion and reassure the American public, she raised the debate over torture to greater prominence and virtually invited inspection of her claims.
Rice has made memorable statements in the past. There was her appearance before the 9/11 Commission, in which she had trouble recalling the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," and dismissed its significance. There were her many assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." There was her attack on Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief on the National Security Council, for his disclosure that both she and the president did not regard al-Qaida as an urgent threat before Sept. 11, 2001, as a "scurrilous allegation." But her remarks on torture may turn out to be her most unforgettable full-length speech, tainting her tenure as secretary of state as indelibly as Colin Powell's speech making the case for the Iraq war before the United Nations blotted him.
"Torture is a term that is defined by law," said Rice. "We rely on our law to govern our operations." She neglected to explain that "torture" as she used it has been defined by presidential findings to include universally defined methods of torture, such as waterboarding, for which U.S. soldiers were court-martialed in 1902 and 1968 specifically on the basis of having engaged in torture.
But the Bush administration has rejected adherence to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," in the term of then White House legal counsel and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; rejects torture as it is defined in the United Nations Convention Against Torture (although the U.S. is a signatory); and rejects torture as it is interpreted by other international expert bodies, including the European Human Rights Court, whose judgments are binding on the nations of the Council of Europe.
"The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances," Rice insisted in her statement. "Moreover, in accordance with the policy of this administration: The United States has respected - and will continue to respect - the sovereignty of other countries." But was the kidnapping of the Egyptian suspect in Italy that has resulted in the 22 indictments of CIA operatives a fiction? Have the Italian prosecutors been made aware that the event was a figment of their imaginations? Was holding el-Masri, the innocent German, not a violation of the sovereignty of another country?
Rice continued: "The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured." But the German government was reported to have a list of 400 flights over European airspace for the purpose of renditions. And Amnesty International reports that there have been 800 such flights. Once again, Rice relies upon her own definition of "torture" to deny it.
She went on: "The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured." In fact, the U.S. receives assurances from those countries that it would be unlikely that the suspects will be tortured, a technical loophole that provides for a washing of hands. Everybody on all sides understands that there will be torture, as there has been.
Rice's legal interpretations were authoritative, bland and bogus. It is hard to say whether they should be called Orwellian for their intentional falsity or Kafkaesque for their unintentional absurdity.
"International law allows a state to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities," she said. But the administration has vitiated international law with its presidential findings. The "global war on terror" is a conflict without end; its time limit extends into perpetuity. So long as terror is used as a tactic, or the threat of terror exists, which it always does, a state of war, such as it is, justifies indefinite detention.
Then, Rice presented as the administration's position precisely the position it opposes: "Detainees may only be held for an extended period if the intelligence or other evidence against them has been carefully evaluated and supports a determination that detention is lawful. The U.S. does not seek to hold anyone for a period beyond what is necessary to evaluate the intelligence or other evidence against them, prevent further acts of terrorism, or hold them for legal proceedings." But the Bush administration has refused to place detainees within the criminal justice system. Instead, they have been kept in a legal limbo, denied the protections of both the U.S. justice system and the Geneva Conventions. The administration has hid "ghost detainees" from the International Red Cross. If the suspects are criminals, they have not been tried as criminals.
Rice cited two cases to make her point: Carlos the Jackal, the international terrorist captured in Sudan in 1994, and Ramzi Youssef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber. But, unlike current detainees, both were put on public trial, Carlos in France, Youssef in the United States. And the European Commission on Human Rights issued a report that Carlos' rights were not violated. Both cases refuted in their particulars the larger argument Rice was making.
One case Rice did not cite was that of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a captured al-Qaida operative, whose claims about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD were used by the administration to build the case for the Iraq war. "We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," President Bush said on Oct. 7, 2002, drawing on al-Libi's information. Al-Libi also provided the basis for a dramatic high point of Secretary of State Powell's U.N. speech: "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate to you now, as he himself, described it." But al-Libi had been tortured and repeated to his interrogators what they had suggested to him. The Defense Intelligence Agency reported in February 2002 that al-Libi's information was dubious, and the CIA also questioned its credibility in a report in January 2003 - both reports made before the war. Rice's various statements created a pandemonium across Europe that she tried to quiet with a clarification Wednesday in Ukraine. The policy she had just declared we did not follow she announced we would no longer pursue. "As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT [U.N. Convention Against Torture], which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment - those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," Rice said at a press conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
Rice's erratic journey also raises the question of her own part in the policy. The Washington Post story on el-Masri reports that Rice intervened on the side of informing the German government, a disclosure that resulted in el-Masri's release. This fact suggests that Rice has a degree of authority and knowledge in the realm of detainees and "black sites."
Since 2003, Rice has repeatedly told representatives of Human Rights Watch and other similar organizations that the U.S. does not torture. There is no trail of memos tracing her involvement in the titanic struggle over U.S. torture policy between Powell and the senior military on one side and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft's Justice Department on the other. Was the national security advisor completely out of the loop? On Nov. 19., ABC News reported, "Current and former CIA officers tell ABC News there is a presidential finding, signed in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, approving the [harsh interrogation] techniques, including waterboarding."
That technique has its origin in the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, in 1490, a baptized Christian who was a secret Jew, a converso named Benito Garcia, was subjected to water torture. The process drew out of him a confession of the ritual murder of a Christian child by crucifixion to get his blood for a magic ceremony to halt the Inquisition and bring about Jewish control. The incident greatly helped whip up the fear that led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, as described by James Reston Jr. in his new book, "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors."
Since the Inquisition, the method of waterboarding has been little refined. But Rice, like Bush, says we did not and will not torture anymore.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Unrest over Pope Benedics' Gay Resolution
Catholic Church's policy on gays isn't enlightened
By Joan GarryWed Nov 30, 6:50 AM ET
USA Today
I was raised Catholic. I never sat in a classroom without a crucifix on the wall. Catholic grammar school, Catholic high school and Catholic college. I sang Kumbaya while playing my guitar at Folk Mass.
I sang at my dad's funeral, too, with his barbershop chorus. The song was Be Not Afraid. For one person in the church that dark day, the song was filled with irony. The priest who said the Mass was under scrutiny for sexual abuse allegations. Not long after the funeral, he was gone.
There is no question that Pope Benedict XVI has a big mess on his hands. People are calling it a sex abuse scandal, but let's be honest - it's about abuse of power.
And now we also have an element of emotional abuse as seminarians all across the USA assess Tuesday's final mandate from the pope. When will they knock on my door? What will they ask? What will I say?
Two months ago, it was widely reported that the Vatican would investigate all 229 U.S. seminaries for "evidence of homosexuality."
On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that it intends to bar from the seminary men who "support the so-called gay culture" or have "deeply rooted gay tendencies." While I don't find this entire mess amusing, I did chuckle at that one. Supporting gay culture?
The problem, as I see it, has little to do with homosexuality and a lot to do with how candidates for seminary are interviewed and selected. A book published earlier this year, Educating Leaders for Ministry, unearths a study that estimates only 10% of seminarians are highly qualified for the educational component of their work and nearly 40% are hindered by poor education, learning disabilities or lack of familiarity with American culture.
Instead of gauging public opinion, and spinning language for the announcement, why doesn't the pope analyze the interview process? If the Church insists on clinging to the celibacy vow, make it meaningful. Make sure that applicants have authentic leadership skills. Ensure that this is indeed a calling for every one of them. Make sure they understand that with power comes responsibility.
And then, after the pope fixes that process, he can focus on creating a clear, transparent and uniform set of rules that holds each of them (gay or straight, priest or bishop) accountable.
Now here's a confession. I'm not a practicing Roman Catholic, so maybe I'm a bit jaded. But my 78-year-old mom is a practicing Catholic. She heads off to daily Mass. I thought she might have a different point of view. She didn't.
"We all knew a lot of priests we figured were gay," my mom told me. "If they did a good job, so what?"
She went on: "Decisions like this make the Church look worse and worse. The whole thing gives me the willies."
I hadn't heard that expression in a long time, but it felt just right.
The pope is filling my mom and millions of others with fear about the future of her Church. Not to mention the fear that must be palpable in each of those 229 seminaries as they await the "verdict."
The last line of that beautiful song I sang at my dad's funeral is "and I will give you rest."
With his new document, the pope mistakenly thinks he is putting this issue to rest. He isn't. Rather, he is choosing to foster fear and unrest.
Some gay priests (who would be exempt from the witch hunt) are already discussing moves in that direction - "outing" themselves through pulpit boycotts - to illustrate that gay priests, like gay people, are everywhere. Let's hope they find their voices and preclude the Church from making a choice that doesn't feel very Christian.
Otherwise, as they say on Survivor, the tribe will have spoken. One by one, the flames of generous and spiritual men prepared to take a vow of celibacy will be extinguished, and they will be voted off the island of Roman Catholicism. And the institution, not those men, will be left in the dark.
Joan Garry is a civil rights advocate, freelance writer and former executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Copyright © 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
By Joan GarryWed Nov 30, 6:50 AM ET
USA Today
I was raised Catholic. I never sat in a classroom without a crucifix on the wall. Catholic grammar school, Catholic high school and Catholic college. I sang Kumbaya while playing my guitar at Folk Mass.
I sang at my dad's funeral, too, with his barbershop chorus. The song was Be Not Afraid. For one person in the church that dark day, the song was filled with irony. The priest who said the Mass was under scrutiny for sexual abuse allegations. Not long after the funeral, he was gone.
There is no question that Pope Benedict XVI has a big mess on his hands. People are calling it a sex abuse scandal, but let's be honest - it's about abuse of power.
And now we also have an element of emotional abuse as seminarians all across the USA assess Tuesday's final mandate from the pope. When will they knock on my door? What will they ask? What will I say?
Two months ago, it was widely reported that the Vatican would investigate all 229 U.S. seminaries for "evidence of homosexuality."
On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that it intends to bar from the seminary men who "support the so-called gay culture" or have "deeply rooted gay tendencies." While I don't find this entire mess amusing, I did chuckle at that one. Supporting gay culture?
The problem, as I see it, has little to do with homosexuality and a lot to do with how candidates for seminary are interviewed and selected. A book published earlier this year, Educating Leaders for Ministry, unearths a study that estimates only 10% of seminarians are highly qualified for the educational component of their work and nearly 40% are hindered by poor education, learning disabilities or lack of familiarity with American culture.
Instead of gauging public opinion, and spinning language for the announcement, why doesn't the pope analyze the interview process? If the Church insists on clinging to the celibacy vow, make it meaningful. Make sure that applicants have authentic leadership skills. Ensure that this is indeed a calling for every one of them. Make sure they understand that with power comes responsibility.
And then, after the pope fixes that process, he can focus on creating a clear, transparent and uniform set of rules that holds each of them (gay or straight, priest or bishop) accountable.
Now here's a confession. I'm not a practicing Roman Catholic, so maybe I'm a bit jaded. But my 78-year-old mom is a practicing Catholic. She heads off to daily Mass. I thought she might have a different point of view. She didn't.
"We all knew a lot of priests we figured were gay," my mom told me. "If they did a good job, so what?"
She went on: "Decisions like this make the Church look worse and worse. The whole thing gives me the willies."
I hadn't heard that expression in a long time, but it felt just right.
The pope is filling my mom and millions of others with fear about the future of her Church. Not to mention the fear that must be palpable in each of those 229 seminaries as they await the "verdict."
The last line of that beautiful song I sang at my dad's funeral is "and I will give you rest."
With his new document, the pope mistakenly thinks he is putting this issue to rest. He isn't. Rather, he is choosing to foster fear and unrest.
Some gay priests (who would be exempt from the witch hunt) are already discussing moves in that direction - "outing" themselves through pulpit boycotts - to illustrate that gay priests, like gay people, are everywhere. Let's hope they find their voices and preclude the Church from making a choice that doesn't feel very Christian.
Otherwise, as they say on Survivor, the tribe will have spoken. One by one, the flames of generous and spiritual men prepared to take a vow of celibacy will be extinguished, and they will be voted off the island of Roman Catholicism. And the institution, not those men, will be left in the dark.
Joan Garry is a civil rights advocate, freelance writer and former executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Copyright © 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
LOL, How is this for a fool of the right wing extremist
At first I thought this was a a joke & there would be some subsance from this blonde dim wit, but no, Coulter is still doing her spin, trying to keep her job a a right wing journalist. Right wing. yes she professes to be. But if the liberals would pay her more she could be changed instantly. But who the hell wants her? N ever a clever journalist. Just out to make a name for herself. Note to Anne, study Maureen Dowd's editorials closely, she didn't win a Pulitzer for nothing.
NEW IDEA FOR ABORTION PARTY: AID THE ENEMY
By Ann Coulter
Wed Nov 23,11:23 PM ET
In the Iraq war so far, the U.S. military has deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. As we now know, Saddam Hussein was working with al-Qaida and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger.
Saddam is on trial. His psychopath sons are dead. We've captured or killed scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. Rape rooms and torture chambers are back in R. Kelly's Miami Beach mansion where they belong.
The Iraqi people have voted in two free, democratic elections this year. In a rash and unconsidered move, they even gave women the right to vote.
Iraqis have ratified a constitution and will vote for a National Assembly next month. The long-suffering Kurds are free and no longer require 24/7 protection by U.S. fighter jets.
Libya's Moammar Gadhafi has voluntarily dismantled his weapons of mass destruction, Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon, and the Palestinians are holding elections.
(Last but certainly not least, the Marsh Arabs' wetlands ecosystem in central Iraq that Saddam drained is being restored, so even the Democrats' war goals in Iraq are being met.)
The American military has accomplished all this with just over 2,000 deaths. These deaths are especially painful because they fall on our greatest Americans. Still, look at what the military has done and compare the cost to 600,000 deaths in the Civil War, 400,000 deaths in World War II and 60,000 deaths in Vietnam (before Walter Cronkite finally threw in the towel and declared victory for North Vietnam).
What is known as a "hawk" in today's Democratic Party looks at what our military has accomplished and -- during the war, while our troops are in harm's way -- demands that we withdraw our troops.
In an upbeat speech now being aired repeatedly on al-Jazeera, last week Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record) said U.S. troops "cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home." Claiming the war is "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," Murtha said the "American public is way ahead of us."
Fed up with being endlessly told "the American people" have turned against the war in Iraq, Republicans asked the Democrats to show what they had in their hand and vote on a resolution to withdraw the troops.
By a vote of 403-3, the House of Representatives wasn't willing to bet that "the American people" want to pull out of Iraq. (This vote also marked the first time in recent history that the Democrats did not respond to getting their butts kicked by demanding a recount.)
The vote is all the more shocking because of what it says about the Democrats' motives in attacking the war -- as well as alerting us to three members of Congress we really need to keep an eye on.
It is simply a fact that Democrats like Murtha are encouraging the Iraqi insurgents when they say the war is going badly and it's time to bring the troops home. Whether or not there is any merit to the idea, calling for a troop withdrawal -- or "redeployment," as liberals pointlessly distinguish -- will delay our inevitable victory and cost more American lives.
Anti-war protests in the U.S. during the Vietnam War were a major source of moral support to the enemy. We know that not only from plain common sense, but from the statements of former North Vietnamese military leaders who evidently didn't get the memo telling them not to say so. In an Aug. 3, 1995, interview in The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, called the American peace movement "essential" to the North Vietnamese victory.
"Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American anti-war movement," he said. "Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
What are we to make of the fact that -- as we now know -- the Democrats don't even want to withdraw troops from Iraq? By their own account, there is no merit to their demands. Before the vote, Democrats could at least defend themselves from sedition by pleading stupidity. Now we know they don't believe what they are saying about the war. (Thanks to that vote, the Islamo-fascists know it, too.)
The Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle.
They fill the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.
NEW IDEA FOR ABORTION PARTY: AID THE ENEMY
By Ann Coulter
Wed Nov 23,11:23 PM ET
In the Iraq war so far, the U.S. military has deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. As we now know, Saddam Hussein was working with al-Qaida and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger.
Saddam is on trial. His psychopath sons are dead. We've captured or killed scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. Rape rooms and torture chambers are back in R. Kelly's Miami Beach mansion where they belong.
The Iraqi people have voted in two free, democratic elections this year. In a rash and unconsidered move, they even gave women the right to vote.
Iraqis have ratified a constitution and will vote for a National Assembly next month. The long-suffering Kurds are free and no longer require 24/7 protection by U.S. fighter jets.
Libya's Moammar Gadhafi has voluntarily dismantled his weapons of mass destruction, Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon, and the Palestinians are holding elections.
(Last but certainly not least, the Marsh Arabs' wetlands ecosystem in central Iraq that Saddam drained is being restored, so even the Democrats' war goals in Iraq are being met.)
The American military has accomplished all this with just over 2,000 deaths. These deaths are especially painful because they fall on our greatest Americans. Still, look at what the military has done and compare the cost to 600,000 deaths in the Civil War, 400,000 deaths in World War II and 60,000 deaths in Vietnam (before Walter Cronkite finally threw in the towel and declared victory for North Vietnam).
What is known as a "hawk" in today's Democratic Party looks at what our military has accomplished and -- during the war, while our troops are in harm's way -- demands that we withdraw our troops.
In an upbeat speech now being aired repeatedly on al-Jazeera, last week Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record) said U.S. troops "cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home." Claiming the war is "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," Murtha said the "American public is way ahead of us."
Fed up with being endlessly told "the American people" have turned against the war in Iraq, Republicans asked the Democrats to show what they had in their hand and vote on a resolution to withdraw the troops.
By a vote of 403-3, the House of Representatives wasn't willing to bet that "the American people" want to pull out of Iraq. (This vote also marked the first time in recent history that the Democrats did not respond to getting their butts kicked by demanding a recount.)
The vote is all the more shocking because of what it says about the Democrats' motives in attacking the war -- as well as alerting us to three members of Congress we really need to keep an eye on.
It is simply a fact that Democrats like Murtha are encouraging the Iraqi insurgents when they say the war is going badly and it's time to bring the troops home. Whether or not there is any merit to the idea, calling for a troop withdrawal -- or "redeployment," as liberals pointlessly distinguish -- will delay our inevitable victory and cost more American lives.
Anti-war protests in the U.S. during the Vietnam War were a major source of moral support to the enemy. We know that not only from plain common sense, but from the statements of former North Vietnamese military leaders who evidently didn't get the memo telling them not to say so. In an Aug. 3, 1995, interview in The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, called the American peace movement "essential" to the North Vietnamese victory.
"Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American anti-war movement," he said. "Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
What are we to make of the fact that -- as we now know -- the Democrats don't even want to withdraw troops from Iraq? By their own account, there is no merit to their demands. Before the vote, Democrats could at least defend themselves from sedition by pleading stupidity. Now we know they don't believe what they are saying about the war. (Thanks to that vote, the Islamo-fascists know it, too.)
The Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle.
They fill the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
"The Rebel Jesus"
"The Rebel Jesus"
John Nichols
The Nation
Despite the worst efforts of Wal-Mart and its equally carnivorous competitors to hype up an earlier start, Thanksgiving Day still marks something akin to the official opening of the Holiday season. And with this beginning even the most resistant radio stations and elevator operators will now be programming a mix of Christmas music that can charitably be referred to as "lamentable."
A musical tradition that was meant to be inspiring, uplifting and perhaps even challenging degenerates each November into a mind-numbing slurry of "festive" Muzak that will, in short order, have tens of millions of Americans counting the days until December 25.
But, hark, there is redemption to be found -- though perhaps not on the radio dials of our ever most consolidated and rigidly-programmed media monopolies.
A better class of Christmas music is out there, waiting to be heard by those who seek it.
In fact, one of the finest contemporary Christmas songs is rapidly taking on "classic" status as it is recorded by discerning artists.
Canadian singers Kate and Anna McGarrigle's fine new holiday CD, The McGarrigle Christmas Hour, features a stirring rendition of the song in question: Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus."
Originally recorded by Browne for the brilliant 1991 Chieftains holiday collaboration, The Bells of Dublin, "The Rebel Jesus" has taken on a life of its own. Along the way, it has become the most welcome antidote to the deadening dose of commercialism that Americans imbibe each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
So let us begin the season with Browne's wise words:
All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
They'll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all god's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus
|
Well they call him by the prince of peace
And they call him by the savior
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus
|
We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
|
But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgment
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus
John Nichols
The Nation
Despite the worst efforts of Wal-Mart and its equally carnivorous competitors to hype up an earlier start, Thanksgiving Day still marks something akin to the official opening of the Holiday season. And with this beginning even the most resistant radio stations and elevator operators will now be programming a mix of Christmas music that can charitably be referred to as "lamentable."
A musical tradition that was meant to be inspiring, uplifting and perhaps even challenging degenerates each November into a mind-numbing slurry of "festive" Muzak that will, in short order, have tens of millions of Americans counting the days until December 25.
But, hark, there is redemption to be found -- though perhaps not on the radio dials of our ever most consolidated and rigidly-programmed media monopolies.
A better class of Christmas music is out there, waiting to be heard by those who seek it.
In fact, one of the finest contemporary Christmas songs is rapidly taking on "classic" status as it is recorded by discerning artists.
Canadian singers Kate and Anna McGarrigle's fine new holiday CD, The McGarrigle Christmas Hour, features a stirring rendition of the song in question: Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus."
Originally recorded by Browne for the brilliant 1991 Chieftains holiday collaboration, The Bells of Dublin, "The Rebel Jesus" has taken on a life of its own. Along the way, it has become the most welcome antidote to the deadening dose of commercialism that Americans imbibe each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
So let us begin the season with Browne's wise words:
All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
They'll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all god's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus
|
Well they call him by the prince of peace
And they call him by the savior
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus
|
We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
|
But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgment
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Ten Commandments for Wal-Mart
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
11.20.2005
Ten Commandments for Wal-Mart
The Huffington Post
Wal-Mart sells itself as the all-American company, but it violates American family values every single day. Wal-Mart refuses to sell magazines, books, or CDs that it believes will offend the values of average Americans. But what Wal-Mart's leaders can't seem to grasp is that average Americans are offended by its shameful tactics to boost profits at the expense of the families of hard-working men and women.
Last week I was happy to join Robert Greenwald to discuss his new documentary, "Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price". I applaud his efforts and the brave workers in the film who tell their stories. And I applaud the community groups and religious leaders who are promoting awareness of Wal-Mart's abuses by showing this important film in neighborhoods and houses of worship throughout the country.
This is not just a Congressional fight. The American people are also demanding accountability. Wal-Mart has forced employees to work overtime without pay. They have hired professional union busters to keep employees from having a voice at work. They have refused to provide affordable health care, while instructing workers to apply for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. They have refused to promote women and people of color. They have violated child labor laws by requiring kids to use dangerous equipment. And they have used predatory pricing practices to put small companies out of business.
Surely, the largest company in the world, which made more than $10 billion in profits last year, can do better by its workers, better by our communities, and better for the American taxpayer.
Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, was known for creating the 10 Commandments of Leadership. Well, today I challenge Wal-Mart to abide by the Ten Commandments of Good Corporate Citizenship.
Thou shalt pay living wages.
Thou shalt provide affordable health care.
Thou shalt pay overtime.
Thou shalt not bust unions.
Thou shalt pay and promote women and men equally.
Thou shalt not discriminate against people of color.
Thou shalt not support sweatshops.
Thou shalt not violate child labor laws.
Thou shalt provide safe working conditions.
Thou shalt not dump toxic waste.
Companies that abide by these commandments succeed. One of Wal-Mart's chief competitors, Costco, is a shining example of good corporate citizenship. Its average pay is 76 percent higher than Wal-Mart's, and its employees have health insurance, dental, and retirement benefits. Yet it is Costco, not Wal-Mart, that has delivered higher returns to shareholders over the past decade.
Sam Walton was right when he said that a company's success depends on its values. And Wal-Mart's current CEO, H. Lee Scott, was right two weeks ago when he called for an increase in the minimum wage even though his only reason for supporting it was so that Wal-Mart's minimum wage customers could buy more Wal-Mart products.
We are working hard in Congress to make the Wal-Marts of the world accountable to workers, families and communities. We have introduced legislation to expose Wal-Mart's practice of dumping responsibility for health care for its employers on the American taxpayer. We have introduced the Employee Free Choice Act to give workers a voice at work and to stop anti-union intimidation tactics. We continue to fight for an increase in the minimum wage, to ensure that no one who works for a living lives in poverty. We have sponsored legislation to ensure equal pay for men and women. And we are increasing penalties against companies with dangerous working conditions.
The time has come to demand more than low prices from America's largest employer
11.20.2005
Ten Commandments for Wal-Mart
The Huffington Post
Wal-Mart sells itself as the all-American company, but it violates American family values every single day. Wal-Mart refuses to sell magazines, books, or CDs that it believes will offend the values of average Americans. But what Wal-Mart's leaders can't seem to grasp is that average Americans are offended by its shameful tactics to boost profits at the expense of the families of hard-working men and women.
Last week I was happy to join Robert Greenwald to discuss his new documentary, "Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price". I applaud his efforts and the brave workers in the film who tell their stories. And I applaud the community groups and religious leaders who are promoting awareness of Wal-Mart's abuses by showing this important film in neighborhoods and houses of worship throughout the country.
This is not just a Congressional fight. The American people are also demanding accountability. Wal-Mart has forced employees to work overtime without pay. They have hired professional union busters to keep employees from having a voice at work. They have refused to provide affordable health care, while instructing workers to apply for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. They have refused to promote women and people of color. They have violated child labor laws by requiring kids to use dangerous equipment. And they have used predatory pricing practices to put small companies out of business.
Surely, the largest company in the world, which made more than $10 billion in profits last year, can do better by its workers, better by our communities, and better for the American taxpayer.
Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, was known for creating the 10 Commandments of Leadership. Well, today I challenge Wal-Mart to abide by the Ten Commandments of Good Corporate Citizenship.
Thou shalt pay living wages.
Thou shalt provide affordable health care.
Thou shalt pay overtime.
Thou shalt not bust unions.
Thou shalt pay and promote women and men equally.
Thou shalt not discriminate against people of color.
Thou shalt not support sweatshops.
Thou shalt not violate child labor laws.
Thou shalt provide safe working conditions.
Thou shalt not dump toxic waste.
Companies that abide by these commandments succeed. One of Wal-Mart's chief competitors, Costco, is a shining example of good corporate citizenship. Its average pay is 76 percent higher than Wal-Mart's, and its employees have health insurance, dental, and retirement benefits. Yet it is Costco, not Wal-Mart, that has delivered higher returns to shareholders over the past decade.
Sam Walton was right when he said that a company's success depends on its values. And Wal-Mart's current CEO, H. Lee Scott, was right two weeks ago when he called for an increase in the minimum wage even though his only reason for supporting it was so that Wal-Mart's minimum wage customers could buy more Wal-Mart products.
We are working hard in Congress to make the Wal-Marts of the world accountable to workers, families and communities. We have introduced legislation to expose Wal-Mart's practice of dumping responsibility for health care for its employers on the American taxpayer. We have introduced the Employee Free Choice Act to give workers a voice at work and to stop anti-union intimidation tactics. We continue to fight for an increase in the minimum wage, to ensure that no one who works for a living lives in poverty. We have sponsored legislation to ensure equal pay for men and women. And we are increasing penalties against companies with dangerous working conditions.
The time has come to demand more than low prices from America's largest employer
Bill Moyers: The Texas Observerat 50
Bill Moyers: The Texas Observerat 50
The Huffington Post
The 50th anniversary of The Texas Observer is a double celebration for me. Your first issue appeared one week before Judith Davidson and I were married in December 1954. We had transferred here to the University of Texas as juniors and were renting a garage apartment that has now totally disappeared along with the block on which it stood. So many landmarks of our lives have disappeared that it’s a joy to come back to Austin and find one that stubbornly and gamely remains true to its mission. Although many people would wish The Texas Observer had also been buried under the rubble of time, a good idea is as hard to kill as a good marriage. And this little newspaper was a good idea.
As Ronnie Dugger reminds us in his epilogue to Fifty Years of The Texas Observer , there was silence in Texas in those days about racism, poverty and corporate power. The state ranked dead last among major states and next-to-last in the South in education, health care, and programs for the poor. “We were as racist, segregated, and anti-union as the Deep South from which most of our Anglo pioneers had emerged,” Dugger writes. ”Mexican Americans were a hopeless underclass concentrated in South Texas. Women could vote and did the dog work in the political campaigns, but they were also ladies to be protected, above all from power. Gays and lesbians were as objectionable as Communists. And the daily newspapers were as reactionary and dishonest a cynical gang as the First Amendment ever took the rap for.”
Into that atmosphere rode a band of journalists determined to poke a thumb in the eye of orthodoxy. Dugger summed up their mission in his lead editorial in that very first issue:
We will have a good time and we hope you do. We will twit the self-important and honor the truly important. We will lay the bark to the dignity of any public man any time we see fit. Telling the whole truth is not an exercise to be limited to children before they reach the age of reason. It is the indispensable requirement for an effective democracy. If the press and the politicians lie to the people, or hide those parts of the truth which trouble the conscience or offend a friend, how can the people’s falsely-based decisions be trusted? Here in the Southwest there is room for a great truth-telling newspaper, its editor free, its editorials cast in a liberal and reasonable frame of mind, its dedication Thoreau’s ‘The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth.
I wish I had written those words. I wish that I had served them all my days as Ronnie Dugger has. But at the time I wasn’t even thinking such thoughts. Back then I was still in the elementary grade school of journalism. I had transferred to the University for one simple reason: LBJ offered me a job on Lady Bird’s station paying $100 a week, and that meant Judith and I could afford to get married. KTBC was the first in Texas to buy a station wagon, paint it red, and christen it—what else?—Red Rover. Charlton Heston churning a backlot in Hollywood in pursuit of Rome’s glories never had more fun than I did in that four-wheeled chariot, careening around Austin in style, broadcasting from crime scenes and accidents and the state legislature, which of course was the biggest crime scene in town. My boss, Paul Bolton, the crusty old news editor of KTBC, would look at the goings on in the Texas House of Representatives and sigh: “If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents.”
No argument there. McCarthyism was a raging plague in the 1950s and the virus rampaged across Texas like tumbleweeds in a wind storm. The legendary Maury Maverick Jr. was in the legislature at the time, one of the “Gashouse Gang” that fought bravely against the poison of the era. He said these were “the worst years” in his life. “The lights were going out” and few voices were raised in protest. The low point, said Maverick, came when the state Senate passed a bill to remove all books from public libraries which “adversely” reflected on American and Texas history, the family and religion. Even the state teachers association endorsed the bill, in exchange for a pay raise. Maverick voted against it, but walking back to his apartment that evening he was suddenly overwhelmed by the evil of what was happening, and he “vomited until flecks of blood came up.”
That was the lay of the land in the 1950s. And Democrats were in charge, remember? That’s right: Texas was a one-party state; Republicans were as scarce in high office as Democrats are today. No matter the players, one-party government is a conspiracy in disguise.
In that rocky soil and toxic climate, Frankie Randolph and Ronnie Dugger and a fistful of fellow dissenters launched The Texas Observer . I wasn’t among them. I had yet to work myself out beyond the cozy confinements of an insular East Texas Baptist culture where you could be well loved, well churched and well taught and still be unaware of the reality of other people’s lives. I belonged in those days to that category of journalists described by George Bernard Shaw as “unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.”
So Judith and I graduated and left town. The Texas Observer stayed: stayed to live out Dugger’s dare to tell the truth about the oligarchy that governed Texas. What kept that original band of scribblers going remains a mystery to me. For sure they made up in irreverence what they lacked in financial security. At that very time, in faraway Washington,D.C., I.F. Stone was also afflicting the comfortable. In his little I.F. Stone’s Weekly, he would pour through the government’s own official documents to catch the government’s lies and contradictions. Amid the thunder of his battle with Potomac dragons he boasted, “I have so much fun I ought to be arrested.” Here in Austin, Dugger and friends were also just a laugh away from jail or bankruptcy.
It took me a long time to catch up—to realize that what matters in journalism is not how close you are to power but how close you are to the truth. I had gone on to seminary, was catapulted into the Washington maelstrom, and then wound up as publisher of Newsday in New York, where I started to get my feet on the ground again.
Back at home, The Texas Observer was doing what journalism does best: setting the record straight. This, said the late Martha Gellhorn, is the reason we exist. Gellhorn spent half a life observing war and politicians and journalists, too. By the end she had lost her faith that journalism could, by itself, change the world, but she had found a different sort of comfort. “Victory and defeat are both passing moments,” she said. “There is no end; there are only means. Journalism is a means, and I now think that the act of keeping the record straight is valuable in itself. Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential, not because it is a guiding light but because it is a form of honorable behavior, involving the reporter and the reader.”
Honorable behavior is what this newspaper was exhibiting here in Texas. The journalists who embodied it included Ronnie Dugger, Willie Morris, Robert Sherrill, Larry Goodwyn, Kaye Northcott, Jim Hightower, Geoffrey Rips, Lou Dubose, Michael King, Nate Blakeslee and Molly Ivins (whose wit should have prompted her arrest long ago. Who else makes us laugh so hard even as we read about the betrayal of democracy?)
Then there were the writers whose creativity and courage buoyed many an article and essay: J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, Walter Prescott Webb, Bud Shrake, Garry Cartwright, Larry King, Larry McMurtry, Bill Helmer, Billy Porterfield, Elroy Bode, Amado Muro and Katherine Anne Porter, to name a few.
Just sample the legacy:
In these pages 40 years ago, Dugger called on liberals to remember our commitment to personal liberty, personal love, personal joy and pain. He urged us to listen to the critique of big government—“It is big, it is impersonal, it is confused” —and to be vigilant in the name of the lone individual: “We must test our system, not by whether we get to the moon, but by whether a man [or woman] can freely and fully express himself here on earth; not by whether we are ahead in weapons, but by whether we are ahead in real room to be free and alive…to be ourselves.”
In 1960, Dugger wrote that Lyndon Johnson “might be a great liberal president—might transcend his thin education, his rural bias, his evident dislike of city-industrial liberalism, his mottled record in civil rights and civil liberties, his relative ignorance in foreign policy—might lead the nation to great new public works and world service.” This made LBJ think a little more kindly toward “that fly in Austin that keeps swimming in my soup,” as he once described Dugger & Company. But it was also the fiercely independent Dugger who, six years later, challenged the escalation of the war in Vietnam and cried out against bombing “the men, women, and children in Hanoi” in order to force our will on them. The president, he wrote, “has already scarred his place in history” by bringing to the war “a West Texan’s simplistic frontier ideas about man-to-man relationships and how to behave in a fight with the enemy.”
Some things never change.
In these pages, Lou Dubose predicted early on what would happen when the chickens of Reaganomics and (Phil) Grammonomics came home to roost, Robert Sherrill anticipated the rapacity of corporate greed in a new Gilded Age, and James Ridgeway imagined a perversion of populism that could serve multinational corporations even as they moved their operations offshore to exploit poor countries for cheap labor and raw materials, costing American workers their jobs.
In these pages, Larry Goodwyn ruminated on the difference between “a politics of the present” and “a politics of the future,” urging liberals to think hard about whether their strategy meant a winning coalition 10 years down the road. Would the election next spring, say, of a “given liberal candidate in Dallas have any real meaning in altering the caste system under which the people of Dallas live?” The headline above that essay read: “Caste and Righteousness.” It was a startling headline at the time, and it still fits today, alas. As The Texas Observer continues to remind us, Texas in 2005 is run by the rich and the righteous, producing a state of piracy and piety that even the medieval papacy couldn’t match.
Consider the scene just a few weeks ago when your Gov. Perry, surrounded by cheering God-folk, showed up at a pep rally in Fort Worth for yet another cleverly staged bashing of gay people, contrived to keep the pious signed on for the culture war so they won’t know they are losing the class war waged against them in Austin by the governor and his rich corporate patrons. The main speaker was none other than the Rev. Rod Parsley of Ohio. Keep your eyes on Rev. Parsley. He is the new incarnation of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, that devout duo who channeled Elmer Gantry into a new political religion driven by an obsession to punish people on account of sex. Parsley runs a multimillion-dollar-a-year televangelism ministry based in Columbus, Ohio, with access worldwide to 400 TV stations and cable affiliates. He describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a “Christo-crat” —a gladiator for God marching against “the very hordes of hell in our society.” But he shows up with so many Republicans that he has been publicly described as the party’s “spiritual advisor.”
The “advice” he offers is the same old stuff peddled by Robertson and Falwell in their own rise to the top of the dung heap of religious bigotry and bile. Parsley demonizes other faiths (“The god of Islam and the god of Christianity are not the same being”) and rouses the partisan faithful to fever pitch by tossing them the red meat of radical disinformation: “The church in America is under oppression.” “The separation of church and state is a lie perpetrated on Americans—especially on believers in Jesus Christ.” So intense is his scapegoating of gays that one cannot help but think of the 1930s when the powerful and the pious in Germany demonized Jews and homosexuals in order to arouse and manipulate public passions. Watching the two of them together, you have to wonder if Gov. Perry and Rev. Parsley have ever read a history book detailing how Heinrich Himmler organized a special section of the Gestapo to deal with homosexuality and abortion, exhorting his country to remember that “Germany’s forebears knew what to do with homosexuals. They drowned them in bags.” You want to believe the governor and the preacher are surely ignorant of such horrors, horrors you know they would never condone, but you want to grab them by the lapels and shake them and tell them their loathing of other people is the kindling of evil.
Ohio newspapers report that Parsley has launched Reformation Ohio to bring “spiritual revival and moral reformation” to the Buckeye state by using pastors and their churches to register at least 400,000 new voters motivated by “Bible-based values.” It’s a familiar agenda: deny women freedom of conscience in the difficult personal choices affecting pregnancy, discriminate against gay people who seek the commitments of marriage, outlaw stem-cell research no matter the lives it might save, and overturn a provision in the U.S. tax code that prohibits non-profit churches from endorsing political candidates. (At one recent rally, Parsley and former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (news, bio, voting record) delivered “fiery speeches” as more than 1,200 pastors were handed thousands of mail-in petitions to spread among their congregations urging the Senate quickly to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court.)
Rev. Parsley is a master of mass psychology. He sees the church as a sleeping giant with the ability and the anointing from God to transform America. At a rally in July he proclaimed: “Let the Revolution begin!” And the congregation answered: “Let the Revolution begin.”
So what was it that brought Rev. Parsley to Austin recently to meet with Gov. Perry? Both showed up for a “Pastors’ Policy Briefing” sponsored by the Texas Restoration Project (not to be confused with Reformation Ohio, unless you think of kissin’ cousins). Once again the aim is to sign up “Patriot Pastors” who will call on their congregations to vote the Lord’s will on Election Day. Also present in Austin was Ohio’s secretary of state, Ken Blackwell. You will remember him as the overseer of the election process in Ohio last year when a surge of conservative Christian voters narrowly carried Bush to victory there. Yes, the same Ken Blackwell who had modestly acknowledged that “God wanted him as secretary of state in 2004” because it was such a critical election. Now, apparently, he has been divinely designated for higher office. One wonders what Blackwell, Perry and Parsley were really talking about when they got down on their knees here in Austin. We will never know, because the praying and preaching and politicking were closed to the press, as befits the stealth salvation they are plotting for Texas.
Who paid to bring preachers from all over the state to town for this politically religious camp meeting? That, too, is a big secret. Two Texas oligarchs were spotted at the closed-door sessions—James Leininger and Bo Pilgrim— and they may have dropped something into the offering plate. But no one will say who put up the half million shekels it cost to bring the brethren to town and provide for them more than a few loaves and fishes.
Some years ago the classicist scholar, William Arrowsmith, writing in The Texas Observer, described the “worst of Texas attitudes—the rock-bottom conviction, expressed in stone throughout the state and in the hearts of politicians, that what counts is always and only wealth, that everything is for sale and can be bought.” Including now the Faith of Our Fathers, the Old Time Religion, the Rock of Ages. Right-wing religion provides the political and corporate forces running America a cloak of “moral values” with which to camouflage the plunder of America. It is the Texas machine duplicated many times over. For, as The Texas Observer once put it, “The men who run the Lone Star State, through a tacit but powerful interlocking directorate of politicians and corporation executives [joined now by preachers] are perpetrating and perpetuating a monstrous deception on the public” —namely, the illusion of self-government.
Everything President George W. Bush knows, he learned here, as the product of a system rigged to assure the political progeny needed to perpetuate itself with minimum interference from the nuisances of liberal democracy. You remember liberal democracy: the rule of law, the protection of individual and minority rights, checks and balances against arbitrary power, an independent press, the separation of church and state. As governor, Bush was nurtured by the peculiar Texas blend of piety and privilege that mocks those values. With the election of 2000, he and his cohorts arrived in Washington like atheists taking over the Vatican; they had come to run a government they don’t believe in.
The results have been disastrous: reckless tax cuts, a relentless assault on social services, monumental debt, pre-emptive war, an exhausted military, booming corporate welfare and corruption so deep and pervasive it has touched every facet of American government.
Much has been made of the president’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina. His early response was to joke the fun he had as a frat boy in now-grieving New Orleans. When a reporter pressed him on what had gone wrong after the hurricane struck, he sarcastically asked: “Who says something went wrong?” His attitude would surprise no one who read the 1999 profile of Bush by a conservative journalist who reported how the then-governor had made fun of Karla Fay Tucker’s appeals to be spared the death penalty. The journalist—a conservative, remember —wrote that Bush mocked and dismissed the woman, like him a born-again Christian, as he depicted her begging him, “Please don’t kill me!” But this is not what she had said. Bush made it up.
Such contempt for other people’s reality is embedded in a philosophy hostile to government except as an instrument of privilege and patronage. This is the crowd, remember, that was asleep at the switch in the months leading up to 9/11 when the intelligence traffic crackled with warnings about terrorist attacks (look it up in the official commission report). It’s the same crowd that made a mess of the occupation of Iraq—and then awarded themselves Medals of Freedom for the wreckage they had created. Their mentality was well summed up by Donald Rumsfeld, who, after Baghdad’s libraries and museums were sacked, shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Stuff happens.’
Hurricane Katrina uncovered what the progressive advocate Robert Borosage calls the “catastrophic conservatism” of the long right-wing crusade to denigrate government, ‘starve the beast,’ scorn its purposes and malign its officials. We are seeing the results of an economic policy focused on top-end tax cuts and deregulations to reward private investors, as opposed to public investments in the country’s vital infrastructure. On the day that Katrina struck the coast, the census bureau reported that last year, one million people had been added to the 36 million Americans living in poverty. A few weeks earlier, the Labor Department had reported that while incomes had grown impressively last year, the gains had gone mostly to the top—the people with stocks and bonds and income other than wages. But the 80 million people who live paycheck to paycheck barely stayed even. It took a natural disaster to expose the stunning inequality and poverty produced when people are written off and shoved to the margins. And to remind us, as Borosage writes, of the dearth of basic investment in the boring but essential public works vital to civilization—schools, public transport, water systems, public health, and yes, wetlands and trees.
We are seeing now the results of systemic and spectacular corruption and cronyism and the triumph of a social ideal—the “You get yours/I’ll get mine” mentality—that is diametrically opposed to the ethic of shared sacrifice and responsibility.
Consider the story of the president’s buddy, Joe Allbaugh. When he was appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration—FEMA—he described the agency as “an oversized entitlement program” and told states and cities to rely instead on faith-based organizations. Not surprisingly, the first in line at FEMA’s front door in the aftermath of Katrina was the televangelist and tycoon, Pat Robertson. Although he had only recently called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and had prayed in public for God to open some Supreme Court vacancies “one way or the other,” Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing—sic—got one of the first faith-based grants for relief work on the Gulf Coast. As a Christian magazine has now informed us, Robertson used some of those tax dollars to help rush 80,000 Bibles to the stricken region.
Joe Allbaugh, meanwhile, was already on the scene—but not as head of FEMA. He had returned to “private life,” as the term is laughingly used among Washington lobbyists. Having failed to prepare his agency to cope with disaster, he carefully prepared himself to exploit disaster when it strikes. It had not escaped him that the invasion of Iraq opened splendid opportunities for gain among the well-connected of Washington who ha cheered it on. Setting up a lobbying firm near the White House, he was soon facilitating business for contractors in Iraq and running another company that provides security for private companies operating there. Allbaugh house his entire complex at the Washington lobbying and law firm of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers. The ‘Barbour’ in that lineup is none other that the former chair of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour. The ‘Rogers’ is Ed Rogers, Barbour’s partner, who is also—hold your breath—one of Allbaugh’s vice presidents. Haley Barbour, having enriched himself as an influence peddler, went back to Mississippi and ran for governor, which means he is playing a big hand in passing out your tax dollars for reconstruction. Lo and behold, on September 1, the Pentagon announced a major contract for repair of Naval facilities on the Gulf Coast to Halliburton, whose chief lobbyist is… Joe Allbaugh. What a lucky coincidence. Or as Shakespeare might put it: ‘Merit doth much, but fortune more.”
This is what you get from people who don’t believe in government except to aggrandize their own privilege. It wasn’t the lack of resources that prevented the administration from responding effectively to the disaster. The Washington Post’s Bill Arkin, among others, reminds us that the federal government had water, medicine, food and security at hand, in addition to the transportation needed to get it down to the coast in a hurry. The problem was “leadership, decisiveness, foresight.” And this goes to the core of the radical right’s atheist-in-the-Vatican philosophy: Denounce the government you now run, defang its powers and dilute its responsibilities, and direct the spoils of victory to your cronies in the private sector.
This predatory convergence of corporate, political and religious power has taken the notion of our commonwealth —the ‘We the People’ in that magnificent preamble to the Constitution—and soaked it in the sanctimony of homegrown Ayatollahs, squeezed it through a rigged market, and then auctioned it to the highest bidder for private advantage, at the expense of working people, their families and their communities.
When the right-wing apostle of no government, Grover (“Starve the beast”) Norquist appeared on my broadcast last year, I told him that I regretted having announced my retirement. With the corporate, political and religious right now exercising a one-party monopoly over Washington, I said, we are going to see such a spectacle of corruption that muckraking journalism could yet produce a new Golden Age of investigative reporting.
Sure enough, not a day passes that I don’t wish we could clone The Texas Observer, plant it smack dab in the center of the nation’s capital, and loose the spirit of Thomas Paine. Paine was the journalist of the American Revolution whose pen shook the powerful and propertied, challenged the pretensions of the pious and privileged, and exposed the sunshine patriots who turned against the revolutionary ideals of freedom, equality and justice. That spirit permeates The Texas Observer . Thanks to your Nate Blakeslee, the wrongly accused in Tulia are finally out of jail. Thanks to your Jake Bernstein and David Mann, “The Rise of the Machine”— the stunning account of modern political corruption in Texas that is the basis of Tom DeLay’s power—has begun to topple the dominoes. Just imagine how such fearless journalism in Washington today could probe deep into the political machinations behind our nation’s shocking inequality, expose the corruption of our public life, and reveal to Americans just how the regime in power is hollowing out the middle class, punishing working people and shackling future generations to runaway debt.
I read The Texas Observer and am reminded of the Irishman who comes upon a street brawl and asks, “Is this a private fight, or can anyone get in it?” You never let us forget that democracy is a public fight. For half a century now, you have covered that fight like no other journalists in the state. From Marshall in East Texas to El Paso in the far west, from Dallas to Corpus Christi, from Bastrop County to Deaf Smith County, you have reported on the men and women who struggle against much larger forces—sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of others, knowing that whether they succeed or not, they had to make a fight of it, had to take a stand, if justice is to have a chance in Texas.
So you richly deserve tonight’s rousing celebration of the difference a free press can make. I am honored to be with you. But the evening will soon end, and just outside those doors the fight is waiting for us. Good luck—and may the dollars rain down on you from good folk far and wide, to make possible another 50 years of independent, courageous journalism.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com.
The Huffington Post
The 50th anniversary of The Texas Observer is a double celebration for me. Your first issue appeared one week before Judith Davidson and I were married in December 1954. We had transferred here to the University of Texas as juniors and were renting a garage apartment that has now totally disappeared along with the block on which it stood. So many landmarks of our lives have disappeared that it’s a joy to come back to Austin and find one that stubbornly and gamely remains true to its mission. Although many people would wish The Texas Observer had also been buried under the rubble of time, a good idea is as hard to kill as a good marriage. And this little newspaper was a good idea.
As Ronnie Dugger reminds us in his epilogue to Fifty Years of The Texas Observer , there was silence in Texas in those days about racism, poverty and corporate power. The state ranked dead last among major states and next-to-last in the South in education, health care, and programs for the poor. “We were as racist, segregated, and anti-union as the Deep South from which most of our Anglo pioneers had emerged,” Dugger writes. ”Mexican Americans were a hopeless underclass concentrated in South Texas. Women could vote and did the dog work in the political campaigns, but they were also ladies to be protected, above all from power. Gays and lesbians were as objectionable as Communists. And the daily newspapers were as reactionary and dishonest a cynical gang as the First Amendment ever took the rap for.”
Into that atmosphere rode a band of journalists determined to poke a thumb in the eye of orthodoxy. Dugger summed up their mission in his lead editorial in that very first issue:
We will have a good time and we hope you do. We will twit the self-important and honor the truly important. We will lay the bark to the dignity of any public man any time we see fit. Telling the whole truth is not an exercise to be limited to children before they reach the age of reason. It is the indispensable requirement for an effective democracy. If the press and the politicians lie to the people, or hide those parts of the truth which trouble the conscience or offend a friend, how can the people’s falsely-based decisions be trusted? Here in the Southwest there is room for a great truth-telling newspaper, its editor free, its editorials cast in a liberal and reasonable frame of mind, its dedication Thoreau’s ‘The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth.
I wish I had written those words. I wish that I had served them all my days as Ronnie Dugger has. But at the time I wasn’t even thinking such thoughts. Back then I was still in the elementary grade school of journalism. I had transferred to the University for one simple reason: LBJ offered me a job on Lady Bird’s station paying $100 a week, and that meant Judith and I could afford to get married. KTBC was the first in Texas to buy a station wagon, paint it red, and christen it—what else?—Red Rover. Charlton Heston churning a backlot in Hollywood in pursuit of Rome’s glories never had more fun than I did in that four-wheeled chariot, careening around Austin in style, broadcasting from crime scenes and accidents and the state legislature, which of course was the biggest crime scene in town. My boss, Paul Bolton, the crusty old news editor of KTBC, would look at the goings on in the Texas House of Representatives and sigh: “If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents.”
No argument there. McCarthyism was a raging plague in the 1950s and the virus rampaged across Texas like tumbleweeds in a wind storm. The legendary Maury Maverick Jr. was in the legislature at the time, one of the “Gashouse Gang” that fought bravely against the poison of the era. He said these were “the worst years” in his life. “The lights were going out” and few voices were raised in protest. The low point, said Maverick, came when the state Senate passed a bill to remove all books from public libraries which “adversely” reflected on American and Texas history, the family and religion. Even the state teachers association endorsed the bill, in exchange for a pay raise. Maverick voted against it, but walking back to his apartment that evening he was suddenly overwhelmed by the evil of what was happening, and he “vomited until flecks of blood came up.”
That was the lay of the land in the 1950s. And Democrats were in charge, remember? That’s right: Texas was a one-party state; Republicans were as scarce in high office as Democrats are today. No matter the players, one-party government is a conspiracy in disguise.
In that rocky soil and toxic climate, Frankie Randolph and Ronnie Dugger and a fistful of fellow dissenters launched The Texas Observer . I wasn’t among them. I had yet to work myself out beyond the cozy confinements of an insular East Texas Baptist culture where you could be well loved, well churched and well taught and still be unaware of the reality of other people’s lives. I belonged in those days to that category of journalists described by George Bernard Shaw as “unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.”
So Judith and I graduated and left town. The Texas Observer stayed: stayed to live out Dugger’s dare to tell the truth about the oligarchy that governed Texas. What kept that original band of scribblers going remains a mystery to me. For sure they made up in irreverence what they lacked in financial security. At that very time, in faraway Washington,D.C., I.F. Stone was also afflicting the comfortable. In his little I.F. Stone’s Weekly, he would pour through the government’s own official documents to catch the government’s lies and contradictions. Amid the thunder of his battle with Potomac dragons he boasted, “I have so much fun I ought to be arrested.” Here in Austin, Dugger and friends were also just a laugh away from jail or bankruptcy.
It took me a long time to catch up—to realize that what matters in journalism is not how close you are to power but how close you are to the truth. I had gone on to seminary, was catapulted into the Washington maelstrom, and then wound up as publisher of Newsday in New York, where I started to get my feet on the ground again.
Back at home, The Texas Observer was doing what journalism does best: setting the record straight. This, said the late Martha Gellhorn, is the reason we exist. Gellhorn spent half a life observing war and politicians and journalists, too. By the end she had lost her faith that journalism could, by itself, change the world, but she had found a different sort of comfort. “Victory and defeat are both passing moments,” she said. “There is no end; there are only means. Journalism is a means, and I now think that the act of keeping the record straight is valuable in itself. Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential, not because it is a guiding light but because it is a form of honorable behavior, involving the reporter and the reader.”
Honorable behavior is what this newspaper was exhibiting here in Texas. The journalists who embodied it included Ronnie Dugger, Willie Morris, Robert Sherrill, Larry Goodwyn, Kaye Northcott, Jim Hightower, Geoffrey Rips, Lou Dubose, Michael King, Nate Blakeslee and Molly Ivins (whose wit should have prompted her arrest long ago. Who else makes us laugh so hard even as we read about the betrayal of democracy?)
Then there were the writers whose creativity and courage buoyed many an article and essay: J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, Walter Prescott Webb, Bud Shrake, Garry Cartwright, Larry King, Larry McMurtry, Bill Helmer, Billy Porterfield, Elroy Bode, Amado Muro and Katherine Anne Porter, to name a few.
Just sample the legacy:
In these pages 40 years ago, Dugger called on liberals to remember our commitment to personal liberty, personal love, personal joy and pain. He urged us to listen to the critique of big government—“It is big, it is impersonal, it is confused” —and to be vigilant in the name of the lone individual: “We must test our system, not by whether we get to the moon, but by whether a man [or woman] can freely and fully express himself here on earth; not by whether we are ahead in weapons, but by whether we are ahead in real room to be free and alive…to be ourselves.”
In 1960, Dugger wrote that Lyndon Johnson “might be a great liberal president—might transcend his thin education, his rural bias, his evident dislike of city-industrial liberalism, his mottled record in civil rights and civil liberties, his relative ignorance in foreign policy—might lead the nation to great new public works and world service.” This made LBJ think a little more kindly toward “that fly in Austin that keeps swimming in my soup,” as he once described Dugger & Company. But it was also the fiercely independent Dugger who, six years later, challenged the escalation of the war in Vietnam and cried out against bombing “the men, women, and children in Hanoi” in order to force our will on them. The president, he wrote, “has already scarred his place in history” by bringing to the war “a West Texan’s simplistic frontier ideas about man-to-man relationships and how to behave in a fight with the enemy.”
Some things never change.
In these pages, Lou Dubose predicted early on what would happen when the chickens of Reaganomics and (Phil) Grammonomics came home to roost, Robert Sherrill anticipated the rapacity of corporate greed in a new Gilded Age, and James Ridgeway imagined a perversion of populism that could serve multinational corporations even as they moved their operations offshore to exploit poor countries for cheap labor and raw materials, costing American workers their jobs.
In these pages, Larry Goodwyn ruminated on the difference between “a politics of the present” and “a politics of the future,” urging liberals to think hard about whether their strategy meant a winning coalition 10 years down the road. Would the election next spring, say, of a “given liberal candidate in Dallas have any real meaning in altering the caste system under which the people of Dallas live?” The headline above that essay read: “Caste and Righteousness.” It was a startling headline at the time, and it still fits today, alas. As The Texas Observer continues to remind us, Texas in 2005 is run by the rich and the righteous, producing a state of piracy and piety that even the medieval papacy couldn’t match.
Consider the scene just a few weeks ago when your Gov. Perry, surrounded by cheering God-folk, showed up at a pep rally in Fort Worth for yet another cleverly staged bashing of gay people, contrived to keep the pious signed on for the culture war so they won’t know they are losing the class war waged against them in Austin by the governor and his rich corporate patrons. The main speaker was none other than the Rev. Rod Parsley of Ohio. Keep your eyes on Rev. Parsley. He is the new incarnation of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, that devout duo who channeled Elmer Gantry into a new political religion driven by an obsession to punish people on account of sex. Parsley runs a multimillion-dollar-a-year televangelism ministry based in Columbus, Ohio, with access worldwide to 400 TV stations and cable affiliates. He describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a “Christo-crat” —a gladiator for God marching against “the very hordes of hell in our society.” But he shows up with so many Republicans that he has been publicly described as the party’s “spiritual advisor.”
The “advice” he offers is the same old stuff peddled by Robertson and Falwell in their own rise to the top of the dung heap of religious bigotry and bile. Parsley demonizes other faiths (“The god of Islam and the god of Christianity are not the same being”) and rouses the partisan faithful to fever pitch by tossing them the red meat of radical disinformation: “The church in America is under oppression.” “The separation of church and state is a lie perpetrated on Americans—especially on believers in Jesus Christ.” So intense is his scapegoating of gays that one cannot help but think of the 1930s when the powerful and the pious in Germany demonized Jews and homosexuals in order to arouse and manipulate public passions. Watching the two of them together, you have to wonder if Gov. Perry and Rev. Parsley have ever read a history book detailing how Heinrich Himmler organized a special section of the Gestapo to deal with homosexuality and abortion, exhorting his country to remember that “Germany’s forebears knew what to do with homosexuals. They drowned them in bags.” You want to believe the governor and the preacher are surely ignorant of such horrors, horrors you know they would never condone, but you want to grab them by the lapels and shake them and tell them their loathing of other people is the kindling of evil.
Ohio newspapers report that Parsley has launched Reformation Ohio to bring “spiritual revival and moral reformation” to the Buckeye state by using pastors and their churches to register at least 400,000 new voters motivated by “Bible-based values.” It’s a familiar agenda: deny women freedom of conscience in the difficult personal choices affecting pregnancy, discriminate against gay people who seek the commitments of marriage, outlaw stem-cell research no matter the lives it might save, and overturn a provision in the U.S. tax code that prohibits non-profit churches from endorsing political candidates. (At one recent rally, Parsley and former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (news, bio, voting record) delivered “fiery speeches” as more than 1,200 pastors were handed thousands of mail-in petitions to spread among their congregations urging the Senate quickly to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court.)
Rev. Parsley is a master of mass psychology. He sees the church as a sleeping giant with the ability and the anointing from God to transform America. At a rally in July he proclaimed: “Let the Revolution begin!” And the congregation answered: “Let the Revolution begin.”
So what was it that brought Rev. Parsley to Austin recently to meet with Gov. Perry? Both showed up for a “Pastors’ Policy Briefing” sponsored by the Texas Restoration Project (not to be confused with Reformation Ohio, unless you think of kissin’ cousins). Once again the aim is to sign up “Patriot Pastors” who will call on their congregations to vote the Lord’s will on Election Day. Also present in Austin was Ohio’s secretary of state, Ken Blackwell. You will remember him as the overseer of the election process in Ohio last year when a surge of conservative Christian voters narrowly carried Bush to victory there. Yes, the same Ken Blackwell who had modestly acknowledged that “God wanted him as secretary of state in 2004” because it was such a critical election. Now, apparently, he has been divinely designated for higher office. One wonders what Blackwell, Perry and Parsley were really talking about when they got down on their knees here in Austin. We will never know, because the praying and preaching and politicking were closed to the press, as befits the stealth salvation they are plotting for Texas.
Who paid to bring preachers from all over the state to town for this politically religious camp meeting? That, too, is a big secret. Two Texas oligarchs were spotted at the closed-door sessions—James Leininger and Bo Pilgrim— and they may have dropped something into the offering plate. But no one will say who put up the half million shekels it cost to bring the brethren to town and provide for them more than a few loaves and fishes.
Some years ago the classicist scholar, William Arrowsmith, writing in The Texas Observer, described the “worst of Texas attitudes—the rock-bottom conviction, expressed in stone throughout the state and in the hearts of politicians, that what counts is always and only wealth, that everything is for sale and can be bought.” Including now the Faith of Our Fathers, the Old Time Religion, the Rock of Ages. Right-wing religion provides the political and corporate forces running America a cloak of “moral values” with which to camouflage the plunder of America. It is the Texas machine duplicated many times over. For, as The Texas Observer once put it, “The men who run the Lone Star State, through a tacit but powerful interlocking directorate of politicians and corporation executives [joined now by preachers] are perpetrating and perpetuating a monstrous deception on the public” —namely, the illusion of self-government.
Everything President George W. Bush knows, he learned here, as the product of a system rigged to assure the political progeny needed to perpetuate itself with minimum interference from the nuisances of liberal democracy. You remember liberal democracy: the rule of law, the protection of individual and minority rights, checks and balances against arbitrary power, an independent press, the separation of church and state. As governor, Bush was nurtured by the peculiar Texas blend of piety and privilege that mocks those values. With the election of 2000, he and his cohorts arrived in Washington like atheists taking over the Vatican; they had come to run a government they don’t believe in.
The results have been disastrous: reckless tax cuts, a relentless assault on social services, monumental debt, pre-emptive war, an exhausted military, booming corporate welfare and corruption so deep and pervasive it has touched every facet of American government.
Much has been made of the president’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina. His early response was to joke the fun he had as a frat boy in now-grieving New Orleans. When a reporter pressed him on what had gone wrong after the hurricane struck, he sarcastically asked: “Who says something went wrong?” His attitude would surprise no one who read the 1999 profile of Bush by a conservative journalist who reported how the then-governor had made fun of Karla Fay Tucker’s appeals to be spared the death penalty. The journalist—a conservative, remember —wrote that Bush mocked and dismissed the woman, like him a born-again Christian, as he depicted her begging him, “Please don’t kill me!” But this is not what she had said. Bush made it up.
Such contempt for other people’s reality is embedded in a philosophy hostile to government except as an instrument of privilege and patronage. This is the crowd, remember, that was asleep at the switch in the months leading up to 9/11 when the intelligence traffic crackled with warnings about terrorist attacks (look it up in the official commission report). It’s the same crowd that made a mess of the occupation of Iraq—and then awarded themselves Medals of Freedom for the wreckage they had created. Their mentality was well summed up by Donald Rumsfeld, who, after Baghdad’s libraries and museums were sacked, shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Stuff happens.’
Hurricane Katrina uncovered what the progressive advocate Robert Borosage calls the “catastrophic conservatism” of the long right-wing crusade to denigrate government, ‘starve the beast,’ scorn its purposes and malign its officials. We are seeing the results of an economic policy focused on top-end tax cuts and deregulations to reward private investors, as opposed to public investments in the country’s vital infrastructure. On the day that Katrina struck the coast, the census bureau reported that last year, one million people had been added to the 36 million Americans living in poverty. A few weeks earlier, the Labor Department had reported that while incomes had grown impressively last year, the gains had gone mostly to the top—the people with stocks and bonds and income other than wages. But the 80 million people who live paycheck to paycheck barely stayed even. It took a natural disaster to expose the stunning inequality and poverty produced when people are written off and shoved to the margins. And to remind us, as Borosage writes, of the dearth of basic investment in the boring but essential public works vital to civilization—schools, public transport, water systems, public health, and yes, wetlands and trees.
We are seeing now the results of systemic and spectacular corruption and cronyism and the triumph of a social ideal—the “You get yours/I’ll get mine” mentality—that is diametrically opposed to the ethic of shared sacrifice and responsibility.
Consider the story of the president’s buddy, Joe Allbaugh. When he was appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration—FEMA—he described the agency as “an oversized entitlement program” and told states and cities to rely instead on faith-based organizations. Not surprisingly, the first in line at FEMA’s front door in the aftermath of Katrina was the televangelist and tycoon, Pat Robertson. Although he had only recently called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and had prayed in public for God to open some Supreme Court vacancies “one way or the other,” Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing—sic—got one of the first faith-based grants for relief work on the Gulf Coast. As a Christian magazine has now informed us, Robertson used some of those tax dollars to help rush 80,000 Bibles to the stricken region.
Joe Allbaugh, meanwhile, was already on the scene—but not as head of FEMA. He had returned to “private life,” as the term is laughingly used among Washington lobbyists. Having failed to prepare his agency to cope with disaster, he carefully prepared himself to exploit disaster when it strikes. It had not escaped him that the invasion of Iraq opened splendid opportunities for gain among the well-connected of Washington who ha cheered it on. Setting up a lobbying firm near the White House, he was soon facilitating business for contractors in Iraq and running another company that provides security for private companies operating there. Allbaugh house his entire complex at the Washington lobbying and law firm of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers. The ‘Barbour’ in that lineup is none other that the former chair of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour. The ‘Rogers’ is Ed Rogers, Barbour’s partner, who is also—hold your breath—one of Allbaugh’s vice presidents. Haley Barbour, having enriched himself as an influence peddler, went back to Mississippi and ran for governor, which means he is playing a big hand in passing out your tax dollars for reconstruction. Lo and behold, on September 1, the Pentagon announced a major contract for repair of Naval facilities on the Gulf Coast to Halliburton, whose chief lobbyist is… Joe Allbaugh. What a lucky coincidence. Or as Shakespeare might put it: ‘Merit doth much, but fortune more.”
This is what you get from people who don’t believe in government except to aggrandize their own privilege. It wasn’t the lack of resources that prevented the administration from responding effectively to the disaster. The Washington Post’s Bill Arkin, among others, reminds us that the federal government had water, medicine, food and security at hand, in addition to the transportation needed to get it down to the coast in a hurry. The problem was “leadership, decisiveness, foresight.” And this goes to the core of the radical right’s atheist-in-the-Vatican philosophy: Denounce the government you now run, defang its powers and dilute its responsibilities, and direct the spoils of victory to your cronies in the private sector.
This predatory convergence of corporate, political and religious power has taken the notion of our commonwealth —the ‘We the People’ in that magnificent preamble to the Constitution—and soaked it in the sanctimony of homegrown Ayatollahs, squeezed it through a rigged market, and then auctioned it to the highest bidder for private advantage, at the expense of working people, their families and their communities.
When the right-wing apostle of no government, Grover (“Starve the beast”) Norquist appeared on my broadcast last year, I told him that I regretted having announced my retirement. With the corporate, political and religious right now exercising a one-party monopoly over Washington, I said, we are going to see such a spectacle of corruption that muckraking journalism could yet produce a new Golden Age of investigative reporting.
Sure enough, not a day passes that I don’t wish we could clone The Texas Observer, plant it smack dab in the center of the nation’s capital, and loose the spirit of Thomas Paine. Paine was the journalist of the American Revolution whose pen shook the powerful and propertied, challenged the pretensions of the pious and privileged, and exposed the sunshine patriots who turned against the revolutionary ideals of freedom, equality and justice. That spirit permeates The Texas Observer . Thanks to your Nate Blakeslee, the wrongly accused in Tulia are finally out of jail. Thanks to your Jake Bernstein and David Mann, “The Rise of the Machine”— the stunning account of modern political corruption in Texas that is the basis of Tom DeLay’s power—has begun to topple the dominoes. Just imagine how such fearless journalism in Washington today could probe deep into the political machinations behind our nation’s shocking inequality, expose the corruption of our public life, and reveal to Americans just how the regime in power is hollowing out the middle class, punishing working people and shackling future generations to runaway debt.
I read The Texas Observer and am reminded of the Irishman who comes upon a street brawl and asks, “Is this a private fight, or can anyone get in it?” You never let us forget that democracy is a public fight. For half a century now, you have covered that fight like no other journalists in the state. From Marshall in East Texas to El Paso in the far west, from Dallas to Corpus Christi, from Bastrop County to Deaf Smith County, you have reported on the men and women who struggle against much larger forces—sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of others, knowing that whether they succeed or not, they had to make a fight of it, had to take a stand, if justice is to have a chance in Texas.
So you richly deserve tonight’s rousing celebration of the difference a free press can make. I am honored to be with you. But the evening will soon end, and just outside those doors the fight is waiting for us. Good luck—and may the dollars rain down on you from good folk far and wide, to make possible another 50 years of independent, courageous journalism.
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com.
Monday, November 21, 2005
The truth about God in public schools
The truth about God in public schools
By Charles C. Haynes Mon Nov 21
USA Today
Attacks on the "Godless public schools" have been at the top of the culture-war hit list for more than 40 years. Hardly a day goes by without some politician or televangelist reminding Americans of how the Supreme Court kicked God out of the schools in the 1960s - and how the nation has been sliding down a slippery slope of moral and spiritual decline ever since.
The banishment of the Deity from the classroom is a compelling story that plays well in a nation where millions of citizens take their faith seriously. There's only one problem:
It isn't true.
Yes, 20 years ago many public schools did come close to being religion-free zones. In the wake of the controversial court decisions banning state-sponsored religious practices, some school officials overreacted by trying to keep all religion out. Textbooks largely ignored religion, and teachers were hesitant to teach about it. Administrators mistakenly confused student speech with government speech and told kids to leave their religion at the schoolhouse door.
But that was 20 years ago. Today, most state standards and textbooks include considerable mention of religion; student religious clubs meet on hundreds, if not thousands, of high school campuses; the sight of Christian students praying around the flagpole or in the lunchroom is not uncommon; and Muslim students are routinely given a free room to perform daily prayers.
How we got here
What accounts for this dramatic turnaround? Start with the Equal Access Act of 1984 that opened the door for student-initiated religious clubs in secondary schools. Then look at how California broke the mold in the late '80s by deciding to require more teaching about religion in history classes. Finally, give credit to the remarkable agreements developed in the '90s on how schools should deal with everything from religious holidays to the Bible under the First Amendment - a series of consensus guides endorsed by everyone from the National Education Association to the National Association of Evangelicals.
In spite of these positive developments, some opponents of public schools stick to the storyline of the Godless school where guns get in the door but prayers are banned. These are the "Restorers," people who long to bring back the "good old days" when one religion (historically Protestant Christianity) was preferred in school policies and practices. Still angry that the courts won't allow school officials to promote religion with prayers over the intercom or by posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, the Restorers downplay or ignore all of the ways in which religion is alive and well in schools. Any concession that things have changed for the better would undermine their call for an "exodus" from "atheistic government schools," to quote a recent direct-mail letter from a religious conservative group.
Of course, it doesn't help that people on the other end of the spectrum - the "Removers" - are determined to scrub every vestige of religion from the classroom. Proposals to teach more about religions are attacked as backdoor ways to impose religion. Policies designed to protect students' religious expression are seen as efforts to encourage evangelization and harassment.
All it takes are a few bad stories to obscure the progress of the past two decades and to reinvigorate the culture warriors on both sides.
Exhibit A is the recent national brouhaha in which one teacher in one California school district (Cupertino) was accused of proselytizing in the classroom by inserting his religious views into the teaching of history. The Removers latched onto the incident as confirmation that teachers just can't be trusted to "teach about religion." Meanwhile, the Restorers saw it as fresh evidence of public-school hostility to all things Christian.
Caught in the crossfire, it's not surprising that some school officials are still nervous about implementing the consensus guidelines or that some teachers remain afraid to touch religion, whatever the standards say.
And it's no mystery why many students and parents are confused about what is and isn't allowed under the First Amendment. Nevertheless, the quiet revolution begun 20 years ago continues to spread.
All of the changes - the Equal Access Act, new standards and textbooks, consensus guides - are built on this: Under the First Amendment, public schools may not inculcate or inhibit religion. This means that school officials must be careful to protect the religious liberty rights of students of all faiths and none. And they must ensure that the curriculum includes study about religion (as distinguished from religious indoctrination) as an important part of a complete education.
Success in the classroom
To see what this looks like, visit Ramona, Calif.; Davis County, Utah; Mustang, Okla.; or any one of the many other school districts that have successfully translated the national agreements into local policies and practices that take the First Amendment seriously.
Instead of lawsuits and shouting matches, these communities have come together to find common ground on how to protect student religious expression while guarding against school endorsement of religion. Visit schools in these districts and you'll see teachers teaching about religions without controversy, students practicing their faith during the school day without interfering with the rights of others, and school officials handling potential conflicts over religion with the support and trust of their communities. Getting it right, however, won't be easy after more than 150 years of getting it wrong.
Moreover, agreement on some issues - such as the place of religion in the curriculum or when students may pray together - doesn't mean agreement on everything. The latest fight over evolution and recent lawsuits over where to draw the line on student religious expression in the classroom are stark reminders of how much work still needs to be done.
However great the challenge, schools have no choice but to move beyond the failed models of the past.
In a nation committed to religious liberty, public schools are neither the local church nor religion-free zones. They must be places where people of all faiths and none are treated with fairness and respect. In the USA, religion goes to school - but always through the First Amendment door.
Charles C. Haynes is the co-author of Finding Common Ground: A Guide to Religious Liberty in Public Schools and a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.
By Charles C. Haynes Mon Nov 21
USA Today
Attacks on the "Godless public schools" have been at the top of the culture-war hit list for more than 40 years. Hardly a day goes by without some politician or televangelist reminding Americans of how the Supreme Court kicked God out of the schools in the 1960s - and how the nation has been sliding down a slippery slope of moral and spiritual decline ever since.
The banishment of the Deity from the classroom is a compelling story that plays well in a nation where millions of citizens take their faith seriously. There's only one problem:
It isn't true.
Yes, 20 years ago many public schools did come close to being religion-free zones. In the wake of the controversial court decisions banning state-sponsored religious practices, some school officials overreacted by trying to keep all religion out. Textbooks largely ignored religion, and teachers were hesitant to teach about it. Administrators mistakenly confused student speech with government speech and told kids to leave their religion at the schoolhouse door.
But that was 20 years ago. Today, most state standards and textbooks include considerable mention of religion; student religious clubs meet on hundreds, if not thousands, of high school campuses; the sight of Christian students praying around the flagpole or in the lunchroom is not uncommon; and Muslim students are routinely given a free room to perform daily prayers.
How we got here
What accounts for this dramatic turnaround? Start with the Equal Access Act of 1984 that opened the door for student-initiated religious clubs in secondary schools. Then look at how California broke the mold in the late '80s by deciding to require more teaching about religion in history classes. Finally, give credit to the remarkable agreements developed in the '90s on how schools should deal with everything from religious holidays to the Bible under the First Amendment - a series of consensus guides endorsed by everyone from the National Education Association to the National Association of Evangelicals.
In spite of these positive developments, some opponents of public schools stick to the storyline of the Godless school where guns get in the door but prayers are banned. These are the "Restorers," people who long to bring back the "good old days" when one religion (historically Protestant Christianity) was preferred in school policies and practices. Still angry that the courts won't allow school officials to promote religion with prayers over the intercom or by posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, the Restorers downplay or ignore all of the ways in which religion is alive and well in schools. Any concession that things have changed for the better would undermine their call for an "exodus" from "atheistic government schools," to quote a recent direct-mail letter from a religious conservative group.
Of course, it doesn't help that people on the other end of the spectrum - the "Removers" - are determined to scrub every vestige of religion from the classroom. Proposals to teach more about religions are attacked as backdoor ways to impose religion. Policies designed to protect students' religious expression are seen as efforts to encourage evangelization and harassment.
All it takes are a few bad stories to obscure the progress of the past two decades and to reinvigorate the culture warriors on both sides.
Exhibit A is the recent national brouhaha in which one teacher in one California school district (Cupertino) was accused of proselytizing in the classroom by inserting his religious views into the teaching of history. The Removers latched onto the incident as confirmation that teachers just can't be trusted to "teach about religion." Meanwhile, the Restorers saw it as fresh evidence of public-school hostility to all things Christian.
Caught in the crossfire, it's not surprising that some school officials are still nervous about implementing the consensus guidelines or that some teachers remain afraid to touch religion, whatever the standards say.
And it's no mystery why many students and parents are confused about what is and isn't allowed under the First Amendment. Nevertheless, the quiet revolution begun 20 years ago continues to spread.
All of the changes - the Equal Access Act, new standards and textbooks, consensus guides - are built on this: Under the First Amendment, public schools may not inculcate or inhibit religion. This means that school officials must be careful to protect the religious liberty rights of students of all faiths and none. And they must ensure that the curriculum includes study about religion (as distinguished from religious indoctrination) as an important part of a complete education.
Success in the classroom
To see what this looks like, visit Ramona, Calif.; Davis County, Utah; Mustang, Okla.; or any one of the many other school districts that have successfully translated the national agreements into local policies and practices that take the First Amendment seriously.
Instead of lawsuits and shouting matches, these communities have come together to find common ground on how to protect student religious expression while guarding against school endorsement of religion. Visit schools in these districts and you'll see teachers teaching about religions without controversy, students practicing their faith during the school day without interfering with the rights of others, and school officials handling potential conflicts over religion with the support and trust of their communities. Getting it right, however, won't be easy after more than 150 years of getting it wrong.
Moreover, agreement on some issues - such as the place of religion in the curriculum or when students may pray together - doesn't mean agreement on everything. The latest fight over evolution and recent lawsuits over where to draw the line on student religious expression in the classroom are stark reminders of how much work still needs to be done.
However great the challenge, schools have no choice but to move beyond the failed models of the past.
In a nation committed to religious liberty, public schools are neither the local church nor religion-free zones. They must be places where people of all faiths and none are treated with fairness and respect. In the USA, religion goes to school - but always through the First Amendment door.
Charles C. Haynes is the co-author of Finding Common Ground: A Guide to Religious Liberty in Public Schools and a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Iraq: Colin Powell Publicly Breaks With Bush
Iraq: Colin Powell Publicly Breaks With Bush (141 comments )
The Huffington Post
“History is often best served cold.” That’s how former Secretary of State Colin Powell answered PBS interviewer Charlie Rose’s question about whether Powell would one day write a book on his service to George W. Bush. Secretary Powell’s paraphrase of “revenge is a dish best served cold” foretold the other observations he would reveal for the first time regarding the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.
Admitting that the nation is going through a “rough spot,” Powell defended the White House’s reliance on intelligence that led up to the Iraq War while appearing to lay blame on the intelligence community for any inaccuracies. He did, however, directly criticize the White House’s planning and execution of the war. No one currently in the Bush leadership has yet to admit any failures in this area.
Powell’s criticism comes at a time when President Bush and Vice President Cheney are personally engaged in direct attacks on anyone who questions the war. In Korea on Wednesday, President Bush fired another shot when he accused his critics of rewriting history, calling them irresponsible.
On intelligence, Secretary Powell dynamited the White House’s apparent pre-war certainty about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam’s Iraq. He admitted that the conclusions about stockpiles of WMDs were only “inferential” because, he explained, the government had no one on the ground in Iraq. Regarding his own famous 2003 testimony before the United Nations Security Council, Powell asserted that he felt at that time that all of his testimony was credible because each piece of evidence he presented was backed by several sources.
Powell offered that the President did get more daily intelligence information than the Congress – despite current protestations by the White House to the contrary – though he said that this additional information would not have led to different pre-war conclusions about the existence of the stockpiles. Powell laid the blame squarely outside Bush’s war cabinet, saying, “I think the intelligence community let us all down.” Yet he also defended the integrity of the intelligence operatives, “These are dedicated people who mean nothing but the best for our country.”
On Iraq, Powell was less circumspect. He stated unequivocally that the United States did not have enough troops to impose order after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow and that the White House should have been more aggressive in going after the insurgents early in the conflict. Powell also took issue with the elimination of Iraq’s military, questioning specifically the dismissal of the officer corps in the process known as de-Baathification.
On the torture issue, Powell expressed support for John McCain’s anti-torture legislation (passed 90-9 by the Senate two weeks ago) that the White House is currently threatening to veto. The White House, led by Cheney, has fought against this legislation and aggressively sought an exception for the CIA. Powell said that the U.S. cannot start “cutting corners” when it comes to finding and eliminating terrorists and their leaders. Not only would this compromise some of our nation’s own deeply held ideals, he said, but a no-compromise policy on torture “also protects our soldiers” when they themselves are taken prisoner. Senator McCain’s legislation, Powell insisted, “says to the world … we’re now making a moral statement. (141 comments )
“History is often best served cold.” That’s how former Secretary of State Colin Powell answered PBS interviewer Charlie Rose’s question about whether Powell would one day write a book on his service to George W. Bush. Secretary Powell’s paraphrase of “revenge is a dish best served cold” foretold the other observations he would reveal for the first time regarding the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.
Admitting that the nation is going through a “rough spot,” Powell defended the White House’s reliance on intelligence that led up to the Iraq War while appearing to lay blame on the intelligence community for any inaccuracies. He did, however, directly criticize the White House’s planning and execution of the war. No one currently in the Bush leadership has yet to admit any failures in this area.
Powell’s criticism comes at a time when President Bush and Vice President Cheney are personally engaged in direct attacks on anyone who questions the war. In Korea on Wednesday, President Bush fired another shot when he accused his critics of rewriting history, calling them irresponsible.
On intelligence, Secretary Powell dynamited the White House’s apparent pre-war certainty about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam’s Iraq. He admitted that the conclusions about stockpiles of WMDs were only “inferential” because, he explained, the government had no one on the ground in Iraq. Regarding his own famous 2003 testimony before the United Nations Security Council, Powell asserted that he felt at that time that all of his testimony was credible because each piece of evidence he presented was backed by several sources.
Powell offered that the President did get more daily intelligence information than the Congress – despite current protestations by the White House to the contrary – though he said that this additional information would not have led to different pre-war conclusions about the existence of the stockpiles. Powell laid the blame squarely outside Bush’s war cabinet, saying, “I think the intelligence community let us all down.” Yet he also defended the integrity of the intelligence operatives, “These are dedicated people who mean nothing but the best for our country.”
On Iraq, Powell was less circumspect. He stated unequivocally that the United States did not have enough troops to impose order after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow and that the White House should have been more aggressive in going after the insurgents early in the conflict. Powell also took issue with the elimination of Iraq’s military, questioning specifically the dismissal of the officer corps in the process known as de-Baathification.
On the torture issue, Powell expressed support for John McCain’s anti-torture legislation (passed 90-9 by the Senate two weeks ago) that the White House is currently threatening to veto. The White House, led by Cheney, has fought against this legislation and aggressively sought an exception for the CIA. Powell said that the U.S. cannot start “cutting corners” when it comes to finding and eliminating terrorists and their leaders. Not only would this compromise some of our nation’s own deeply held ideals, he said, but a no-compromise policy on torture “also protects our soldiers” when they themselves are taken prisoner. Senator McCain’s legislation, Powell insisted, “says to the world … we’re now making a moral statement.
The Huffington Post
“History is often best served cold.” That’s how former Secretary of State Colin Powell answered PBS interviewer Charlie Rose’s question about whether Powell would one day write a book on his service to George W. Bush. Secretary Powell’s paraphrase of “revenge is a dish best served cold” foretold the other observations he would reveal for the first time regarding the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.
Admitting that the nation is going through a “rough spot,” Powell defended the White House’s reliance on intelligence that led up to the Iraq War while appearing to lay blame on the intelligence community for any inaccuracies. He did, however, directly criticize the White House’s planning and execution of the war. No one currently in the Bush leadership has yet to admit any failures in this area.
Powell’s criticism comes at a time when President Bush and Vice President Cheney are personally engaged in direct attacks on anyone who questions the war. In Korea on Wednesday, President Bush fired another shot when he accused his critics of rewriting history, calling them irresponsible.
On intelligence, Secretary Powell dynamited the White House’s apparent pre-war certainty about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam’s Iraq. He admitted that the conclusions about stockpiles of WMDs were only “inferential” because, he explained, the government had no one on the ground in Iraq. Regarding his own famous 2003 testimony before the United Nations Security Council, Powell asserted that he felt at that time that all of his testimony was credible because each piece of evidence he presented was backed by several sources.
Powell offered that the President did get more daily intelligence information than the Congress – despite current protestations by the White House to the contrary – though he said that this additional information would not have led to different pre-war conclusions about the existence of the stockpiles. Powell laid the blame squarely outside Bush’s war cabinet, saying, “I think the intelligence community let us all down.” Yet he also defended the integrity of the intelligence operatives, “These are dedicated people who mean nothing but the best for our country.”
On Iraq, Powell was less circumspect. He stated unequivocally that the United States did not have enough troops to impose order after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow and that the White House should have been more aggressive in going after the insurgents early in the conflict. Powell also took issue with the elimination of Iraq’s military, questioning specifically the dismissal of the officer corps in the process known as de-Baathification.
On the torture issue, Powell expressed support for John McCain’s anti-torture legislation (passed 90-9 by the Senate two weeks ago) that the White House is currently threatening to veto. The White House, led by Cheney, has fought against this legislation and aggressively sought an exception for the CIA. Powell said that the U.S. cannot start “cutting corners” when it comes to finding and eliminating terrorists and their leaders. Not only would this compromise some of our nation’s own deeply held ideals, he said, but a no-compromise policy on torture “also protects our soldiers” when they themselves are taken prisoner. Senator McCain’s legislation, Powell insisted, “says to the world … we’re now making a moral statement. (141 comments )
“History is often best served cold.” That’s how former Secretary of State Colin Powell answered PBS interviewer Charlie Rose’s question about whether Powell would one day write a book on his service to George W. Bush. Secretary Powell’s paraphrase of “revenge is a dish best served cold” foretold the other observations he would reveal for the first time regarding the Bush Administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.
Admitting that the nation is going through a “rough spot,” Powell defended the White House’s reliance on intelligence that led up to the Iraq War while appearing to lay blame on the intelligence community for any inaccuracies. He did, however, directly criticize the White House’s planning and execution of the war. No one currently in the Bush leadership has yet to admit any failures in this area.
Powell’s criticism comes at a time when President Bush and Vice President Cheney are personally engaged in direct attacks on anyone who questions the war. In Korea on Wednesday, President Bush fired another shot when he accused his critics of rewriting history, calling them irresponsible.
On intelligence, Secretary Powell dynamited the White House’s apparent pre-war certainty about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam’s Iraq. He admitted that the conclusions about stockpiles of WMDs were only “inferential” because, he explained, the government had no one on the ground in Iraq. Regarding his own famous 2003 testimony before the United Nations Security Council, Powell asserted that he felt at that time that all of his testimony was credible because each piece of evidence he presented was backed by several sources.
Powell offered that the President did get more daily intelligence information than the Congress – despite current protestations by the White House to the contrary – though he said that this additional information would not have led to different pre-war conclusions about the existence of the stockpiles. Powell laid the blame squarely outside Bush’s war cabinet, saying, “I think the intelligence community let us all down.” Yet he also defended the integrity of the intelligence operatives, “These are dedicated people who mean nothing but the best for our country.”
On Iraq, Powell was less circumspect. He stated unequivocally that the United States did not have enough troops to impose order after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow and that the White House should have been more aggressive in going after the insurgents early in the conflict. Powell also took issue with the elimination of Iraq’s military, questioning specifically the dismissal of the officer corps in the process known as de-Baathification.
On the torture issue, Powell expressed support for John McCain’s anti-torture legislation (passed 90-9 by the Senate two weeks ago) that the White House is currently threatening to veto. The White House, led by Cheney, has fought against this legislation and aggressively sought an exception for the CIA. Powell said that the U.S. cannot start “cutting corners” when it comes to finding and eliminating terrorists and their leaders. Not only would this compromise some of our nation’s own deeply held ideals, he said, but a no-compromise policy on torture “also protects our soldiers” when they themselves are taken prisoner. Senator McCain’s legislation, Powell insisted, “says to the world … we’re now making a moral statement.
Gore's Crystal Ball
Trudi Loh: Gore's Crystal Ball
Trudi Loh Fri Nov 18, 9:00 PM ET
The Huffington Post
As the Democrats rage about the war –- 3 years too late -- and the Bush Administration huffs and puffs about the Democrats playing politics with an issue and rewriting history, I felt the need to re-read some of the remarks made by Vice President Al Gore at the Commonwealth Club on September 9th, 2002, prior to the vote authorizing Bush to invade Iraq.
I believe that 1) It is the Republicans who are trying to rewrite history and have now and always been playing politics with the issue of Iraq and 2) Al Gore must be the smartest man in politics, or he has a crystal ball.
Quoted remarks are Gore’s. Bracketed words mine. Emphasis added.
“I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than was predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another. We should remain focused on the war against terrorism.”
[Yes Al we should have]
“I believe that we are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion. If you're going after Jesse James, you ought to organize the posse first. Especially if you're in the middle of a gunfight with somebody who's out after you.”
[Yea, you are right again]
“I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”
[Yep – sure has!]
“Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that America's most urgent requirement of the moment - right now - is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving its host government from power, even as Al Qaeda members slip back across the border to set up in Afghanistan again; rather, he is telling us that our most urgent task right now is to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein.”
“[T]he war against terrorism manifestly requires a multilateral approach. It is impossible to succeed against terrorism unless we have secured the continuing, sustained cooperation of many nations. And here's one of my central points; our ability to secure that kind of multilateral cooperation in the war against terrorism can be severely damaged in the way we go about undertaking unilateral action against Iraq.”
“[B]ack in 1991, President George H. W. Bush purposely waited until after the mid-term elections of 1990 in order to push for a vote at the beginning of the new Congress in January of 1991. President George W. Bush, by contrast, is pushing for a vote in this Congress immediately before the election. That in itself is not inherently wrong, but I believe that puts a burden on the shoulders of President Bush to dispel the doubts many have expressed about the role that politics might be playing in the calculations of some in the administration. I have not raised those doubts, but many have. And because they have been raised, this has become a problem for our country's effort to build a national consensus and an international coalition.”
“Rather than making efforts to dispel these concerns at home and abroad about the role of politics in the timing of his policy, the president is on the campaign trail two and three days a week, often publicly taunting Democrats with the political consequences of a "no" vote. The Republican National Committee is running pre-packaged advertising based on the same theme - all of this apparently in keeping with a political strategy clearly described in a White House aide's misplaced computer disk, which advised Republican operatives that their principal game plan for success in the election a few weeks away was to "focus on the war." Vice President Cheney, meanwhile, has indignantly described suggestions of any such thing as reprehensible, and then the following week took his discussion of the war to the Rush Limbaugh show.”
[Now, who is it they are accusing of playing politics?]
“I believe this proposed foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of exactly what may lie before us. Such consideration is all the more important because the administration has failed thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run - even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest at every opportunity that this will be a pretty easy matter. And it may well be, but the administration has not said much of anything to clarify its idea of what would follow regime change or the degree of engagement that it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.”
“I believe that this is unfortunate, because in the immediate aftermath of September 11, more than a year ago, we had an enormous reservoir of goodwill and sympathy and shared resolve all over the world. That has been squandered in a year's time and replaced with great anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do. My point is not that they are right to feel that way, but that they do feel that way. And that has consequences for us. Squandering all that goodwill and replacing it with anxiety in a year's time is similar to what was done by turning a hundred-billion-dollar surplus into a two-hundred-billion-dollar deficit in a year's time.”
[So sad, but so true]
“If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion. If what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion.”
[So that what we call all those protestors – a legion of enemies …]
[ Sigh. What a different world it would be. I guess there was a good reason this man won the popular vote]
Trudi Loh Fri Nov 18, 9:00 PM ET
The Huffington Post
As the Democrats rage about the war –- 3 years too late -- and the Bush Administration huffs and puffs about the Democrats playing politics with an issue and rewriting history, I felt the need to re-read some of the remarks made by Vice President Al Gore at the Commonwealth Club on September 9th, 2002, prior to the vote authorizing Bush to invade Iraq.
I believe that 1) It is the Republicans who are trying to rewrite history and have now and always been playing politics with the issue of Iraq and 2) Al Gore must be the smartest man in politics, or he has a crystal ball.
Quoted remarks are Gore’s. Bracketed words mine. Emphasis added.
“I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than was predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another. We should remain focused on the war against terrorism.”
[Yes Al we should have]
“I believe that we are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion. If you're going after Jesse James, you ought to organize the posse first. Especially if you're in the middle of a gunfight with somebody who's out after you.”
[Yea, you are right again]
“I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”
[Yep – sure has!]
“Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that America's most urgent requirement of the moment - right now - is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving its host government from power, even as Al Qaeda members slip back across the border to set up in Afghanistan again; rather, he is telling us that our most urgent task right now is to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein.”
“[T]he war against terrorism manifestly requires a multilateral approach. It is impossible to succeed against terrorism unless we have secured the continuing, sustained cooperation of many nations. And here's one of my central points; our ability to secure that kind of multilateral cooperation in the war against terrorism can be severely damaged in the way we go about undertaking unilateral action against Iraq.”
“[B]ack in 1991, President George H. W. Bush purposely waited until after the mid-term elections of 1990 in order to push for a vote at the beginning of the new Congress in January of 1991. President George W. Bush, by contrast, is pushing for a vote in this Congress immediately before the election. That in itself is not inherently wrong, but I believe that puts a burden on the shoulders of President Bush to dispel the doubts many have expressed about the role that politics might be playing in the calculations of some in the administration. I have not raised those doubts, but many have. And because they have been raised, this has become a problem for our country's effort to build a national consensus and an international coalition.”
“Rather than making efforts to dispel these concerns at home and abroad about the role of politics in the timing of his policy, the president is on the campaign trail two and three days a week, often publicly taunting Democrats with the political consequences of a "no" vote. The Republican National Committee is running pre-packaged advertising based on the same theme - all of this apparently in keeping with a political strategy clearly described in a White House aide's misplaced computer disk, which advised Republican operatives that their principal game plan for success in the election a few weeks away was to "focus on the war." Vice President Cheney, meanwhile, has indignantly described suggestions of any such thing as reprehensible, and then the following week took his discussion of the war to the Rush Limbaugh show.”
[Now, who is it they are accusing of playing politics?]
“I believe this proposed foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of exactly what may lie before us. Such consideration is all the more important because the administration has failed thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run - even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest at every opportunity that this will be a pretty easy matter. And it may well be, but the administration has not said much of anything to clarify its idea of what would follow regime change or the degree of engagement that it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.”
“I believe that this is unfortunate, because in the immediate aftermath of September 11, more than a year ago, we had an enormous reservoir of goodwill and sympathy and shared resolve all over the world. That has been squandered in a year's time and replaced with great anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do. My point is not that they are right to feel that way, but that they do feel that way. And that has consequences for us. Squandering all that goodwill and replacing it with anxiety in a year's time is similar to what was done by turning a hundred-billion-dollar surplus into a two-hundred-billion-dollar deficit in a year's time.”
[So sad, but so true]
“If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion. If what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion.”
[So that what we call all those protestors – a legion of enemies …]
[ Sigh. What a different world it would be. I guess there was a good reason this man won the popular vote]
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Graham Amendment Invokes Constitutional Crisis
Graham Amendment Invokes Constitutional Crisis
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 14 November 2005
The "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
--James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 47
In blatant defiance of the Constitution's guarantees of Habeas Corpus and separation of powers, the Senate on Thursday approved the Graham Amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 49 to 42. Five Democrats joined all but 4 Republican Senators in giving the President unfettered power to hold prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the rest of their lives, with no criminal charges, and no right to challenge their confinement by Habeas Corpus.
Last year, the Supreme Court held in Rasul v. Bush that the Guantánamo detainees are entitled to file habeas petitions in US courts to contest their detentions. The high court determined that non-US citizens held at Guantánamo, "no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts' authority" to hear their petitions under 28 USC § 2241, the US Habeas Corpus statute.
The Supreme Court stated firmly in Rasul, "Consistent with the historic purpose of the writ, this Court has recognized the federal courts' power to review applications for habeas relief in a wide variety of cases involving Executive detention, in wartime as well as in times of peace."
The Graham Amendment is crafted to render Rasul a nullity by cutting off the rights of Guantánamo prisoners to have their habeas petitions considered by the federal courts. The Amendment limits federal court review to the narrow issue of the validity of decisions rendered by Combatant Status Review Tribunals. These kangaroo courts were set up to determine whether the Guantánamo prisoners are "enemy combatants." They are not independent judicial tribunals, but rather administrative proceedings stacked with military officials who can use secret or even fabricated evidence. The prisoner is not entitled to be represented by an attorney.
Only a handful of prisoners at Guantánamo have been charged with crimes. Their cases will be heard in military commissions that George W. Bush established to impose long sentences and even execute detainees with virtually no judicial oversight. Without habeas access to federal courts, Bush and Donald Rumsfeld will ostensibly serve as prosecutor, judge and executioner in the military commissions. This flies in the face of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. Three days before the Graham Amendment was passed, the Supreme Court announced it would review the legality of those military commissions in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Even though the majority of prisoners detained at Guantánamo admittedly pose no threat to the United States, they continue to languish in virtual isolation under torturous conditions. Two hundred of them, who have decided death is preferable to life, are trying to starve themselves in a hunger strike.
Last month, the Senate passed the McCain Amendment, which makes it unlawful for any "individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location [to be] subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." Bush and Cheney have fought this measure tooth-and-nail because it would interfere with their ability to torture prisoners with impunity. The Graham Amendment will undermine the ability of tortured prisoners to enforce the McCain Amendment in federal courts.
By foreclosing judicial review of sentences imposed by the military commissions, the Graham Amendment also violates Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a ratified treaty and therefore part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. That article prohibits "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." Unlawful combatants are protected by Common Article 3.
Violations of Common Article 3 constitute war crimes under the federal War Crimes Act. Violators can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies.
Sen. Lindsey Graham's pernicious Amendment was proposed and passed with no debate about its far-ranging implications and without any hearings. The senators who voted for it bought into Bush's "war on terror" mantra, ignoring the basic constitutional principles that inform our system of government.
These senators will have the opportunity to rectify this grave threat to the Constitution. As early as today, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) will attempt to strike from the Graham Amendment the language barring Guantánamo prisoners from habeas relief. Senator John McCain may support a compromise. He said, "Based on ongoing discussions, it is entirely possible that the current version of the amendment will be modified to address concerns about lawful treatment and the scope of independent appeals."
More than 100 legal scholars, including this writer, have signed a letter urging senators to adopt an amendment of the kind proposed by Senator Bingaman. The Center for Constitutional Rights concurs: "Habeas Corpus is a fundamental right that our entire legal tradition is founded on. Unfettered Executive power jeopardizes our free and democratic society. Creating 'no law zones' of unreviewable Executive power at Guantánamo undermines the moral standing of the United State in the eyes of the world and endangers the lives of US soldiers abroad."
The Graham Amendment has also drawn opposition from Judge John Gibbons, who argued Rasul v. Bush before the Supreme Court; John Hutson, Dean of Franklin Pearce Law Center and former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy; and the National Institute for Military Justice. NIMJ President Eugene R. Fidell wrote, "We disable ourselves from objecting to flagrant lawlessness elsewhere when we shut the doors to our courts, which are the jewel in the crown of our democracy."
Habeas Corpus, known as The Great Writ, is the final bastion of liberty for those unjustly held. There was an attempt to suspend Habeas Corpus during the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. That travesty is now universally recognized as a shameful chapter in our nation's history. To suspend The Great Writ while allegations of systematic torture continue to emerge from US prisons, will threaten our Constitution and render "quaint" our democracy.
The Democrats who voted in favor of the Graham Amendment were Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Ben Nelson (Neb), Mary L. Landrieu (La), and Ron Wyden (Or)
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 14 November 2005
The "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
--James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 47
In blatant defiance of the Constitution's guarantees of Habeas Corpus and separation of powers, the Senate on Thursday approved the Graham Amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 49 to 42. Five Democrats joined all but 4 Republican Senators in giving the President unfettered power to hold prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the rest of their lives, with no criminal charges, and no right to challenge their confinement by Habeas Corpus.
Last year, the Supreme Court held in Rasul v. Bush that the Guantánamo detainees are entitled to file habeas petitions in US courts to contest their detentions. The high court determined that non-US citizens held at Guantánamo, "no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts' authority" to hear their petitions under 28 USC § 2241, the US Habeas Corpus statute.
The Supreme Court stated firmly in Rasul, "Consistent with the historic purpose of the writ, this Court has recognized the federal courts' power to review applications for habeas relief in a wide variety of cases involving Executive detention, in wartime as well as in times of peace."
The Graham Amendment is crafted to render Rasul a nullity by cutting off the rights of Guantánamo prisoners to have their habeas petitions considered by the federal courts. The Amendment limits federal court review to the narrow issue of the validity of decisions rendered by Combatant Status Review Tribunals. These kangaroo courts were set up to determine whether the Guantánamo prisoners are "enemy combatants." They are not independent judicial tribunals, but rather administrative proceedings stacked with military officials who can use secret or even fabricated evidence. The prisoner is not entitled to be represented by an attorney.
Only a handful of prisoners at Guantánamo have been charged with crimes. Their cases will be heard in military commissions that George W. Bush established to impose long sentences and even execute detainees with virtually no judicial oversight. Without habeas access to federal courts, Bush and Donald Rumsfeld will ostensibly serve as prosecutor, judge and executioner in the military commissions. This flies in the face of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. Three days before the Graham Amendment was passed, the Supreme Court announced it would review the legality of those military commissions in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Even though the majority of prisoners detained at Guantánamo admittedly pose no threat to the United States, they continue to languish in virtual isolation under torturous conditions. Two hundred of them, who have decided death is preferable to life, are trying to starve themselves in a hunger strike.
Last month, the Senate passed the McCain Amendment, which makes it unlawful for any "individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location [to be] subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." Bush and Cheney have fought this measure tooth-and-nail because it would interfere with their ability to torture prisoners with impunity. The Graham Amendment will undermine the ability of tortured prisoners to enforce the McCain Amendment in federal courts.
By foreclosing judicial review of sentences imposed by the military commissions, the Graham Amendment also violates Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a ratified treaty and therefore part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. That article prohibits "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." Unlawful combatants are protected by Common Article 3.
Violations of Common Article 3 constitute war crimes under the federal War Crimes Act. Violators can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies.
Sen. Lindsey Graham's pernicious Amendment was proposed and passed with no debate about its far-ranging implications and without any hearings. The senators who voted for it bought into Bush's "war on terror" mantra, ignoring the basic constitutional principles that inform our system of government.
These senators will have the opportunity to rectify this grave threat to the Constitution. As early as today, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) will attempt to strike from the Graham Amendment the language barring Guantánamo prisoners from habeas relief. Senator John McCain may support a compromise. He said, "Based on ongoing discussions, it is entirely possible that the current version of the amendment will be modified to address concerns about lawful treatment and the scope of independent appeals."
More than 100 legal scholars, including this writer, have signed a letter urging senators to adopt an amendment of the kind proposed by Senator Bingaman. The Center for Constitutional Rights concurs: "Habeas Corpus is a fundamental right that our entire legal tradition is founded on. Unfettered Executive power jeopardizes our free and democratic society. Creating 'no law zones' of unreviewable Executive power at Guantánamo undermines the moral standing of the United State in the eyes of the world and endangers the lives of US soldiers abroad."
The Graham Amendment has also drawn opposition from Judge John Gibbons, who argued Rasul v. Bush before the Supreme Court; John Hutson, Dean of Franklin Pearce Law Center and former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy; and the National Institute for Military Justice. NIMJ President Eugene R. Fidell wrote, "We disable ourselves from objecting to flagrant lawlessness elsewhere when we shut the doors to our courts, which are the jewel in the crown of our democracy."
Habeas Corpus, known as The Great Writ, is the final bastion of liberty for those unjustly held. There was an attempt to suspend Habeas Corpus during the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. That travesty is now universally recognized as a shameful chapter in our nation's history. To suspend The Great Writ while allegations of systematic torture continue to emerge from US prisons, will threaten our Constitution and render "quaint" our democracy.
The Democrats who voted in favor of the Graham Amendment were Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Ben Nelson (Neb), Mary L. Landrieu (La), and Ron Wyden (Or)
Morning-After, Months Later
Morning-After, Months Later
The Los Angeles Times | Editorial
Tuesday 15 November 2005
Everybody knew it anyway, but it's worthwhile to have a respected government office make it official: Anomalies surrounded the decision to refuse over-the-counter status to the morning-after pill. All of them point to top managers at the Food and Drug Administration who expressed more concern about the moral views of religious conservatives than the questions of health and science that are supposed to guide their decisions.
In a report released Monday, the Government Accountability Office probed the FDA's May 2004 decision on the pill, marketed as Plan B. It found that the ruling deviated from agency practice and was highly unusual in many respects.
Forty studies and 15,000 pages of documents, reviewed and approved by FDA staff, made Plan B's safety and effectiveness clear. Yet Dr. Steven Galson, then the acting director of the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, focused instead on whether easy availability of Plan B would make younger teens more promiscuous or more likely to have unprotected sex. In rejecting over-the-counter status, Galson overruled advisory panels and sub-directors of FDA offices. But he invited Barr Laboratories Inc. to come back with a proposal to make the pill available only to older teenagers and adults.
The drug company did that. Then, less than three months ago, the FDA delayed a decision, saying in true "Catch-22" fashion that it wasn't sure availability could be split up that way.
The Plan B ruling was the only one of 68 over-the-counter decisions made by the agency in a decade to raise age as an issue. There are no similar age-related marketing restrictions on other approved contraceptives, the GAO said, and the FDA never offered reasons why this should be an exception. Studies have found that easing availability of the drug does not make teenagers more likely to have unprotected sex.
There is a compelling medical reason to make Plan B readily available. The pill is most effective when used within 24 hours after intercourse. Restricting access only makes it less likely that women will get a chance to take it in time.
Religious conservatives consider Plan B a form of abortion, and abstinence to be the only acceptable form of contraception for teenagers. The first belief conflicts with studies that find no evidence the pill interferes with a fertilized egg. Its effectiveness lies in preventing fertilization. Further, restricting Plan B probably just leads to more abortions - women who might have used the drug to avoid a pregnancy are forced to terminate it later. And the notion that abstinence trumps birth control conflicts with the reality of how many teens behave.
With the Bush administration happy to let this issue drag on unresolved, Congress now has justification - if it was ever needed in the first place - to move it forward. The FDA is supposed to be a health and science agency, not the moral arbiter for women or teenage girls
The Los Angeles Times | Editorial
Tuesday 15 November 2005
Everybody knew it anyway, but it's worthwhile to have a respected government office make it official: Anomalies surrounded the decision to refuse over-the-counter status to the morning-after pill. All of them point to top managers at the Food and Drug Administration who expressed more concern about the moral views of religious conservatives than the questions of health and science that are supposed to guide their decisions.
In a report released Monday, the Government Accountability Office probed the FDA's May 2004 decision on the pill, marketed as Plan B. It found that the ruling deviated from agency practice and was highly unusual in many respects.
Forty studies and 15,000 pages of documents, reviewed and approved by FDA staff, made Plan B's safety and effectiveness clear. Yet Dr. Steven Galson, then the acting director of the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, focused instead on whether easy availability of Plan B would make younger teens more promiscuous or more likely to have unprotected sex. In rejecting over-the-counter status, Galson overruled advisory panels and sub-directors of FDA offices. But he invited Barr Laboratories Inc. to come back with a proposal to make the pill available only to older teenagers and adults.
The drug company did that. Then, less than three months ago, the FDA delayed a decision, saying in true "Catch-22" fashion that it wasn't sure availability could be split up that way.
The Plan B ruling was the only one of 68 over-the-counter decisions made by the agency in a decade to raise age as an issue. There are no similar age-related marketing restrictions on other approved contraceptives, the GAO said, and the FDA never offered reasons why this should be an exception. Studies have found that easing availability of the drug does not make teenagers more likely to have unprotected sex.
There is a compelling medical reason to make Plan B readily available. The pill is most effective when used within 24 hours after intercourse. Restricting access only makes it less likely that women will get a chance to take it in time.
Religious conservatives consider Plan B a form of abortion, and abstinence to be the only acceptable form of contraception for teenagers. The first belief conflicts with studies that find no evidence the pill interferes with a fertilized egg. Its effectiveness lies in preventing fertilization. Further, restricting Plan B probably just leads to more abortions - women who might have used the drug to avoid a pregnancy are forced to terminate it later. And the notion that abstinence trumps birth control conflicts with the reality of how many teens behave.
With the Bush administration happy to let this issue drag on unresolved, Congress now has justification - if it was ever needed in the first place - to move it forward. The FDA is supposed to be a health and science agency, not the moral arbiter for women or teenage girls
Bush Rewrites History to Criticize His Anti-War Critics
Bush Rewrites History to Criticize His Anti-War Critics
By David Corn
The Nation
Monday 14 November 2005
In a Veterans Day speech on Friday, delivered to troops and others at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, George W. Bush veered from the usual commemoration of sacrifice to strike at critics who have questioned whether he steered the country into war by using false information. This has become a tough and troubling issue for his presidency. A poll taken before his speech found that 57 percent of the respondents now believe that Bush "deliberately misled" the nation into war. That is astounding and, I assume, without precedent in history. Has there been another wartime period during which a majority of Americans believed the president had purposefully bamboozled them about the reasons for that war? Addressing this charge is tough for Bush because it calls more attention to it, and the on-ground-realities in Iraq only cause more popular unease with the war. But Bush and his aides calculated that it was better to punch back than ignore the criticism, and that's a sign that they're worried that Bush is coming to be defined as a president who conned the nation into an ugly war. So Bush tried. Let's break down his effort:
Our debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war.
Conservative who claim raising questions about the war does a disservice to the troops and is anti-American might want to keep these words in mind.
When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.
Actually, Congress did not approve Bush's decision to remove Saddam. In October 2002, the House and Senate approved a resolution that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq if he deemed that appropriate. At the time, Bush and his aides were claiming it was their goal to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction and his WMD programs (which, we know now, did not exist). When the resolution passed - and in the weeks after - the White House insisted that Bush was not bent on "regime change" and that he was willing to work within the UN to force Saddam to accept UN inspectors (which Saddam did) in pursuit of the goal of disarming Iraq. Is Bush now saying that he had already resolved to invade Iraq at this point and all his talk about achieving disarmament through the UN process was bunk? Is he rewriting history-or telling us the real truth? In any event, when Bush did order the invasion of Iraq months later in March 2003, he did not ask Congress to vote on his decision to remove Saddam.
I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn't support the liberation of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I accept the responsibilities, and the criticisms, and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision.
Bush might accept "the responsibilities and criticisms," but has yet to acknowledge the mistakes he and his aides made before and after the invasion about planning for a post-invasion Iraq. He also has not insisted on any accountability for these mistakes. For instance, he gave a spiffy medal to former CIA chief George Tenet, who was responsible for the prewar intelligence failure.
While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.
When was the last time Bush talked about how the war began-that is, when did he mention that his primary reason for war (protecting the American public from the supposed WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein) was discredited by reality? Is ignoring history the same as rewriting it?
Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.
This is not the full and accurate explanation of the controversy at hand. The issue of whether the Bush administration misled the nation in the run-up to the war has two components. The first is the production of the intelligence related to WMDs and the supposed al Qaeda-Sadam connection. The second is how the Bush crowd represented the intelligence to the public when trying to make the case for war. As for the first, the Senate intelligence committee report did say the committee had found no evidence of political pressure. But Democratic members of the committee and others challenged this finding. Several committee Democrats pointed to a CIA independent review on the prewar intelligence, conducted by a panel led by Richard Kerr, former deputy director of the CIA, which said,
Requests for reporting and analysis of [Iraq's links to al Qaeda] were steady and heavy in the period leading up to the war, creating significant pressure on the Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection.
More to the point, Kerr told Vanity Fair that intelligence analysts did feel pressured by the go-to-war gang. The magazine in May 2004 reported,
"There was a lot of pressure, no question," says Kerr. "The White House, State, Defense were raising questions, heavily on W.M.D. and the issue of terrorism. Why did you select this information rather than that? Why have you downplayed this particular thing?...Sure, I heard that some of the analysts felt pressure. We heard about it from friends. There are always some people in the agency who will say, 'We've been pushed to hard.' Analysts will say, 'You're trying to politicize it.' There were people who felt there was too much pressure. Not that they were being asked to change their judgments, but there were being asked again and again to restate their judgments-do another paper on this, repetitive pressures. Do it again."
Was it a case, then, of officials repeatedly asking for another paper until they got the answer they wanted? "There may have been some of that," Kerr concedes. The requests came from "primarily people outside asking for the same paper again and again. There was a lot of repetitive tasking. Some of the analysts felt this was unnecessary pressure. The repetitive requests, Kerr made clear, came from the C.I.A.'s "senior customers," including "the White House, the vice president, State, Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Despite Bush's assertion, the question remains whether undue pressure was applied by the White House. And in his Veterans Day speech, Bush ducked the second issue: how he and his aides depicted the intelligence. This is the source of the dispute over the so-called Phase II investigation of the Senate intelligence committee. The allegation is that Bush and administration officials overstated and hyped the flawed intelligence and claimed it was definitive when they had reason to know it was not.
For example, in his final speech to the nation before launching the war, Bush claimed that US intelligence left "no doubt" about Iraq's supposed WMDs. But there was plenty of doubt on critical issues. Intelligence analysts at the Energy Department and State Department disagreed with those at the CIA about the evidence that purportedly showed Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program: its importation of aluminum tubes and the allegation that Iraq had been uranium-shopping in Niger. (In 2002, Dick Cheney said the tubes were "irrefutable evidence," and Condoleezza Rice said they were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." But a year earlier, as The New York Times reported in 2004, "Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear expert seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons.") The CIA believed Iraq had chemical weapons. But the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that there was no evidence such stockpiles existed. Some intelligence analysts concluded that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles that could deliver chemical or biological weapons. The experts on UAVs at the Air Force thought this was not so. Was Bush speaking accurately when he told the public-and the world-there was "no doubt"?
Also, did Bush make specific claims unsupported by the intelligence? The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced in October 2002, maintained that Iraq had an active biological research and development program. Bush publicly said Iraq had "stockpiles" of biological weapons. There is a difference between an R&D program (which Iraq did not have) and warehouses loaded with ready-to-go weapons (which Bush implied existed). How did an R&D program become stockpiles? This is as intriguing a question as how those sixteen words about Iraq's alleged pursuit of uranium in Africa became embedded in the State of the Union speech Bush delivered in early 2003.
On the key issue of Saddam Hussein's alleged connection to al Qaeda, Bush also made statements that went beyond the intelligence. This link was crucial to the case for war, for Bush and other hawks were arguing that Saddam Hussein could slip his WMDs to his pal Osama bin Laden. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was "dealing with" al Qaeda. But his intelligence agencies had not reached that conclusion. (And the 9/11 Commission later said there was no evidence of collusion between al Qaeda and Saddam.) So how did Bush come to make such a statement? Recently, Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, released formerly classified material showing that before the war when Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and other administration officials cited evidence that Iraq had been training al Qaeda operatives in the use of bombs and other weapons, Bush and these officials were relying on the statements of a captured al Qaeda member whose claims had been discounted by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Once more, how had Bush and his senior aides come to disseminate specific and provocative information deemed unreliable by the intelligence community?
Bush's Veterans Days comments addressed none of this.
They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein.
The people with the most hands-on information regarding WMDs in Iraq did not. The International Atomic Energy Agency, led by recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, concluded weeks before the war (after their inspectors had returned to Iraq) that Saddam Hussein had not revived the nuclear weapons program that the IAEA had dismantled in the mid-1990s. And Hans Blix, head of the UN inspectors in Iraq, repeatedly said that his team was not finding evidence of chemical or biological weapons stockpiles.
...And many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: "When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." That's why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate-who had access to the same intelligence-voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.
As noted above, the Democrats voted to give Bush the authority to use force when he thought he should-but only after Bush had promised to go to the United Nations in an effort to disarm Saddam Hussein, who, it turned out, was telling the truth when he denied his government possessed WMDs. Even the John Kerry quote that Bush cites contains the to-disarm condition. And several Democratic members of Congress have claimed that they did not see all the intelligence that was available to the White House.
The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges.
It's hard to argue with that.
These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough.
Who said that "it's perfectly legitimate to criticize" the "decision [to go to war in Iraq] or the conduct of the war"? That was Bush, moments earlier, in the same speech. So which is it? Is it okay to criticize the conduct of the war or not?
By the way, while accusing his critics of falsifying history, Bush never conceded that he launched the war on a false premise-that Saddam Hussein was up to his neck in WMDs-and, thus, as he paid tribute to veterans of this war and others, he did not accept responsibility for sending American troops into battle for a cause that did not exist
By David Corn
The Nation
Monday 14 November 2005
In a Veterans Day speech on Friday, delivered to troops and others at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, George W. Bush veered from the usual commemoration of sacrifice to strike at critics who have questioned whether he steered the country into war by using false information. This has become a tough and troubling issue for his presidency. A poll taken before his speech found that 57 percent of the respondents now believe that Bush "deliberately misled" the nation into war. That is astounding and, I assume, without precedent in history. Has there been another wartime period during which a majority of Americans believed the president had purposefully bamboozled them about the reasons for that war? Addressing this charge is tough for Bush because it calls more attention to it, and the on-ground-realities in Iraq only cause more popular unease with the war. But Bush and his aides calculated that it was better to punch back than ignore the criticism, and that's a sign that they're worried that Bush is coming to be defined as a president who conned the nation into an ugly war. So Bush tried. Let's break down his effort:
Our debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war.
Conservative who claim raising questions about the war does a disservice to the troops and is anti-American might want to keep these words in mind.
When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.
Actually, Congress did not approve Bush's decision to remove Saddam. In October 2002, the House and Senate approved a resolution that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq if he deemed that appropriate. At the time, Bush and his aides were claiming it was their goal to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction and his WMD programs (which, we know now, did not exist). When the resolution passed - and in the weeks after - the White House insisted that Bush was not bent on "regime change" and that he was willing to work within the UN to force Saddam to accept UN inspectors (which Saddam did) in pursuit of the goal of disarming Iraq. Is Bush now saying that he had already resolved to invade Iraq at this point and all his talk about achieving disarmament through the UN process was bunk? Is he rewriting history-or telling us the real truth? In any event, when Bush did order the invasion of Iraq months later in March 2003, he did not ask Congress to vote on his decision to remove Saddam.
I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn't support the liberation of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I accept the responsibilities, and the criticisms, and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision.
Bush might accept "the responsibilities and criticisms," but has yet to acknowledge the mistakes he and his aides made before and after the invasion about planning for a post-invasion Iraq. He also has not insisted on any accountability for these mistakes. For instance, he gave a spiffy medal to former CIA chief George Tenet, who was responsible for the prewar intelligence failure.
While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.
When was the last time Bush talked about how the war began-that is, when did he mention that his primary reason for war (protecting the American public from the supposed WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein) was discredited by reality? Is ignoring history the same as rewriting it?
Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.
This is not the full and accurate explanation of the controversy at hand. The issue of whether the Bush administration misled the nation in the run-up to the war has two components. The first is the production of the intelligence related to WMDs and the supposed al Qaeda-Sadam connection. The second is how the Bush crowd represented the intelligence to the public when trying to make the case for war. As for the first, the Senate intelligence committee report did say the committee had found no evidence of political pressure. But Democratic members of the committee and others challenged this finding. Several committee Democrats pointed to a CIA independent review on the prewar intelligence, conducted by a panel led by Richard Kerr, former deputy director of the CIA, which said,
Requests for reporting and analysis of [Iraq's links to al Qaeda] were steady and heavy in the period leading up to the war, creating significant pressure on the Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection.
More to the point, Kerr told Vanity Fair that intelligence analysts did feel pressured by the go-to-war gang. The magazine in May 2004 reported,
"There was a lot of pressure, no question," says Kerr. "The White House, State, Defense were raising questions, heavily on W.M.D. and the issue of terrorism. Why did you select this information rather than that? Why have you downplayed this particular thing?...Sure, I heard that some of the analysts felt pressure. We heard about it from friends. There are always some people in the agency who will say, 'We've been pushed to hard.' Analysts will say, 'You're trying to politicize it.' There were people who felt there was too much pressure. Not that they were being asked to change their judgments, but there were being asked again and again to restate their judgments-do another paper on this, repetitive pressures. Do it again."
Was it a case, then, of officials repeatedly asking for another paper until they got the answer they wanted? "There may have been some of that," Kerr concedes. The requests came from "primarily people outside asking for the same paper again and again. There was a lot of repetitive tasking. Some of the analysts felt this was unnecessary pressure. The repetitive requests, Kerr made clear, came from the C.I.A.'s "senior customers," including "the White House, the vice president, State, Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Despite Bush's assertion, the question remains whether undue pressure was applied by the White House. And in his Veterans Day speech, Bush ducked the second issue: how he and his aides depicted the intelligence. This is the source of the dispute over the so-called Phase II investigation of the Senate intelligence committee. The allegation is that Bush and administration officials overstated and hyped the flawed intelligence and claimed it was definitive when they had reason to know it was not.
For example, in his final speech to the nation before launching the war, Bush claimed that US intelligence left "no doubt" about Iraq's supposed WMDs. But there was plenty of doubt on critical issues. Intelligence analysts at the Energy Department and State Department disagreed with those at the CIA about the evidence that purportedly showed Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program: its importation of aluminum tubes and the allegation that Iraq had been uranium-shopping in Niger. (In 2002, Dick Cheney said the tubes were "irrefutable evidence," and Condoleezza Rice said they were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." But a year earlier, as The New York Times reported in 2004, "Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear expert seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons.") The CIA believed Iraq had chemical weapons. But the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that there was no evidence such stockpiles existed. Some intelligence analysts concluded that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles that could deliver chemical or biological weapons. The experts on UAVs at the Air Force thought this was not so. Was Bush speaking accurately when he told the public-and the world-there was "no doubt"?
Also, did Bush make specific claims unsupported by the intelligence? The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced in October 2002, maintained that Iraq had an active biological research and development program. Bush publicly said Iraq had "stockpiles" of biological weapons. There is a difference between an R&D program (which Iraq did not have) and warehouses loaded with ready-to-go weapons (which Bush implied existed). How did an R&D program become stockpiles? This is as intriguing a question as how those sixteen words about Iraq's alleged pursuit of uranium in Africa became embedded in the State of the Union speech Bush delivered in early 2003.
On the key issue of Saddam Hussein's alleged connection to al Qaeda, Bush also made statements that went beyond the intelligence. This link was crucial to the case for war, for Bush and other hawks were arguing that Saddam Hussein could slip his WMDs to his pal Osama bin Laden. Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein was "dealing with" al Qaeda. But his intelligence agencies had not reached that conclusion. (And the 9/11 Commission later said there was no evidence of collusion between al Qaeda and Saddam.) So how did Bush come to make such a statement? Recently, Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, released formerly classified material showing that before the war when Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and other administration officials cited evidence that Iraq had been training al Qaeda operatives in the use of bombs and other weapons, Bush and these officials were relying on the statements of a captured al Qaeda member whose claims had been discounted by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Once more, how had Bush and his senior aides come to disseminate specific and provocative information deemed unreliable by the intelligence community?
Bush's Veterans Days comments addressed none of this.
They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein.
The people with the most hands-on information regarding WMDs in Iraq did not. The International Atomic Energy Agency, led by recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, concluded weeks before the war (after their inspectors had returned to Iraq) that Saddam Hussein had not revived the nuclear weapons program that the IAEA had dismantled in the mid-1990s. And Hans Blix, head of the UN inspectors in Iraq, repeatedly said that his team was not finding evidence of chemical or biological weapons stockpiles.
...And many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: "When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." That's why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate-who had access to the same intelligence-voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.
As noted above, the Democrats voted to give Bush the authority to use force when he thought he should-but only after Bush had promised to go to the United Nations in an effort to disarm Saddam Hussein, who, it turned out, was telling the truth when he denied his government possessed WMDs. Even the John Kerry quote that Bush cites contains the to-disarm condition. And several Democratic members of Congress have claimed that they did not see all the intelligence that was available to the White House.
The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges.
It's hard to argue with that.
These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough.
Who said that "it's perfectly legitimate to criticize" the "decision [to go to war in Iraq] or the conduct of the war"? That was Bush, moments earlier, in the same speech. So which is it? Is it okay to criticize the conduct of the war or not?
By the way, while accusing his critics of falsifying history, Bush never conceded that he launched the war on a false premise-that Saddam Hussein was up to his neck in WMDs-and, thus, as he paid tribute to veterans of this war and others, he did not accept responsibility for sending American troops into battle for a cause that did not exist
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