“NOT GOOD ENOUGH” – BALTIMORE SUN, MARYLAND

* “The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on elevating Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court were about as instructive for what he did not say as for what he did. In 3 1/2 days of statements and testimony, there was no "smoking gun" revelation, but there was a troubling erosion of confidence and comfort in his responses that warrant a rejection of his nomination… Perhaps Judge Alito is as good as could be expected from a conservative Republican administration, but for a lifetime appointment to the nation's highest court and with the prospect that hard-won rights could be diminished, he's not good enough.” Read.


“ALITO WRONG FOR SUPREME COURT” – GRAND FORKS HERALD, NORTH DAKOTA

* “Alito reads the Constitution and finds more power for the government and fewer rights for individuals. This apparent indifference to individual rights is disturbing. It runs counter to American history, which proves that human rights are won through political and legal struggle. Alito's point of view has implications beyond the hot-button issues that dominated the hearings. For example, he has not been sympathetic to the rights of individuals or interest groups to bring environmental lawsuits. This fits his perceived judicial philosophy, favoring institutions more than individuals. Alito's apparent sympathy for a more powerful executive is especially worrisome in this regard. George Bush has pushed presidential power to levels not imagined by any of his predecessors, and a Supreme Court sympathetic to that position could give him license to go farther.” Read.

“CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS HANGING IN THE BALANCE” – SACRAMENTO BEE, CALIFORNIA

* “Alito seems willing to go further than the current court in overturning laws passed by Congress. Alito has shown throughout his career that he has a cramped view of congressional power and an expansive view of presidential power. That, surely, is a prime reason why Bush nominated him. Are members of Congress of both parties going to stand up against this corrosive agenda? If not now, when?” Read.

“ALITO NO ES PARA LA SUPREMA CORTE” (ALITO IS NOT FOR THE SUPREME COURT) – LA OPINION, CALIFORNIA

* “lito has the legal and professional experience to be nominated to the Supreme Court, but he lacks the judicial philosophy that guarantees that the highest court will follow the path of justice for all Americans. Alito, if confirmed, would break the equilibrium and the Court would begin to lean towards a vision that would be prejudicial to individual rights. With regard to Hispanics and the current immigration debate, this could be a disaster. (Translated from the original Spanish.) Read.

“ALITO: EVASIONS AND RESERVATIONS” – ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, MISSOURI

* [I]n 15 years as a judge on the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Mr. Alito compiled a record that is far more conservative than the mild-mannered opinions he expressed in four days in the witness chair. If confirmed, he is likely to join with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and possibly Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., to form a solid conservative bloc on the court for years to come. There is little doubt that Mr. Alito has the intellectual heft for the high court. Nor is there any question that he is a gracious colleague and a decent man. But evasiveness, however pragmatic it might be, becomes troubling when it segues into disingenuousness. His fuzzy memory about his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group notoriously hostile to minority and women's rights, was simply not credible. Much more troubling was his waffling on questions about the powers of the president and reproductive rights. Read.

“NOT FIT FOR THE COURT” – BOSTON GLOBE, MASSACHUSETTS

* “SAMUEL ALITO tells a moving and very American personal story about the path his immigrant father took to raise a son who would one day be poised to sit on the US Supreme Court. But Judge Alito's judicial philosophy, his written record of court decisions, and his unconvincing, sometimes evasive, answers in his nomination hearings far outweigh the personal appeal. He should not be sent to the Supreme Court, where he could reverse the progress this nation has made toward lifting precisely the kinds of barriers his father struggled to overcome. In four days of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Alito appeared contained and well informed. But Americans who were concerned about his views on presidential power, privacy, and minority rights heard little to have those fears allayed.” Read.

“THE JUDGE OF BUSH’S DREAMS” – THE OREGONIAN

* “As a presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush promised to nominate Supreme Court justices who would oppose abortion rights and align with the court's two most conservative and out-of-the-mainstream members, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. President Bush has fulfilled that promise with the nomination of Samuel Alito. If senators give Alito a lifetime seat on the divided court, they must acknowledge the consequences of that decision. A vote to confirm Alito is likely to be a vote to increase presidential authority, expand the government's power over individuals, compromise privacy rights and overturn Roe v. Wade.” Read.

“ALITO’S ‘OPEN MIND’” – SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, CALIFORNIA

* “Unlike Roberts, Alito stopped short of characterizing the 1973 Roe ruling, which established abortion rights for women, as settled law. Instead, under repeated questioning, he merely called it "an important precedent" that should be taken into consideration in future cases… Americans are left to wonder what happened in Alito's life over the past 20 years to reach his current ‘open mind’ on basic matters of privacy and equality -- or whether his real views are being kept locked up for strategic reasons during the confirmation hearings.” Read.

“THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY AT WORK” – NEW YORK TIMES

* “Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right. The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power.” Read.

“ALITO NOMINATION – TIME ISN’T RIGHT” – SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, WASHINGTON

* “Early in his career, Alito outlined a strategy to erode the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights. That should be a particular concern for this state, with its history of support for women's rights and reproductive rights. Long before al-Qaida, there was Alito, then an assistant to the U.S. Solicitor Ggeneral, writing a 1984 memo proclaiming that government officials should be able to order domestic wiretaps without fear of legal retaliation by their subjects. Almost every worry about the Bush administration goes back to its arrogant, sweeping view of executive powers. There again, one finds Alito. In 1986, as The Washington Post reported, he outlined an idea, picked up occasionally by President Reagan and used frequently by President Bush, of having the executive issue his own view of legislation he signed. Although courts haven't paid much attention, the aim is to give the president more say in how laws passed by Congress are interpreted. Read.

Abramoff, the GOP loyalist who White House spokesman Scott McClellan claims Bush doesn’t know, was a key player in Bush’s transition team after the disputed 2000 Presidential election. Abramoff, working on Interior Department transition issues, attended a number of meetings with Bush during the transition.

“Bush tapped Abramoff as member of his Presidential Transition Team, advising the administration on policy and hiring at the Interior Department, which oversees Native American issues,” writes Richard Wolfe and Holly Baily in Newsweek. “That level of close access to Bush, DeLay and other GOP leaders has been cited by many of the Indian tribes who hired Abramoff with hopes of gaining greater influence with the administration and Congress on gaming issues.”

Although McClellan claims Bush did not meet with Abramoff, another White House spokesman, Erin Healy, said last year that "they may have met on occasion. After the Abramoff scandal broke, Healy amended her statement to add that the President “did not consider him a close friend” and claimed the White House had limited contact with the lobbyist. McClellan Tuesday claimed he could find only two contacts between the White House and Abramoff.

Yet public lobbying records filed by Abramoff’s firm show the lobbyist made 195 lobbying contacts with the administration on issues for the Marianas islands alone during Bush’s first 10 months in office. Abramoff lobbied to preserve the American territorial islands -- notorious for their "Made in the USA" sweatshops -- as exempt from federal minimum wage standards.

Two key players on Abramoff's lobbying team wound up with Bush administration jobs: Patrick Pizzella, named an assistant secretary of labor by Bush; and David Safavian, chosen by Bush to oversee federal procurement policy in the Office of Management and Budget.

In fact, Abramoff’s close ties with Bush go back to 1997 when the then Governor of Texas wrote a letter on the lobbyist’s behalf supporting his Marianas island client’s school choice proposal.

“I hope you will keep my office informed on the progress of this initiative,” Bush said in the July 18, 1997, letter, which included a CC to an Abramoff deputy.

Although they now try to distance themselves from the disgraced lobbyists, key Bush allies once openly embraced Abramoff as one of their own.

“What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs," Grover Norquist, another Bush confidant, told The National Journal in 1995.

“I know Jack Abramoff,” admitted former National Republican Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, who adds that lobbyists like Abramoff “are Republicans; they were Republicans before they were lobbyists.”

In April 2002, The National Journal reported: "Last summer, in an effort to raise the visibility of his Indian clients, Abramoff helped arrange a White House get-together on tax issues with President Bush for top Indian leaders, including Lovelin Poncho, the chairman of the Coushattas." Poncho first denied the meeting took place, but later changed his story in an interview with the Texas Observer. He now confirms Abramoff attended the meeting with Bush and says Bush greeted the lobbyist warmly “like an old friend.”

Poncho says his tribe paid Abramoff $25,000 to arrange the May 2002 meeting with Bush.

Abramoff came up through GOP ranks with Norquist and conservative Christian leader Ralph Reed. All enjoyed unfettered access to Bush and worked closely with Bush’s Machiavellian political advisor Karl Rove.

In 2001, Abramoff recommended one of his key assistants, Susan Ralston, to Rove, who was looking for a new key advisor. She is still with Rove.

In 2003, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a Seattle radio host and activist, urged friends and colleagues to send campaign contributions to Bush via Abramoff, often praising the lobbyist on his show as “a good and personal friend of the President.”

“While White House aides now speak privately (and anonymously) about the need to clean up Congress in the wake of lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s guilty pleas in an influence-peddling scandal, there’s no sense of them taking the lead on what used to be a signature issue—before they came to Washington,” writes Wolfe and Bailey. “One reason may be their own reluctance to acknowledge their own ties to Abramoff, the one-time master of the lobbying universe.”

Originally Published and © Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

Everyone who attended a coffee at the White House during the Clinton Administration had their name printed in the Washington Post and New York Times. The press DEMANDED that information. But, we know the Bush White House repeatedly welcomed Jack Abramoff -- who is both a major GOP fundraiser (a Bush Pioneer, no less) and a convicted felon in part because of his GOP-related shenanigans -- yet, the Bush White House doesn't have to provide details. Is the traditional media really that weak? If they ask too many questions or push too hard, maybe they won't get a Presidential nickname...that would really suck for them.

There's a history to Scotty and the crew stonewalling about their more notorious allies. Remember, they never fully explained how that man-whore Jeff Gannon managed all that repeat business at the White House either.

Sadly, the America people have yet to reach a point when they will tolerate no more of this obvious fraudulent regime. They have made every effort to silence any and all data coming from Iraq and Afghanistan save that that is filtered through US Army censors. Further, though this regime has already bombed hell out of Al Jazeera and apparently had plans to do this again. Every non (in bed with) journalist wakes each day with no certainty of seeing the next. Not because of Iraqi fire, but from American fire. So desperate is this regime to keep a sorry theater going that it is willing to commit any sort of crime to foul the efforts of honest journalists whose only desire is to bring the truth out of these war torn, clearly failed states. To bring the truth of the historic crimes committed by US military, and American Multinational Corporations.

Secret prisons in Romania and Poland, Uzbekistan, and now North Africa. Of course, while not forgetting GITMO. This is the very behavior of depots such as Josef Stalin. Kangaroo courts that have no resemblance to real jurisprudence whatever. Even now, the regime is considering releasing Mr. Padilla after detaining this American citizen without consideration of the rights his citizenship allegedly guarantee him. Hundreds of these "prisoners" are being released as the regime finally realizes that just roaming the world kidnapping Arabs very likely won't stop terrorism. People who haven't seen their families in years just being tossed out with no ceremony whatever, not even an apology for the crimes committed against them. Crimes such as beatings, electrical shocks, food and sleep deprivation to mention only a few which by all definitions is clearly and undeniably torture, despite this rotten regimes pathetic attempts to "redefine" terms that already have accepted definitions, or making up terms and phrases and forcing new definitions to them.

One must go to sources like Al Jazeera and Dahr Jamil to find the truth about these fraudulent "free elections" that have to be heavily guarded by heavily armed men to maintain a basic sense of order. We know that the insurgency is of Iraqi people. People who have been bombed back to the stone age by America in a failed attempt to open the Caspian Sea oil region to the world. The trans-Afghan Pipeline, the Pipeline to the port at Aqaba and other projects.

There is great doubt that without supervision the Iraqis will survive as a "nation." Most people divorced of ideology and in possession of some knowledge of the Islamic world, well know democracy is an impossibility in Iraq. They know that these "governments" are merely puppets for picture purposes in an attempt to show the world a terrible lie dressed in ridiculous propaganda. The regime doesn't seem to realize that it has failed wholesale to do this. Only the inbreds and mental defectives believe that the mission was about democracy in the first place instead of trying to reestablish a foothold in the oil rich Middle East, which the regime failed to do. The comique of all of the aftermath arises out of clear unplanned and thoughtless attempts to cover a massive fraud with pathetic theater.

Despite the regimes efforts to restrict truth from leaving the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan by any and all means available, it still flows steadily out. Now, only those who refuse enlightenment and those who profit from this nightmare are left on the side of the regime. Now we can only hope that some Democrat with the fortitude to do so, will file charges against the Bush regime via the articles of Impeachment. For God's sake, if the republicans can bring impeachment charges against former President Clinton for such a lame indiscretion as was committed with Lewinski, then Bush and his regime can CERTAINLY be charged with mass murder, defiling the Constitution, making a mockery of International Law and horrific crimes against the Human Race.

He has referred to the Constitution as a "Goddamned piece of paper," he has begun to drink again and has used sick behavior in the face of other officials, and clearly had to have known who the person who outed Mrs. Wilson was. The truth of 911 remains to be discovered and the REAL criminals brought to justice. Lying to congress as limpwristed as their behavior has been constitutes a felony, which the regime has done many times.

These people are genuinely a low form of hominid life. With all the crimes that are outed and vetted, and lies that are likewise, to see them as the architects of the WTC debacle becomes very easy. Further, the 28 pages redacted from the 911 report very likely will indicate that the alleged "hijackers" are still alive. It is sad in the extreme that many Americans must ALWAYS perceive someone else as responsible for the actions of their "government." But REAL history clearly demonstrates without ANY equivocation, the historic nature of such crimes as are seen today. This country began it's life with a persistent century long genocide against the Native People. I takes what it wants by force. It has never competed fairly in ANY markets then, or now. It was easy to walk all over other people for their goods and services then!, but now, countries like China, Taiwan and others have evolved to the state where they can compete with the US with ease, and to win as well. This fact may well be the sound of the "death knell" of American world superiority.

In any case, if America plans to save any portion of its former place at the world's table, this regime must be disbanded and brought to justice preferably in front of the International Criminal Court, if only in abstentia. If measures are not taken soon, we will all be destined to suffer the consequences of our collective arrogance. We will be just as guilty for all the criminal acts as the people in the government who committed them. Ignorance is no defense. Further, the means necessary to cure the ignorance exist now. With this fact in mind, ignorance can no longer be feigned.

The Constitutions clearly outlines the means to bring this regime to justice. So does the Declaration of Independence. It is time for us to declare our Independence again from tyranny. It is time to bring these criminals to justice. Righteousness demands it. The World demands it.

Ted Bohne N96173@msn.com is a Vietnam Vet, 51 years old, disabled, formerly a paramedic and adjunct faculty at Texas Tech University School of Medicine and tenured faculty at Odessa College, Odessa Texas.

Indeed, a movement already clandestinely growing and attracting more souls before 9/11 was given a gift from the heavens, quite literally, on that fateful day, creating images and emotions that transformed the way millions of Americans saw the world. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, terror fell from the sky like the vengeance-filled thunderbolts of Zeus, spawning a fear and insecurity never before seen inside a nation that had never been attacked on its continental soil. The world was transformed, along with the psyches of millions of people whose beliefs ratified in their minds that the destruction of the World Trade Center was a religious manifestation conjured up by God himself. Paranoid, afraid, uncertain and insecure, thinking themselves living in a troubled world on the verge of its last throes, millions traumatized by the events of 9/11 turned to fundamentalist religion for the salvation reserved for the end of days, answers to most troubling questions and the false comfort that religion offers in times of cataclysm and need.

The profound psychological shift in the minds of tens of millions in the aftermath of 9/11 cannot be underestimated, and must be seen as a monumental trigger that has unleashed the myriad of problems now afflicting America. The trauma, stress, fear and hatred engendered transformed America and its people in ways that have yet to be fully understood. Images never before seen by a mass population, from every conceivable angle, played and replayed over and over again thanks to the power of television caused a massive paradigm shift the likes of which has never been seen or studied. The gravitational pull towards fundamentalist Christian religion by millions of people is one such reality of the aftereffects of 9/11, as humans tend to seek comfort and answers through religion when the world seems most dangerous and troubled. It is religion, through its myths and fantasies, its gods and parables, that can accommodate the fragile minds inherent in the human condition, offering short-term comfort and security through faith in the invisible and belief in the unknown.

At a time when millions needed to find solace and answers to the evil witnessed on 9/11 Christian extremism opened its doors. When the world was spinning out of control, bursting America’s bubble of security, fundamentalist Christianity took full advantage, absorbing those wanting to understand why God had allowed such wickedness upon our shores. Psychologically fragile, weak-minded and made vulnerable by the events of 9/11, millions quickly believed the lies of false prophets and corrupt high priests, the excuses made by fear engendering televangelists, the reasoning as stated by greed mongering evangelists. God allowed 9/11 to happen, millions were told, because America had become a debauched society, threatened by homosexuality, allowing the mass murder of pin-size zygotes and abandoning the ways of the Bible. America had been allowed to fall away from its Christian ways, and so the always psychotic God had, once again, wrought violence, death and destruction upon the lands of those breaking covenants with the Almighty.

The reality of why 9/11 happened was never told those seeking answers; the truth behind the attacks was destroyed in favor of lies of convenience and opportunity, where high priests saw benefit in tragedy, like good snake-oil salesmen ready to take advantage of opportunity, seeing a chance to expand religious belief and personal power in a society turning more secular and progressive every year. Millions were told what they wanted to hear, not what would help shake their foundations. Of course the fictions of false prophets and the reality of truth have always been mutually exclusive, with truth an enemy of those seeking the control of thought.

It is these charlatans that thrive off of the misfortunes, stresses and tragedies of others, waiting, like sharks in open water, for the right moment to strike, knowing exactly when the human mind is at its most vulnerable, weak enough to succumb to the whispered shrieks of false comfort and fictitious security, its trauma making willing servants of millions to institutionalized control. To the false prophets and high priests, 9/11 became the catalyst needed to push the agenda and interests of the extreme Christian right, presenting this group with the wallets, energy and political power of millions of fragile psyches and frightened converts. As a result, the influence of fundamentalist Christianity has only risen exponentially since 9/11, creating a deep rift throughout the nation.

What should have been eroded over time through civilization’s natural evolution and progression, with the healthy and continued accumulation of America’s wealth, progress, education and an increased standard of living has instead remained strong, in fact gaining numbers and momentum, threatening to help erase centuries of progress and struggle. The prosperity afforded America since its inception, together with its rising secularism, along with the separation of church and state enforced since the nation’s founding, should have been enough to sentence fundamentalist theology to the fringes of society. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening. This is the reality of 21st century America, a land modern and progressive yet fighting itself over a return to Middle Ages thought and understanding, with millions of citizens preferring the unenlightenment of Dark Ages rather than the liberation of modern thinking.

Endowed with the greatest level of comfort humankind has ever witnessed, possessing a standard of living never seen in the human condition, addicted to the gluttony of materialism, its citizens living in one of the freest societies ever experienced by any people, able to bask in the riches of the world’s best technologies, education, infrastructure and society in general, America and its citizens, logic would tell us, should be headed in the direction of secularism and knowledge, reaching human enlightenment by escaping the shackles of religion and the indigence of ignorance.

Instead, America finds itself unable to exorcise itself from religious fundamentalism, with millions of its citizens refusing to enter the realm of modernity, and reality, preferring instead to remain captive believers in the myths and fables of primitive peoples living thousands of years ago. To tens of millions of Americans, Christian fundamentalism, with the Bible seen as the literal interpretation of humanity, of the planet’s creation, and of how civilization is to be managed, remains their idea of truth and of reality, even in the face of incontrovertible scientific truth proving otherwise and even with the accumulated knowledge of an ever-progressing society.


In Human Misery Religion Finds a Nest


American Christian fundamentalism, it seems, refuses to bend to the rules of human progress, becoming the exception, not the rule, of what happens to people’s religious beliefs the more education they receive and the better off they become. The more comfortable a life is made the less religious a person tends to become. The more secure a person feels the less religious he will be, and the less miserable her life is the less she will lean on religion for meaning to a life seen harsh and cruel.

The more education one receives, free of the education masking religious brainwashing from birth, has a direct correlation on the level of religious faith one has. Knowledge is power, after all, and education is liberation of free thought, a chance to see the world as it is, not as we are told it should be. There is reason why those seeking control and power consider true education and knowledge the enemy, for free thought, both analytical and logical, with reasoning and open mindedness, invariably leads to questioning of authority, to dissent, protest and debate of myths, beliefs and propaganda, and to thinking outside the box that has for millennia shackled the human mind, rendering us unable to see truth, reality and the possibilities of our own free thoughts and capabilities.

In capturing minds at the earliest possible age, when innocence is tender and naiveté bountiful, those seeking the control of souls, minds and energies know that they are more likely to have loyal slaves for an entire life, for the earlier the brainwashing commences the harder it is for the human mind to later escape its parasitic beliefs. The conditioning must begin early on, therefore, before the mind reaches the age of reason, before free thought can light dark tunnels and black holes, before the myths and fables and gods of religion can be seen for the fantasy they are.

In lives full of suffering, indigence, bitterness, disease, malnutrition and lost ability, where destinies are predetermined and inescapable, where education is nonexistent and anemic, where families are large and immobile, where faith in humanity has been replaced by the dying faith in metaphysical hope, such as those of 3 billion humans living on two dollars a day, or five billion people living on less than ten dollars a day, many living at the margins of human habitation, religion, whether fundamentalist or otherwise, finds its most suitable hosts, jumping, like a virus, from soul to soul, gorging on false faith and in the hope that a better life awaits, if not in the today then certainly in the tomorrow, if not on Earth then in the promised afterlife.

In the minds of those billions not lucky enough to escape perpetual castes of servility, forced to live lives squandered and wasted, becoming the numbers and statistics of the failed human pyramid of hierarchy, unable to ever escape a destiny not of their own making, religion becomes the only mechanism to cope, to find solace in a life rotting away in the shantytowns and shacks in which so much of mankind survives in. It is a modes of escape from the harshness of modern day living. Surviving day to day, meal to meal, rich in honor and integrity but not in material possessions, unable to offer a future to their children, powerless to escape the lives they have been chained to since birth, their innocence destroyed at an early age, their education halted even earlier, billions are forced to believe in and place blind faith in the invisible and unseen, for the visible and seen have failed to bear fruit, becoming utter disappointments to billions of people.

Exploited by and subjugated to the wickedness of their fellow man, abandoned to the fortune of misery, billions find in religion answers to questions about why their life has been so full of injustice and inequality, why they have been made to suffer endlessly, while a tiny minority thrives in the splendors of wealth and luxury, basking in opportunity and fortuitous birth. God has a plan for them, they are told; theirs is the kingdom of God, but only if they follow God’s legions of high priests, and only if they allow religious institutions to have dominion and control over their daily lives. They are not to seek happiness on Earth, for it certainly awaits them in heaven; they must simply place blind faith in an entity that has never been proved to exist.

They are taught that in suffering and poverty they will find the keys to salvation, unaware that only through education and opportunity will they find escape and futures. They are told to succumb to exploiters and subjugators, to market colonialism and the tentacles of neoliberalism. They are told to multiply as much as possible, with birth control being forbidden, not understanding that the more children they have the less resources they and their children will possess, thereby condemning the entire family to perpetual indigence and socio-economic immobility. More children means less education, which invariably means less of an ability to question authority or become threats to the system, and more of a probability to become the slaves of the high priests. Women are told to stay home and become factories of procreation, becoming subservient slaves to their husband masters, for women are told they were created out of a single male rib, not even worthy of a leg or arm. Yet only in female emancipation from paternalistic cultures will both women and their families find betterment, freedom and an opportunity to escape perpetual caste societies.

Billions are told that the Christian god has a plan for them after their life on Earth, that one must remain a faithful servant of religion and of institutionalized dogma, thus of human institutions, allowing themselves to be controlled by the high priests and elite who make of religion the opiate of the masses. Billions are told that education is not of importance, that it can be abandoned after a few measly years. When it is provided, it becomes another way to indoctrinate heathens to religion, brainwashing and conditioning the still developing human brain to the control mechanisms of theology. Real education is liberation, and those that control know this, which is why they abhor it; knowledge is their kryptonite, the antibiotic to their epidemic. Is it any wonder why the nations with the lowest per capita investments in education also have some of the highest percentages of their population who are deeply religious?

Around the world, religious fundamentalist belief thrives in anemic, poor, angry, exploited and undereducated peoples, those residing inside nations commonly described as “third world,” abandoned by incompetent governments and adopted by neo-liberal chicanery, billions lacking the liberation that comes with knowledge, the free thought that arises through education and the standards of living associated with prosperity. They are the ones born not in the apex of human civilization, such as those northern nations rich and developed, but in those resembling the armpit of humanity, those raped of resources, capital and slave labor by the peoples of the north.

Religious fundamentalism is most easily engendered in the soup of poverty, hopelessness, ignorance and bitterness, where humans, their faith in humanity eviscerated by the suffering that is their lives, living in the trenches of what modern day living affords billions of souls, are made to believe in the unseen greatness of invisible gods. It is blind faith in the unseen that gives them hope to press onward even as their high priests only work to subjugate them deeper into misery. Is it any wonder why religion is most strong in the nations of the south, whose peoples live in endemic poverty and perpetual misery, unable to receive substantial education nor opportunity, and almost extinct in wealthy and secular Europe, where only grey hair can be seen in decaying churches?


Created in Our Own Image


From birth hundreds of millions of humans are conditioned to believe in the despotic god of the Bible, a sadistic, vengeance-filled, incompetent leader with deep psychological and anger management issues, a violent, destructive and blood-thirsty entity playing with the psyches of the same creations molded out its image. This god, it seems, has a fascination with human war, with murder and criminality and masochistic lives, granted that humans killing humans, oftentimes for pleasure, are an inherent part of the human condition. This god relishes poverty and suffering of billions, given the present state of humankind, allowing squalor in most nations and bestowing riches upon few. It is allowing us to destroy ourselves, and the Eden it supposedly created, forever remaining a clandestine, missing and unfound entity for thousands of years.

Indeed, it seems that it prefers the rich few over the poor many, the powerful over the weak, the sinful over the honorable, those that exploit over those that are exploited, choosing injustice over justice, inequality over equality, death over survival and ignorance over knowledge. This so-called god allows the miserable death and suffering of millions every year to HIV/AIDS, particularly black humans from Sub-Sahara Africa, creating entire generations of orphaned children. It allowed for the slaughter and suffering of its chosen people during World War II, the Inquisition and other such persecutions over time. It grants sustenance to murder and mayhem in Rwanda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where millions of human beings have died, slaughtered to feed the ravenous need that is our embedded appetite for human violence and war. The god of man allows for wars of religion, wars in its name, where humans fight humans based on whose religious beliefs are right and superior. It is these wars, so full of hatred and bloodletting, carrying the icons of the god of man, committed in the name of the Almighty, that have killed more humans than any other human made or naturally spawned cataclysm in the history of human existence.

This so-called god allows for the extinction of his creations and the destruction of his paradise by the same organism molded in its own image. If such a god existed, it would be called an utter failure, for the state of human affairs, since our Diaspora out of Africa, has been war, violence, destruction, suffering, exploitation and decimation of the planet and its creatures. Such a god would be impeached by its own creations, replaced with more competent gods, for it has done nothing to alleviate the perpetually decaying state of human affairs since it came into existence a few thousands years ago. Human leaders are dethroned for less serious incompetence. One need only read the Old Testament to bear witness to failure and wrath, incompetence and psychotic behavior, animalistic emotions and human passion.

Yet the god of man is a failure because it is a god concocted in man’s own image, not the other way around. It is molded in our self-image, which explains just how fallible our god really is. It espouses our animalistic behaviors and emotions because it is a creation of our most imaginative minds, fantasies of metaphysical prowess that cannot escape our own frail and fragile human psychology. The god of the Bible is a god captured by mammalian behaviors and emotions, unable to escape the human condition, no matter how hard its creators tried to concoct a being superior to us. Thus, the god of man is susceptible to the same emotions and passions as ourselves simply because it is of our own making, molded to hate as well as love, to be indifferent as well as caring, becoming enraged, seeking vengeance, destroying cities and murdering humans as it sees fit, becoming a creation unable to escape the human realm of understanding, a concoction existing and acting within the ignorance and unenlightenment of its primitive creators. It was molded as a way for us to find our place in the unknown world of yesteryear, helping to make us more secure that our fears of the unknown had purpose and that we were not alone in a world full of mystery and fright.

The god of the Bible is a mirror image of humanity itself, the best and worst of the human condition, a direct introspection of humankind. It is us and we are it.

Having gods, created by a tribe’s elder men – at a time when women had no voice—made to resemble the all-powerful male paternalistic figure, enabled followers to place reason behind that which was not understood. At a time when little was known or understood, gods were created to help man understand the complexities of nature and the vastness of the sky and earth. Through gods we became differentiated from the animal world, escaping a reality too humbling for the human ego to absorb. Through religion, gods, myth and fable a world too complex and large to fathom became easier to grasp, placing us, as usual, as the center of the known universe, the splendorous and wonderful creations of the gods, perfect entities placed in charge of Earth, masters of nature and all its creations. Man’s religion is as much our ego as our creativity.

The rise of religion, and of gods, allowed humans to believe and strive for an afterlife, for the insecure and fragile human mind cannot be made to contemplate in the reality of nothingness after death. The idea of death, and that life ends after one’s last breath, is a thoroughly taboo idea to us because of the amazing human fear of seizing to exist, of never again living, of not continuing life, of becoming the food for maggots and the fertilizer for plants, of finding darkness and not light. Through an afterlife humans could continue living, even after death, joining their god in his realm, a better place than Earth, a heaven where we can continue our life, even if only in spirit form. The idea of gods, and of a heaven, allows us to continue believing in the afterlife of human existence, making our frail and primitive minds secure that even after death we continue living. A god with a kingdom of heaven awaits us, after all.

Our egos not wanting to contemplate the reality of our evolution from the reptilian to the animal to the human worlds, nor our close relation with our primate cousins, along with the substantial behaviors, psychologies, social structures, needs, wants, passions and instincts we share with the animal world, we choose instead to believe in a primitive myth of created molded clay, borrowed rib and six day constructions of planets, a fantasy of escapism and denial, a story made up by the archaic creativity of primitive men gathering around a warm fire, knowledgeable only to the limits of their time and space, contemplating their place in the natural world, awe struck by the countless stars in the night sky and the sheer darkness enveloping them, trying to find meaning to life and purpose to existence, molding fantasies to the understandings and knowledge then known to them.

Theirs was a legend molded to the time, beliefs and place of its authors, never meant for a world of knowledge, certainties and proven analysis, where science extinguishes faith on a daily basis. Out of all creation stories, and there are hundreds known and undoubtedly thousands forever lost, all wonderful examples of the diversity of human creativity and thought, the western world adopted the one in Genesis, a metaphysical myth that helped primitive humans of thousands of years ago understand the world around them, meant for the ignorance of prehistory, not the wisdom of modernity. In its story lies not literal truth but myth and fable, tales of times long gone when the world was less known and more innocent, its complexities given meaning not by the accumulated knowledge of a thousand generations but by the experience of primitive tribes and clans whose stories were passed down orally under cover of darkness while warming to the radiance of warm fires.

Make no mistake about it, religion is a defense mechanism of the frail human ego, unable and unwilling to conceptualize the idea of who and what we truly are. It is our ego that refuses to accept the reality that we evolved, much the same way every mammal and organism on Earth has evolved, making us no different than the creatures we claim dominion over. It is our ego that wishes to ignore the possibility that there is no life after death, for human beings cannot accept death, finality and nothingness, a return to the circle of life from which all things derive. Death and finality are very difficult concepts for us to grasp, and accepting them would mean that our lives are made that much more insignificant than they already are.

Religion offers us meaning to our lives, a purpose that we are part of a much grandeur structure. It caresses our ego into the belief that we are cherished beings, special creatures molded by God himself, chosen to rule over Earth. The fear of being alone is conveniently made to disappear with the introduction of the metaphysical, for if a realm of gods and souls exists then we have purpose and are therefore not alone in the universe. Human religion allows us to comprehend, in human terms, and as far as we are capable of understanding with our primitive brains, the vast complexities of the natural world, of a universe that is larger than we can ever imagine, and it helps us better understand, by inventing fantasy and fable to explain human nature, why we are the way we are, yet failing, as always, thanks to our inflated egos, to confront the reality and truth of what the human condition truly is.

Unknown to tribal elders then but now understood by modernity is the truth of evolution, of natural selection and of the incredible mutations that have created the abundance of life on Earth as we see it today. Known now are the chemical reactions and the enzyme combinations and protein concoctions that led to the creation of homo sapiens, taking us onto a separate branch from our chimpanzee cousins, and the continued mutations, based on genetics and environment, that has led to the diversity of humanity that we see today, including those responsible for eye, skin and hair color as well as those affecting skull shape and body height.

Known to us now is our rise from East African jungles, our branching out to all corners of the planet, the 98 percent genetic similarities with our chimpanzee brethren and the evolution of our species from scavenger to cave dweller to dominator of agriculture to builder of enormous cities. The powerful truths of Darwin and Galileo and Copernicus can no longer be silenced or threatened with burning or excommunication. Books of knowledge and of enlightenment no longer face threats of bonfires. Humans seeking alternative religions or no religion at all no longer face being burned at the stake or eternal banishment. We live in the 21st century, not the Dark Ages, a product of centuries of progress and accumulated knowledge, a time when myth and fable no longer dominate and control, a time when fear of the unknown is evaporating like a thin fog, now replaced by knowledge, science and free thought.

The remnants of the Middle Ages, collections of times past and thankfully gone, are now left to gather dust in museums and libraries, hopefully never again to find refuge in human society. Gone are primitive torture devices, Church dominated literature and art, and medieval thought processes, where fear of the unknown was exploited in the accumulation of souls. Gone are indulgences, direct tickets to heaven sold by the Church for money, with their automatic forgiveness of sins granted those wealthy enough to have their bad deeds expunged. Gone are the fears engendered by the Roman Catholic Church that captured the minds, and souls, of millions; gone is its control over the masses and of society in its entirety that made conservative and regressive thought the hallmark of the Dark Ages.


Never-Ending Hypocrisy


American Christian fundamentalism has degenerated to an entity wishing a return to the Dark Ages, when religion actually controlled government, society and the minds of the masses. It is a movement dependent on the fears and ingrained hatreds of its followers, exploiting emotions and ignorance to further its ultra-conservative goals. Its leaders are false prophets and corrupt high priests preaching the teachings of Jesus but following the examples of Lucifer. They depend on the growing numbers of under educated citizens from which to replenish their ranks, becoming highly successful manipulators of fragile psychologies, using the insecurities and hatreds and hereditary prejudices of their followers to mold ordinary citizens into extremist followers of lies, distortions and manipulations.

Christian fundamentalism preaches about right to life and living in a culture of life but supports the wholesale death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Muslims and Arabs, preferring saving pin-size zygotes rather than actual human beings whose only crimes are living in Iraq and being Iraqi. Salivating at the thought of dead Muslims, these extremists support war crimes and crimes against humanity, turning a blind eye to torture and bombings and illegal kidnappings and rapes and murder, sanctifying the criminality of incompetent American leadership. They are ardent supporters of the debacle called the Iraq War, remaining mute to its atrocities even while having the audacity to preach the teachings of Jesus Christ, the most anti-war political activist to ever exist. It has often been said that these people are the biggest hypocrites on the face of the Earth.

Fundamentalists would have no problem eviscerating a women’s right to free choice and having complete control over her body, preferring the rights and freedoms of cell size structures over those of adult human beings. It seems making women once again subservient to paternalistic structures, where they can be readily controlled and subjugated, due to the threats presented on insecure males by the wiser half of humanity, is again on the agenda. Never satisfied with the emancipation of women, fundamentalists seek male control over their bodies and lives, wishing a return to days when women were dependent to and slaves of men, acting out their roles as baby factories and housewives, just as the Bible and their god command.

They have declared war upon homosexuals, thinking these people deranged deviants from Hell, acting in direct response to the literal interpretation of the thousands year old Bible (though conveniently forgetting the other many literal rules and interpretations that would undoubtedly condemn them as well), doing everything in their power to eliminate any rights gays might have. A tremendous fear of gay marriage do they possess, even though in most likelihood these activities will never affect their daily lives. Again, preaching the tolerance and acceptance of Jesus, they hypocritically hate and prejudge those different than themselves, becoming the most intolerant and bigoted people in the nation. Their ignorance is only superceded by their idiocy; their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Blind Christian fundamentalists remain to their hypocrisy and to the complete opposite actions they perform relative to the teachings of their Lord Jesus Christ.

Christian fundamentalists want to destroy the separation of church and state, allowing the reintroduction of the Dark Ages into modern times. They seek to destroy knowledge and education by introducing children to myth and fantasy wrapped around pseudo-science, renaming creationism “intelligent design,” a concept of religion at complete odds with reality and truth. They seek to condition children that the planet is only 6,500 years old, that man lived alongside dinosaurs, and that 6.5 billion humans are direct descendants from Adam and Eve, two creations popped out by God in their complete and evolved human form, failing to take into account the dynamics of evolution or the abundant evidence of our slow and gradual progression from mammal to ape to human.

Fundamentalists wish that four billion years of Earth’s history be erased from memory, replaced with a six-day creation story that has no basis in reality. They conveniently fail to report the entire findings of paleontologists and archeologists. They wish to teach children that woman was born from a single male rib, out of an entire body (what does that say about the superiority of man over woman, or the supposed inferiority of woman to men?), and that it was woman, in her deeply flawed and corrupted ways, that was the cause of eternal banishment from Eden (what does that say about the Church leaders’ trust in women’s psychology?)

Extremists wish to become the American Taliban, banning progress and all its freedom-engendering virtues. They are the book burners and music banners, the censors of enlightened programming and movies and the persecutors of knowledge. They wish to rob children of real enlightened education, wishing to teach the myths of primitive peoples upon modern minds. They wish to fight science, just like their predecessors have since time immemorial, because in science and knowledge they see a threat to their continued control of millions, for its findings continue to destroy their cherished myths and fables and tales of primitive thought. In science and knowledge they see the enemy that will birth their extinction. It is science that has exposed the illusions and fantasies of control, the impotent attempts at grasping at straws, at retaining power over human beings.

Their kind has tried to silence progress ever since science and knowledge began to question dogma. They fear it, loathe it and hate it, their fright apparent in the stench running out their pores, in the desperate attempts at suppressing human progress, in their attempts to stop enlightenment. With each myth or belief or act of faith eviscerated by our accumulated knowledge their power over us erodes further, their voices trembling and lies growing, their vague attempts at retaining their fantasies growing ever more desperate. In their literal interpretation of the Bible they fail to understand progress or the reality of the human condition, preferring to live in ignorance and unenlightened belief, choosing the faith of the never seen over the reality of the always present.

Wherever they live their hypocrisy is readily apparent, as always preaching Jesus while living Satan, hiding behind the cross while seeking Hell for others, becoming bigots and engines of hatred while hiding inside monolithic Houses of God, cheering tax cuts for the wealthy while wanting to destroy social services, wanting to erect walls to keep the poor, weak and hungry from seeking a better life. They support war while preaching peace, purposefully making themselves ignorant to death and mass murder committed in their name, all the while carrying the cross and Bible in their hands. They praise the Almighty yet raise their hands higher to the Almighty Dollar. They say they want a culture of life yet support the death penalty, but cannot allow the right of individual’s afflicting with terminal pain and suffering to die with dignity. Intolerant of other religions and other belief structures, of diverse peoples and those different than themselves, extremists can accept only their way of life, becoming the opposite of what their founder told us to do.

The threat posed by Fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East or in America, is as strong as ever, yet progressive thought will not be defeated. The natural progression of human civilization is away from ignorance and fear of the unknown and towards knowledge of the world around us. History abounds with this reality. Modern times attest to this truth, for if it were not so we would still be trapped in the Middle Ages. Religion was created because we failed to understand this world of ours, and in this inability to understand where we lived and who we were a fear of the unknown arose. We needed answers and comfort, we needed to make secure our frail egos, and so religion served a valuable purpose to those people primitive and ancient. The modern world has allowed us to better understand our world as well as ourselves, and in time new ways of thinking will emerge, new spiritualities will be born, based not on the writings of tribal people living thousands of years ago but based on the time, space and knowledge of modern times.

It is only a matter of time, yet the backwards movements of humanity, exemplified best by the American Christian fundamentalists, cannot be allowed to become an insurmountable barrier to the inevitable evolution of human thought. The days of Dark Ages and of control through fear of the unknown are coming to an end, yet steadfast progress must remain, unafraid to confront the truths exposed almost daily, unafraid to battle the regressive and repressive groups among us, and unafraid to push forward the limits of human knowledge. It is better to live in truth than in fantasy, in free thought over that which is controlled, in reality over fiction. Faith in the seen and understood will always go further than faith in the never seen and unknown.

It is time to evolve religion before religion regresses us backwards yet again, as it has attempted to do for millennia, returning us to the days when tribal men sat around, afraid of darkness and the vast expanse of the universe, forcing themselves to conjure up stories to explain away their fears of the unknown, their women subservient to them, their children brainwashed from birth, their high priests and false prophets in complete control over the lives of the masses.

For 2,000 years the poisoning of the human well has taken place, becoming the strong friction and inertia slowing human progress and understanding and knowledge and spirituality down, betraying our true selves, forcing us to live in lies and fantasy, becoming the weight attached to our legs, the shackles maintaining us prisoners in the dungeons of backwardness, capturing and hypnotizing our minds, forcing us to see charades and mirages, hiding truth and reality, slowing us down just enough to hinder our immense ability and talents, robbing us of the enlightenment we are due and the renaissance that must inevitably come.

The time to cleanse the polluted waters of the well is upon us, helping build a fertile oasis from which humanity can prosper and be reborn.

www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com

Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet columnist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel made available at most online book sellers.

As Abraham prepares to slit his son’s throat, despite the Devil urging him to disobey, his devotion is rewarded by God, who lets the prophet sacrifice a sheep instead. Every year, millions of believers worldwide celebrate Abraham’s commitment by feasting on meat and distributing it among the poor. This year, let us imagine your place of worship and prayer – be it Westminster Cathedral or a boring brick chapel in Canberra - is struck by hellfire. Almost a score of the congregation are burnt to a crisp, many of them women and children. No warning is given, no negotiation is proffered. An untold number of celebrants are maimed, orphaned and scarred for life.

Later, after the wounded are tended, the bodies buried, you ask, who are these evil doers? From whence came the fire? Was it Al-Qaeda? No! Imagine your rage and despair upon discovering that the slaughter was instigated by an ally of your own Government, the champion of the “War on Terror”, the USA. The children were sacrificed at the behest of the CIA, on the grounds that a bad guy was in the building – to hell with the innocent!

ON NOT TREATING PEOPLE LIGHTLY

On Friday the 13th of January, such was the plight of the tribes people in Damadola, a village in Pakistan, when the CIA flattened several dwellings with Hellfire missiles. The apparent target was Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, who was not present at the time. Some Pakistani officials said the village been struck by as many as 10 missiles fired from the remote-controlled drones and that the death toll was 25. Locals denied any knowledge of al-Zawahiri. No apology was offered by the US. On the contrary, Condoleezza Rice reminded the Pakistanis that al-Qaeda and its supporters "are not people who can be dealt with lightly", meaning the lives of children – even the children of its allies – are expendable.

The bombing of Damadola is a war crime. In a just world, the people who the ordered the attack would be hauled before an international court. In Bushworld, such criminals are honoured.

Two weeks prior to this atrocity, eight people died in what is believed to be another U.S. drone attack on a cleric's house in Pakistan. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/3591040.html

Repeated airstrikes in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 have killed countless noncombatants, worshippers at mosques and wedding guests. Isn’t it time for the UN to publicly name the CIA as the world’s most lethal terrorist network? The people who work for the agency, despite their firm handshakes and boyish charm, are handmaidens of terror and torture. They should be investigated by a legally constituted war crimes tribunal.

It may turn out that some of the victims at Damadola were “associates of al Qaeda”, but this does not excuse the CIA’s relentless slaughter of innocents, the global torture gulags, the serial flouting of international laws, etc. Even diehard conservatives must realize the futility of bombing allies. Up to 10,000 men, women and children rallied in the southern city of Karachi to denounce the atrocity at Damadola, chanting “Death to America”. For every “associate” of al Qaeda who is eliminated by such means, a thousand new terrorists are born.

THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH

One of the CIA’s golden boys is Henry "Hank" Crumpton, hailed by the Washington Post as a “revered master of CIA covert operations… on at least four continents … who recently came in from the cold … to take the job as State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism -- with the very public rank of ambassador”. It is likely Ambassador Crumpton ordered the murder of the devotees at Damadola. As though to divert scrutiny of this crime, he is currently berating the mass media with dire warnings that the West will soon be hit with a major attack from a terrorist organisation, (presumably, one that rivals the CIA in ruthlessness). It could be anthrax, he says, or maybe WMD’s, even nuclear, bio-tech…. Did he mention bird flu? Not sure, but he reckons Osma bin Laden is still alive… and ticking.

Even as these words pour out, I wonder if I am wasting my time. Maybe the web merely cushions dissent, instead of being its springboard. A screaming room in a nut house. “Freedom is a precious thing”, a friend said, who had escaped from East Germany as a child. “You people are losing it bit by bit, and you don’t even notice.” She had fled across barbed wire.

The only country in the world to have ever dropped a nuclear bomb on a civilian population is unlikely to blink at collateral damage. In fact, the US military seems to relish big explosions at midnight, blood on the walls, the scattered bodies of decapitated children. And there’s plenty more bombs in the pipeline.

Ends

http://www.richardneville.com

Richard Neville has been a practicing futurist since 1963, when he launched the countercultural magazine, Oz, which widened the boundaries of free speech on two continents. He has written several books, including Playpower (71), the bio of a global serial killer (79), his sixties memoir, Hippie Hippie Shake (95) and his latest handbook of social change, Footprints of the Future. A social commentator and a professional futurist with a sharp tongue, Richard is based in Australia, where he continues to “stir the possum”.

Angela Merkel's visit to Washington

George W. Bush spent 45 minutes with Angela Merkel signaling a "new chapter" in U.S.-German relations. But it was admitted that there was a "spirited" but respectful one-on-one Oval Office session where she challenged U.S. treatment of terror suspects but lent strong support to joint diplomatic efforts to defuse the nuclear standoff with Iran. Merkel, raised the question of detainee treatment at Guantánamo Bay, but she was non-confrontational stating that Europeans critical of such treatment needed to suggest reasonable alternatives for dealing with lawless terrorists.

Bush described his first impressions of Merkel "incredibly positive." "She's smart," he said. "She's plenty capable. She's got kind of a spirit to her that is appealing. She loves freedom." Some years ago he had looked into the soul of another visitor , Russian President Vladimir Putin, and was equally effusive.

But Merkel's visit was further blighted by a growing scandal reported by Germany's ARD television channel that Germans had fed USA key information about military targets in Iraq. Citing a US government source the TV channel said German intelligence officers in Baghdad passed information about a restaurant in the Mansur district of the city which the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, was likely to visit on the eve of the US-led invasion. The US military bombed the building killing 12 people.

German MPs have called for a full inquiry into the allegations putting under cloud future of Franz Walter Steinmeyer, Merkel's Social Democrat Foreign Minister, who was a close aide of Schröder during the Iraq war. The allegations were reportedly confirmed by Berlin government sources and were perhaps made to embarrass the Schröder government and his party.

From such reports it is clear that many segments of western establishments in contravention of officially stated policies help each other against eastern nations. During the 1990-91 Gulf Crisis and War , many sections of former communist states in East Europe and good friends of Iraq ,had helped US-led coalition forces . Both in USA and West Europe there are leaks galore now a days .While there are many sincere and righteous people angered and worried by immoral and illegal policies and acts of their governments, there are many who remained silent when Iraq was being invaded and destroyed.They are now croaking and singing a new tune to earn brownie points , specially senior Foreign officials and some think tanks in UK and USA. This is fooling no one.

USA with almost total bi-partisan support, with co-operation from its willing and supine corporate media , sought to sell " Operation Iraqi Freedom " to the American public as a bedside story with a happy ending .Ahmed Chalabi, in exile since decades and a longtime CIA agent , now Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq , but a convicted embezzler in Jordan , cheer led the invasion saying that Iraqis would welcome US[ invading?] forces with flowers .Among others ,he also conveniently produced an Iraqi defector named " curve ball " to mislead the Administration and the media ,about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) , not that it was needed , with the Neo-Cons in the Bush administration having already made up their minds for an invasion. But the 'Operation' has turned out to be a night mare for the Administration.

Swiss paper uncovers Ugly truth about CIA torture centers in Europe

Swiss newspaper Sonntags Blick better known for its light reading material said that it had hard evidence of CIA operated secret prisons in Europe, where al-Qaeda sympathizers were detained and interrogated. It said that the Swiss Intelligence had intercepted a message from the Egyptian Foreign Office to its Embassy in London in the middle of November, 2005 by the Swiss "Big Ears" , its Onyx system .Since 2000 it has enabled the Swiss to keep watch over civil and military satellite communications around the world . Onyx is a miniature Echelon system which the Americans use for eavesdropping and information around the world including Europe , even on commercial matters which is then passsed on to US companies to give them undue advantage.It has led to debates in European Parliaments.

This interception would constitute the first proof of the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe. Leakage of this secret according to France's Le Monde, has caused embarrassment and confusion in Switzerland. The Federal Department of Defense (DDPS), which refused to make any comment did admit that a secret document had leaked. It announced the opening of an administrative investigation which will be led by a Parliamentary Commission in charge of activities linked to national security.

Ironically , Swiss Senator Dick Marty, appointed by the Council of Europe to investigate on the "secret CIA prisons" in Europe, said he couldn't confirm the authenticity of the Egyptian message. Quoted by SwissInfo, he pointed out that this document used "information that confirms clues which was already suspected."

In Romania, the SonntagsBlick article reopens the scandal that broke in November 2005, triggered by Human Rights Watch accusations. At that time, Bucharest denied everything. The site of Mihail Kogalniceanu - a base used by the American army during the Iraq war - was mentioned as the airport where a CIA plane, coming from Kabul and going to Guantanamo, had stopped on September 23, 2005. This base was enthusiastically offered to USA by the Romanian government , after Turkey had refused use of its military bases for attacks against Iraq in 2003.

In the intercepted message the Egyptian Foreign Ministry claimed to have discovered, "through its own sources," that Romania allowed the CIA to interrogate 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens at a interrogation centre at the Mihail Kogalniceanu military base near its major Black Sea port Constantza.

The ugly truth about the doings of the US administration is now becoming fully public even in USA. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACL) recently released new documents obtained from the Defense Department detailing abuse at U.S. facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Included in the release is the first publicly available government document confirming the existence of a secret "Special Access Program" involving a special ops unit, Task Force 6-26, which has been implicated in numerous detainee abuse incidents in Iraq, and whose operatives used fake names to thwart an Army investigation.

"These documents confirm that the torture of detainees and its subsequent cover-up was part of a larger clandestine operation, in all likelihood, authorized by senior government officials," said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh. "Despite mounting evidence of systemic abuse authorized or endorsed from above, however, not a single high level official has thus far been brought to justice."

Rendition of Khaled Masri

It may be recalled that in May 2004, the White House had dispatched US Ambassador Daniel R. Coats to Berlin to tell that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, with a request that the German government not disclose what it was told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of covert action programs on thin or speculative evidence and transfer of the suspects to countries with secret bases would have serious repercussions. The CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured an estimated 3,000 people, including several key leaders of Al Qaeda, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. But it is impossible to know how many mistakes the CIA and its foreign partners have made.

Masri said that he underwent coercive interrogation and confinement for five months before being released, two months after the CIA concluded it was a case of mistaken identity. He is suing former CIA director George Tenet with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In filing the suit in Washington, the ACLU said it was seeking to "reaffirm that the rule of law is central to our identity as a nation".

In another instance, according to the Washington Post, the CIA seized Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasir, an Egyptian refugee known as Abu Omar, from a street in Milan. The agency then told Italian anti-terrorism police that he had fled to the Balkans - a piece of disinformation. The deception worked for more than a year, until the Italians discovered that the CIA had whisked Nasir off to Egypt, where he was reportedly interrogated and tortured. The Italian courts are investigating the case.

Clive Stafford Smith of UK based Charity 'Reprieve', fighting against the death penalty and other human rights abuses who represented 40 of the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay feels that Rumsfeld operates an archipelago of Gulags, and Guantanamo is now just a decoy. Many of the media reported captured associates of Osama bin Laden like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman, Waleed Mohammed bin Attash, Hassan Ghul, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, and Abu Faraj al-Libbi are not in Guantanamo. They were perhaps removed form there in the summer of 2004, when the US Supreme Court ruled that the writ of habeas corpus should be available to prisoners in Guantánamo. Apart from East Europe , Arab countries like Morocco and Jordan appear to be good candidates for secret prisons.

US claims that Gulag prisoners were captured on the Afghan battlefield is false . Many of prisoners were not captured in Afghanistan at all, but purchased in Pakistan for the bounties offered by the US – starting at US$5,000, a fortune for many locals.Two of Smith's clients, Bisher al Rawi and Jamil el Banna, both British residents, were captured in the Gambia ( a winter holiday resort of the British ,where the author was concurrent High Commissioner from Senegal in 1978-81 ) far from Kabul or London.

US refused the Red Cross access to all detainees

The state department's top legal adviser, John Bellinger admitted for the first time in Geneva that the US has not given the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to all detainees in its custody. But he gave no details about where such prisoners were held. He said ICRC had access to "absolutely everybody" at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which holds suspects detained during the US war on terror.

Adam Ereli, the State Department's deputy spokesman, had said the United States would not alter its position after the ICRC president said in Geneva that his organization was holding discussions to gain access to all detainees, including those held in secret locations.

Ereli said that the Geneva Conventions requiring humane treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to certain terrorism suspects seized as "unlawful enemy combatants," but that, in any case, the United States treats most of them as prisoners of war. "We're going the extra mile here," Ereli said, by allowing the Red Cross access to Al Qaeda suspects and others held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The Red Cross also has access to prisoners held in Iraq.

Commentators said that this has confirmed suspicions that the CIA has been operating secret prisons outside international oversight.

UN against US led detentions in Iraq

John Pace, human rights chief for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), said that the US military is abusing its United Nations mandate in Iraq by detaining thousands of people without due process of law. The Iraqi Government, installed by the US led Occupation Forces , is also guilty of major human rights abuses, including holding people without charge in secret jails "littered" across the country. Referring to accusations of corruption among Iraqi justice officials and police, Pace said illegal detentions were fuelling rather than curbing revolt.

"There is no question that terrorism has to be addressed. But we are equally sure that the remedies being applied... are not the best ways of eliminating terrorism," he said. "More terrorists are being created than are being eliminated." Pace added that the system, including the pattern, duration and conditions of detention, were "not consistent with what is foreseen in the UN Security Council Resolution 1546" and complained of "total breakdown" in individuals' rights.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has also voiced concern about mass detentions without charge, which US commanders say are a legitimate response to security threats under the Resolution 1546, their mandate for occupying Iraq.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said that the U.S.-led war on terror has undermined the global ban on torture. This did not please U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, appointed by Bush against the wishes of the US Congress. Bolton called Arbour's statement "inappropriate and illegitimate."

Rice's December tour of Europe

Tell us about the CIA flights.
The US does not torture.
Tell us about the black sites.
The US does not torture.

"Let me be clear," was a popular refrain of Secretary State Ms Condi Rice about US rendition of terrorism suspects, when she visited Europe last month. But for many, she was everything but clear. [From Der Spiegel]

Before her departure for Europe in a pep talk for US audience at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, Ms Rice told critics of tough U.S. tactics in the war on terror that the intelligence gathered by the CIA had saved European lives. Responding to the outcry over detailed reports of secret CIA run prisons in Europe. Rice said the United States "will use every lawful weapon to defeat these terrorists."

But Ms Rice steadfastly refused to respond to the question if the United States had CIA-operated secret prisons there. "We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations. We expect other nations share this view."

Reports of the existence of the secret prisons did cause a trans-Atlantic uproar. The European Union asked the Bush administration about these reports. Britain, the current EU president, sent a two-paragraph letter to Washington for clarifications.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot said Rice's comments about secret CIA flights and detention centers for terrorist suspects outside the United States were "unsatisfactory," Bot told MPs that "rendition" was not kidnapping as some critics claimed but a speedy process of extraditing suspects to the US. Normal extraditions through the courts can last for years, he said. Media reported that the CIA regularly made use of Dutch airports for secret flights.

The European Union (EU) has threatened to sanction any EU member countries, which had such prisons on their territories. Let us see!

US admits policy of renditions

National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, Ms Rice's successor told CNN that "we do not move people around the world so they can be tortured". Thus dittoing the official line. But Hadley added that the policy of renditions "has been a practice before 9/11, before this Administration", as well as "a practice engaged in by a number of countries".

What is 'rendition'?

Rendition is an old western practice beginning perhaps from the days of the Spanish inquisitions if not earlier. In his memoirs, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel wrote that during the World War II the secret abduction and 'rendition' from Third Reich occupied countries to Germany of suspected Resistance members - otherwise known as the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) Decree - was the worst of all of the orders issued by Adolf Hitler . Nacht und Nebel-type practices were used by the French to suppress successive uprisings by Algerian freedom fighters in the 1950s. Since then the practice of "disappearances" has spread around the globe - according to Human Rights Watch. Iraq and Sri Lanka accounted for the most cases between 1980 and 2003.

In Latin America, the technique was successfully internationalized under "Operation Condor". The operation, conceived and effectively implemented under Chilean president Augusto Pinochet, brought together the intelligence agencies of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, as well as Pinochet's own secret police chief, Manuel Contreras, in 1975. The objective was to "enhance communications among each other and integrate tactical operations in tracking down, secretly detaining, torturing and terminating [the lives of] critics or suspected militants, who were often referred to as 'terrorists'," according to Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA).

So what is new! Yes, Western leaders and media keep on maligning eastern governments for similar practices .In many cases the techniques have been taught by western agencies to the agencies of their allies e.g. CIA to Savak of Shah's Iran or to Pakistan's ISI and Jihadis during the Afghan resistance against USSR. Israel's Mossad almost openly implements rendition techniques and teaches it to any takers.

An Important Rice visit to Romania

During her short December trip to Bucharest, Ms Rice signed with the Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu a bilateral agreement for use of Romanian military bases at Mikhail Kogalniceanu, Babadag, Cincu and Smardan, with President Traian Basescu watching over at the Cotroceni Palace. Ms Rice also had talks with President Basescu on bilateral relations and cooperation within the Black Sea region and in the Balkans, as well as the cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq. Romania announced that it would not withdraw troops from Iraq.

"Romania will turn into a pylon of stability in the region through the setting up of the American bases," declared Basescu. "The location of the American facilities on the territory of Romania represents a confirmation of the fact that the Romanian army has reached a certain potential as partner of the USA", added Basescu.

He also said that the other security structures of Romania could cooperate at the highest level with those of the US. "Washington's decision means also political credibility from the point of view of Romania," The acceptance by the Romanian people of the American presence in Romania is considered a precious asset of the bilateral relations, Basescu concluded.

Ms Rice replied that "Romania has become a strong ally for the US." She recollected that when she was in Bucharest with President Bush a rainbow appeared as a symbol of bilateral relations. She added that the US and Romania are not just friends, but also brother and sister in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ms Rice thanked Romania for the sacrifices of their soldiers in difficult and dangerous places, calling this a strong commitment for the future of democracies like Iraq and Afghanistan. "We have a great, committed partner in Romania, which is ready to make sacrifices.

"Explaining why Washington chose Romania instead of Bulgaria, Rice said this was because of Romania's progress in the fields of defense and military training and that it was President Bush's decision who also took into account the strategic position of Romania.

In connection with the reported CIA detention centers, Ms Rice said the agreement regarding the bases in Romania would be a transparent one and up for discussion in the Parliament.

Asked about the risks following the signing, President Basescu said the risk was neither big, nor small, but that this was "just a leap forward for Romania in the global security system." "When I decided to sign, I had already assessed the risks and I knew that Romania was able to face the risks." He pledged commitment for stability in Iraq. "Romania will not diminish her military capabilities destined for this end in Iraq and will stay at the disposal of the Iraqi Government under the UN resolution and close to her allies," Basescu assured.

Ms Rice did not give a direct reply about the CIA prisons in Romania, but Basescu reiterated that Romania did not have and does not have such prisons on its territory, "My only appeal is that those who say that Romania has allegedly hosted or is hosting torture places assumed the responsibility of their declarations. It was improper to state that secret prisons existed only subject to the arrival of some planes. Romania is not willing to accept accusations of infringement of the human rights based on mere speculations," President Basescu said.

After 50 years under communism, a reluctant member of the Soviet Camp (but not fully of the Warsaw pact) Romania has discovered and assumed its European Christian identity as a full member of NATO and hopes to join EU in 2007. For USA and EU, the Romanian location is very important militarily and as a vantage point for trade with Caspian basin and Central Asia across the Black Sea.

How ever ,as the author had pointed out last year to senior Romanian leaders in meetings along with members of the foreign media in Bucharest that Romania must avoid projecting too close an affinity with US policies of torture .There are around 100,000 Muslims, mostly Tatars in Romania, which has a history of anti-Semitism . A few hundred thousand Romanian Jews had migrated to Israel. Tens of thousands of Israelis visit Romania for rest and recreation. The November 2003 bombings of a Synagogue in Istanbul was to punish it for the pro Israel policy . Turkey also receives hundreds of thousands of Israeli tourists every year. When President Basescu, soon after his election, visited Iraq to show solidarity with USA, the three journalists accompanying him were kidnapped. The story of their capture and release remains a mystery.

Poland

Romania and Poland are two very pro US countries, described by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as new Europe (an appellation the countries rejected) which was chided by French President Jacque Chirac when they had sided with USA on the question of US invasion of Iraq, against the general EU policy of opposition or neutrality.

Poland appears to be the center of CIA's secret detention network in Europe, with bases there holding a quarter of the 100 detainees estimated in such camps worldwide.

"Poland was the main base for CIA interrogations in Europe, while Romania played more of a role in the transfer of detained prisoners," Marc Garlasco, a leading analyst at Human Rights Watch, was quoted by Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

Garlasco said that the CIA maintained two detention centers in Poland, which were closed only after the Washington Post broke the story. He said the allegations were based on information from CIA sources and other documents obtained by Human Rights Watch. "We have leads, circumstantial evidence to check but it's too early to reveal them," Garlasco added.

Polish authorities have repeatedly denied the existence of secret jails of any form on Polish territory, with Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkieicz saying this week he would fully cooperate in human rights probes into the allegations. On 11 December, he ordered a detailed probe to "check if there is any proof that such an event took place in our country. It is necessary to finally close the issue because it could be dangerous to Poland." Said Marcinkiewicz's spokesman, Konrad Ciesiolkiewicz.

Rice in Ukraine of US franchised revolution

Ms Rice flew to Kiev from Bucharest to express solidarity with US protégé President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine. US organizations across the board had spent hundreds of millions of US dollars last year to get him elected in a US franchised election organized through street revolutions , a process which was begun with the overthrow of Milosevich in Serbia and then perfected in Georgia . Street revolutions failed dismally in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with Russia and China with central Asian states vociferously opposing US led franchised revolutions.

The sheen has come off the so called Orange revolution with Yushchenko's rich partner the Prime Minister quitting his company. The Ukrainian masses are unhappy with the results of the revolution with bribery and other scandals on increase. Russia on which Ukraine is dependent for its energy needs is squeezing Kiev. Next year's Parliament elections would be a litmus test for the Yushchenko regime. Ukraine is feeling the pinch of moving away from Russia, as Moscow is now charging market price for its gas, making the government unpopular. Western media and leaders objected to the market price. US and West use such tactics regularly. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander!

Shift in US Policy?

By the time Ms Rice reached Kiev, there was apparent shift in her position. She said that Washington now viewed its responsibilities under a UN treaty as banning the cruel or inhumane treatment of prisoners anywhere. She appeared to give the torture question a clear and broad interpretation. Referring to the UN Convention against Torture (CAT), ratified by USA in 1994, Rice said that "as a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT, which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment - those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States."

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, described the new approach by Rice as "existing policy." But when pressed repeatedly by reporters, he would not say whether the United States took steps to ensure that countries to which it transferred prisoners lived up to promises against using torture.

Rice's shift produced some confusion in Washington, possibly reflecting tensions among the State Department, White House, Congress and the Pentagon on how narrowly to define some of the tools available .These can include techniques known as water boarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a plank and dunked into water to create a sense of being drowned. Rights groups say that these methods have been used on prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

No rendition for torture – George Bush

President Bush, referring to the process known as rendition, under which the United States has turned detainees over to other countries reiterated: "We do not render to countries that torture. That has been our policy, and that policy will remain the same."

But wrote Naomi Klein in the Guardian "It's [torture] a history exhaustively documented in an avalanche of books, declassified documents, CIA training manuals, court records and truth commissions. In his forthcoming book, A Question of Torture, Alfred McCoy synthesizes this evidence, producing a riveting account of how monstrous CIA-funded experiments on psychiatric patients and prisoners in the 1950s turned into a template for what he calls "no-touch torture", based on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain. McCoy traces how these methods were field-tested by CIA agents in Vietnam as part of the Phoenix program and then applied in Latin America and Asia under the guise of police training.

"It is not only apologists for torture who ignore this history when they blame abuses on "a few bad apples". A startling number of torture's most prominent opponents keep telling us that the idea of torturing prisoners first occurred to US officials on September 11 2001, at which point the methods used in Guantanamo apparently emerged, fully formed, from the sadistic recesses of Dick Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's brains. Up until that moment, we are told, America fought its enemies while keeping its humanity intact."

David Luban, a Georgetown University law professor said that Rice appeared to be marking a genuine shift. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had implied that such treatment was forbidden by the U.S. Constitution - meaning within the United States. So the techniques short of outright torture could legally be employed abroad. "But this looks like it's different," Luban said, "and I think if Rice meant what she said, that's a big change." He cautioned, however, that only U.S. personnel were covered and perhaps not foreign police or security personnel or even foreign contractors.

Opposition in UK to rendition in CIA torture Prisons

Resistance to wayward US ways has grown steadily in UK, where assurances by Ms Rice that Washington did not send detainees abroad for torture were dismissed as "beyond belief" by a group of MPs from various parties.

The group was launched to investigate the "extraordinary renditions" of prisoners by the CIA. It claimed that Ms Rice confirmed that Britain had been informed about the nature of the secret CIA flights to UK airports. Andrew Tyrie, the group's Tory chairman, said: "There has been so much smoke on this issue; it's very unlikely that there is not a fire somewhere. I think it's likely they have been tortured."

Photographs were produced of CIA planes landing and taking off at UK airports while the government denied that British airports were used for torture flights, "so far as we aware". This did not satisfy the MPs, and Mr. Mullin , a former Labor foreign affairs minister said , "Some of the assurances in [Ms Rice's] statement defy belief in a country where there has recently been a public discussion on whether submerging prisoners in water to the point of drowning constitutes torture or not."

Tyrie interpreted Rice's claim that the US respected the sovereignty of other countries to mean that UK ministers knew about the flights. "By implication, whatever has been going on, the British authorities were informed," he said. He added that Ms Rice chose her words carefully to avoid ruling out abuse of prisoners that stopped short of torture. "She said torture is defined by law and by implication there may be levels of duress that may be short of torture," he clarified.

He warned Ms Rice that defending abuse of prisoners would be counter-productive. "It's not just that people may have been tortured. It is that using torture to combat terrorism is likely to inflame Muslim opinion and leave us less secure, not more. We have learnt that lesson the hard way in Northern Ireland; the French learnt that lesson in Algeria."

Liberal Democrat MP Menzies Campbell described Ms Rice's statement as "disingenuous". He said: "The volume of evidence of transfers has become overwhelming but what possible purpose is served by rendition other than to subject individuals to harsher treatment than would otherwise be the case?

"Parliament and the public are entitled to expect the British Government to show equivalent candor. But the question remains, what did our government know and when did it know it? How high up the political tree did such knowledge go?"

The Labor chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike Gapes pledged that his committee would also pursue ministers over "extraordinary rendition" flights across UK airspace. Some member of the committee privately said they were appalled after Ian Pearson, a Foreign Office minister, who told a recent hearing that the Government would use information gained from torture to protect against attacks by terrorists.

In spite of Tony Blair being in a state of denial that US-UK led invasion of Iraq had any relation to last July bombings in London, the people know better and are worried about implications of torture by US and UK , with many British citizens being victims of such torture in Guantanamo, in Iraq , Afghanistan and even UK itself .

British Lords ban "torture evidence"

The Law Lords ruled in London that information gleaned from torture anywhere in the world was unacceptable as evidence in British courts. Rights groups immediately said the ruling sent a clear signal to governments around the world who are wrestling with accusations that they participated in, provided facilities for, or used evidence in court extracted from people detained as part of a CIA program known as "rendition". The decision by UK's highest court to refuse evidence obtained under torture in third countries comes a day after the United States explicitly banned its interrogators from treating detainees inhumanely after widespread anger and pressure from European governments and the U.S. Congress.

POWER CORRUPTS, ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTED US SYSTEM ABSOLUTELY

Louise Arbour, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, also warned that the absolute ban on torture could become a casualty of the "war on terror". Without naming the United States, she criticized "governments in a number of countries" who were claiming that the world had changed and that the old rules no longer applied. No credible case for this had been made, she insisted.

With the growing opposition in USA and even reawakening of some in the US media to Bush policies, there is hope. Even before the March 2003 war more than 1,000 law professors and U.S. legal institutions had organized opposition to the U.S. war crime of launching an "aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter" against Iraq. Violation of international law was also a central theme in worldwide demonstrations by tens of millions against the war. The illegality of the war was confirmed by the leak of the Downing Street memo; 130 members of Congress joined Rep. John Conyers in demanding that the Bush administration come clean about the invasion ,supported by a half million citizen signatures gathered in barely a week. "Scootergate" is fundamentally about the cover-up of White House lies justifying the war.

"Illegal detention and torture are also war crimes. Starting with the exposure of prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo, cascading revelations have established that these cases exemplify a pattern of abuse authorized at the highest levels of government. Human rights groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Human Rights First have suggested suing in U.S. and foreign courts Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others for breaching the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

Paul Craig Roberts, Hoover Institution senior fellow and assistant secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan, has charged Bush with "lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Gharib and Guantanamo torture centers" and calls for the president's impeachment. Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and former president of the American Society of International Law, declares: "These policies make a mockery of our claim to stand for the rule of law. [Americans] should be marching on Washington to reject inhumane techniques carried out in our name." Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, whose single handed resistance to US policies, including sit-ins near Bush's Texas ranch, brought various opposition groups together, insists: "We cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."

Throughout the discourse on Iraq war, which now agitates USA and Western Europe, the point made is that the US invasion could have been carried out better and implemented better and successfully. There is no realization or acknowledgement that time for colonization is now gone. It is not the divine right of Christian West to subjugate and rule the Middle East, Africa or Asia through the power of its guns. The Iraqi resistance to U.S.-led occupation from the very beginning has made it clear that the era of colonization is over.

(Gajendra Singh., < Gajendrak@hotmail.com > served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in 1992 -96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the 1990 - 91 Gulf war), Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies, in Bucharest. The views expressed here are his own.)

Again, being who I am, I am also a new member of Military Families Speak Out, a group made up of over 4,000 families of US service members who oppose the war in Iraq and various other Bush Administration policies. I was amazed that so many military families were willing to speak out publicly against a United States military action. The number might seem appallingly low compared to the number of men and women serving in the US military, but if you have any doubts that it is impressive, please see a previous piece of mine entitled “Big Brother” for clarification.

In light of my special circumstances, as an antiwar advocate, progressive writer, and the wife of a United States Marine, I was particularly horrified by what came next in this message: “When Cindy began her protest outside the President’s ranch, she catapulted onto the national stage as a leading figure in the anti-war movement. She and hundreds of anti-war fanatics swarmed to Crawford, Texas to support her anti-war crusade. A mother of a fallen veteran, the mainstream media proclaimed Cindy to be a hero. They say she speaks for America.”

I would find it amusing that they chose the word “crusade” to describe Cindy Sheehan’s activism after their Golden Calf was censured by much of the world when he used this word to describe the war on terrorism (Christian Science Monitor). I would find it amusing that they had the gall to make light of the sacrifice made by Sheehan’s son in service to his country, and the sacrifice of his mother, who must forever live with the grief that his death has caused her. I would find it amusing if it hadn’t sent bile rising in my throat.

Tis a tale, told by an idiot…

You see, this is one of those classic examples of irrational hypocrisy we are asked to swallow daily by the voices of the right-wing media. You must support the troops, and that means you must support the President and the war and torturing prisoners and illegal wiretapping and Karl Rove leaking information about CIA operatives to the press, and if you don’t support all of these things, you cannot possibly support our men and women in uniform.

Your husband/brother/sister/daughter/father died in Iraq? Well, the American people thank you for your sacrifice. Wait! You are against the war? Well then, you are sympathizing with the terrorists, you’d rather see Saddam Hussein eat babies than see the Iraqi people free, you must hate freedom, you obviously know nothing and are no longer worth my pitiful excuse for gratitude. (Sorry—that was my very best Bill O’Reilly impression—it works better in person.) Once you show your true colors, that’s when they really show theirs, and their colors are not available in the Crayola 100 count box. They are vile and twisted and filled with vicious invective until all you can do is try vainly to wipe the shit from your eyes.

Full of sound and fury…

“Disillusioned by her son Casey’s death in Iraq, Sheehan claims to be searching for the reason her son was sent to war.”

I claim to have read all of Dickens’ Bleak House. High school students claim to have participated enthusiastically in Key Club on their college applications. Ann Coulter claims to understand politics. Cindy Sheehan does not claim to be searching for anything. Cindy Sheehan is, in fact, searching for answers. And whether you agree with her views or not, she has a right to them, as does every loved one of a fallen soldier, as does every American.

Signifying nothing…

Of course, what would I know about it? I’m just another pansy-ass liberal who wants to gut the military and let ruthless dictators like Saddam Hussein go on killing and torturing people and have every American sucking off the teat of mother government while they let me do their thinking for them. I’m just another family member of a US soldier who could die tomorrow for God knows what purpose and then, because I am who I am and would join Cindy Sheehan on the White House lawn even if she and I were the only ones there, I too would be just another American who hates freedom, at least in the eyes of the right-wing smear machine. My sacrifice wouldn’t count with them any more than Cindy Sheehan’s, because I continue to try wiping away the shit.

Katherine Brengle is a freelance writer and the wife of a deployed United States service member.

For the New York Times, it was a nonevent that a former vice president and presidential candidate, denied the presidency by one vote of the Supreme Court, challenged the Bush administration for its illegalities, rending of the Constitution and disrespect for the separation of powers.

So much for "the liberal press" that right-wingers rant about. If a "liberal press" exists, the New York Times is certainly no longer a member.

The Washington Post had a short report on Gore’s address at Constitution Hall, but the newspaper, if that is what it is, managed to water down the seriousness and urgency of the message that Gore brought to the country with sneers.

Gore’s address is the first sign of leadership from the Democratic party in six years. This alone makes it a major news event. But not even his own party took notice. According to reports, only one Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein (CA) was in the audience. One would have thought the entire Democratic congressional delegation would have turned out in support of Gore’s challenge to Bush’s extraordinary claims of power.

The lack of an opposition party makes the media vulnerable to intimidation by a dictatorial-minded administration.

The New York Times ownership suppressed for one year the leaked information in the paper’s possession that the Bush administration was violating the Surveillance Act and was spying on Americans without court warrants. Had the New York Times not placed a gag in its reporter’s mouth and suppressed the story, Bush may have gone down in defeat as the new Richard M. Nixon. Clearly, the New York Times is failing the obligations of a free press.

Bush is angry at the New York Times and at the government officials who leaked the story that Bush illegally spied on American citizens. Both may be prosecuted for making Bush’s illegal behavior public. By ignoring Gore’s speech, is the New York Times signaling to Bush that the newspaper is willing to be a lap dog in exchange for not being prosecuted?

With the US media now highly concentrated in a few corporate hands, has the Democratic Party reached the conclusion that opposition is no longer possible?

Once Bush places Sam Alito on the Supreme Court, he will have a high court majority friendly to his claims that his executive powers are not constrained by congressional statutes or judicial rulings. Once a president is held to be above the law, whether for reasons of his role as commander-in-chief or any other, he can no longer be held accountable.

Conservatives should fear this more than anyone. The separation of powers and our civil liberties are our most precious property rights. They are our patrimony from the Founding Fathers. We are stewards of these rights, which we hold in trust for our descendants. How can any conservative fail to realize that Bush’s attack on these rights is the ultimate attack on property? It is astonishing to watch conservatives wave the flag while they are transformed into subjects to be dealt with as presidential authority decides.

Gore challenged the American people to step up to the task of defending the Constitution, a task abandoned by the media, the law schools, and the Democratic and Republican parties. If we fail, darkness will close around us.


Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

"There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law.

"Second, the Attorney General's attempt to cite a previous administration's activity as precedent for theirs -- even though factually wrong -- ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.

"The issue, simply put, is that for more than four years, the executive branch has been wiretapping many thousands of American citizens without warrants in direct contradiction of American law. It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.

"The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration's program."

Hackett was unapologetic Tuesday for the comments in a newspaper story, saying religious fanatics of any flavor should be ashamed.

"I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it," he said.

Hackett said in a Sunday column in The Columbus Dispatch: "The Republican Party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of the other religious nuts around the world."

Hackett, an Iraq war veteran from the Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill, is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate against Rep. Sherrod Brown of Lorain. They are vying to run against two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine.

Hackett also said the practice of denying homosexuals equal rights is un-American. The newspaper asked Hackett if that meant the 62 percent of Ohioans who voted to ban gay marriage were un-American.

"If what they believe is that we're going to have a scale on judging which Americans have equal rights, yeah, that's un-American," Hackett said.

Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett said Hackett should apologize, saying his comments applied to any "people of faith" and, therefore, most Ohioans.

"These intolerant views have no place in the public debate, and I hope his fellow Democrats reject this divisive hate speech," Bennett said, while calling on Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern to condemn the remarks.

"If Bob Bennett needs an apology, he should apologize for Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Bob Taft and Tom Noe," state Democratic spokesman Brian Rothenberg said. "This is nothing more than a smokescreen from the corruption that surrounds him."

DeLay, of Texas, and Ney, of Ohio, are Republican congressmen who have stepped down from leadership posts because of their ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to bribing members of Congress and other charges.

Taft, Ohio's Republican governor, was convicted of ethics charges for failing to report gifts. Noe, a GOP fundraiser, is charged with illegally funneling money to President Bush's re-election campaign.

Hackett said Pat Robertson, a television evangelist and former GOP presidential candidate, is an example of the kind of Republican he was criticizing. Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent stroke was divine punishment for ceding the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority.

Robertson later apologized for the remarks.

It should come as no surprise to any observer of modern America that U.S. military recruiters are having a difficult time meeting their quotas. Last year, the U.S. Army fell 6,600 recruits short of its goal to enlist 80,000 new soldiers. An increase in recruitment incentives, including signing bonuses and increases in college scholarships, combined with the raising of the minimum enlistment age (to 39) and allowing high school dropouts to be recruited, have not helped reverse the tide. Even the vaunted U.S. Marines, the pinnacle of the all-volunteer U.S. military, which has prided itself on its ability to attract recruits with slogans like "If everyone could be a Marine, there wouldn't be Marines" versus money and other recruiting gimmickry, have failed to make their enlistment quota.

As recruiters struggle to overcome the national aversion to military service that has gripped the country, their superiors wrestle to pin down the underlying reasons behind this failure of the American people to heed the call of the trumpet. Some, like Gen. Richard Cody, the U.S. Army's Vice Chief of Staff, have turned the issue into one of fundamental patriotism.

"This recruiting problem is not just an Army problem, this is America's problem," Cody is quoted as saying. "And what we have to really do is talk about service to this nation -- and a sense of duty to this nation."

Fair enough. I'd like to take Gen. Cody up on the challenge and talk about this so-called inability or unwillingness on the part of America to live up to any sense of duty to the nation by turning its collective back on joining the U.S. military. Some observers of the recruitment crisis, including the recruiters themselves, have noted that a main reason for the drop off in numbers of new enlistees is the war in Iraq and the growing casualty figures attributed to the fighting in Iraq. This line of argument seems to draw a direct correlation between the costs associated with being a soldier and the decision to enlist.

I frankly couldn't think of a greater insult to the American people than to put forward an argument along those lines. When one examines the employment picture in America today, firefighting is listed as one of the most dangerous vocations. And yet America's youth are lining up to compete for firefighting jobs, despite the dangers. The reason for this is that danger aside, firefighting is seen as an honorable profession, one worthy of the sacrifice entailed.

Americans aren't afraid to put their lives on the line for a worthy cause. It is not military service that is being rejected, but rather military service in support of a cause not deemed worthy of the sacrifice expected. The military today has degenerated into an entity that is viewed by many in the American public as no longer serving the larger interests of the American people, but rather the play toy of a political elite who use the U.S. military as a tool to impose their ideology on others around the world, as opposed to "upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States," the mission assumed when one is sworn into military service.

It is not just the fighting and dying in Iraq that creates an image problem. The military today is involved in a variety of activities that not only insult American sensibilities abroad (such as the illegal invasion of sovereign states, and the illegitimate occupation and oppression of sovereign peoples), but also assault at home the very Constitution they are sworn to uphold and defend. Americans should not overlook the fact that the agency at the heart of the illegal warrant-less wiretaps that have been ordered by President Bush is the National Security Agency, or NSA, run out of the Department of Defense.

Likewise, a lesser known but equally disturbing attack on the individual civil liberties enjoyed by American citizens -- the ongoing collection of "domestic intelligence information" by a Department of Defense agency known as the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA. CIFA has, for several years, been operating a new reporting mechanism known as TALON (for Threat and Local Observation Notice). TALONs report on "non-validated domestic threat information" derived from a variety of means, including a process known as 'data mining' -- a similar process used by the NSA to spy on American citizens as part of the president's illegal warrantless eavesdropping campaign. "Data mining" allows the agency involved to access as much data as it can from any and all available sources -- emails, internet chatter, phone calls, newspapers, etc. -- in an effort to collate and correlate information on suspected potential threats.

To date, the data mining efforts of CIFA have targeted such high-priority targets as university students and concerned Americans expressing their constitutional freedom of speech through participation in anti-war discussions and demonstrations. It should come as no surprise to Gen. Cody and others in the U.S. military that American citizens might very well balk at joining an organization that ostensibly is supposed to protect the constitutional freedoms of Americans but in reality serves to violate those freedoms.

The Pentagon's recruitment problems have spilled over into the political realm as well. Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., who was thrust into the center of the Iraq war debate when he declared last fall that the Iraq war (of which he was once a fervent supporter) was no longer winnable, and that America needed to leave Iraq immediately, added fuel to the fire when he recently noted that if he were a young man today, he would not join the U.S. military.

The Pentagon immediately attacked Rep. Murtha's remarks. Gen. Pete Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took the lead. Murtha's remark, Gen. Pace said, was "damaging to recruiting. It's damaging to morale of the troops who are deployed, and it's damaging to the morale of their families who believe in what they're doing to serve this country."

"We have almost 300 million Americans who are being protected by 2.4 [million] volunteer active, Guard and reserve members," the general went on to say. "We must recruit to that force. When a respected leader like Mr. Murtha, who has spent 37 extremely honorable years as a Marine, fought in two wars, has served the country extremely well in the Congress of the United States, when a respected individual like that says what he said, and 18- and 19-year-olds look to their leadership to determine how they are expected to act, they can get the wrong message." Gen. Pace said young people should be encouraged to join, not shun, the military, "especially when we're in a war where our enemy has stated intention of destroying our way of life."

It is very curious that Gen. Pace likened the war in Iraq to a struggle against a foe who has stated its intention to destroy the American way of life. The only "way of life" being destroyed today in Iraq is the Iraqi way of life, and the force responsible for this devastation is the U.S. military. The insurgency being waged in Iraq today is not anti-American, but rather anti-occupation. The more Americans reflect on the nature of the occupation ongoing in Iraq, the more they wrestle with the notion of how they would respond if a foreign power put its troops on the ground here at home. The answer, of course, is obvious. It is hard to recruit Americans who know that if they were in the shoes of the Iraqis, they would be doing the exact same thing as the insurgents -- fighting with every tool available to drive out the foreign occupier.

Gen. Pace and others miss the point completely when they appeal to American patriotism in trying to draw recruits to a U.S. military that is engaged in activities in Iraq that can only be seen as inherently un-American.

The very fact that the War in Iraq does NOT threaten the American way of life is the main reason why Americans, by and large, are refusing to walk away from the comforts afforded by the American way of life to join a military system comparatively Spartan in nature. While economic incentives have always played a role in rounding out the numbers in the all-volunteer force of the post-Vietnam War era, the fact is that military service was for many (including myself) a calling, a reflection of a desire to serve a higher cause than simple economic self-interest. In many ways, military service was (and is) inherently un-American, since it embraces core values that place the collective over the individual. These inconsistencies were accepted, however, since those serving in the military understood that the team they were joining represented that which guaranteed to all others the wherewithal to enjoy the freedoms associated with being an American. We knew when we joined the military that we had a social contract with our fellow Americans. We who served would forego the comforts and freedoms of civilian life so that we could guarantee that those very same civilians could live as Americans. We also knew that, when the time came, America would support us by not only providing us with the wherewithal to wage war, but also ensure that before asking us to make the ultimate sacrifice in defense of a cause, that it was a cause worthy of that sacrifice.

Today, that contract lays broken and violated. America went to war in Iraq on the basis of false premises. Our troops fight and die for a cause most Americans cannot identify with. And the U.S. military is engaged in domestic spying operations against the very citizens it is sworn to defend.

The generals who criticize Congressman Murtha would do well to study recent history, especially some of the historical lessons drawn from books that they themselves encourage mid- to senior-level officers to read. Since its publication in 1998, U.S. Army Col. H. R. McMasters' "Dereliction of Duty," an indictment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the escalation of the Vietnam War, has been required reading for a generation of U.S. military leaders. Drawing upon recently declassified documents, McMasters outlines the betrayal of the American military during the Vietnam War by its own leaders, the general officers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who put their own career ambitions ahead of the welfare and well-being of their troops, allowing the politicization of the Vietnam War to occur to the point that a war all knew to be unwinnable (and unjust) was sustained for many years by those afraid to speak out lest they threaten their career and reputation.

Gen. Pace and his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff are the current manifestation of the same cowardice and dereliction of duty McMasters chronicled in his book, a trend that leads one to question whether there are any generals today who possess enough honor to speak out against a war, and its underlying policies, that not only destroys the men and institutions they represent as leaders, but threatens the very nation they are sworn to defend.

One only needs to look to Col. McMasters himself to find an answer to this question. McMasters, a major at the time of the publication of his book, is an officer of great courage and conviction, not to mention considerable military talent. He commanded an armored unit during the 1991 Gulf War, which engaged the Iraqi Republican Guard in a ferocious battle known as "73 Easting." During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McMasters commanded an armored battalion with distinction. More recently, McMasters commanded the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, where he participated in combat operations in northern Iraq, including a decisive battle in September 2005 for the city of Tall Afar, a city of some 200,000 people about 260 miles northwest of Baghdad and only 40 miles from Syria. This battle, Operation Restore Rights, was one of several waged by the U.S. military and its erstwhile Iraqi government allies against Iraqi insurgents in an effort to demonstrate that the Iraqi military was taking a lead in security and stability operations inside Iraq. In a briefing to journalists shortly after the fighting in Tall Afar wound down, McMasters referred to the insurgents as "terrorists" who were drawn to Tall Afar because of its location along routes between the Iraqi city of Mosul and Syria. According to McMasters, the "terrorists" considered it a good place to incite sectarian and ethnic violence and chaos that would preclude Iraqi governmental control.

When the terrorists took over Tall Afar, McMasters said, they replaced all the imams from the mosques with Islamic extremists, replaced all teachers from the schools with people who "preached hatred and intolerance," and kidnapped and murdered large numbers of people. "The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine," McMasters said, "in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body, and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents."

In the end, McMasters said, the "terrorists" who once ran the western Iraq city of Tall Afar were routed by American and Iraqi security forces.

The operation began in early May of 2005, McMasters noted, but fighting reached a climax in September. About 5,000 Iraqi security forces and around 3,500 U.S. troops participated in Tall Afar operation, according to McMasters, who noted that a "pall of fear" has been lifted from Tall Afar.

McMasters, in extolling the victory in Tall Afar, noted that the United States is employing "the right strategy" to defeat insurgents in Iraq by building up capable Iraqi security forces, including police, to eventually take over from coalition troops.

The colonel said the American people should be very proud of U.S. service members in Iraq, noting that they and their coalition and Iraqi partners have "the enemy on the run." The Iraqi people should know that America is "going to stand by them" until the insurgents have been defeated, McMasters said.

If one were ignorant of Col. McMasters' curriculum vitae, one might be excused for thinking that Gen. Pace or one of his clones had given the briefing, so in lock-step was the briefing with the political message being issued from the White House. According to McMasters' simplistic briefing, one would believe that the "terrorists" had imposed themselves on the people of Tall Afar, and not the U.S. military. Tell that to the Hassan children, orphaned by the U.S. Army in January 2005, when their car was shot up at a U.S. military roadblock inside Tall Afar. "If it were up to me, I'd kill the Americans and drink their blood", 14-year-old Jilian Hassan, who survived the shooting, is quoted as saying afterwards. The Hassans were Turkmen, natives of Tall Afar. I'd like to ask Col. McMasters what his sentiments would be if foreign troops shot up his car while he drove home in his own hometown, killing members of his family. I'm certain they would echo that of young Jilian.

But McMasters will be the first to tell you that there are unforeseen consequences to war, first and foremost being the tragic reality of what the military euphemistically refers to as "collateral damage" among the civilian population. But I will tell you that another casualty of war is the truth, and McMasters, the man who took the Joint Chiefs of Staff to task for their lack of honor when it came to selling the Vietnam War, seems to have taken a page directly from his own book.

McMasters failed to mention that his operation was an eerie repeat of a similar operation fought in Tall Afar almost exactly one year prior by members of the U.S. Army's Stryker Brigade in September 2004. As with that effort, Operation Restore Rights found virtually no foreign fighters in Tall Afar, only Iraqi Turkmen native to the city. Almost all of those killed or captured during the battle for Tall Afar were native Turkmen.

McMasters also glosses over the reality of the Iraqi military, which fought alongside the U.S. soldiers in Tall Afar. Drawn primarily from the ranks of the Kurdish Peshmergh, who were (and are) waging their own pogrom of ethnic cleansing against Turkmen in the area of Kirkuk, the Iraqi military was engaged in nothing less than the wholesale terrorizing of an innocent civilian population which the U.S. military, including McMasters, allowed to be categorized as "criminal." Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a former lieutenant colonel in Saddam Hussein's army who fled Iraq in 1986, commenting on the "battle" of Tall Afar, said that it would be used as a model as his forces attacked other insurgent-held cities in quick succession. "We are warning those who have given shelter to terrorists that they must stop, kick them out, or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tall Afar," al-Dulaimi said.

Within a month of McMasters' press conference, U.S. forces in Tall Afar were trying to win over the deeply traumatized Turkmen population. Meetings were held with local school officials on how to reopen schools closed since the fighting in September.

Most of the schools had been destroyed or damaged in the fighting, and those that remained intact served as barracks for the occupying U.S. military forces that remained behind in Tall Afar. School officials asked when the Americans might leave, so that they could return to a sense of normalcy. The U.S. military made it clear that the security situation in the city will dictate when the soldiers will leave the schools. "We hope we can leave those schools as soon as possible, but we do not want to do so too early and allow the criminals to come back," a U.S. military officer said.

Left unsaid was the reality that the "criminals" the officer referred to are in fact the very citizens he claims to be protecting. As McMasters and others know, the vast majority of the "terrorists" killed and detained during the fight for Tall Afar were natives of that town simply fighting to defend their homes. Like young Jilian, however, there can be little doubt about what will motivate them for the foreseeable future -- a burning desire to drive out an occupying force, that destroyed their homes and slaughtered their fellow townspeople. In an effort to win back the "hearts and minds" of the citizens of Tall Afar, Col. McMasters' 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment participated in a program in mid-November 2005 to distribute blankets to help ward off the cold of the coming winter. This action was reported by the Department of Defense's new "Defend America" website, part of a propaganda effort to feed to the American people the "good news" coming from Iraq. Tell that to the citizens of Tall Afar, who know that a few blankets and repaired schools can't undo the damage done by a brutal occupation run by officers like Col. McMasters who have lost all sense of history or responsibility when it comes to waging war in Iraq.

When Col. McMasters was a major, he authored a book that made me proud to say I was an officer in the service of the armed forces of the United States of America. Today, I cannot in all good faith say I share these sentiments. Col. McMasters seems to have forgotten the lessons Maj. McMasters penned in his book "Dereliction of Duty." After reviewing Col. McMasters' words and deeds regarding Tall Afar, I wonder if he could write such a book today, or instead has he become so enamored with his rank and position, and with his seemingly upward mobility in the ranks of the U.S. Army, that he has forgotten the important lessons he drew from the failure of leadership exhibited by the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Vietnam War. One could easily confuse Col. McMasters' briefing regarding operations in Tall Afar with similar briefings offered years ago by colonels concerning operations in the Au Shau Valley, or outside Danang, or anywhere else in Vietnam, just as one would have no problem drawing a direct comparison with the politicized posturing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Vietnam with the similar behavior of Gen. Pace and his colleagues today regarding Iraq.

All of this only serves to solidify my endorsement of Congressman Murtha's statement encouraging America's youth to avoid service in the military today. America's youth would do well to enlist in an armed forces led by men not afraid to put their careers on the line when it comes to telling the truth about a war in which these same youth are called upon to give their lives in increasing numbers. As Congressman Murtha knows, it is not the number of casualties that presents the problem. Marines lost thousands on Iwo Jima and other islands in the Pacific during the war to defeat Imperial Japan. Hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat the forces of fascism and empire. These were losses justified by the cause. In Iraq, it is not the numbers, but the cause. If the Iraq war were just, then America should (and I believe, would) be prepared to lose as many as it takes to get the job done. But since the Iraq war is not a just war, one soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is too great a price, let alone more than 2,270.

As the recent decision to authorize unwarranted wiretaps illustrates, the Bush administration has exploited the abrogation of constitutional responsibility by the U.S. Congress to position the executive branch of government as an Imperial Presidency. As long as this is the case, and those who wield the reigns of power view the American armed forces as their personal legions useful in the spreading of American imperial power, then I could not in good faith encourage anyone to enlist in the ranks of such a legion. Once the American people have reigned in the excesses of power that have propelled the United States into an unjust war in Iraq, and the increasing possibility of a similar war of aggression against Iran, I could think of no greater waste of patriotic expression than to serve in a military so abused.

I am hopeful that the current course undertaken by America can be reversed, and that someday (soon) Americans can enlist with pride in a military not only sworn to defend the Constitution, but also actively engaged in legitimate activities designed to do just that. Then, perhaps, a new generation of American military officers will sit down and pen the successor volume to H.R. McMasters' masterpiece, telling the story of the leadership failures exhibited by senior U.S. military officers during the course of the Iraq war. I can only hope that Col. McMasters will be the one either writing such a volume, or assisting in its preparation, as opposed to being the subject of the narrative.

Scott Ritter served as a chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 until his resignation in 1998. He is the author of, most recently, "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein" (Nation Books, 2005).

As of January 2006, the U.S. stockpile contains almost 10,000 nuclear warheads. This includes 5,735 active or operational warheads: 5,235 strategic and 500 nonstrategic warheads. Approximately 4,225 additional warheads are held in the reserve or inactive stockpiles, some of which will be dismantled. Under plans announced by the Energy Department in June 2004 (and possibly revised in spring 2005), some 4,365 warheads are scheduled to be retired for dismantlement by 2012 (see Nuclear Notebook, September/October 2004). This would leave approximately 5,945 warheads in the operational and reserve stockpiles in 2012, including the 1,700-2,200 "operationally deployed" strategic warheads specified in the 2002 Moscow Treaty or Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).

To understand the composition of the U.S. stockpile, it is helpful to examine the terms used to describe the different categories of warheads. Active warheads are maintained in a ready-for-use status, with tritium and other limited life components installed, and may be either deployed or stored. The active warhead inventory is broken down into deployed warheads, responsive force warheads, and spares. Deployed warheads consist of operationally deployed warheads (for example, warheads on fielded strategic forces), warheads associated with weapon systems in overhaul, and fielded nonstrategic weapons. Responsive force warheads consist of active warheads not on deployed systems. These are kept in secure storage but are available to be returned to the operationally deployed force. Depending on the particular weapon system, this task may take days, weeks, or months. Spare warheads are part of the active but not operational inventory, and support routine maintenance and operations. Inactive warheads do not have limited life components installed or maintained, and may not have the latest warhead modifications.

New war plans. The Defense Department is upgrading its nuclear strike plans to reflect new presidential guidance and a transition in war planning from the top-heavy Single Integrated Operational Plan of the Cold War to a family of smaller and more flexible strike plans designed to defeat today's adversaries. The new central strategic war plan is known as OPLAN (Operations Plan) 8044. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Meyers described some of the planning changes in April 2005 Senate testimony: "[U.S. Strategic Command] has revised our strategic deterrence and response plan that became effective in the fall of 2004. This revised, detailed plan provides more flexible options to assure allies, and dissuade, deter, and if necessary, defeat adversaries in a wider range of contingencies."

One member of the new family is CONPLAN 8022, a concept plan for the quick use of nuclear, conventional, or information warfare capabilities to destroy--preemptively, if necessary--"time-urgent targets" anywhere in the world. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an Alert Order in early 2004 that directed the military to put CONPLAN 8022 into effect. As a result, the Bush administration's preemption policy is now operational on long-range bombers, strategic submarines on deterrent patrol, and presumably intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

ICBMs. In 2005, the Pentagon completed the retirement of the MX Peacekeeper ICBM, after almost 20 years of service. The missile's long and controversial history stretches back to the 1970s, when officials proposed many elaborate basing schemes to try and prevent a supposed "window of vulnerability" from increasing numbers of accurate Soviet ICBMs. By 1979 the program called for the deployment of 200 missiles, hidden among 4,600 shelters (one missile in each cluster of 23 shelters), in a kind of mobile shell-game spread over approximately 40,000 square miles of Utah and Nevada. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan canceled that basing scheme and cut the number of missiles to 100, to be placed in Minuteman missile silos, tacitly conceding that the vulnerability problem could not be solved or never existed in the first place. Two years later, Congress limited deployment to 50 missiles. The first 10 missiles, located at Warren Air Force Base (AFB), Wyoming, were declared operational on December 22, 1986, with the full force of 50 on alert two years later. The Pentagon phased out the MX over a three-year period beginning in October 2002; it deactivated the last missile on September 19, 2005. In the end, billions of dollars were expended to rectify an imaginary strategic vulnerability.

The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) calls for MX silos to be retained, rather than destroyed as was required in the now-abandoned Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) II. The United States will keep MX missiles for possible use as space-launch vehicles, as target vehicles, or for redeployment. The missiles' 550 W87 warheads will be temporarily stored, and a portion will eventually replace W62 warheads on Minuteman III ICBMs under the Safety Enhanced Reentry Vehicle (SERV) program beginning this year. All W62s are scheduled to be retired in 2009. A Minuteman missile can carry one or two SERVs with W87 warheads, but apparently not three. In total, we estimate that 200 W87 warheads will be used to complement the W78 warheads assigned to Minuteman IIIs, with the balance placed in the responsive force of reserve warheads. Full operational capability of the SERV is scheduled for autumn 2010.

The 500-strong Minuteman III force remains basically unchanged from last year. Under START I, the air force downloaded the 150 missiles located at Warren AFB to single-warhead configuration in 2001. With START II's ban on multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) now a dead letter, U.S. officials revised earlier plans to download all Minuteman missiles to a single-warhead configuration. Although the air force plans to reduce the operational warhead loading on Minuteman IIIs to 500, it is considering keeping as many as 800 warheads for the Minuteman force.

Minuteman modernization continues under an ambitious $7 billion-$8 billion, six-part program intended to improve the missile's accuracy and reliability and extend its service life beyond 2020. The United States test-launched four Minuteman IIIs from Vandenberg AFB, California, between July 14 and September 14, 2005. Three tests flew a single unarmed reentry vehicle, while the fourth missile carried two vehicles. An August 25 test used a Minuteman III from the 564th Missile Squadron at Malmstrom AFB, Montana, with a single vehicle. The air force stated that the test aimed to "demonstrate the ability to integrate a safety enhanced reentry vehicle" for W87 warheads onto the Minuteman III weapons system. Military officials executed the September 14 launch through the 20th Air Force's airborne launch control system using a U.S. Navy E-6B Mercury (TACAMO) aircraft.

The air force issued a Mission Need Statement in 2002 for a new ICBM to be introduced in 2018. The air force has earmarked more than $10 million for 2006-2007 for studies to define the required capabilities and set milestones for missile development. Some defense strategists have suggested equipping a portion of the ICBM force with conventional warheads. There are rumors that the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review may recommend converting 50 of the 500 Minuteman missiles to conventional missions.

Submarines. The navy decommissioned the Trident I C4 missile, after 26 years of service, in late October 2005, when the Alabama off-loaded the last 24 operational C4 missiles. The entire force of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) is now comprised of Trident II D5 missiles. When missile conversion is completed in 2008, the United States will have 336 Trident II D5 SLBMs on 14 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), which is the force level decided on in the 1994 NPR; the missiles will be armed with approximately 2,000 warheads. The navy has extended the service life of the subs from 30 to 44 years. The oldest sub is scheduled to retire in 2029, when a new SSBN class will be introduced.

The navy completed the first phase of downloading the warheads from all Trident II missiles in 2005 to keep pace with SORT goals. The navy has opted for a gradual decrease in the number of warheads on its SLBMs over several years, rather than a sudden drop just before the end of 2012, the treaty deadline. Under START, each Trident II D5 missile is counted as carrying eight warheads, though the actual number varies depending upon mission. We estimate that each missile now carries an average of six warheads. They will be further downloaded as 2012 approaches.

During the past few years, the navy has significantly changed the homeporting of SSBNs to meet new planning requirements. It transferred two SSBNs from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in 2002 and another in 2003. On August 17, 2005, the Louisiana left Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia, on patrol. Rather than roaming the Atlantic during its 58-day patrol, the sub sailed around Cape Horn and ended up at its new homeport, Naval Submarine Base Bangor, Washington. On September 27, 2005, the Maine left Kings Bay on a similar journey, bringing to nine the number of SSBNs in the Pacific. Five subs remain in the Atlantic.

The primary goal of the shift is to increase coverage of targets in China, according to navy officials. (Pacific-based SSBNs also target Russia and North Korea.) The buildup of the more capable Trident II D5s in the Pacific additionally "enhances system accuracy, payload, and hard-target capability, thus improving [U.S.] available responses to existing and emerging Pacific theater threats," Rear Adm. Charles B. Young, director of the navy's Strategic Systems Program, said in an August 2002 speech at the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific.

The four oldest Ohio-class SSBNs have been removed from the nuclear mission and are being converted into cruise missile submarines (SSGN) at a cost of $4.1 billion. Electric Boat Corporation, a division of General Dynamics, is the main contractor and built the original submarines. Work on the Ohio and Michigan is being done at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Washington, after which the subs will be homeported at Bangor. Work on the Florida and Georgia is being done at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Virginia, after which they will be homeported at Kings Bay. We estimate that the Defense Department transferred the nearly 1,000 W76 warheads from these four older SSBNs to inactive/responsive status and will eventually send them to the Pantex Plant in Texas for dismantlement.

At least four important upgrades are under way involving the Trident II D5. The first is a life-extension program (LEP) for the W76 warhead that will significantly enhance the weapon's capability. Outfitting the W76/Mk-4 reentry vehicle with a new arming and fuzing subsystem (MC4700) will give the 100-kiloton W76 a ground-burst capability for the first time and will increase the types of targets that it can destroy. The modified W76 warhead, which may have its yield reduced by about 40 percent to 60 kilotons, according to a July report in Sante Fe's New Mexican newspaper, is designated the W76 Mod 1 (or W76-1), and the reentry vehicle is known as Mk-4A.

The navy is working on a second warhead upgrade to equip the reentry vehicles with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receivers for increased accuracy. In 2004, Congress refused to fund the Enhanced Effectiveness (E2) Reentry Body program, which would have provided this capability, because of a concern that equipping SLBM reentry vehicles with GPS accuracy could lead to mini-nukes on the submarines.

Using other funds, the navy supports programs to improve the missile's accuracy. One program aims to equip reentry vehicles with a three-axis flap system that steers the reentry vehicle during its descent toward its target, essentially creating a maneuverable reentry vehicle. In March 2005, the Tennessee launched a Trident II D5 missile equipped with an unarmed reentry vehicle fitted with the three-axis flap system and GPS. One navy admiral who participated in the test told us: "I had GPS signal all the way down and could steer it." The test was also significant because the D5's 2,200-kilometer (1,367-mile) trajectory was the shortest ever flown by a U.S. SLBM, according to the admiral, with the warhead impacting just 12-13 minutes after launch.

The third modernization program involves upgrading the current Mk-6 guidance system and extending its service life. The Mk-6LE (life extension) is scheduled to be operational in 2013 and would last through 2042. The fourth upgrade involves refurbishing the solid propulsion motors of the Trident II D5. Defense awarded a $71.5 million contract to Alliant Techsystems for production of new solid propulsion systems for all three stages of the D5 through 2007.

The navy continues to buy Trident II D5 missiles. It has bought 408 so far and requested an additional five missiles in 2005. Officials extended D5 production through 2013 and increased the total number to be procured from 453 to 561, at an additional cost of $12.2 billion. The total cost of the program is now $37 billion, or $66 million per missile. To make the D5 operational through 2042 (to the end of the extended service life of the Ohio-class SSBN), the navy will upgrade existing missiles to a new variant, the D5LE. In 2003, Congress budgeted $416 million to modernize the D5. At any given time, 336 Trident II D5s will arm the 14 U.S. SSBNs (including two sets for two SSBNs that will be in overhaul), 58 D5s will be allocated to Britain for their SSBNs, and the balance will be available for flight tests.

The navy appears to have dropped plans to equip its new submarine-launched intermediate-range ballistic missile (SLIRBM) with dual nuclear-conventional capability in favor of developing only conventional warheads for the weapon. Defense awarded a $9.2 million, 16-month contract to Lockheed Martin in July 2005 to demonstrate and validate solid rocket motor technologies for a two-stage SLIRBM design. The program envisions fitting multiple SLIRBMs inside each missile tube on SSGNs, adding a second conventional strike weapon to the boats' Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles. The SLIRBM is intended to precisely deliver a conventional payload at ranges in excess of 1,770 kilometers (1,099 miles) within 10-15 minutes of launch.

After a more than 11-year hiatus, the navy has resumed SLBM flight-testing in the Pacific. In November 2004, the Nevada launched two Trident II D5s down the Pacific Missile Range. In March 2005, the Tennessee test-fired a missile in the Atlantic, and in October the Royal Navy's Vanguard test-fired a D5 missile, also in the Atlantic. In anticipation of flight-testing in both oceans, the navy, with the help of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, converted two 8-foot by 40-foot containers into vans for data processing and analysis during test-launches.

Bombers and bomber weapons. The United States has two types of long-range bombers for nuclear missions: the B-2A Spirit and the B-52H Stratofortress. The B-52Hs are based at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, and at Minot AFB, North Dakota; the B-2As are based at Whiteman AFB, Missouri.

The B-52s can deliver cruise missiles, gravity bombs, or a combination of both; B-2s carry only bombs. Both have conventional missions as well.

Neither bomber is maintained on day-to-day alert as during the Cold War, yet the alert level has increased with the recent tasking of bomber wings in Global Strike missions. In October 2004, for example, the air force launched 13 B-52s near-simultaneously from Barksdale AFB in a minimum--interval takeoff, with each bomber taking off within a minute or less of one another. The commander of the 8th Air Force at Barksdale AFB told the Times of Shreveport in October 2005 that the 8th Air Force is now "essentially on alert . . . to plan and execute global strikes" on behalf of Strategic Command.

A five-year modernization effort completed in 2003 enables the B-2 to carry a mix of B61 and B83 nuclear bombs as well as various conventional weapons. B-2s are already capable of making some targeting changes en route, but the air force is replacing the onboard UHF and VHF radios, and satellite communications systems, with a new system that will allow crews to receive beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) voice and data communications, and review full mission plans en route to their targets. An extremely high frequency (EHF) satellite communication will be added to ensure the bombers have secure BLOS communications in their nuclear mission. The air force is also equipping all B-2s with a new external coating known as alternate high-frequency material, which will increase the bomber's stealthiness and ease its maintenance. The program will be completed by 2011.

The air force began installing the Avionics Midlife Improvement (AMI) on the B-52H in 2005, to improve the aircraft's navigation and nuclear weapons delivery. Installation on all bombers will be completed by September 2008. Technicians will also replace the bomber's existing satellite communication system with an EHF radio to improve connectivity in nuclear-strike scenarios.

The weapons deployed on U.S. strategic bombers have a variety of capabilities. B61-7 bombs have multiple yield options, sometimes referred to as "dial-a-yield," ranging from 10 to 350 kilotons. The bomb, which is almost 12 feet long and weighs approximately 760 pounds, has five fuzing options: free-fall airburst, parachute-retarded airburst, free-fall contact burst, parachute--retarded contact burst, and parachute--retarded lay down delayed-surface burst (with 31-second and 81-second delays available). The B61-11 "bunker buster" is a B61-7 with a one-piece hardened--steel center case and a new nosepiece and rear subassembly, which provide for ground penetration and add approximately 450 pounds of weight. The 400-kiloton weapon is also equipped with a special ground-impact time-delay feature to allow it to penetrate 3-6 meters (10-20 feet) underground before detonation. The Pentagon and Los Alamos National Laboratory developed the Mod 11 to replace the 9-megaton B53 bomb, whose purpose was to hold selected deeply buried targets at risk.

The B83 is a high-yield strategic bomb with variable yield options up to 1.2 megatons. It is designed for high-speed external carriage and low-altitude delivery against hard targets. The weapon is built for relatively hard impacts on irregular, reinforced concrete surfaces, such as ICBM silos. The bomb weighs 2,400 pounds and has four sections behind its hollow shock-absorbing nose. The first compartment houses the warhead; the mid-case contains the firing set and fuzing controls; the aft-case contains the arming system and thermal batteries; and the last compartment holds the parachute system, which contains a 46-foot Kevlar-nylon ribbon parachute that is held by 60 Kevlar suspension lines and deployed by three 4-foot diameter pilot chutes. The 180-pound parachute system can reduce the bomb's velocity from about 700 miles per hour to 44 miles per hour within a few seconds.

The advanced cruise missile (ACM) and air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) carried on the B-52H are undergoing service life-extension programs to prolong their lifetimes through 2030. The ACM's forward-swept wings and tailplanes, flush air-intake, and flat, shielded jet exhaust make it difficult for radar to observe the missile. The ACM has a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and for guidance uses an inertial navigation system, together with a terrain contour matching (TERCOM) system to provide accuracies of 100-300 feet circular error probable. TERCOM uses a downward-pointing radar altimeter to determine the missile's altitude as it flies toward a target and compares the ground elevation profiles with maps stored in memory to determine if it is on course. The ALCM has the same navigation and guidance system but has a slightly shorter range of approximately 2,400 kilometers (1,491 miles). Both missiles are equipped with a W80-1 warhead, which has variable yield options up to 150 kilotons. The air force moved all remaining reserve ALCMs at Fairchild AFB, Washington, to Barksdale AFB in November 2005.

The air force is studying options for a next-generation nuclear cruise missile. One possibility is a joint enhanced cruise missile with a nuclear payload and longer range to support Global Strike missions against "targets deep within future high-threat anti-access environments," according to air force documents. The new missile could be delivered by bombers or from various ground or sea platforms.

Nuclear Surety Inspections. Air Combat Command's inspector general periodically conducts Nuclear Surety Inspections (NSI) to assess if rules, regulations, and procedures are being maintained to the highest standards. The inspections evaluate many areas, including weapon loading and mating procedures; storage, maintenance, and security practices; accident ("Broken Arrow") response; exercises to recapture and recover a nuclear weapon; processing and relaying emergency action messages; and permissive action link/use control operations that ensure that authorization orders are authentic.

Inspectors conducted an NSI of the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot AFB from December 12 to 19, 2004 and rated the base satisfactory. An NSI conducted from July 9 to 16, 2005 of the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale AFB was rated unsatisfactory. Inspectors visited Whiteman AFB in December 2003 for an NSI, and a follow-up was expected in mid-2005. From February 18 to 24, 2004, inspectors conducted an NSI of the 896th Munitions Squadron (MUNS) at Nellis AFB, Nevada. The 896th MUNS receives, ships, stores, and maintains a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons. The Weapon Storage Area consists of 790 acres, crisscrossed by 36 miles of roadway, and houses 75 specialized storage igloos. The inspectors graded 18 areas, and the MUNS received 17 excellent or satisfactory ratings and one outstanding.

Nonstrategic nuclear weapons. The United States retains approximately 500 nonstrategic operational nuclear weapons and keeps another 790 in reserve. These include the B61-3,-4, and-10 gravity bombs and the W80-0 warhead for the nuclear Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile (TLAM/N). The B61-10 is no longer in the active stockpile, according to Energy documents. The 2001 NPR did not address nonstrategic nuclear weapons.

The United States deploys B61 nonstrategic nuclear bombs at eight bases in six European countries for delivery by various U.S. and NATO aircraft. Additional tactical bombs are in reserve status stored at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, and Nellis AFB. The air force deploys approximately 50 bombs with the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina. The 27th Fighter Wing at Cannon AFB, New Mexico, no longer has a nuclear mission, and the base is expected to be phased out under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process.

U.S. delivery aircraft include the F-16C/D Fighting Falcon and F-15E Strike Eagle. NATO aircraft assigned nuclear missions include U.S.-supplied F-16s and German and Italian Tornado bombers. Under current air force planning, a portion of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) force will have nuclear capability starting in 2012. The JSF program completed an initial nuclear certification requirements plan in 2004, and more detailed procedures to make it nuclear capable began in 2005.

Selected Los Angeles-class, improved Los Angeles-class, and some Virginia-class attack submarines can deploy with TLAM/Ns. The navy plans to refurbish the missiles, and Energy their W80-0 warheads, to extend their service life to around 2040. An estimated 320 TLAM/Ns are currently stored at the Strategic Weapons Facilities at Bangor, Washington, and King's Bay, Georgia, alongside strategic weapons for the SSBNs.

While most U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) were credited with some nuclear capability during the Cold War, today most SSNs do not have nuclear missions. In the Pacific Fleet, for example, less than half of the attack submarines regularly undergo nuclear certification. But if the order were given, Tomahawks could be redeployed in 30 days. We estimate that no more than 12 out of around 50 SSNs have nuclear capability. The navy has test-launched unarmed Tomahawks 92 times since 1978. Two of these were conducted in 2005, one from the Greenville and another from the Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Nuclear warheads. To ensure the reliability of nuclear weapons beyond their original design lives, most of the warheads in the "enduring" stockpile are scheduled to undergo life-extension programs over the next decade. The first of these programs began in 1999 and was for the W87; it was completed in 2001.

The B61-7/-11, W76, W78, W80, B83, and W88 warheads will also undergo life-extension programs. Some life-extension programs are substantial enough to change a warhead's modification designation. Accordingly, the W76 will become the W76-1, and the W80-0 and W80-1 will become the W80-2 and W80-3, respectively. The first production units of the W80-2 and B61-7/-11 are scheduled for delivery later this year, the W76-1 in 2007-2008, and the W80-3 around 2008. The B61-7/-11 LEP involves refurbishing the secondary.

Strong congressional opposition to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) warhead program induced Energy to withdraw its 2006 funding request for the program, but hardened--case penetration tests applicable to RNEP will likely continue with Defense funding at Sandia National Laboratories.

After spending almost $2 billion during more than a decade, Energy is still "reestablishing" small-scale plutonium pit production at Los Alamos. Lab scientists produced two certifiable W88 pits in 2003, four more in 2004, and six in 2005. Energy plans to test these pits in support of achieving W88 pit certification (for quantity production and stockpiling in the "war reserve") in 2007. Los Alamos aims to manufacture 10 W88 pits per year from 2008 to 2014. As part of its "pit campaign," Energy also hopes to "establish manufacturing process capability for all pit types" by 2009 and to "manufacture initial pit EDUs [engineering demonstration units] for Reliable Replacement [Warhead] pits" by 2012, according to its 2006 budget request.

In total, Los Alamos could be making plutonium pits for as many as 30-40 new warheads per year after 2010, according to an October 2005 Albuquerque Journal interview with Linton Brooks, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Energy's plans for constructing a larger Modern Pit Facility at a new site are on hold.


Nuclear Notebook is prepared by Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. Direct inquiries to NRDC, 1200 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 20005; 202-289-6868.