Progress Demands Thinking Americans
• Resist the Criminalization of Ideology
Bush Speeches
• U.S. Fears Growing Resistance, Organizes to Criminalize Ideology
• Youth Sent Home for T-Shirts
• Church Targeted by Government for Anti-War Sermon
• In Case I Disappear
• Rushing Off a Cliff
• AP Propaganda About Iraq
Resistance Continues Against Bush reaction
• World Can’t Wait Actions: Drive Out the Bush Regime
• Military Commissions Act Challenged
• Bush is After Our Rights
• A Constitutional Shredding: Rounding Up U.S. Citizens
• Now That You Could be Labeled an Enemy Combatant...
Progress Demands Thinking Americans
Resist the Criminalization of Ideology
A major feature of the government’s war of terrorism against the peoples is the effort to criminalize ideology. In numerous speeches over the past month, Bush has emphasized, “The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.” He warns that “underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake,” emphasizing, “We’re taking the words of the enemy seriously. We’re on the offensive, and we will not rest, we will not retreat, we will not withdraw from the fight, until this threat to civilization has been removed.” (speech to Military Officers Association, 9/5/06).
The threat the imperialists are concerned about is the growing resistance here and worldwide to their failed system. This resistance includes the growing rejection of the ideology of the imperialists. The U.S. ruling circles are acting to target the “different strains of radicalism,” all of which they brand as expressing “absolute hostility towards America.”
The ruling circles are especially concerned with blocking Americans from taking their stand against U.S. imperialism and developing the thinking needed to advance their fight for change. Bush attempts to discredit the anti-war movement by claiming it is part of a media campaign by Osama Bin Laden to “create a wedge between the American people and their government.” He presents support for resistance, in Palestine, in Lebanon and Iraq, as an idea belonging only to foreigners, like Hizbollah.
The ruling circles are attempting to convince Americans that anything foreign is supposedly anti-American. Anything against the government is supposedly anti-American and foreign to the thinking of Americans. Expressing views and standing with the resistance to U.S. imperialism worldwide is, as Bush puts it, expressing “absolute hostility towards America.”
The effort here is to deny that Americans as a people have their own thought material and experience to utilize as they organize for change. We are to accept that we do not have our own thinking and experience that is anti-imperialist and one with the world’s peoples. More than this, we are to stop thinking, stop being political, as this is the requirement for the fascist arrangements the ruling circles are imposing. Everyone is to submit and obey, in Congress, in the schools, in society as a whole.
The ruling circles are also attempting to divide Americans from the one struggle of all humanity rising against imperialism and war and organizing to bring forward another world that serves humanity. They are attempting to fall back on their imperialist chauvinism, but they are failing in this regard. The growing resistance today is rejecting the notion that American lives are more valuable than those of Iraqis or Palestinians. There is rejection of the ruling class view that the main problem with the Iraq war is that it is mismanaged and instead there is the stand of principle — to oppose aggressive wars as crimes against the people and to stand as one with the resistance.
The recent passage of the Military Commissions Act also makes clear that the government has put in place arrangements to enforce its criminalization of ideology and opposition of any kind. The Act specifically gives the Office of the President power to brand anyone an enemy combatant and jail or kill them. The definition of enemy combatant makes no reference to people engaged in armed conflict with the U.S. Instead it defines an enemy combatant as “a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Given the direction of government, simply the expression of views different than the President’s will soon be considered hostile.
The effort to block and eliminate thinking is a crime against humanity that must be vigorously opposed by all. Let everyone unite as one to oppose this attack on human beings, as thinking is part of what makes us human beings. Let us together answer Bush’s challenge, that it is we, the working class and people, who will prevail in this ideological battle of the 21st century, in this fight for a new world.
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U.S. Fears Growing Resistance, Organizes to Criminalize Ideology
In recent speeches outlining the government’s strategy for “the global war on terror,” President George W. Bush has emphasized that “The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.” He said, “On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation — the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism — the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. As veterans you have seen this kind of enemy before. They’re successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century,” (speaking to the American Legion Convention, 8/31/06). He more generally referred to the need to combat “radical extremism,” and what he calls “absolute hostility towards America.”
Making clear that he is speaking not only as the defender of U.S. imperialism but as the defender of the world system of imperialism, Bush said, “The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq. So the United States of America will not leave until victory is achieved.” He elaborated this further when speaking to the Military Officers Association. He presented the vision of the “terrorists” as a “unified totalitarian Islamic state,” stretching from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. He then emphasized, “These violent extremists know that to realize this vision, they must first drive out the main obstacle that stands in their way — the United States of America,” (9/5/06). Again speaking to the need to win the ideological struggle, he added, “All civilized nations are bound together in this struggle between moderation and extremism. By coming together, we will roll back this grave threat to our way of life.” It is this imperialist way of life Bush is defending, against all those who oppose it, including Americans.
The enemies, for the U.S. rulers, are the resistance movements, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon, countries like Iran, and the resistance here in the U.S. The government is organizing to attack resistance, including targeting people and organizations for their views and words alone.
Bush spent most of his speech to the Military Officers Association quoting the words of those he has branded “terrorists,” like Hizbollah and the president of Iran. The White House released an entire “fact sheet,” titled “In Their Own Words,” with quotes of various kinds. Bush sites, for example, the stand by Hizbollah in support of the Palestinians and against U.S. imperialism. This is expressed in the slogan “Death to America.” The president of Iran is quoted as saying, “I am telling you [major powers], if you do not abandon the path of falsehood and return to the path of justice, your doomed destiny will be annihilation, misfortune and abjectness.” These quotes are included in a section labeled “The Terrorists On Their Absolute Hostility Towards America.”
It does not take much to see that very similar words and banners by Americans, rejecting Bush’s lies, saying “Down with U.S. Imperialism” and similar content, can equally be branded as that of the enemy. The imperialists are recognizing the growing anti-imperialist stand within the U.S. movement and seeks to block it by branding it as “terrorist” and the “ideology of radical extremists.” They recognize the danger to their system of Americans taking their stand with the world’s peoples and opposing U.S. aggression and the entire system of imperialist oppression and exploitation.
The government is attempting to discredit the resistance movement inside the U.S. by branding it as the product of a propaganda and media campaign by Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida. They are preparing the ground to criminalize simply the expression of anti-government and anti-imperialist views.
Bush, and the White House fact sheet, emphasized that Bin Laden has organized a media campaign “to create a wedge between the American people and their government,” and to “create pressure from the American people on the American government to stop their campaign against Afghanistan.” The campaign includes putting forward that Americans are being sacrificed for the interests of big business and will suffer losses, financially and in casualties.
In this manner, the government is trying to make it appear that much of the content being raised by a wide range of fighting forces — such as opposing the military budget, opposing the massacres of Iraqis and demanding that all troops be brought home, exposing and condemning the role of the military monopolies pushing war — are all the work of Osama Bin Laden. The notion is being pushed that anyone who is against the government, or reflects these views, are dupes of foreigners, whether it be Bin Laden, the Iranians or Hizbollah.
For the U.S. rulers, resistance to imperialism can only be foreign, not American made. For them, even to think is to be un-American. Instead, Americans are to submit and, as Bush suggested after September 11, go shopping. Anything else is hostile to the U.S.
Bush also specifically attempts to target leading forces, especially the revolutionary and communist forces, in the U.S. and worldwide. He does this with the tried and true method of the imperialists, to attempt to equate communism with fascism, just as there is the attempt to brand the resistance by the Islamic countries and forces as “Islamofascism.”
In addition to comments such as that above, that the resistance movements represent the “successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century,” Bush specifically emphasizes, referring to the “terrorists,” that “we need to take their words seriously.” After the referring to various quotes, such as those about Bin Laden’s media campaign, Bush refers to Lenin, leader of the proletarian revolution in Russia. He specifically refers to Lenin’s work “What is to Be Done?” Two main features of this work are the need for a communist party of the working class and the need for the independent press of the working class as a critical part of its organizing for revolution. Bush next refers to Hitler and the Nazis. He then says, “We’re taking the words of the enemy seriously. We’re on the offensive, and we will not rest, we will not retreat, and we will not withdraw from the fight, until this threat to civilization has been removed.”
It is no accident that Bush targets revolution and the need for a revolutionary press as an integral part of this ideological struggle of the 21 century. The ruling circles are preparing the grounds to openly attack and eliminate the work going forward to develop an independent press serving the interests of the working class and peoples — work that includes websites, newspapers, radio shows and more.
The effort to criminalize ideology shows that U.S. imperialism is desperate to prevent its own defeat. There is a fierce ideological struggle being waged by the working class and peoples against imperialism and the imperialist world outlook, which says the world’s peoples are nothing, which says there is no alternative to the present chaos, destruction and war, which says there is no future. And this struggle is being led by the communist and revolutionary forces guided by their proletarian world outlook.
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An indication of the impact of the government’s pressure to crimialize ideology was seen in Michigan on September 11, 2006. Seven youth were sent home from school for wearing T-shirts described as having a “patriotic message,” about the attacks of September 11, 2001. The school explained that youth are not permitted to wear T-shirts that have statements or images with a “message.” Such clothing violates the school’s dress code. Students are, however, allowed to express their loyalty to the school, by wearing shirts with the school mascot or name on them. The school is located in a suburban district, near Detroit.
The incident is similar to one that occurred during President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address this year, when women wearing T-shirts with a message, one pro-war and one anti-war were both escorted out by police. These and similar examples are indicative of the atmosphere being imposed, expecially in the schools, where youth are not to express any views and are instead being trained to follow orders and submit to arbitrary actions by officials.
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Church Targeted by Government for Anti-War Sermon
The federal government, using the Internal Revenue Service, is stepping up its attack on churches that participate in the political life of the country by expressing views on issues of concern, such as the war against Iraq. The threat by the government is that the churches will lose their tax-exempt status for engaging in political activity. -Tax exempt organizations, such as churches and nonprofits are not permitted to support or oppose specific candidates, but they are permitted to express opinions on the issues.
As one example, the IRS recently ordered a church in Pasadena, California, to turn over all the documents and emails it produced during the 2004 election year with references to political candidates. According to the IRS, one particular sermon, delivered two days before the 2004 election, was considered sufficient to question the church’s tax-exempt status. The sermon involved a mock debate between Jesus and President George W. Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry. Neither candidate was endorsed or opposed, while the sermon did call the policy of pre-emptive war a disaster.
The IRS summons is very broad. In addition to seeking electronic communications, the IRS summons requests “a copy of all oral communications identifying candidates for public office delivered at All Saints Church or at events sponsored by All Saints Church between January 1, 2004, and November 2, 2004.” The summons also asks for various financial records. “Please provide an accounting of all expenditures associated with delivery of the sermon, including allocations of overhead.” All Saints’ officials take that to mean such things as the pay of church staff. The current rector of the church, Reverend Ed Bacon, was also summoned to testify.
All Saints has decided not to cooperate with the IRS and is going to court to oppose the summons as an attack on their right to free speech and religion. The church called on its 3,500 active parishioners to join in deciding what stand to take and more than 900 came to the service where the issue was discussed, and many more sent letters and emails. Their stand was to reject the government attack. As Rev. Bacon put it, while the church could not endorse or oppose a political candidate, neither could it remain silent in the face of “dehumanization, injustice and violence.” He added, “Neutrality and silence in the face of oppression always aids the oppressor.”
All Saints is well known for its anti-war stand and its stand in defense of rights more generally. It opposed the internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II for example, participated in the civil rights movement, opposed the war in Vietnam, supports women clergy, and has continued to oppose the Iraq war and the policy of preemptive war.
In their press release on their decision to oppose the summons, the church said, “We are today defending our religious responsibilities to criticize any public policies that demean or destroy any member of the human family. Our faith demands that we say without fear or intimidation that every human life is sacred and that in God’s eyes and heart every human life is equally precious. This calls us to speak to the issues of war and poverty, bigotry, torture, and all forms of terrorism.” It continued, “American pulpits in mosques, synagogues, temples, and churches must not cower from the responsibility to speak truth to power, including any and every expression of American exceptionalism that through policy and practice values American life above other life.” It concluded, “Only by standing now can we protect ourselves from the chilling effect on our own First Amendment rights of free speech and free exercise of religion that these summonses represent, and also stand for churches, synagogues and mosques across the country who may find themselves in similar circumstances, but are less able or less funded to make such a challenge.”
All Saints is not the only church being targeted, and some of those included also have views in support of the war. In July, the IRS warned 15,000 tax-exempt groups across the nation, including churches and nonprofit organizations, to stay neutral on politics. The stepped up attacks are part of a new enforcement program, the Political Activity Compliance Initiative. Under it, the IRS will no longer wait for an annual tax return to be filed or for the tax year to end before investigating allegations of wrongful campaigning.
Since 2004, the IRS has investigated more than 200 organizations nationwide. In July it had 100 cases pending — 40 of them churches.
Numerous other churches are taking their stand with All Saints. Reverend Bob Edgar, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA said, “I’m outraged. Preachers ought to have the liberty to speak truth to power.”
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I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back. “Be careful,” people always tell me. “These people are capable of anything. Stay off small planes, make sure you aren’t being followed.” A running joke between my mother and me is that she has a “safe room” set up for me in her cabin in the woods, in the event I have to flee because of something I wrote or said.
I always laughed and shook my head whenever I heard this stuff. Extreme paranoia wrapped in the tinfoil of conspiracy, I thought. This is still America, and these Bush fools will soon pass into history, I thought. I am a citizen, and the First Amendment hasn’t yet been red-lined, I thought.
Matters are different now.
It seems, perhaps, that the people who warned me were not so paranoid. It seems, perhaps, that I was not paranoid enough. Legislation passed by the Republican House and Senate, legislation now marching up to the Republican White House for signature, has shattered a number of bedrock legal protections for suspects, prisoners, and pretty much anyone else George W. Bush deems to be an enemy.
So much of this legislation is wretched on the surface. Habeas corpus has been suspended for detainees suspected of terrorism or of aiding terrorism, so the Magna Carta-era rule that a person can face his accusers is now gone. Once a suspect has been thrown into prison, he does not have the right to a trial by his peers. Suspects cannot even stand in representation of themselves, another ancient protection, but must accept a military lawyer as their defender.
Illegally-obtained evidence can be used against suspects, whether that illegal evidence was gathered abroad or right here at home. To my way of thinking, this pretty much eradicates our security in persons, houses, papers, and effects, as stated in the Fourth Amendment, against illegal searches and seizures.
Speaking of collecting evidence, the torture of suspects and detainees has been broadly protected by this new legislation. While it tries to delineate what is and is not acceptable treatment of detainees, in the end, it gives George W. Bush the final word on what constitutes torture. U.S. officials who use cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment to extract information from detainees are now shielded from prosecution.
It was two Supreme Court decisions, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that compelled the creation of this legislation. The Hamdi decision held that a prisoner has the right of habeas corpus, and can challenge his detention before an impartial judge. The Hamdan decision held that the military commissions set up to try detainees violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.
In short, the Supreme Court wiped out virtually every legal argument the Bush administration put forth to defend its extraordinary and dangerous behavior. The passage of this legislation came after a scramble by Republicans to paper over the torture and murder of a number of detainees. As columnist Molly Ivins wrote on Wednesday, “Of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, (Guantanamo) only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA (cover your a--) for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.”
It seems almost certain that, at some point, the Supreme Court will hear a case to challenge the legality of this legislation, but even this is questionable. If a detainee is not allowed access to a fair trial or to the evidence against him, how can he bring a legal challenge to a court? The legislation, in anticipation of court challenges like Hamdi and Hamdan, even includes severe restrictions on judicial review over the legislation itself.
The Republicans in Congress have managed, at the behest of Mr. Bush, to draft a bill that all but erases the judicial branch of the government. Time will tell whether this aspect, along with all the others, will withstand legal challenges. If such a challenge comes, it will take time, and meanwhile there is this bill. All of the above is deplorable on its face, indefensible in a nation that prides itself on Constitutional rights, protections and the rule of law.
Underneath all this, however, is where the paranoia sets in.
Underneath all this is the definition of “enemy combatant” that has been established by this legislation. An “enemy combatant” is now no longer just someone captured “during an armed conflict” against our forces. Thanks to this legislation, George W. Bush is now able to designate as an “enemy combatant” anyone who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.”
Consider that language a moment. “Purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States” is in the eye of the beholder, and this administration has proven itself to be astonishingly impatient with criticism of any kind. The broad powers given to Bush by this legislation allow him to capture, indefinitely detain, and refuse a hearing to any American citizen who speaks out against Iraq or any other part of the so-called “War on Terror.”
If you write a letter to the editor attacking Bush, you could be deemed as purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States. If you organize or join a public demonstration against Iraq, or against the administration, the same designation could befall you. One dark-comedy aspect of the legislation is that senators or House members who publicly disagree with Bush, criticize him, or organize investigations into his dealings could be placed under the same designation. In effect, Congress just gave Bush the power to lock them up.
By writing this essay, I could be deemed an “enemy combatant.” It is that simple, and very soon, it will be the law. I always laughed when people told me to be careful. I am not laughing anymore.
In case I disappear, remember this: America is an idea, a dream, and that is all. We have borders and armies and citizens and commerce and industry, but all this merely makes us like every other nation on this Earth. What separates us is the idea, the simple idea, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our organizing principles. We can think as we please, speak as we please, write as we please, worship as we please, go where we please. We are protected from the kinds of tyranny that inspired our creation as a nation in the first place.
That was the idea. That was the dream. It may all be over now, but once upon a time, it existed. No good idea ever truly dies. The dream was here, and so was I, and so were you.
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Here is what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.
It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.
Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Next, Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.
These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.
We do not blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.
They will know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
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But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. — George Orwell
On Monday, September 18, the Associated Press (AP) ran a story titled, “Iraqi tribes fight Insurgency.” At first glance, the average reader cannot be blamed for thinking that this is a story about how tribes in Iraq have decided to take up arms against the “insurgency.”
The reader certainly cannot be blamed for thinking this, because the first paragraph in the AP story reads, “Tribes in one of Iraq’s most volatile provinces have joined together to fight the insurgency there, and they have called on the government and the U.S.-led military coalition for weapons, a prominent tribal leader said Monday.”
Allow me to pause here and address the use of the word “insurgent.” According to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, an insurgent is “a person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an established government: [a] rebel.” This of course begs the existence of a legitimately elected government that the “insurgent” rises in revolt against, which in Iraq we do not have. How is it possible to have a legitimate government in a country that was first illegally invaded and today is illegally occupied?
Yet, AP uses the word unquestioningly.
The story continues: “Tribal leaders and clerics in Ramadi, the capital of violent Anbar province, met last week and have set up a force of about 20,000 men ‘ready to purge the city of these infidels,’ Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent tribal leader from Ramadi, told the Associated Press, referring to the insurgents. ‘People are fed up with the acts of those criminals who take Islam as a cover for their crimes,’ he said. ‘The situation in the province is unbearable, the city is abandoned, most of the families have fled the city and all services are poor.’ Al-Guood said 15 of the 18 tribes in Ramadi ‘have sworn to fight those who are killing Sunnis and Shiites and they established an armed force of about 20,000 young men ready to purge the city from those infidels.’”
At this point, either the author of this AP story, or the editor, or both, rightly assume that the reader is not aware that Sheik Fassal al-Guood tried to lead the local resistance against the occupation in Ramadi, but turned against the same resistance group when its members rejected him as a leader because they considered him a corrupt thief. Nor is the reader aware that today, Sheikh Fassal al-Guood lives in the “Green Zone” and happily talks to reporters from behind the concrete blast walls, and that his power in Al-Anbar now equals exactly nothing.
I contacted author and media critic Norman Solomon and asked him what he thought of this AP story. “The holes in this story beg for questions that it does not raise, much less answer,” he wrote. “For instance: What are the past, present and hoped-for financial relationships between the quoted ‘tribal leader’ on the one hand and the U.S. and Iraqi governments on the other? Are there any indications that money has changed hands? Is a mercenary arrangement being set up? Is this part of the Bush administration’s strategy to get more Iraqis to kill each other rather than have Iraqis killing American troops - aka ‘As the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down?’ Isn’t there a good chance that such arrangements will actually fuel civil war in Iraq rather than douse its already horrific flames?”
He continued, “So, this AP story agreeably paraphrases an official from the U.S.- backed Iraqi government’s Defense Ministry as saying that ‘Iraqi security forces had met with tribal leaders and had agreed to cooperate in combating violence.’ But how will they be ‘combating violence?’ With massive violence, of course, although the article doesn’t say so. Many sources are available to make such a point, but in this story AP availed itself of none of them.”
Solomon, a nationally-syndicated columnist on media and politics who is also the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts, had this to say about why AP might get away with this type of “reportage” as consistently as it does: “AP is providing the kind of coverage that it and other mainstream U.S. media outlets have provided in the past. The coverage does not seem conspicuously shoddy to most readers because it fits in with previous shoddy reportage. From all appearances, this AP article is based on statements from four sources — and each of them is in line with U.S. government policies. There’s one tribal leader from Ramadi who is seeking large quantities of material aid from the U.S. and the Iraqi government; there are two spokespeople for that Iraqi government; and there’s a general from the U.S. military. That all four would present a similar picture of events is not surprising. But for an article to rely on only those sources is stenography for one side of the conflict — which should not be confused with journalism.”
It is also important for the reader to note that, according to an August U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, of 1,666 bombs exploded in Iraq in July, 90 percent were aimed at U.S.-led forces. Along with this fact, attacks against U.S. forces have increased dramatically in recent months, and the U.S. military itself has admitted that less than 6 percent of the attacks against them are from foreign fighters (i.e., “terrorists”). Thus, at least 94 percent of all attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq are from the Iraqi Resistance, as opposed to “terrorists.”
It is time, too, that readers of mainstream news knew that any “tribal meeting” that discusses fighting “the insurgents” is currently being held secretly inside American military bases or inside the “green zone.” Iraqi people who are trying to lead that operation are well known to Al-Anbar citizens. These leaders did succeed in some cases in recruiting certain groups to fight resistance fighters by paying considerable sums of money, but it was only temporary success.
A case in point would be Al-Qa’im last spring. A tribal fight occurred between local resistance fighters. Sheik Osama al-Jadaan was involved in engineering it by paying members of his tribe to take up arms against local resistance groups. Yet this conflict was settled, and when it was, al-Jadaan had to flee to the “green zone.” He lived there for a short time before his work as a collaborator with occupation forces caught up with him, and he was killed in Baghdad.
Yet the AP story has this to say about al-Jadaan: “In late May, a prominent Sunni Arab tribal leader, Sheik Osama al-Jadaan, who provided fighters to help battle al-Qaeda in Anbar, was assassinated in Baghdad.”
There are the usual token scraps of truth in the AP story, lending it a hue of credibility. The story quotes a U.S. military spokesperson who goes out on a limb to say that tribal leaders in Anbar “very much want to see security brought back to that area.”
Another scrap of truth came earlier in the story where Al-Guood is quoted as saying that most of the tribes of Ramadi “have sworn to fight those who are killing Sunnis and Shiites and they established an armed force of about 20,000 young men ready to purge the city from those infidels.”
This is true throughout Iraq, where even the U.S. military has documented several cases of resistance groups fighting foreign terror groups that have infiltrated Iraq’s porous borders in order to carry out attacks against Iraqi civilians.
The most disconcerting portion of this AP story, however, is the melding of the word “insurgent” with the word “terrorist.” Clearly there is a flippancy, and I believe a malicious intent in this misuse. I have witnessed this melding repeated in AP stories from Iraq in which “insurgent” replaces “terrorist.”
We can see the melding in a recent AP story, which states: “Attacks against U.S. troops have increased following a call earlier this month from al-Qaeda in Iraq’s leader to target American forces, the top U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.”
Another example of this melding is in an AP story from September 17 about Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen of Fallujah who has been held by the U.S. military without charges for five months. Part of the story reads, “The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
Regarding the reference to al-Qaeda (read “terrorism”), Solomon had this to say: “The word ‘terrorism’ is clearly a pejorative. And it’s an unwritten rule of U.S. media coverage that the ‘terrorism’ label can only be used, or quoted with credence being given to the sources, if ‘terrorism’ applies to murderous violence opposed by the U.S. government — in contrast to murderous violence inflicted or otherwise supported by the U.S. government, in which case that violence is routinely presumed to be positive.”
It is a melding that has the power to change minds.
A melding that may have prompted Orwell to say, “... language can also corrupt thought.”
It is important to note that the board of directors of AP is composed of 22 newspaper and media executives that include the CEOs and presidents of ABC, McClatchy, Hearst, Tribune and the Washington Post. Two of the directors are members of very conservative policy councils that include the Hoover Institute. The Hoover Institute is a Republican policy research center that has been referred to as “Bush’s brain trust.” Its fellows include Condoleezza Rice and Newt Gingrich, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, along with George Shultz.
Douglas McCorkindale, also on the board of directors at AP, is on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contract company. One does not require crystals to see that the board of AP displays a clear tilt toward right-wing conservative views, and comprises representatives of a huge corporate media network of the largest publishers in the U.S..
It is not difficult to demolish the myth of the liberal media and its prominent arms like AP.
“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” - George Orwell
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Resistance Continues Against Bush Reaction
World Can’t Wait Actions: Drive Out the Bush Regime
Actions to drive out the Bush regime occurred from coast to coast on October 5 in more than 200 locations. Several thousand took to the streets in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, hundreds acted in cities such as Tucson, Portland, Atlanta, and Austin, and in many small towns and cities scores of people went to intersections, town centers, local beaches, and wherever they thought they would reach the most people in their areas with the message that This Regime Does Not Represent Us and We Will Drive it Out.
Across the country, people young and old showed the heart and courage to confront the reality of the fascistic and war mongering direction the Bush regime has been driving this country and the entire world. Together, we made a powerful and precious political statement — one that is being debated and seriously considered but that must still be acted on by people in a more massive way to actually shift the political dynamics in this country. The thousands who acted are the nucleus of a spreading movement that must now go on and win the argument with those who still are on the sidelines. Where Bush’s whole agenda is repudiated and he and his regime must leave office in disgrace. The World Can’t Wait, Drive Out The Bush Regime!
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Military Commissions Act Challenged
On October 2, 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) announced that it had filed the first new legal challenges to key provisions of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) passed by Congress last week. CCR filed a habeas petition on behalf of 25 detainees held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan who have been detained without charge or trial. Mohammed v. Rumsfeld directly contests the MCA’s denial of due process to non-citizens held in U.S. custody.
There are an estimated 500 men detained in U.S. custody at Bagram. Though some have been held for years, none of these men has ever received a hearing of any sort. Bagram has been the site of notorious examples of abuse — including abuses that led to the December 2002 deaths of two Afghanistani detainees.
CCR Staff Attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez said: “Bagram should be synonymous with Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. These are abusive environments where the rights we all hold dear are regularly violated. Habeas is the only chance the men there have of ever responding to the allegations against them and demanding accountability for their treatment in court.”
Mohammed v. Rumsfeld raises challenges to the Military Commissions Act’s sweeping definition of “unlawful enemy combatant,” denial of due process, and rejection of accountability for torture and abusive interrogations.
The MCA’s sweeping definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” would include many people not engaged in hostilities against the United States. The MCA writes the term “unlawful enemy combatant” into law for the first time — and with a definition so expansive that it includes U.S. citizens and those who are not directly engaged in hostilities against the United States but who “materially support” hostilities. Further, the MCA sanctions the president or Secretary of Defense’s unilateral declaration that an individual is an “unlawful enemy combatant.” The MCA even attempts to deny due process to individuals who are not yet classified as unlawful enemy combatants under this broad definition, but also those who are “awaiting such determination” — a definition that could be read to include all non-citizens held in U.S. custody in the U.S. or abroad.
Despite being held indefinitely in U.S. custody, all detainees at Bagram would be denied habeas relief — or any ability to challenge any aspect of their detention or treatment. The MCA purports to revoke the right of non-citizen detainees to bring a habeas petition to challenge the legality of their detention. For detainees not held at Guantánamo, the MCA further purports to deprive them of any right to challenge any aspect of their detention, treatment, trial or conditions of confinement through any means.
The law severely limits accountability for torture and abusive interrogations for those detained in U.S. custody at Bagram and around the world. Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits violence to detainees and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” The MCA permits the president to interpret any violations of the Geneva Conventions which do not constitute “grave breaches” and amends the War Crimes Act so that only grave breaches of Common Article 3 can be prosecuted. The president’s prior interpretations prompt great concern about unchecked executive interpretations of Geneva Convention violations. As the MCA does not allow those held in U.S. custody to sue over the conditions of their detention, torture prohibitions such as the McCain Amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act will be unenforceable without habeas rights.
CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren said: “Last week, Congress voted to have the United States join the ranks of the nations of the world that have authorized indefinite detention without trial and torture without accountability. For over two hundred years, our Constitution has guaranteed that we would not sacrifice our democratic principles even in times of crisis. In this first challenge to the MCA, we demand that the administration uphold the Constitution which has, and should continue to be, the pillar of living in a democratic society.”
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While this article was written before the Military Commissions Act, 2006 was passed, the content it refers to remains in the law and in fact was taken further, with the definition of “enemy combatant” being broadened to include anyone engaged in hostilities with the U.S. — previously it referred only to those engaged in armed conflict with the U.S. — as well as any who provide material support to anyone engaged in hostilities or simply associated with them.
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To turn our eyes momentarily from the terrifying war in the Middle East is to discover an ever-more ominous turn in the Bush administration’s war on terror. Having been barred by the Supreme Court from treating foreign terrorism suspects as if they had few, or no, legal rights, the president’s initial response is not to comply with the high court’s finding that detainees must be treated under accepted standards of international law. In fact, the White House pushes to extend the ill treatment to American citizens.
That is, effectively, what the administration’s draft of new rules for the military detention and trial of terrorism suspects would do. News and human rights organizations that have obtained the document, marked “deliberative draft, close hold,” have criticized the way in which it would obliterate the Supreme Court’s ruling. It seeks to have Congress write into law essentially the same procedures for military trials that the high court just said were illegal. That is, terrorism suspects still could be excluded from the courtroom, evidence could be withheld from the defense, and the Geneva Conventions, which the Supreme Court explicitly said must apply, would be circumvented.
More chilling is that the draft makes clear that the president wishes to impose these conditions upon any American citizen he calls an “enemy combatant.”
A copy of the draft made public by The Washington Post shows that, while an initial version anticipated military trials only for “alien” enemy combatants, the word “alien” is subsequently crossed out. Instead, the document refers time and again to “persons” who are detainees. A “person,” under this draft, could be an American seized at a shopping mall, or in a suburban backyard.
Here, then, is how the government could treat American citizens if this draft were to become law: A citizen could be designated an “enemy combatant” (a term the administration has never clearly defined) and held in a military prison. There, the citizen would have no right to a speedy trial. Any trials, the draft says, could occur “at any time without limitations.”
Once the citizen is tried under rules that mock the constitutional protections he would receive in a federal court, or in a U.S. military court-martial, the outcome would mean little. An acquittal would not necessarily free the detainee. Neither would a sentence imposed, say, for two or three years and served in full. “An acquittal or conviction under this act does not preclude the United States, in accordance with the law of war, to detain enemy combatants until the cessation of hostilities as a means to prevent their return to the fight.”
Of course, “the fight” as defined in the draft is not necessarily an armed battle. People may be designated “enemy combatants” and subject to these rules if the president and the Pentagon believe they are now or were once “part of, or supporting” the Taliban, al-Qaeda or “associated forces.” Support is not defined. It could mean shouting “long live Osama!” while walking down Pennsylvania Avenue.
All these powers are rightly the president’s because he is commander in chief of the armed forces, according to the draft. This is the precise argument the White House has tried, again and again, to get the Supreme Court to accept. It has failed.
In two cases in which President Bush indeed did detain American citizens indefinitely and without charge, the courts derailed the effort. After the Supreme Court ruled against the administration two years ago in the case of Yaser Hamdi, the military released him and returned him to his family in Saudi Arabia. In a second case involving Jose Padilla, a citizen who was picked up at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, the government finally issued an indictment four years into his detainment, just as the Supreme Court was considering Padilla’s case.
The Bush administration now seeks from Congress an authorization for the blank check it once sought to give itself. If lawmakers hand him this, they will be handing over rights that Americans may never regain.
The Daily Camera, Boulder, Colorado
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Rounding Up U.S. Citizens
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, “unlawful enemy combatants.”
Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.
Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s list of “terrorist” organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.
Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.
In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party’s political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.
The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.
The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything “false, scandalous and malicious” with the intent to hold the government in “contempt or disrepute.” The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.
Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear- mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).
During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in “red-baiting.”
One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.
In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would “lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.”
That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney’s Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.
In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans “they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.”
We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of more of our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in serious jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin’s prescient warning should give us pause: “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
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Now That You Could be Labeled an Enemy Combatant...
Since Congress recently handed Bush the power to identify American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" and detain them indefinitely without charge, it's worth examining the administration's record of prisoner abuse as well as the building of stateside detention centers.
As Texas governor (from 1995-2000) Bush oversaw the executions of 152 prisoners, and thus became the most-killing governor in the history of the United States. Ethnic minorities, many of whom did not have access to proper legal representation, comprised a large percentage of those Bush put to death, and in one particularly egregious example, Bush executed an immigrant who hadn't even seen a consular official from his own country (as is required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the US was a signatory). Bush's explanation: "Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?"
Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared at the time only by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Significantly, in 1998 a full 92% of the juvenile offenders on Bush's death row were ethnic minorities.
Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush's reign were so notorious that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions."
In September 1996, for example, a videotaped raid on inmates at a county jail in Texas showed guards using stun guns and an attack dog on prisoners, who were later dragged face-down back to their cells.
Funding of mental health programs during Bush's reign was so poor that Texan prisons had a sizeable number of mentally-impaired inmates; defying international human rights standards, these inmates ended up on death row. For instance, a prisoner named Emile Duhamel, with severe psychological disabilities and an IQ of 56, died in his Texan death-row jail cell in July 1998. Authorities blamed "natural causes" but a lack of air conditioning in cells that topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a summer heat wave may have killed Duhamel instead. How many other Texan prisoners died of such neglect during Bush's governorship is unclear.
As president, Bush presides over a prison population topping two million people, giving America the dubious distinction of having a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country. When considering that (based on 2003 figures) the US has three times more prisoners per capita than Iran and seven times more than Germany, the nation looks more like a Gulag than the Land of the Free.
The White House has also stifled investigation into the roughly 760 aliens (mainly Muslim men) the US government rounded up post-9/11, ostensibly for immigration violations. Amnesty International reports that 9/11 detainees have suffered "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some corrections officers" and a denial of "basic human rights."
Then of course, there's Guantanamo, where the US is holding hundreds of detainees in top secrecy and without access to courts, legal counsel or family visits. Add to that the thousands of Afghans and Iraqis the US has imprisoned (including a large percentage of innocent civilians) and countless US secret prisons across the globe, and it looks as if incarceration is the nation's best export.
While Abu Ghraib may have left administration officials falling over themselves with protestations of compassion, it's worth remembering that the Bush White House has fought hard against the International Convention Against Torture, especially a proposal to establish voluntary inspections of prisons and detention centers in signatory countries, such as the United States.
Put it all together, and last week's passage of the Military Commissions Act is ominous for those in the US. As Bruce Ackerman noted recently in The Los Angeles Times, the legislation "authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any protections of the Bill of Rights." The vague criteria for being labeled an enemy combatant (taking part in "hostilities against the United States") don't help either. Would that include anti-war protestors? People who criticize Bush? Unclear.
In 2002, wacko former Attorney General John Ashcroft called for the indefinite detainment of US citizens he considered to be "enemy combatants," and while widely criticized at the time, Congress went ahead and fulfilled Ashcroft's nefarious vision last week. Ashcroft had also called for stateside internment camps, and accordingly, in January 2006 the US government awarded a Halliburton subsidiary $385 million to build detention centers to be used for, "an unexpected influx of immigrants or to house people after a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." New programs that require additional detention space. Hmm.
The disgraceful Military Commissions Act and the building of domestic internment camps are yet more examples of blowback from the administration's so-called war on terror, and we ignore these increasing assaults on our civil liberties at our own peril.
Action Ideas:
1. Read the Military Commissions Act of 2006 for yourself here. Find out how your congressmembers voted on this legislation, and raise the topic when they ask for your vote this November.
2. For more information on US prisoner abuse, check out BBC's report from 2005 entitled "Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons." You can learn more about US prisoner's rights from the American Civil Liberties Union.
3. To take action regarding "the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees held as part of the War on Terror," visit Cageprisoners.com.
CommonDreams.org, October 4, 2006
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