RUMINATIONS ON OUR CURRENT PREDICAMENT

INTRODUCTION

Expressing any view that runs counter to the party line of the current administration has become increasingly difficult if not downright risky since 911. The purveyors of the policy that led to the Iraq invasion have become very adept at branding anyone who expresses any intelligent view that is critical of their policy as unpatriotic, unsupportive of the military, un-American, or a misguided peacnik who wants to roll over and let terrorists run the world. Many conservatives also point to our many heroic and self sacrificing soldiers who unquestionably obey their orders, and then insinuate that the world would be a better place if we all behaved in this manner. This coupled with the often abusive and potentially violent reaction many conservatives have at the very mention of an opposing viewpoint has until very recently had a chilling affect on the intelligent discourse that should have been taking place publicly since 911.

I support and respect our military fully, and a careful reading of the following information will show that our military and most of our intelligence services have acted completely honorably. They have actually fought hard against the Bush administration in an effort to adhere to the Geneva convention, the Uniform Code of Military justice, and to try to execute the war on terrorism properly, but they were overridden by the most powerful and seasoned pair of political infighters ever to grace Washington, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

I would also like to point out that the duties of military personnel differ from the duties of private citizens. Because it is imperative for the proper function of the military command structure, it is ingrained into every soldier within the first few hours of boot camp, that they must unquestionably follow the orders coming down the chain of command all the way from the oval office, and that they must show the utmost respect for their superiors.

While this behavior is needed and beneficial within the military, it would not be possible for a democracy to function if all the citizens behaved in this manner. In a democracy, the power of the president is derived from the will of the people. It is the duty of the president to do his best to represent the will of the people, and it is the duty of the people to know what the president is doing on their behalf, and to keep him in check if he breaches that trust. To do this, we must ask questions, and openly discuss the actions of our leaders. To avoid doing this invites the creation of another Hitler, or worse.

For these aforementioned reasons, I find this administration and its supporter’s methods of stifling dissent to be offensive and undemocratic. It is very important to look carefully at past mistakes, so we can learn from them to avoid repeating them. Democracies thrive only where there is intelligent discourse and freely expressed views.

I grew up in a staunch Republican household, and was a Republican myself. However, I am the type of person who pays close attention to the actions, as well as the statements, of my leaders. It was the actions of people like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney during the Reagan administration, as well as the fear mongering antics of so many gun toting, NRA card carrying, Bible thumping conservatives, that caused me to leave the Republican party become non-partisan.

While I have normally kept my politics fairly low key, I have chosen to become more outspoken about certain issues because some of the actions of this administration threaten the very existence of democracy, as well as the very existence of all species on the face of the earth. Keep in mind that I am not a member of the Democratic party, and I am actually very disappointed in it as an alternative to the Republican party.

Also, the information below is not some document that has been passed around the internet, or the ranting of some liberal talk show host. It is all my own writing, gleaned from a lifetime of paying attention to my government as well as world events and history, and compiled from a multitude of sources. Most of the information below has been communicated to me several times from different sources including the many periodicals I read that engage in investigative journalism, books I have read, documentaries I have watched, main stream news, and from U.S. government, U.N. and I.A.E.A web sites I visit to confirm information.

Also, while Bush supporters often accuse me of second guessing the administration, I arrived at my position on these issues in foresight, not in hindsight. The issues I wish to discuss are not some minor little goofs that couldn’t be foreseen. These are problems that were foreseen publicly, by the very people whose job it is to foresee them, long before we went into Iraq.

Unfortunately, these people were systematically ignored, and then fired or marginalized for their disloyalty after they were proven right, and replaced with people who put their loyalty to the president above their own common sense and ethics. Most of the people who created these problems are either still in the administration, or in other positions of power. They show no sign of having learned from their mistakes, or any interest in changing their behavior. In fact, they refuse to even acknowledge that these mistakes were made, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. None have been held accountable for their actions, which in many cases are criminal. See the excellent Frontline documentary Bush's War for a complete analysis.

This administration aggressively pursues the reckless agenda of a few narrow minded hawks in the oval office, with little on no regard for domestic law, international law, diplomacy, past experience, ethics, scientific inquiry, or common sense. This reckless agenda has already resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, with no end in sight. (See Major General John R.S. Batiste at the DPC Hearing ) Also, the administrations attempts to expand presidential power beyond the reach of any law, threaten the very foundation of democracy itself.

To ignore or allow this behavior is to condone it. Condoning it allows it to be repeated both by this, and by future administrations. It is not only the right, but also the duty of Americans who perceive legal or ethical problems in their government, to speak up and try to correct them before they get further out of hand.

The Bush administration constantly preaches about spreading democracy around the globe. We already have an institution that extends democracy beyond our immediate borders to the worldwide arena. It was formed to try to prevent unnecessary wars by mediating international disputes through a democratic process, to add legitimacy and appropriate military strength when military action is absolutely necessary, and to provide a true multinational force, controlled by this democratic multinational government, to insure the nation that emerges is truly free rather than the empire of the nation(s) that overthrew it. This institution is called the United Nations. Like all democracies, including the United States, it is cumbersome and frustratingly slow to reach any decision, and is sometimes paralyzed by its own indecision. However, the benefits of membership in this body, when its member nations abide by the rules, far outweigh the sacrifices.

By invading Iraq without due process through the United Nations, this administration has set a precedent that can be used by any country in the world to justify an attack on any nation, simply by calling it a threat to their security. It has also cast a shadow of illegitimacy that will cause a large percentage of the people in the Muslim world, and elsewhere, to always view the government of Iraq as a puppet government set up by the United States, no matter how democratic and independent it actually becomes. Gathering a "Coalition of the willing" to overthrow Saddam, is analogous to a person getting together a group of friends to beat up someone who has wronged him. It may punish the offender, but it doesn't do much for basic law and order in the big picture.

We have also created a chaotic war zone that is within a 4 to 5 day car ride from European nations like Spain, France, and Britain, that have large populations of disenfranchised Muslims, and many Militant Salafist clerics, who recruit young people for jihad. These clerics encourage disenfranchised young men to use Iraq as a training ground for jihad, so they can return to Europe and elsewhere and wreak further havoc. See the FRONTLINE documentary Al qaeda's New Front for more details.

Just as the 911 attacks caused a massive shift toward fundamentalism, nationalism, and militancy in the United States, by invading Iraq we have caused a massive shift back toward hard line fundamentalism, nationalism, and radical militancy in Iran and in the Palestinian territories, reversing the gradual trends toward reform and westernization in the decade prior to the Iraq invasion. This has culminated in the sweeping victory for the terrorist organization Hamas over the more moderate Fattah party in the Palestinian Parliamentary elections, and the election of ultra conservative Mahmoud Ahmadineejed in Iran on August 2, 2005, after the reform minded Seyyed Mohammad Khatami had led the country since 1997.

Prior to 911, Khatami had gradually introduced incremental improvements in freedom of speech and the status of women, and he continued to do so until the cultural tide changed directions in 2003, rendering him incapable of achieving his goals. Within hours after the attacks on 911, both Khatami and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini had made public statements condemning the 911 attacks as well as all other terrorist attacks on civilians. Khatami also asked the people of Iran to stop chanting “Death to America”, and encouraged them to show sympathy for America in the wake of the 911 attacks.

As America prepared to invade Afghanistan, Khatami and his reformist government offered to help America by brokering the deal made with the Northern Alliance convincing them to fight along side the Americans against Iran’s enemies the Taliban and Al Qaeda. This help was accepted by America and was pivotal in the war effort. Without this help the invasion of Afghanistan may not have been successful, or at best it would have taken much longer and would have been far more costly in American and British lives.

For this help, Iran was rewarded by being included as a member of the “Axis of Evil” in President Bush’s State of the Union Address in January of 2002. This caused an immediate backlash against America and against the reformist government by the hardliners in the Iranian government and the people of Iran. The “Death to America” chants quickly returned, replacing the “Death to Terrorists” chants that were going on during this period, in spite of Khatami’s valiant efforts.

In spite of this setback, and at great peril to their own existence, the reformists made one more attempt to reach out to America via the Swiss embassy during the invasion of Iraq by offering help in winning over Iraq’s large Shea population and aiding in the rebuilding effort in return for a non aggression treaty. This offer was completely ignored and no reply was sent by the Bush administration.

In the light of these actions, is it any surprise that the hard liners are now in total control in Iran, and that the Iranian government feels it has no alternative other than to undermine the US effort in Iraq in order to repel the imminent threat of a US invasion of Iran.

(See the Frontline documentary Showdown With Iran for more details on this.)

The strengthening of Hesbollah and the recent conflict with Israel in Lebanon are also logical outgrowths of the Iraq invasion. This entire scenario was predicted by Colin Powell and communicated to President Bush prior to the invasion when Powell had dinner with the President and made his now famous Pottery Barn analogy.

We have strengthened Al Qaeda’s most powerful weapon, which is the ability to convince disenfranchised youth that the United States is on the march to expand its empire in the Middle East and eradicate the Muslim faith, and that they must give their lives for the jihad against us. We have also further weakened the United Nations, and set worldwide democracy back decades.

ON ISLAMIC RELATIONS

To understand the feelings of helplessness and ensuing hatred that cause tens of thousands of people to sacrifice their lives simply to kill westerners, one must look carefully at what has happened to Arabs over the past 100 years. 100 years ago, the state of Israel did not exist. Jerusalem, the location of the third holiest Muslim site for pilgrimage called "The Dome of the Rock", and the city of Hebron, another Holy Muslim site, had been under control of Arab Muslims for the previous 2000 years. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all lived scattered in these areas with some tension between them, and few major hostilities.

A good place to start is with the story of Thomas Edward Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence, who had always had a great interest in archeology, began his exploits in the middle East as a graduate student when set out completely on his own to photograph extremely remote desert archeological sites of great interest. In his travels, he found the Arabs to be extremely friendly hospitable to westerners. He never had to worry about where he would stay when he traveled, because the Bedouins would always invite him into their tents, where he would eat and sleep with their families. He grew very fond of this culture, and found many friends among the various tribes he encountered.

The photographs he brought back impressed many people, including his professors. He eventually secured a job as an assistant at the British Museum's excavation of the Hittite city of Carchemish, on the River Euphrates from 1910 to 1914. He distinguished himself quickly for his ability to motivate the Arabs working at the site without resorting to the traditional method of force.

When World War I broke out, Lawrence was back in London. He began working in the Geographical Section of the General Staff in London, and was then posted to the Military Intelligence Department in Cairo. Here he became an expert on Arab nationalist movements in the Turkish provinces that now comprise Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and the Hedjaz region of Saudi Arabia. His ability to gain the trust of the Arab leaders, combined with the quality of his reports, earned him the role of liaison officer in the Arab Revolt serving with the forces led by the Emir Feisal in their attempt to repel the German backed troops of the Ottoman empire.

The scope of my writing here does not justify exploring the details of Lawrence’s involvement in this war. However, if you have not done so already, I encourage you to explore this on your own. It is one of the most amazing stories I have ever encountered. Lawrence rode side by side with these Arab warriors on a camel, sabotaging railroads and bridges, and ambushing and defeating large Turkish mechanized infantry units with small bands of fighters on camels.

In the negotiations between Lawrence and Arab leaders, as he tried to convince the Arabs to fight with the Allies to expel the Turks and Germans from their homeland, the Arabs cited one condition. They would only join if they were promised by the allies that they could rule themselves once the war is over. Lawrence reported this condition to his superiors who, upon realizing how badly they needed the help of the Arabs, granted the condition. With the prospect of self rule in their sights, the Arabs fought valiantly and were pivotal in the war effort in that region.

Once the war ended, despite Lawrence’s fervent political efforts for the cause of Arab independence, the allies completely ignored the agreement they had made with the Arabs and divided up the spoils of war between them. Lawrence lobbied the ailing American President Woodrow Wilson to speak up for the Arabs during the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles, which began on January 18, 1919. While he was officially on the side of Arab independence, he pretty much turned his back on the issue. Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq) were duly allocated to France and Britain as mandated territories, leaving the Arabs under colonial rule.

By the end of 1920, the Arabs were in open revolt against the British attempts to impose colonial rule in Iraq. Winston Churchill, who was appointed to the Colonial Office to find a solution to the rebellion, persuaded Lawrence to become his adviser. Lawrence recommended the accession of his old friend the Emir Feisal to the throne of Iraq, and the formation of the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan (now Jordan). He also saw to it that both countries enjoyed a much greater degree of self government, although for the time being these countries were still colonies.

The various states in the region did eventually gain their independence as the concept of colonialism fell out of fashion. Egypt was the first to become independent in 1922, then Saudi Arabia in 1932, Jordan in 1946, Cyprus in 1951, and Kuwait in 1961. However, the fact that these regions contained vast amounts of oil insured that these governments would not be free of the meddling of western nations any time soon.

Since before W.W.I, Zionist-socialist organizations led by David Ben-Gurion had been active in the Palestinian territories. In 1915, Ben Gurion was expelled from the Palestinian territories for these activities. He returned after W.W.I to the now British governed territory to resume his political activities. In 1920, Palestine was designated by the League of Nations as a "National Home" for the Jewish people. During the 1920s and 30s, Palestine was inundated by waves of Jewish settlers, due to the fervent anti-Semitism all over Europe. Muslims and Jews had lived side by side in this region for the previous 2000 years with few problems, until the Jews began their quest to create a mono-theistic society by expelling the Muslims from their homes to make room for these waves of settlers.

These settlers, aided by militant Zionist groups such as Irgun or the Stern gang and by the Jewish Agency military organization Hagana, used extremely violent methods to drive out the Palestinians from their former homeland. Contrary to the perception of most westerners, the first bombings targeting civilians were not done by Palestinians against Jews, but by Jews against Palestinians. On March 17, 1937, hand grenades were exploded in Jerusalem cafes frequented by Palestinians. On July 6, 1938, delayed-action electrically timed mines were planted by Irgun members in crowded market places in Haifa. These tactics of expansionism by brutal intimidation, and repression of the angry displaced Palestinians continued unabated over the ensuing 69 years.

Because of a combination of factors including sympathy for the Jews because of the Holocaust, the closer relationship between Judaism and western Christianity than with the Islamic faith, and the large number of affluent Jews in the United States, our country has always turned a blind eye to these horrible injustices and consistently sided with Jews over the Palestinians. (See THE ISRAELI LOBBY ) This practice has not changed today, as was made obvious during the recent war in Lebanon when the United States sided with Israel and encouraged them to escalate the carnage while the rest of the world called for an immediate cease fire. In 1947, a UN resolution partitioned Palestine into a Jewish state, and an Arab state, thereby founding the State of Israel, and making these injustices permanent.

Israel has received ninety five billion dollars in financial and military aid from the United States since its inception. The amount per year is usually approximately one third of the entire US foreign aid budget, even though the population of Israel is .001 of the worlds population, and the per capita income of Israel population ranks them among some of the wealthier nations on earth. Unlike all other US aid recipients, Israel is not required to account for how it spends this aid, and it receives it in one lump sum at the beginning of the year, allowing it to collect interest on the unused balance throughout the year. All other recipients must use their aid for very specific purposes, and receive it in quarterly payments.

Since its inception, Israel has constantly encroached further and further into the Palestinian areas under the guise of improving security. First, radical Zionist fundamentalist settlers, who in my view are just as wacky as their jihadi counterparts, brazenly encroach into and Palestinian area, creating hostility in the Palestinians and resulting in violence that spills into more established areas. The Israeli military, using highly trained soldiers and state of the art military equipment against civilians armed with rocks, clears a "security zone" deep within the Palestinian area of all Palestinian inhabitants. Then the radical Zionist fundamentalists immediately settle this cleared area right to its outer edge, once again exposing themselves to further hostility and continuing the feedback loop and the advance. (See Israel's Next War? for more details.)

It always amazes me when, in discussions about the Palestinian situation, most Americans simply scoff at the Palestinians saying they have no right to try to reclaim land that has belonged to someone else for so long. It is the Israelis who, based on their own religious prophecy, have laid claim to land that was in possession of Palestinian Arabs for 2000 years. The Palestinians who were driven out of their homes have never accepted this, and have been fighting for justice and to stop further incursions over the past 100 years.

I suspect that people from just about any culture in the world would eventually end up resorting to extreme violence after enduring so many years of violent injustice against them. Of course, the fact that some of these people have now resorted to terrorist tactics, allows westerners to dismiss acknowledging or addressing any of the aforementioned injustices because that would be giving in to terrorism.

I agree that we should never cave in to the immediate demands of terrorist actions, but unless we find some way to acknowledge and atone for these injustices, the violence will only continue to escalate. This means our leaders will need to get tough with Israel, and push for more than token concessions in peace talks. It also means we will need to even out the playing field by reducing Israel’s and increasing Palestine’s financial and military aid to a point where some semblance of rationality and fairness exists. We will also need to learn to respect the people of the Arab world, and stop demonizing them and treating them like they are all terrorists.

ON THE IRAQ WAR

While the Bush administration would like you to believe that the invasion of Iraq was simply a reaction to 911, and to the perceived WMD threat and terrorist links, a close look at the architects of this invasion, and the process that led to it, leads me to believe otherwise.

Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, have an interesting history regarding Iraq. Rumsfeld and Cheney have worked together frequently since the 1970’s, when Rumsfeld brought in Cheney as an intern while working in President Nixon’s Cabinet. During the Ford administration, Rumsfeld was Chief of Staff, and later Secretary of Defense, and he once again brought in Cheney to work for him.

During the Reagan administration, Rumsfeld became Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East. During the Iran-Iraq war, he worked tirelessly to ensure that Saddam Hussein secretly received intelligence, military support, and financial aid from the United States and other benefactors. Rumsfeld also worked hard to enable American companies to do business with Saddam, allowing Saddam to buy the precursors he needed to make the chemical weapons he used against the Iranians and later the Kurds, as well as the military helicopters that Saddam used to deliver these weapons. All of this was contrary to both UN resolutions requiring all nations to abstain from aiding either Iran or Iraq, and against America’s own official stance of neutrality in this conflict.

Throughout this period, Rumsfeld continued pushing for more financial aid to Saddam, and succeeded in delivering another large aid package in 1988, just two weeks after Saddam used poison gas on the Kurds. He never publicly expressed any concern about Iraq’s possession or use of these weapons until August of 1990, during the week that Saddam invaded Kuwait.

It appears to me that Rumsfeld couldn't care less about the well being of any of the people in the Middle East or elsewhere, as long as he is able to manipulate powerful figures to achieve his or his boss’s immediate narrow-minded goals. His support of Saddam continued throughout the entire period of chemical weapons use, and ended only when Saddam demonstrated that he can no longer be controlled by the US. Cabled documents between George P. Shultz from the State Dept. and Rumsfeld, that were declassified by the freedom of information act, show that these men considered the United States public condemnation of Saddam’s chemical weapons use as a nuisance that interfered with their goals of completing a pipeline to deliver Iraqi oil to Aquaba, and other US regional interests.

One could say that this was a long time ago, and that Rumsfeld was working for administrations that did things differently than the current one. Let’s take a look at a more current assessment of Mr. Rumsfeld. In his book AMERICAN SOLDIER, General Tommy Franks writes, "Rumsfeld believed in realpolitic. He would fly halfway around the world for a sit-down meeting with Uzbek President Islam Karimov - whose human rights record was tarnished at best - in order to secure a vital K-2 air base for American operations in Afghanistan. He'd probably have shaken hands with the devil if that had furthered our goals in the war on terrorism." Well, it looks to me like he hasn't changed a whole lot! While I feel that the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan was absolutely necessary and justified, I do find it somewhat disturbing that this administration, which prides itself on never negotiating with terrorists to make peace, doesn't hesitate to negotiate with terrorists to make war.

It is this type of narrow minded approach to foreign policy, where our leaders focus on one single objective and then proceed to jump into bed with the slimiest, most oppressive, and murderous regimes on the planet to achieve that objective, that always comes back to bite us in the ass. For example, our strong-armed approach to foreign policy created the conditions that led to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and his radical Shiite following in Iran, by using the CIA to help overthrow Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. He was a popular and democratically elected leader who had the audacity to suggest that Iranians should be able to control their own oil. Instead, the US backed the Shah, who was corrupt and hated by the Iranian people, but amiable to the American demands. It is the backlash against this puppet government that led to the Khomeini uprising, and the radicalization of Iran.

The United States has used the CIA to help overthrow many democratically elected leaders all over Central and South America and replace them with brutal dictators in order to extract cheap oil and other commodities over the past century. In fact, this is still occurring today, as the CIA backed coup attempt against Hugo Chaves of Venezuela attests. See The War on Democracy for a thorough overview of this.

The US also helped create the conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban, and Osama Bin Laden, in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was very pro-western, and tolerant of various religions before the soviet invasion. The Sufi form of Islam, practiced by the majority of Afghan Muslims, is one of the most peaceful and tolerant forms of Islam in the world. In fact, the Sufi "Dance for Universal Peace" has long been a favorite of hippie and new age culture since the sixties. While I have no problem with the United States helping the Afghans repel the Soviet invasion, the CIA seemed to favor arming the brutal Islamist jihadis, who were mostly Wahhabis from our unlikely ally Saudi Arabia, or from the Saudi supported Madrases in Pakistan and elsewhere, rather than arming the tribal militias that were made up of indigenous fighters. The Wahhabis or Salafi, who dominate Saudi Arabia, are among the most oppressive, backwards, and militant people on face of the planet. They literally believe the world is flat!

In his very authoritative book, TALIBAN, which was published in 2000, correspondent Ahmed Rashid provides an interesting account of how this all took place. After a detailed description of the tribal structure that ruled Afghanistan before the Soviet Invasion, he wrote, "Prior to the war, the Islamicists barely had a base in Afghan society, but with money and arms from the CIA pipeline and support from Pakistan, they built one and wielded tremendous clout. The traditionalists and the Islamacists fought each other mercilessly so that by 1994, the traditional leadership in Kandahar had virtually been eliminated, leaving the field free for a new wave of even more extreme Islamacists, the Taliban." Of course, as soon as our narrow objective of repelling the Soviets was met, the Afghans were abandoned by the US to fend for themselves.

Getting back to the architects of the Iraq Invasion, during the Bush Sr. administration, Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense, and Paul Wolfowitz worked under Cheney. Rumsfeld was working mostly in the private sector, but was still involved in various committees within the government.

After Saddam invaded Kuwait, I felt Bush Sr. and his staff, aided by the moderating force of Gen. Colin Powell, did a great job both in convincing the United Nations to support the liberation of Kuwait, and in the actual task of liberating Kuwait. I must admit that I would have loved to see Saddam’s regime ended at that time, but I have the utmost respect for Bush Sr. for following the UN resolution, in spite of all the heat he took from the hawks in his administration and the Republican Party. It would have been nice if we could have at least helped the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings against Saddam with weapons and intelligence support, but it is my guess that this would not have been a desirable option to people like Cheney and Wolfowitz, who seem more interested in exerting control over the region, than creating self directed states. Here is an interesting video of Dick Cheney explaining the administrations reasons for not overthrowing Saddam in the Gulf War. Does this scenario sound familiar? Dick Cheney in 1994 on Iraq

Ahmed Chalabi also told Wolfowitz's intellegence team that Iraq had nuclear and biological weapons and links to Al Qaeda. During this time, Chalabi was known to just about everyone including me, apparently with the exception of everyone the Bush administration, as a crook who was in exile from Iraq not for his political views, but because he had defrauded many thousands of his fellow Iraqis while serving as chairman of Petra Bank in Jordan. He fled Jordan under mysterious circumstances in 1989 and was convicted in absentia of embezzlement, fraud and currency trading irregularities, and sentenced to 22 years hard labor.

From Chalabi interviews I had read, it appeared to me that he was trying manipulate the United States into installing him as Iraq’s new president, and it appears he came quite close to achieving his goal. When the State Department asked the Iraqi National Congress to participate in the "Future of Iraq Program" to try to create practical plans for post Saddam Iraq by drawing on well educated Iraqi businessmen and scholars for input, most of the INC members focused on infrastructure and peace keeping issues. Chalabi was only interested in who would rule, and you can guess whom his choice was. General Franks gave his impression of Chalabi in his book AMERICAN SOLDIER with the statement, "I met Chalabi only once, and while I was impressed with his sincerity, I was disappointed by his obvious view of his own importance, and his stated opinion that he could "easily" rally Iraq around himself."

After the invasion, when more and more people began to question the sources of the Bush administrations intelligence, the administration had Chalabi’s office searched, in an unsuccessful attempt to find any evidence validating the intelligence he supplied. Chalabi was also publicly challenged by a FRONTLINE reporter to produce this evidence, and Chalabi said he would produce it, but never did.

Greg Thielman calls the Bush administrations practices "faith based analysis", since they proceed in much the same way as religious thought. One starts with a pre-conceived idea of the truth, such as "The earth was created 6000 years ago". Then he picks out the two or three pieces of scientific evidence that, when taken out of context, could be used to support this, while ignoring the other billions of pieces of evidence to the contrary. Intelligence, when used in this manner, becomes propaganda rather than intelligence.

The majority of the aforementioned information on the discredited intelligence was readily available, before the invasion, to anyone who was willing to listen to credible investigative journalists rather than be spoon fed their information by the administration itself. Unfortunately, the fervent nationalism and fundamentalism present in our society after 911 caused most people to ignore the journalists.

The Bush administration’s false public statement, war planning, and troop deployments to Iraq, went on in spite of the fact that a classified memo was circulated though the administration by the Defense Intelligence Agency in Sept. of 2002, stating that there is no reliable intelligence that Iraq has chemical weapons. Around this time, the Pentagon Special Intelligence Office stated it was also having trouble establishing any links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The administration also continually made statements trying to discredit the UN and I.A.E.A. inspectors, insinuating that they are a bunch of bumbling idiots. These inspectors went on a wild goose chase visiting each site the Bush Administration claimed housed WMD, and found only what they knew was already there. Post war investigations showed that the containment strategy had actually worked, and that the UN and I.A.E.A had a very clear picture of what weapons and potential weapons were actually in Iraq, completely vindicating the inspectors and making US intelligence look like a joke.

On September 12, 2002, President Bush addressed the UN, citing most of the aforementioned discredited intelligence, and making it very clear that the United States intends to act with or without UN approval. This bullying maneuver probably ensured that certain member nations of the UN would not cooperate, no matter how well anyone argued the case from that point forward.

Bush went to the Senate on October 11, 2002, and used this discredited intelligence to get authorization to attack Iraq if Saddam refuses to give up his alleged WMD as required by the UN resolutions. It really pisses me off every time I hear President Bush state that the Senate gave him the authority to go to war, based on the same intelligence they had. The administration disclosed everything except the minor detail that they completely short-circuited the intelligence analysis system, so they could use discredited intelligence to make their case for war. It also infuriates me when they use the excuse that anyone who criticizes them for their actions is putting our soldiers in danger. If they had allowed an honest debate to take place before the invasion, it would not be necessary to have one during and after.

Once they received this authorization from the Senate, it was the intention of the administration to proceed directly to war, without any further attempts to convince the UN to authorize it. Colin Powell was adamantly against this, and was also opposed to the war plan, because of it’s low levels of troops on the ground, which he, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, and Secretary of the Army Thomas White, believed were grossly inadequate to keep order and prevent looting, damage to infrastructure, terrorist attacks, and delays in rebuilding, that could severely cripple the post war effort. Powell also warned that this war would most likely have a destabilizing affect on the entire region, and that removing this government would unleash a ruling Shea majority that would eventually result in a radical theocracy closely aligned with Iran. This would also create friction with the Sunnis and Kurds, who would not want to live under a Shea government.

Colin Powell arranged to have a private dinner with the president, where he warned of the likely consequences if we followed the current plan to go into Iraq. He used his now famous Pottery Barn analogy, "You break it, it’s yours." He managed to convince the Cabinet Foreign Policy Team to make one more try to bring in the UN. Powell offered to put his political career on the line and go to the UN himself, to make one last attempt to make the case for the overthrow of Saddam. (See the FRONTLINE documentary The War Behind Closed Doors for more details.)

On January 29, 2003, President Bush delivered his State of the Union Speech. The speech included this statement, which makes it clear that his administration views the UN not as a democratic body, but as an instrument to impose the will of the United States on the rest of the world:

"The United States will ask the UN Security Council to convene on February the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's -- Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors and its links to terrorist groups. We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. "

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell delivered his address to the UN, dutifully presenting the Bush Administrations case like the team player he has always been, while tainting his own brilliant career by using the discredited intelligence they sent him there with. Follow this link for more information: Colin Powell Interview

Meanwhile, Tommy Franks prepared for war. The first plans that General Franks brought to Rumsfeld, were very close to the 400,000 soldiers Powell, Shinseki, and White wanted in boots on the ground, until Rumsfeld beat him down on the numbers.

General Shinseki had overseen the Army’s peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, and had found he needed 40,000 troops to control the population of 2 million in that country. This situation is a very good model, because it had many of the same ethnic and religious tensions present in Iraq. Shinseki calculated he would need approximately 10 times that number to control Iraq’s population of 25 million, a soldier to citizen ratio slightly lower than Kosovo.

A tank commander named Col. Mc Greggor, who had a very promising strategy for small rapidly deployed forces, was referred to Rumsfeld by Newt Gingrich. His plan called for a force of 50,000 troops to be rapidly deployed, striking at the heart of Baghdad. Upon Rumsfeld’s request, Franks called Mc Greggor down to CENTCOM, and discussed his strategy with him.

Rumsfeld wanted Franks to go in using this plan only with 50,000 troops. Supposedly, he literally went through Franks’s list of forces, and crossed out things he didn’t think he needed. The numbers they finally settled on were a compromise between the two.

Keep in mind that Iraq is a piece of real estate roughly the size of California, with 25 million people in it, 6.5 million in Baghdad alone. Explain to me how any rational person can expect 50,000 soldiers, or even 140,000 (the number of boots on the ground in the actual invasion), no matter what they are armed with, to keep order after popping the lid of an oppressive dictatorship in a region of the world where anti American sentiments are about as high as they can possibly be.

On February 25, 2003, both General Shinseki and Thomas White testified in public hearing of the Armed Services Committee. They were asked their own assessments of the troops required on the ground, and both said several hundred thousand, and when pressed further Shinseki said around 400,000. Both stated that because of the ethnic tension, the large geographic area, and the large number of people in Iraq, it is the post hostility peace keeping that will require the high numbers of troops, not the actual war. Later, Paul Wolfowitz took the stand and stated that these numbers are ridiculous, and that it is hard to imagine that it would take more troops to keep the peace than to overcome Saddam’s troops.

Thomas White was fired by Donald Rumsfeld in April 2003 because he agreed with Shinseki's assessment of needed troop levels in Iraq. According to USA Today, "Rumsfeld was furious with White when the Army secretary agreed with Shinseki." On August 1, 2003, Rumsfeld replaced General Shinseki as Army Chief of Staff with General Peter J. Shoomaker. In 2002, Shinseki had announced his plans to retire in 2004. However, by announcing his successor a year before his planned retirement, Rumsfeld made Shinseki a lame duck General for the remainder of his career.

Our nation and our military have a huge amount of experience in post war peacekeeping and nation building. We occupied and rebuilt Germany and Japan, and have participated in many smaller conflicts and peacekeeping missions all over the world. The conventional wisdom that the military has gleaned from all this experience is that there are two different types of soldiers needed to win a war. There is the regular soldier, who fights the battles to defeat the enemy’s military, and the Military Police, who keep the peace after the hostilities cease.

The regular soldier is trained to resolve conflicts by killing the opponent as quickly and efficiently as possible. The MP has training more akin to that of a police officer. He is taught to interact with people, and try to resolve conflicts peacefully whenever possible. Conventional military wisdom also requires that large numbers of Military Police are in place to immediately flood into areas that are taken by the regular soldiers, to prevent the looting and general lawlessness that inevitably follows a large military conflict.

Post war situations have been intensely studied by scholars such as Robert M. Perito, who advised the Bush administration on Iraq. He studied the post war situations in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and Haiti. He warned that there is a high likelihood of post war violence in post war Iraq. Practically every major conflict in recent history has been followed by a period of general lawlessness and looting, and has required a large number of soldiers to restore law and order. Afghanistan had a fairly low level of post war unrest, but this can be attributed to the fact that the people liberating and occupying it were mostly indigenous fighters who knew the language and culture. Using indigenous fighters was clearly not an option in Iraq, because very few Iraqis were willing to stick their necks out and trust the US after Saddam’s retaliation against the Shiites and Kurds for the failed uprisings after Desert Storm.

On March 19, 2003 the invasion began. As expected, thanks once again to the brilliant tactics of Tommy Frank’s and his cohorts, the defeat of Saddam’s military went relatively smoothly, especially when considering what he was given to work with by Rumsfeld. The military defeat resulted in only 150 American deaths. However, once this was accomplished, the winning of the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people was postponed indefinitely. The nature of the invasion plan Franks was forced to use, precluded the possibility of having the troops in place to keep order once the invasion was completed. 250,000 military police, engineers, and logistics personnel would need to magically appear overnight all over Iraq.

The small numbers of heavily armed soldiers present in the post conflict Iraq found themselves able to do nothing but protect themselves and watch as Iraqis looted everything remotely valuable from buildings, even stripping the drywall from the walls. Commanders on the ground in Iraq, who were interviewed in the PBS documentaries, say they probably could have helped some, but they were not given orders to even try until the entire infrastructure was destroyed. At the point where they were finally instructed to put a stop to the looting and the gathering insurgency, the act of doing so would become a war in itself, with many times the casualties.

The team in charge of the rebuilding effort was not allowed to leave Kuwait until several days after the fall of Baghdad for security reasons. When they were finally brought in and set up in one of Saddam’s palaces, there were no vehicles available to transport them anywhere, and no communications gear for them to use. They were completely powerless to do anything for weeks. Once they were finally able to move around, all the buildings they had planned to set up operations in were completely stripped bare, right down to the structural members. All the infrastructure elements needed to rebuild Iraq suffered a similar fate.

The lack of immediate security also resulted in large amounts of high explosives, and even some radioactive material suitable for dirty bombs, to disappear from sources being previously monitored by the UN and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. At a huge facility called Al Qaqaa, 342 tons of conventional explosives including 195 tons of HMX, 141 tons of RDX, and 6 tons of PETN, disappeared during or shortly after the invasion. The explosives had been discovered and sealed by the UN inspectors, and reported to the I.A.E.A. The inspectors had verified the quantities in January of 2003. The I.A.E.A. first tried to quietly alert the U.S and military to no avail, and then publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the invasion. I heard this warning myself on NPR. The I.A.E.A. tried to warn the US military again during the invasion, but was ignored. (See Letter dated 25 October 2004 from the Secretary-General for more details.)

At Al Tuwaitha, a nuclear research facility that has been closely monitored by the I.A.E.A. since the Gulf War, approximately 10 kg of uranium compounds are unaccounted for after looters unsealed two of the storage buildings and ransacked them during or shortly after the invasion. Since the Gulf War, the I.A.E.A. had remove all highly enriched nuclear materials, and destroyed or rendered inoperative all the equipment used for enrichment activities. The low level wastes and contaminated materials were stored in sealed and monitored areas on site until the invasion left them completely unprotected.

General Jay Garner was initially put in charge of the post war planning by the Pentagon. He opted to take an approach that roughly followed the recommendations of the State Department. Huge amounts of work had been done by the State Department and prominent Iraqis in the "Future of Iraq Program" to plot an effective strategy for post war Iraq. (See Beyond Baghdad for reporting during this time period.

Upon realizing this, Donald Rumsfeld quickly replaced Garner with Paul Bremmer, and opted instead to control the entire operation from the Pentagon. Contrary to the plans of the State Department and Colin Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bremmer decided on a debaathification strategy. This would disband the Iraqi military, and exclude any members of the Baath party, even involuntary ones, from holding any public service jobs. The State Department had considered these options and concluded that this would cripple the rebuilding effort by placing and undo burden on the already thinly stretched military to provide security, and would render the entire infrastructure inoperative. It would also place tens of thousands of armed men out of work and in a position where they would be very likely to engage in armed rebellion. (See The Lost Year in Iraq for more details.)

Upon the fall of Baghdad, polls showed that around 50% of Iraqis viewed the coalition forces as liberators rather than occupiers. This number fell steadily from this point forward reaching 2% by the time sovereignty was handed over. (See Major General Paul D. Eaton's testimony before the DPC )

In the successful historical models of occupations and nation building, when large numbers of troops are immediately available to confidently ensure relative peace, the soldiers and the indigenous population may interact readily to begin rebuilding the infrastructure together. This face to face interdependence helps diffuse the tension between soldiers and their former enemy. In Iraq, after three years of occupation, we have still not reached a point where this type of interaction is possible on a large scale. Instead, our soldiers are forced to be either in a constant state of high alert and defensiveness, or on the attack looking for the bad guys. The numbers of innocent civilians being killed every day, a number the administration. goes out of its way to avoid knowing, continually inflames the populace to higher and higher levels, making any long term peace almost impossible.

In the successful historical models the soldiers also lived in close proximity, and in similar living conditions, with the indigenous population. This reduced the feelings of disparity between them. In Iraq, the aforementioned security issues, combined with our down-sized military’s widespread use of private contractors for both security and logistics, made this approach impossible.

In Iraq, American soldiers live in giant and quite luxurious military bases that are walled off from any contact with the indigenous population, surrounded by concrete barriers and razor wire, and staffed with tens of thousands of civilians working for private contractors such as KBR. Veteran officer Col. Thomas X. Hammes attributes some of the problems he had with counter insurgency in Vietnam to this sort of separation between the troops and the indigenous population.

KBR, a subsidiary of Haliburton, does the equivalent of 30 battalions worth of logistical support for the US military. Dick Cheney originally hired Haliburton as a consultant during the down-sizing of the post cold war military when he was Secretary of Defense in the Bush Sr. administration. When he left office, he slipped into the cozy position of President of Haliburton. Now Cheney is the United States VP, and Haliburton is raking in the bucks on account of his actions. What a small world!

The presence of large numbers of civilians, combined with the minimal presence of military security forces, has led to huge problems with ambushes and kidnappings, especially with the convoys bringing in supplies for the military bases. It seems to me that the old model, where trained military personnel do the logistics, makes much more sense. With the old model, the soldiers doing the logistics can perform some of their own security when the shit hits the fan. One also has to wonder how many human lives it is worth for our soldiers to have several different flavors of ice cream available.

The widespread use of private contractors for security in Iraq has also caused problems for our troops, and inflamed the Iraqis. The security needed for the out-sourced logistics and rebuilding efforts is provided not by the military, but by private security companies hired by the contractors. These security companies hire mercenaries, with varying degrees of experience and training, from all over the world, and turn them loose in Iraq often with very little additional training and equipment. These mercenaries are not subject to the rules of engagement, command structure , or ethical obligations of the US and coalition military forces, nor are they likely to have the same sense of pride and duty as a regular soldier of an all volunteer army. (See A Soldier's Heart and A Company of Soldiers for a look at our brave and dedicated soldiers under very trying circumstances.)

These mercenaries blast around Iraq in groups of unarmored SUVs, shooting at anyone who looks threatening, and running people off the road. In the PBS FRONTLINE documentary Private Warriors , Interviews with commanders on the ground in Iraq describe how, in many cases, the military plans to engage the populace and begin the rebuilding effort were thwarted by the presence of these security contractors. After inflaming the residents, they end up getting themselves ambushed and killed. This generates an order from the military command to pacify the area, so the local commanders are forced to come in with guns blazing, rather than peacefully as they would prefer.

To the Iraqis, the private security contractors represent America just as much as our soldiers do, yet America has practically no means of holding these mercenaries accountable for their actions when they indiscriminately kill civilians. About the worst that could happen to them, is that the contractor who hired the security contractor may lose their contract, but even this is highly unlikely. Here is a link that will show you our presidents deep understanding of the aforementioned situation: President Bush on laws governing private contractors in Iraq.

It is my opinion that, in their zeal to prove their transformational military, Rumsfeld and company threw out the baby with the bath water, and created an international incident that will haunt us for decades. This war has proven to me, that no matter how well armed or well planned an invasion is, when the enemy’s army is vanquished, you must have lots of real human beings on the ground to deal with the aftermath. The fact that our military can outmaneuver, outgun, outbomb, and outsmart our enemies using far fewer troops than they throw at us, has been common knowledge for a long time. The idea to go in with too few troops has been around for a while too, but it has been resisted until Iraq, because the people at the top were rational enough to listen the people who knew why it’s bad idea to try.

The Iraq war has also proven something to me that was publicly stated again and again by many moderates prior to the invasion of Iraq. It has proven that for the most part, conventional warfare is counter productive in fighting Al Qaeda. Their mobility, adaptability, and decentralized cell structure, makes even our current highly mobile military seem slow and cumbersome. Our purposes can be much better served by quiet intelligence gathering and small scale precisely targeted interventions. Turning the theater into a war zone just creates an optimal environment for Al Qaeda to flourish. Also, I question how attacking a Muslim country that was almost completely devoid of any Wahhabi, Al Qaeda, Jihadi, or Taliban activity prior to the invasion has helped in the war on terrorism. (See the FRONTLINE documentary The Insurgency for more details.)

As predicted by the many critics of the Iraq war, the diversion of resources to Iraq shortly after the initial American/British invasion of Afghanistan allowed the majority of the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to escape across the border into the tribal areas of Pakistan such as Peshawar, where the Pakistani government has little or no control over their activities, and where they have resided and gained strength ever since. This blunder is now coming to fruition with the powerful resurgence of cross border Taliban activity in Afghanistan at a time when American forces are dangerously over deployed and bogged down in Iraq in a disastrous war that we now MUST somehow win in order to prevent a situation that will be far worse in orders of magnitude than Afghanistan was under the Taliban. (See Return of the Taliban for more details.) This war has killed anywhere from 30,000 to possibly over 100,000 civilians, inflamed the entire Muslim world (which consists of 1.3 billion people or 1/5 of the worlds population), and has probably created tens of thousands in not millions of new terrorists.

While the prospect of these terrorist acquiring nuclear or biological weapons is frightening to say the least, the truth of the matter is that they really don't need them. Look at what they accomplished with a few box cutters! One interesting aspect of the Taliban and Al Qaeda movements is that they seem to thrive by using the simplest weapons, which are often improvised from whatever is available. I recently saw an interview with a Taliban leader residing in the tribal areas of Pakistan who was bragging how he is fighting the United States and all their high tech weapons using a rifle that was originally used by his forefathers to fight the British in the last century. Weapons can be improvised anywhere out of anything! You cannot take away their weapons.

The primary strength of these movements is not in their weapons. It is in their ability to motivate large numbers of people to participate in a jihad against us. The jihad is an interesting adaptation in the Muslim faith that gives this religion a powerful edge in self preservation. All the major religions owe their success to their incorporation of mechanisms that help propagate and preserve the religion. For instance, all the major religions have some form of divine punishment simply for doubting or questioning the existence of their God, or in some cases for questioning important aspects of the religion. This feature is amazingly effective at causing huge numbers of otherwise quite rational people to swallow some pretty tall tales.

Islam has gone a step further, and has incorporated a mechanism that obligates all Muslims of all the various sects to join a self sacrificial holy war any time a group of clerics decides, during a fatwa, that the religion as a whole is threatened and declares a Jihad. Islam also takes full advantage of another mechanism called martyrdom, which is a very effective tool that was instrumental in the survival of Christianity during the Roman empire. Basically, if you do anything that could be construed as threatening the Muslim religion, you risk having 1.3 billion people mobilized in a jihad against you, and martyrdom ensures that for every one you kill, ten more will stand up to take his place. (See Son of Al Qaeda for a glimpse of how this is happening.

Now that we are occupying a largely hostile Iraq, we are left with no desirable option. To cut and run would surely leave Iraq in a condition more dangerous to the rest of the world than Afghanistan was under the Taliban. To stay means sacrificing possibly thousands more American lives to create a government that, if allowed to practice true self direction, will be a Shiite dominated theocracy that is quite oppressive and closely aligned to Iran. If we stay, and apply pressure to turn it into the kind of government we would like to see there, it will be dismissed as a puppet government or empire of the United States, creating a permanent magnet for terrorists in a hornets nest of them. I truly hope we can somehow salvage this situation, but it doesn’t look terribly promising to me.

Currently, it appears that the Bush administration once again plans to ignore all the expert advice it has been given by its own military commanders, the Baker Commission, and the American people, by sending more troops to Iraq in the form of a so called "troop surge". Once again, the administration has ousted those who advised against its preconceived policy such as, General John P. Abizaid – Head of US Central Command, General George W. Casey – US Ground Commander in Iraq, and General Peter J. Schoomaker – Army Chief of Staff, and brought in new generals who are willing to toe the party line.

After the invasion of Iraq, the United States once again found itself in need of intelligence on the insurgency, and needing to deal with large numbers of prisoners. General Ricardo Sanchez put General Janice Karpinsky in charge of the prison system in Iraq. Sanchez was under tremendous pressure from Donald Rumsfeld to supply intelligence from the prisoners. Because they needed room for many thousands of prisoners, the 280 acre site of Saddam Hussain’s most feared prison, Abu Ghraib, was chosen in spite of the fact that it was in a very insecure location in the middle of a very hostile combat zone.

Abu Ghraib found itself overwhelmed by the number of prisoners it was receiving. Soldiers were raiding homes based on vague tips on enemy locations, and bringing in just about anyone they encountered inside, even though most appeared to have no involvement in any organized resistance. Meanwhile, the pressure from Rumsfeld for intelligence was increasing.

General Sanchez had heard the President declare that the detainees are "unlawful combatants" so he decided he could do the same. He had Capt. William Ponce Jr. send an e-mail to Military Intelligence at Abu Ghraib saying, "The gloves are coming off. Casualties are mounting. We need to start gathering information to protect our soldiers from any further attacks."

Donald Rumsfeld, in his perpetual impatience, also personally inspected the prison in the middle of 2003. He recommended that General Jeffrey Miller should do an inspection of Abu Ghraib and recommend a course of action. In August of 2003, Miller brought in his team for an inspection. He recommended that they "GITMOIZE" Abu Ghraib. Miller and Karpinsky clashed. Miller told Karpinsky that they are too nice to the prisoners. He said they need to treat the prisoners like dogs.

General Sanchez subsequently authorized similar techniques to those used at GITMO, including allowing the military police to participate in the interrogations. He posted Rumsfeld’s list of extended methods, and encouraged the interrogators to be creative.

It’s bad enough that Rumsfeld experimented with torture at a very remote and top secret military base, where at least the abhorrent behavior can be somewhat contained. How could anyone expect to let the genie out of the bottle smack dab in the middle of a war zone, and not have it spread like a wildfire in the Santa Ana winds?

One of the reasons that conventional military doctrine has always espoused extremely strict discipline throughout all levels of the military, is to prevent these types of abuses. Wars are always full of high levels of hostility. Even within an environment of strict discipline and adherence to the Geneva Convention, abuses always happen in wars when soldiers whose comrades have been blown to bits by the enemy have to look after enemy prisoners.

As any rational person would expect, the prisoner abuse spread all over Iraq. FRONTLINE has interviews with several people who have firsthand accounts of this. According to an interrogator on active duty in Iraq, who withheld his name for fear of retribution, the abusive behavior spread like wildfire throughout Iraq. In September of 2005, Army Captain Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne stated in an interview that he witnessed prisoner abuse throughout Iraq.

SPC Anthony Lagourams, who was an interrogator for the US Army from 2001 to 2005, says he used dogs to intimidate prisoners and thought it was allowed until after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. During this time, he always made his Chief Warrant Officer sign off on every technique he used on a prisoner. Lagourams also witnessed interrogators in Mosel in the spring of 2004 using ice water to lower the body temperature of prisoners to near hypothermia conditions. They had heard about this technique from Navy seals. These same people also used dogs to intimidate the prisoners. Lagourams says he also heard of many instances where soldiers tortured people in their homes to try to extract information, by smashing their feet or hands.

On May 2, 2004, Senator John Mc Cain asked Donald Rumsfeld what the instructions to the guards at Abu Ghraib were. Rumsfeld tried to dodge the question several times. When Mc Cain pressed him he said, "They were instructed to follow the Geneva Conventions." What a bastard!

The threat of torture is not limited to prisoners from the battlefield either. Anyone anywhere on the planet is subject to random acts of torture at the hands of that bastion of freedom and liberty, the United States. On December 6, 2005, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a German citizen named Khaled El-Masri aimed at George Tenet for crimes against international and American law in the course of an extraordinary rendition. El-Masri was abducted by the CIA and flown to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned and tortured. The CIA eventually figured out they had the wrong guy and released him. "OOPS. sorry. Hope there are no hard feelings. Just doing our jobs to protect all of us." See the Frontline documentary Extraordinary Rendition and the Mother Jones article Are We Better Off for more information.

Please be assured, my position against torture is not derived from any feelings of sympathy for the savages who commit terrorist acts. As John Mc Cain so eloquently put it, "It’s not about who they are, it’s about who WE are." Going down this road will very quickly rot the very foundation on which our nation stands. In The Torture Question , they included home videos made by the soldiers themselves of the appalling behavior that went on in the in the barracks at Abu Ghraib. This gives one a glimpse of what torture does to the people who participate in inflicting it. We are becoming our enemy!

This administration is doing things that are hitting very close to my own home, and which send a chill down my spine. One example has to do with the many friends I have who work for NASA either at JPL or Caltech. There are several people in the group of friends I ride mountian bikes and ski with weekly, who have built instruments, written software, or otherwise participated in the massive amounts of atmospheric research conducted by NASA to answer the many questions related to the theory of global warming. Up until a couple years ago, whenever someone in our group would spout some unsubstantiated statement that assumes the global warming theory to be proven in their presence, these people would always come forward and point out that there just isn’t enough scientific data available to prove or disprove this theory yet.

Now, after scientist all over the world have spent three decades gathering data and analyzing it, publishing their work in respected scientific journals such as “NATURE” and “SCIENCE”, and challenging and recreating each others work with the time honored practice of peer review, the results are in and they are pretty unnerving. See NOVA "Fastest Glacier" & NOVA "Stronger Hurricanes" for a small taste.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration does not like these results because they don’t not fit into its energy and business agenda. Their solution was to quietly issue a mandate that NASA is to fund no new projects addressing global warming, and to send word through the NASA public relations department that it is forbidden for any NASA employee to take a public position on global warming.

They also assigned a young political operative named George Deutsch to manage the media relations of James E. Hansen, the NASA scientist from Goddard who in 1976 accidentally discovered the connection between carbon dioxide and atmospheric warming. Hansen noticed, while serving as principal investigator on the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, that the super hothouse atmosphere of Venus was composed of 95 percent carbon dioxide. This spurred his curiosity about the affects of human emitted carbon dioxide here on earth and opened up this very important field of research.

Hansen was instructed by his bosses at NASA that all press releases must be cleared by George Deutsch, his minder. Deutsch, who’s only qualifications for the job were having worked on the Bush Cheney reelection campaign, and a journalism degree from Texas A&M which was quickly exposed as a fraud, attempted to censor large portions of Hansens work until this scandal was exposed, mainly because of Hansens refusal to cooperate. After this was exposed, NASA did issue new rules protecting the rights of scientist to communicate their work, but the thought that this Cold War Soviet style censorship of scientist was attempted by our current administration makes me shiver! See FRONTLINE "Hot Politics" for more information on the politics of global warming.

Another example of things that are hitting very close to home, is that I recently found out from a newsletter from my congressman Adam Schiff, that the IRS is threatening to revoke the tax exempt status of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena because Reverend George Regas made some anti war statements in a sermon. For very good reason, our tax codes make it very clear that churches that seek tax exempt status must avoid endorsing political candidates. Without this rule, political organizations could funnel money through church organizations to avoid campaign finance reform laws, and cause very sticky separation of church and state issues.

Even though I have several friends who are members of this church, and I have attended a wedding and some musical performances there, I wouldn’t be bothered much by this if I didn’t know that President Bush is in office primarily because the evangelical church openly and unabashedly endorsed him for president. throughout both of his campaigns. These churches have yet to receive any punishment under this law. All Saints is admittedly a very liberal organization, and Regas was certainly dancing right on top of the line in his sermon, but I do not believe he crossed it, as I know these evangelical churches did. Interestingly, many of these evangelical churches are coming to the defense of All Saints, claiming they have an altruistic motive to protect freedom of speech. I believe it has more to do with the fact that they know if All Saints loses its tax exempt status, practically every evangelical church in the nation will lose its tax exempt status in the ensuing backlash..

For the Bush administration to use the IRS to try to punish its critics under separation of church and state laws is just outlandish to me, especially when it has made every effort to blur the lines between church and state by creating the “Faith based Initiatives Program” (See the FRONTLINE documentary The Jesus Factor for more details.), by pushing to make abortion illegal based on their religious convictions (See the FRONTLINE documentary The Last Abortion Clinic for more details.), by supporting prayer in public schools, by replacing medically and scientifically based sex education and public health programs with religiously based abstinence only programs, and by supporting the teaching of creationism under the guise of “Intelligent Design” in public schools (See the NOVA documentary Judgement Day for more details).

I also find it laughable that this administration can’t seem to grasp why, in light of all the aforementioned breaches of trust, the American people might be a little hesitant to trust them with secret phone taps on domestic phones without proper judicial oversight. An instrument already exists to legally accomplish their goal. This instrument, called FISA, has granted 99.97% of the administrations requests. Doing it legally would not have generated any publicity whatsoever, while doing it in the manner they did, broadcast it to the entire world at the expense of national security. (See the FRONTLINE documentary Spying On The Homefront for more details.) It appears to me that their motivation to use this tactic has more to do with the expansion of presidential power, a cause that has been a focus of Dick Cheney’s entire career, rather than national security. (See the FRONTLINE documentaries Cheney's Law and The Dark Side for more details.) What worries me, is that if they are already using the IRS to punish their critics, how long will it be before they use domestic spying? Personally, I don’t trust them as far a I can spit.

My question to you is, “How much farther are you willing to let all this go?” We live in a country whose leaders:

1. Have knowingly used discredited intelligence as propaganda to justify the preemptive invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of international law.

3. Have overridden several of there own military leaders sound judgment, causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths with no end in sight.

4. Have tried to censor some of the nation’s top scientists on issues that could potentially cause a global catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions.

5. Have done more to dismantle the separation of church and state than any administration in our history.

8. Kidnap people worldwide, hold them without trial, and send them to countries where they can be tortured.

If we don’t speak up soon, we could end up living in a cold war Soviet style society with no more choice in the matter.