The evidence is now persuasive that George H.W. Bush participated in negotiations with Iran's radical regime in 1980, behind President Jimmy Carter's back, with the goal of arranging for 52 American hostages to be released after Bush and Ronald Reagan were sworn in as Vice President and President, respectively.

In exchange, the Republicans agreed to let Iran obtain U.S.-manufactured military supplies through Israel. The Iranians kept their word, releasing the hostages immediately upon Reagan's swearing-in on Jan. 20, 1981.

Over the next few years, the Republican-Israel-Iran weapons pipeline operated mostly in secret, only exploding into public view with the Iran-Contra scandal in late 1986. Even then, the Reagan-Bush team was able to limit congressional and other investigations, keeping the full history - and the 1980 chapter - hidden from the American people.

Upon taking office on Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush walled up the history even more by issuing an executive order blocking the scheduled declassification of records from the Reagan-Bush years. After 9/11, the younger George Bush added more bricks to the wall by giving Presidents, Vice Presidents and their heirs power over releasing documents.

Impending War

But that history is vital today.

First, the American people should know the real history of U.S.-Iran relations before the Bush administration launches another preemptive war in the Middle East. Second, the degree to which Iranian officials are willing to negotiate with their U.S. counterparts - and fulfill their side of the bargain - bears on the feasibility of talks now.

Indeed, the only rationale for hiding the historical record is that it would embarrass the Bush Family and possibly complicate George W. Bush's decision to attack Iran regardless of what the American people might want.

The Time magazine cover story, released on Sept. 17, and a new report by retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner - entitled "The End of the 'Summer Diplomacy'" - make clear that the military option against Iran is moving rapidly toward implementation.

Gardiner, who taught at the National War College and has war-gamed U.S. attacks on Iran for American policymakers over the past five years, noted that one of the "seven key truths" guiding Bush to war is that "you cannot negotiate with these people."

That "truth," combined with suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions and Tehran's relationship with Hezbelloh and other militant Islamic groups, has led the Bush administration into the box-canyon logic that war is the only answer, despite the fact that Gardiner's war games have found that war would have disastrous consequences.

In his report, Gardiner also noted that Bush's personality and his sense of his presidential destiny are adding to the pressures for war.

"The President is said to see himself as being like Winston Churchill, and to believe that the world will only appreciate him after he leaves office; he talks about the Middle East in messianic terms; he is said to have told those close to him that he has got to attack Iran because even if a Republican succeeds him in the White House, he will not have the same freedom of action that Bush enjoys.

"Most recently, someone high in the administration told a reporter that the President believes that he is the only one who can 'do the right thing' with respect to Iran. One thing is clear: a major source of the pressure for a military strike emanates from the very man who will ultimately make the decision over whether to authorize such a strike - the President."

A Made-up Mind

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who reflects the thinking of influential neoconservatives, reached a similar conclusion - that Bush had essentially made up his mind about attacking Iran.

Krauthammer noted that on the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Bush responded to a question about Iran by saying: "It's very important for the American people to see the President try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."

"'Before' implies that one follows the other," Krauthammer wrote. "The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option." [Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2006]

Yet, before making such a fateful decision, shouldn't Bush at least ask his father to finally level with him and with the American people about what happened in 1980 when the country was transfixed by Iranian militants holding 52 American hostages for 444 days?

At Consortiumnews.com, we have a special interest in that history because it was my discovery of a trove of classified documents pointing to the secret Republican negotiations with Iran that led to the founding of this Web site in 1995 and the publication of our first investigative series.

In the mid-1990s, the U.S. news media was obsessed with issues such as the O.J. Simpson trial and the so-called "Clinton scandals," so there was little interest in reexamining some historical mystery about Republicans going behind Jimmy Carter's back to strike a deal with Iran's mullahs.

[The fullest account of this history can be found in Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege, which was published in 2004.]

But that history now could be a matter of life or death for thousands of people in the Middle East, including Iranians, Israelis and American soldiers in Iraq.

False History

The false history surrounding the Iranian hostage crisis also has led to the mistaken conclusion that it was only the specter of Ronald Reagan's tough-guy image that made Iran buckle in January 1981 and that, therefore, the Iranians respect only force.

The hostage release on Reagan's Inauguration Day bathed the new President in an aura of heroism as a leader so feared by America's enemies that they scrambled to avoid angering him. It was viewed as a case study of how U.S. toughness could restore the proper international order.

That night, as fireworks lit the skies of Washington, the celebration was not only for a new President and for the freed hostages, but for a new era in which American power would no longer be mocked. That momentum continues to this day in George W. Bush's "preemptive" wars and the imperial boasts about a "New American Century."

However, the reality of that day 25 years ago now appears to have been quite different than was understood at the time. What's now known about the Iranian hostage crisis suggests that the "coincidence" of the Reagan Inauguration and the Hostage Release was not a case of frightened Iranians cowering before a U.S. President who might just nuke Tehran.

The evidence indicates that it was a prearranged deal between the Republicans and the Iranians. The Republicans got the hostages and the political bounce; Iran's Islamic fundamentalists got a secret supply of weapons and various other payoffs.

State Secret

Though the full history remains a state secret, it now appears Republicans did contact Iran's mullahs during the 1980 campaign; a hostage agreement was reached; and a clandestine flow of U.S. weapons soon followed.

In effect, while Americans thought they were witnessing one reality - the cinematic heroism of Ronald Reagan backing down Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - another truth existed beneath the surface, one so troubling that the Reagan-Bush political apparatus has made keeping the secret a top priority for a quarter century.

The American people must never be allowed to think that the Reagan-Bush era began with collusion between Republican operatives and Islamic terrorists, an act that many might view as treason.

A part of those secret dealings between Iran and the Republicans surfaced in the Iran-Contra Affair in 1986, when the public learned that the Reagan-Bush administration had sold arms to Iran for its help in freeing U.S. hostages then held in Lebanon.

After first denying these facts, the White House acknowledged the existence of the arms deals in 1985 and 1986 but managed to block investigators from looking back before 1984, when the official histories assert that the Iran initiative began.

During the 1987 congressional hearings on Iran-Contra, Republicans - behind the hardnosed leadership of Rep. Dick Cheney - fought to protect the White House, while Democrats, led by the accommodating Rep. Lee Hamilton, had no stomach for a constitutional crisis.

The result was a truncated investigation that laid much of the blame on supposedly rogue operatives, such as Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North.

Many American editors quickly grew bored with the complex Iran-Contra tale, but a few reporters kept searching for its origins. The trail kept receding in time, back to the Republican-Iranian relationship forged in the heat of the 1980 presidential campaign.

'Germs' of Scandal

Besides the few journalists, some U.S. government officials reached the same conclusion. For instance, Nicholas Veliotes, Reagan's assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, traced the "germs" of the Iran-Contra scandal to the 1980 campaign.

In a PBS interview, Veliotes said he first discovered the secret arms pipeline to Iran when an Israeli weapons flight was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course on its third mission to deliver U.S. military supplies from Israel to Iran via Larnaca, Cyprus.

"We received a press report from Tass [the official Soviet news agency] that an Argentinian plane had crashed," Veliotes said. "According to the documents ... this was chartered by Israel and it was carrying American military equipment to Iran. ...And it was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment.

"Now this was not a covert operation in the classic sense, for which probably you could get a legal justification for it. As it stood, I believe it was the initiative of a few people [who] gave the Israelis the go-ahead. The net result was a violation of American law."

The reason that the Israeli flights violated U.S. law was that no formal notification had been given to Congress about the transshipment of U.S. military equipment as required by the Arms Export Control Act - a foreshadowing of George W. Bush's decision two decades later to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe that the Reagan-Bush camp's dealings with Iran dated back to before the 1980 election.

"It seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration," Veliotes said. "And I understand some contacts were made at that time."

Q: "Between?"

Veliotes: "Between Israelis and these new players."

Israeli Interests

In my work on the Iran-Contra scandal, I had obtained a classified summary of testimony by a mid-level State Department official, David Satterfield, who saw the early arms shipments as a continuation of Israeli policy toward Iran.

"Satterfield believed that Israel maintained a persistent military relationship with Iran, based on the Israeli assumption that Iran was a non-Arab state which always constituted a potential ally in the Middle East," the summary read. "There was evidence that Israel resumed providing arms to Iran in 1980."

Over the years, senior Israeli officials claimed that those early shipments had the discreet blessing of top Reagan-Bush officials.

In May 1982, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon told the Washington Post that U.S. officials had approved the Iranian arms transfers. "We said that notwithstanding the tyranny of Khomeini, which we all hate, we have to leave a small window open to this country, a tiny small bridge to this country," Sharon said.

A decade later, in 1993, I took part in an interview with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Tel Aviv during which he said he had read Gary Sick's 1991 book, October Surprise, which made the case for believing that the Republicans had intervened in the 1980 hostage negotiations to disrupt Jimmy Carter's reelection.

With the topic raised, one interviewer asked, "What do you think? Was there an October Surprise?"

"Of course, it was," Shamir responded without hesitation. "It was." Later in the interview when pressed for details, Shamir seemed to regret his candor and tried to backpedal somewhat on his answer.

Lie Detector

Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh also came to suspect that the arms-for-hostage trail led back to 1980, since it was the only way to make sense of why the Reagan-Bush team continued selling arms to Iran in 1985-86 when there was so little progress in reducing the number of American hostages in Lebanon.

When Walsh's investigators conducted a polygraph of George H.W. Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg, they added a question about Gregg's possible participation in the secret 1980 negotiations.

"Were you ever involved in a plan to delay the release of the hostages in Iran until after the 1980 Presidential election?" the examiner asked. Gregg's denial was judged to be deceptive. [See Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Vol. I, p. 501]

While investigating the so-called "October Surprise" issue for PBS "Frontline" in 1991-92, I also discovered a former State Department official who claimed contemporaneous knowledge of an October 1980 trip by then vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush to Paris to meet with Iranians about the hostages.

David Henderson, who was then a State Department Foreign Service officer, recalled the date as October 18, 1980. He said he heard about the Paris trip when Chicago Tribune correspondent John Maclean met him for an interview on another topic.

Maclean, son of author Norman Maclean who wrote A River Runs Through It, had just been told by a well-placed Republican source that Bush was flying to Paris for a clandestine meeting with a delegation of Iranians about the American hostages.

Henderson wasn't sure whether Maclean was looking for some confirmation or whether he was simply sharing an interesting tidbit of news. For his part, Maclean never wrote about the leak because, he told me later, a GOP campaign spokesman had denied it.

Faded Memory

As the years passed, the memory of that Bush-to-Paris leak faded for both Henderson and Maclean, until October Surprise allegations bubbled to the surface in the early 1990s.

Several intelligence operatives were claiming that Bush had undertaken a secret mission to Paris in mid-October 1980 to give the Iranian government an assurance from one of the two Republicans on the presidential ticket that the GOP promises of future military and other assistance would be kept.

Henderson mentioned his recollection of the Bush-to-Paris leak in a 1991 letter to a U.S. senator, which someone sent to me. Though Henderson didn't remember the name of the Chicago Tribune reporter, we were able to track it back to Maclean through a story that he had written about Henderson.

Though not eager to become part of the October Surprise story in 1991, Maclean confirmed that he had received the Republican leak. He also agreed with Henderson's recollection that their conversation occurred on or about Oct.18, 1980. But Maclean still declined to identify his source.

The significance of the Maclean-Henderson conversation was that it was a piece of information locked in a kind of historical amber, untainted by subsequent claims from intelligence operatives whose credibility had been challenged.

One couldn't accuse Maclean of concocting the Bush-to-Paris allegation for some ulterior motive, since he hadn't used it in 1980, nor had he volunteered it a decade later. He only confirmed it when asked and even then wasn't eager to talk about it.

Bush Meeting

The Maclean-Henderson conversation provided important corroboration for the claims by the intelligence operatives, including Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe who said he saw Bush attend a final round of meetings with Iranians in Paris.

Ben-Menashe said he was in Paris as part of a six-member Israeli delegation that was coordinating the arms deliveries to Iran. He said the key meeting had occurred at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.

In his memoirs, Profits of War, Ben-Menashe said he recognized several Americans, including Republican congressional aide Robert McFarlane and CIA officers Robert Gates, Donald Gregg and George Cave. Then, Ben-Menashe said, Iranian cleric Mehdi Karrubi arrived and walked into a conference room.

"A few minutes later George Bush, with the wispy-haired William Casey in front of him, stepped out of the elevator. He smiled, said hello to everyone, and, like Karrubi, hurried into the conference room," Ben-Menashe wrote.

Ben-Menashe said the Paris meetings served to finalize a previously outlined agreement calling for release of the 52 hostages in exchange for $52 million, guarantees of arms sales for Iran, and unfreezing of Iranian monies in U.S. banks. The timing, however, was changed, he said, to coincide with Reagan's expected Inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981.

Ben-Menashe, who repeated his allegations under oath in a congressional deposition, received support from several sources, including pilot Heinrich Rupp, who said he flew Casey - then Reagan's campaign director - from Washington's National Airport to Paris on a flight that left very late on a rainy night in mid-October.

Rupp said that after arriving at LeBourget airport outside Paris, he saw a man resembling Bush on the tarmac. The night of Oct. 18 indeed was rainy in the Washington area. Also, sign-in sheets at the Reagan-Bush headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, placed Casey within a five-minute drive of National Airport late that evening.

Other Witnesses

There were other bits and pieces of corroboration about the Paris meetings. As early as 1987, Iran's ex-President Bani-Sadr had made similar claims about a Paris meeting between Republicans and Iranians. A French arms dealer, Nicholas Ignatiew, told me in 1990 that he had checked with his government contacts and was told that Republicans did meet with Iranians in Paris in mid-October 1980.

A well-connected French investigative reporter Claude Angeli said his sources inside the French secret service confirmed that the service provided "cover" for a meeting between Republicans and Iranians in France on the weekend of Oct. 18-19, 1980. German journalist Martin Kilian had received a similar account from a top aide to the fiercely anti-communist chief of French intelligence, Alexandre deMarenches.

Later, deMarenches's biographer, David Andelman, told congressional investigators under oath that deMarenches admitted that he had helped the Reagan-Bush campaign arrange meetings with Iranians about the hostage issue in the summer and fall of 1980, with one meeting held in Paris in October.

Andelman said deMarenches ordered that the secret meetings be kept out of his biography because the story could otherwise damage the reputation of his friends, Casey and Bush. "I don't want to hurt my friend, George Bush," Andelman recalled deMarenches saying as Bush was seeking re-election in 1992.

Gates, McFarlane, Gregg and Cave all denied participating in the meeting, though some alibis proved shaky and others were never examined at all.

Lashing Out

For his part, George H.W. Bush lashed out at the October Surprise allegations. At a news conference on June 4, 1992, Bush was asked if he thought an independent counsel was needed to investigate allegations of secret arms shipments to Iraq during the 1980s.

"I wonder whether they're going to use the same prosecutors that are trying out there to see whether I was in Paris in 1980," Bush snapped.

As a surprised hush fell over the press corps, Bush continued, "I mean, where are we going with the taxpayers' money in this political year?" Bush then asserted, "I was not in Paris, and we did nothing illegal or wrong here" on Iraq.

Though Bush was a former CIA director and had been caught lying about Iran-Contra with his claims of being "out of the loop," he was still given the benefit of the doubt in 1992. Plus, he had what appeared to be a solid alibi for Oct. 18-19, 1980, Secret Service records which placed him at his home in Washington on that weekend.

However, the Bush administration released the records only in redacted form, making it difficult for congressional investigators to verify exactly what Bush had done that day and whom he had met.

The records for the key day of Sunday, Oct. 19, purported to show Bush going to the Chevy Chase Country Club in the morning and to someone's private residence in the afternoon. If Bush indeed had been on those side trips, it would close the window on any possible flight to Paris and back.

Investigators of the October Surprise mystery - including those of us at "Frontline" - put great weight on the Secret Service records. But little is really known about the Secret Service's standards for recording the movements of protectees.

Since the cooperation of the protectees is essential to the Secret Service staying in position to thwart any attacker, the agents presumably must show flexibility in what details they report.

Few politicians are going to want bodyguards around if they write down the details of sensitive meetings or assignations with illicit lovers. Reasonably, the agents might have to fudge or leave out some of the facts.

Bush's Alibi

As it turned out, only one Secret Service agent on the Bush detail - supervisor Leonard Tanis - claimed a clear recollection of the trip to the Chevy Chase Country Club that Sunday. Tanis told congressional investigators that Mr. and Mrs. Bush went to the Chevy Chase club for brunch with Justice and Mrs. Potter Stewart.

But at "Frontline," we had already gone down that path and found it to be a dead end. We had obtained Mrs. Bush's protective records and they showed her going to the C&O Canal jogging path in Washington, not to the Chevy Chase club.

We also had reached Justice Stewart's widow, who had no recollection of any Chevy Chase brunch. So it appeared that Tanis was wrong - and he later backed off his claims.

The inaccurate Tanis account raised the suspicions of House International Affairs Committee counsel Spencer Oliver. In a six-page memo urging a closer look at the Bush question, Oliver argued that the Secret Service had withheld the uncensored daily report for no justifiable reason from Congress.

"Why did the Secret Service refuse to cooperate on a matter which could have conclusively cleared George Bush of these serious allegations?" Oliver asked. "Was the White House involved in this refusal? Did they order it?"

Oliver also noted Bush's strange behavior in raising the October Surprise issue on his own at two news conferences.

"It can be fairly said that President Bush's recent outbursts about the October Surprise inquiries and [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best," wrote Oliver, "since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush."

Secret Flight

Unintentionally, Bush's eldest son poked another hole in the assumption that the government would never doctor official records to help cover up international travel by a protected public figure.

For Thanksgiving 2003, George W. Bush wanted to make a surprise flight to Iraq. To give Bush's flight additional security - and extra drama - phony flight plans were filed, a false call sign was employed, and Air Force One was identified as a "Gulfstream 5" in response to a question from a British Airways pilot.

"A senior administration official told reporters that even some members of Bush's Secret Service detail believed he was still in Crawford, Texas, getting ready to have his parents over for Thanksgiving," Washington Post reporter Mike Allen wrote. [Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2003]

Besides falsely telling reporters that George W. Bush planned to spend Thanksgiving at his Texas ranch, Bush's handlers spirited Bush to Air Force One in an unmarked vehicle, with only a tiny Secret Service contingent, the Post reported.

Bush later relished describing the scene to reporters. "They pulled up in a plain-looking vehicle with tinted windows. I slipped on a baseball cap, pulled 'er down -- as did Condi. We looked like a normal couple," he said, referring to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Though the melodramatic deception surrounding Bush's flight to Baghdad soon became public - since it was in essence a publicity stunt - it did prove the ability of high-ranking officials to conduct their movements in secrecy and the readiness of security personnel to file false reports as part of these operations.

Collapsing Alibis

By the late 1990s, other elements of the Republicans' October Surprise alibis were collapsing, including pro-Reagan-Bush claims cited prominently by some news organizations, such as the New Republic and Newsweek. [For more details, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege or Consortiumnews.com's "The Bushes & the Death of Reason."]

With the Republican defenses falling apart and with many documents from the Reagan-Bush years scheduled for release in 2001, the opportunity to finally learn the truth about the pivotal election of 1980 loomed.

But George W. Bush got into the White House via a ruling by five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the counting of votes in Florida. Then, on his first day in office, his counsel Alberto Gonzales drafted an executive order for Bush that postponed release of the Reagan-Bush records.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Bush approved another secrecy order that put the records beyond the public's reach indefinitely, passing down control of many documents to a President's or a Vice President's descendants.

Thus, the truth about how the Reagan-Bush era began in the 1980s - and what was done to contain the Iran-Contra investigations in the late 1980s and early 1990s - might eventually become the property of the noted scholars, the Bush twins, Jenna and Barbara.

The American people will be kept in the dark about their own history, like the subjects of some hereditary dynasty. Without the facts, they also face the possibility of being more easily manipulated by emotional appeals devoid of informed debate

That moment has come sooner than many expected. The United States appears to be on the brink of a war with Iran, while many government officials and the citizenry are operating on historical assumptions derived more from fiction than fact.

http://www.consortiumnews.com

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Alternately combative and humorous, Turner spoke nine years after his pledge to donate $1 billion to the United Nations over 10 years and on the same day President Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly a mile away.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has caused "incalculable damage" that will take 20 years to overcome "if we just act reasonably intelligently."

"It will go down in history, it is already being seen in history, as one of the dumbest moves that was ever made by anybody. A couple of others that come to mind were the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia," Turner told the forum.

"It literally broke my heart. You don't start wars just because you don't like somebody. ... I wouldn't even start a war with Rupert Murdoch," Turner said, referring to his onetime cable network rival.

Often contrarian, Turner called it a "joke" that Bush demanded that Iran abandon any ambitions for nuclear weapons while at the same time hoping to ban all such bombs.

"They're a sovereign state," Turner said of Iran. "We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel -- they've got 100 of them approximately -- or India or Pakistan or Russia. And really, nobody should have them.

"They aren't usable by any sane person."

POWER TO THE WOMEN

One way to reduce such dangers in the world would be to leave women in charge, said the former husband of Jane Fonda.

"Men should be barred from public office for 100 years in every part of the world. ... It would be a much kinder, gentler, more intelligently run world. The men have had millions of years where we've been running things. We've screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women."

In the meantime, the United Nations represents the best hope, Turner said.

While the world body is ridiculed as ineffective and irrelevant by its harshest critics and often criticized by its strongest advocates, Turner offered what was then one-third of his net worth to the world body nine years ago.

"I am absolutely certain we would not have made it through the Cold War without the U.N.," Turner said. "When Khrushchev at the U.N. took his shoe off and hit podium he was so mad, but he had a place to let off steam. If the U.N. hadn't been there, that would have been war right then."

When a questioner from the audience challenged Turner on the United Nations's value, Turner shot back.

"The war between Lebanon and Israel and Hizbollah would still be going on if it hadn't been for the U.N., and that's only in the last two weeks, Bubba."

I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully -- saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?

Last Friday's Rose Garden press conference seemed so awful I thought it worth wading through it again to see what set him off. Maybe if you saw it on television, it seemed better. Perhaps his banter with reporters works better on TV. But I left with the impression that this is a spoiled man whose frustration level when someone disagrees with him is that of a 3-year-old and that he's the last person you want to see operating under a lot of stress because he doesn't handle it well. See what you think:

Q: "On both the eavesdropping program and the detainee issues --"

A: "We call it the terrorist surveillance program, Hutch."

Yo. Sometimes I'm convinced this is a war of words. Should we call it surveillance or eavesdropping? Is the detainee issue about holding terrorists, or is it about torturing them and then trying them without telling them what evidence we have against them? If we stop calling it eavesdropping plus torture with kangaroo trials, will it stop being eavesdropping, torture and kangaroo trials, and become "anti-terrorist activity"? Who gets to name things? Would a rose by any other name, like skunkwort, smell as sweet?

Sen. John McCain, who knows more than President Bush about torture in captivity, thinks abandoning the Geneva Convention rules leaves American soldiers in peril of being tortured in turn and us without a court of resort to look to.

It's a thorny issue, but Bush kept getting more and more annoyed as he reiterated, "And I will tell you again, David, you can ask every hypothetical (question) you want, but the American people have got to know the facts. And the bottom line is simple: If Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules, if they do not do that, the program is not going forward." (In other words, we will not hold tribunals for suspected terrorists.) In what court in what world is not allowing the defendant to hear the evidence against him held to be just?

Bush kept insisting the legislation to permit such tribunals is vital and "the program will not go forward without it" because young intelligence officers might be accused of breaking the law(!).

"Let's see if I can put it (Article III of the Geneva Convention) this way for people to understand. There is a very vague standard that the (U.S. Supreme) Court said must kind of be the guide for our conduct in the war on terror and detainee policy. It's so vague that it's impossible to ask anybody to participate in the program for fear ... of breaking the law. That's the problem."

Actually, the problem is the proposed program of tribunals is illegal -- and not just young intelligence officers, but potentially old war criminals are at risk, as well.

Now here's a Bush classic, clarifying the matter with exquisite precision:

Q: "Well, recently you've also described bin Laden as sort of a modern-day Hitler or Mussolini. And I'm wondering why, if you can explain why you think it's a bad idea to send more resources to hunt down bin Laden, wherever he is? "

A: "We are, Richard. Thank you. Thanks for asking the question. They were asking me about somebody's report, well, special forces here -- Pakistan -- if he is in Pakistan, as this person thought he might be, who is asking the question -- Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we've got to be invited by the government of Pakistan.

"Secondly, the best way to find somebody who is hiding is to enhance your intelligence and to spend the resources necessary to do that; then when you find him, you bring him to justice. And there is a kind of an urban myth here in Washington about how this administration hasn't stayed focused on Osama bin Laden. Forget it. It's convenient throw-away lines when people say that."

Now that's a problem. Because in the summer lead-up to the war in Iraq, both administration officials and Bush himself repeatedly deemphasized the importance of Osama bin Laden. This was, of course, after they had let him slip away at Tora Bora, a mistake increasingly denounced within the military itself.

As resources were transferred out of Afghanistan and toward Iraq, we were repeatedly told that bin Laden was not central to the war on terror, it would continue with or without him, he was no longer our focus. There was a flurry of commentary at the time about this odd decision, but Saddam Hussein was being presented as the great menace and monster, and bin Laden was off the table.

You might think this is a classic fork: either they were lying then or they are lying now. But it would just take Bush longer to explain.

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

1) The Bush administration has created the biggest budget deficit, debt, and trade imbalance ever while cutting funding for domestic needs like education, Medicare, and Medicaid.

2) The administration's tax cuts favor the rich, no matter how you look at it. About 87 percent of tax benefits go to the 14 percent of households with incomes above $100,000. Households with incomes below $75,000 -- three-quarters of all households -- get just 5 percent of those benefits.

3) Bush signed the largest corporate tax break package in two decades, $136 billion. After World War II, corporations paid half the cost of running the federal government. Today, they pay 7%.

4) The price of gas doubled under Bush. The top oil companies earned $25 billion during the quarter that Hurricane Katrina struck compared to $50 billion for all of 2004. Former Exxon-Mobil, CEO, Lee Raymond got a $400 million exit package.

5) The Republican Congress has voted against every minimum wage increase, except the one linked to getting rid of the estate tax for the rich. The real income of the average American household has fallen five years in a row.

6) House Republicans chopped education programs by $14.3 billion -- the highest cuts ever. College tuition has increased 34 percent since Bush took office.

7) Since 2001, average monthly health care premiums have risen from $342 to $603. Annual deductibles have doubled. Today 46 million Americans (including 8.4 million children) have no health insurance, an increase of 6 million since Bush took office.

8) The Senate approved the biggest bankruptcy law in a quarter of a century. Republicans voted AGAINST protecting senior citizens, the seriously ill, military members, veterans, and employees.

9) In 1983, the Greenspan Commission put Social Security measures in place that created a $1.7 trillion surplus in the system. This administration borrowed against and cut that to $153 billion while blaming citizens for not dying young enough.

10) In 2005, Americans paid $4.3 billion in withdrawal fees at ATM's and $16 billion to credit card companies in late fees alone. Republicans have suggested no remedies.

Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and author of Other People's Money and Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (Whether you voted for them or not).

It's not that there aren't real reasons to fix our broken immigration system. And, earlier this year, it seemed that the debate over immigration would actually result in action -- tough, fair and practical comprehensive immigration reform. Led by John McCain and Ted Kennedy, the Senate passed, with bipartisan support, a bill that addressed border security, created a path to earned citizenship for hardworking immigrants already here and acknowledged the realities of businesses that rely on immigrant labor. The measure was fair to taxpayers by asking undocumented workers to pay back taxes before being able to become citizens, and was fair to workers who have contributed greatly to our economy by allowing them to come out of the shadows and protecting them against being exploited.

But the House Republicans had already passed an amazingly callous, enforcement-only bill that would not only make felons of undocumented workers, but would also criminalize soup kitchen volunteers and religious organizations who give humanitarian assistance to the undocumented. People who have lived, worked and paid taxes here for years would be made felons and permanently ineligible to earn citizenship.

In the rants from the far-right, the House Republicans heard a possible solution to their plunging poll numbers. They refused to negotiate in conference with their Senate colleagues, figuring they could score political points by spending August holding "field hearings" that had nothing to do with learning anything new about immigration and everything to do with creating forums to grandstand for local media.

Remember, these supposedly fact-finding hearings were all held after House Republicans passed their version of immigration "reform" -- and the vast majority of witnesses permitted to speak at the hearings held long-documented anti-immigration views. The brazenly political nature of the hearings was even evidenced in their names, like this gem from San Diego: "Would the Reid-Kennedy Bill Impose Huge Unfunded Mandates on State and Local Governments?" That succinctly illustrates the Republicans' objectives: One, obscure the fact that the Senate bill had bipartisan support (hello, John McCain) by naming it after two Democrats; and two, inflaming the debate in hopes of energizing anti-immigrant voters in November.

So-called immigration reforms that focus only on punishing undocumented immigrants or building bigger barricades cannot and will not be effective. We have to also address the economic realities that drive immigration, including the many American businesses and communities that rely on immigrant labor. Already a labor shortage is being felt in the vineyards of California, the lettuce fields of Colorado and strawberry patches in New York. Towns that have succumbed to anti-immigrant hysteria and passed harsh ordinances are already seeing damage to their economies as well as to their spirit of community.

Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., insists on calling the sham summer hearings a success and has continued to push for enforcement-only legislation. But it is clear that enforcement-only policies will not work: There's 20 years' precedent of spectacular failure as proof. In putting down the bipartisan Senate bill, Hastert said that the House Republicans' brief visits to the border during the hearings gave him insight into the border's needs.

But the governors of the four states bordering Mexico -- Republicans and Democrats who know border issues intimately -- recently signed a letter admonishing Hastert for wasting time on hearings that did "little but stir the pot of discontent," and urged Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform before adjourning this year.

America is a nation of immigrants. They come with a willingness to work hard to achieve the American dream: freedom, prosperity and a better life for themselves and their children. We have been immeasurably strengthened throughout our history by welcoming laborers, nurses, carpenters, scientists and academics from across the globe.

Much of the current debate dishonors our history and demeans our values. Let us reject those who are seeking short-term political gain with short-sighted policies, and put our collective creativity and energy to fashioning a comprehensive approach that will both protect our security and reflect our ideals.

Jorge Mursuli is the national executive director of Democracia Ahora, a project of People for the American Way.

That is 108 killings every day. As Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, put it this week during the final General Assembly of his tenure: "If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war."

That was not what the Bush administration intended when Nuri al-Maliki became prime minister four months ago. The security situation has only worsened since and basic services have become ever more intermittent. Even the most upbeat US commanders admit, if Baghdad cannot be saved, Iraq is lost.

That fate, according to a leaked recent report by the Marines' top intelligence officer in Iraq, has befallen Anbar province, home of the "Sunni Triangle" - which accounts for nearly a third of the country.

The report, which has not been seriously disputed by the Pentagon, concludes that nothing US forces at their present levels can do in Anbar will bring it under control. The writ of the central government does not run there. In Baghdad too, nothing seems to work. Earlier this summer Mr Malaki announced a massive security blitz in the capital by US and Iraqi troops.

The upshot has been only greater violence in a city where private militias rule entire neighbourhoods. Now there is talk of a fortified cordon around the city - but scant prospect that this initiative will succeed.

Not surprisingly, muttering here against Mr Maliki grows more audible by the day. President Bush was being "driven crazy" by Mr Maliki's indecisiveness, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, quoting a former senior US official. The pictures of a smiling Mr Maliki on his recent visit to Iran, apparently getting on famously with Washington's current nemesis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cannot have improved President Bush's humour.

The killings spare no one. Pentagon figures show that attacks between May and August this year were running at 792 a week, up 24 per cent from the previous quarter. Sectarian violence is increasing, but so too are attacks on US troops.

The hope was to reduce US forces in Iraq in this US election year. Instead they have been increased, from 127,000 in January to 144,000 now. Each day, two or three more American soldiers die. Since the March 2003 invasion over 2,690 have been lost.

Three decades ago, a decorated young veteran who would become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 famously asked: "How do you ask a man to become the last man to die for a mistake?" The words of John Kerry to a Congressional Committee that was probing the Vietnam war now apply to Iraq - to American soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike.

For the last year of the Second World War, Ms Rinkel - then known by her maiden name Elfriede Huth - worked as a guard and dog handler in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, not far from Düsseldorf. More than 130,000 women passed through the slave labour facility in six years, and more than two-thirds of them died - in medical experiments or from malnutrition and disease.

According to the US Justice Department, which has spent the past 27 years tracking down suspected former Nazi collaborators, Ms Rinkel's duties included using dogs to march inmates to work. "She was an integral part of the machinery of destruction and persecution," the chief of the Office of Special Investigations, Eli Rosenbaum, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ms Rinkel's lawyer, Allison Dixon, painted a different picture, suggesting Elfriede Huth responded to a job advertisement because she needed the money. Ms Dixon told reporters that her client, now 84, never joined the Nazi party and regretted what she had done.

The Justice Department traced Ms Rinkel by comparing the employee rosters at Ravensbrück and other camps with immigration records. According to Mr Rosenbaum, she offered no expression of remorse at all when confronted.

Instead, she quietly went about preparing for deportation back to Germany, telling her friends and family there was a problem with her apartment building.

She is now living with a sister in Viersen, a short drive from the Ravensbrück camp. The German authorities have the option of trying her for war crimes, but it's more likely that her main punishment will be the embarrassment of having her past revealed.

Ms Rinkel's younger brother, who lives just outside San Francisco, told the Chronicle he had no idea about his sister's secret - he was fighting in the German army at the time and never knew what she was doing in 1944-45. "I just don't have any words," he said. "I don't have any feelings any more. I cannot accept it, let's put it that way."

The statement came as Bush and Musharraf met at the White House to discuss cooperation in the war on terrorism and efforts to prevent a resurgence of the Taliban.

They were to hold a news conference at 10:10 a.m. EDT (1410

GMT).

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state at the time, had denied warning Musharraf that the United States would bomb his country if it did not cooperate with the U.S. campaign against the Taliban in
Afghanistan.

Musharraf, in an interview with CBS News' magazine show "60 Minutes," to air on Sunday, said that after the September 11 attacks, Armitage had told Pakistan's intelligence director, "'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age."'

Snow said he did not know what Musharraf had been told but that U.S. policy was to seek Musharraf's cooperation.

"U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats. U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf: 'We need you to make a choice,"' Snow said.

As for what Armitage said to the Pakistanis: "I don't know," Snow said. "This could have been a classic failure to communicate. I just don't know."

Pat Wilkerson says U.S. troops and veterans are her first priority, believes family values are important and voted Republican in 2004. But in November she'll switch parties -- though not because Democrats have won her over.

"When I vote now, it's not who I'm voting for, it's who I'm voting against," said the 59-year-old administrator, adding she is fed up with the war in
Iraq and wants troops home.

"I think a lot of Republicans who are in office are at risk," Wilkerson said as she watched sweating politicians work the crowd at a town festival in Monroe City in southwest Indiana.

Polls show U.S. voters are overwhelmingly unhappy with the direction of the country.

In a New York Times/CBS poll released on Thursday, 77 percent of respondents said most members of Congress did not deserve re-election. Fifty percent said they would support a Democrat in November, when control of Congress is at stake, compared with 35 percent who said they would vote Republican.

That discontent has convinced some that control of Congress could change hands for the first time since 1994, when Republicans gained 54 seats amid a wave of voter anger. Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House of Representatives and six Senate seats in November to win a majority.

While all 435 House seats and a third of the Senate's 100 seats are up for grabs on November 7, gerrymandered districts means only a fraction are really in play.

HEARTLAND REPUBLICANS

"We need a change. It's time for different opinions," said maintenance worker Wayne Brashear, 57, as he waited for the start of Monroe City's anniversary parade -- which featured plenty of campaigning politicians.

In the two massive congressional districts sprawling across the southern half of Indiana, that call for change has imperiled both of the sitting Republicans, six-term veteran John Hostettler, 45, and freshman Mike Sodrel, 60.

Separate polls shows Hostettler trailing Democratic county Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, 48, by 4 points, while Sodrel is 6 points behind Democrat Baron Hill, 53, who'd held the seat for three terms before being ousted by Sodrel in 2004.

While Hill lost by a razor-thin 1,425 votes last time, he believes a backlash against the status quo will put him over the top in November.

"I've got a rock solid base of support right around 49 percent -- the trick is to get over the magical 50, and I think people are in a different mood this time around," Hill said in an interview.

Nathan Gonzales, political editor at the Rothenberg Political Report in Washington, said it's actually wrong to call this election an "anti-incumbent" race -- since only Republican incumbents are truly endangered.

Heartland districts held by Republicans are among the most at risk. Seven Republican seats now lean Democratic, including three in Indiana and one each in Iowa, Texas, Colorado and Arizona. Another 10 Republican seats nationwide are considered pure toss-ups, according to the Rothenberg Report.

No Democrat seat is considered at risk.

While voters in middle America tend to be more conservative than in other parts of the country, Gonzales said heartland voters angry with Republican incumbents are willing to vote for "the right Democrat."

Hill and Ellsworth oppose abortion, gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research and campaign as fiscal conservatives.

"These are very Republican districts, so it's still a challenge for Democrats," said Gonzales. "But this time Republican incumbents are dealing with the baggage of being Republican."

President Bush's war on terror now exists outside the law. His great struggle for "freedom" and "democracy" has turned into a crusade for lawlessness. After the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v Rumsfeld that his policy of denying rights to detainees and practicing torture was illegal he could have agreed to uphold the Geneva Conventions, especially Article 3 against torture. Instead he has tried to force the Congress to legitimate the conditions the Supreme Court has outlawed. His insistence on torture has aroused the intense opposition of the senior military. The counter-proposal of senators John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham that adheres to the Geneva Conventions reflects the military's resistance to Bush's illegal regime. In this fight, the military stands against torture and for the rule of law.

In my new book "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime," I have reported on the revolt of the generals. Their alienation was unexpected, a surprise perhaps most of all to themselves. As I write:

The analogy between
Iraq and Vietnam has proved to be most compelling to the generals who planned and conducted the invasion of Iraq. They kept to themselves their profound disquiet about the rapid rejection of the original plan for invasion that had taken 10 years to develop, the inadequate downsized force, the absence of preparation for the occupation, and the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi military. Almost all these generals voted for George W. Bush in 2000 as a statement of conservatism; they never expected radicalism. Serving their civilian neoconservative superiors, they endured contempt.

With the debate over torture intensifying the long war between Bush and the military has entered a new phase. Not only has former Secretary of State
Colin Powell stepped forward to declare that Bush's support of torture has thrown into "doubt" the "moral basis" of his "war on terror"; not only have more than three dozen retired generals and admirals signed a letter denouncing Bush's policy; but now five former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have warned that Bush's effort is an "egregious mistake."

In his adamant demand fortorture, Bush has thrown his "war paradigm" into legal chaos. As I write in Salon, "Bush had intended to use his post-Hamdan bill to taint Democrats, but instead he has split his own party and further antagonized the military. His standoff on torture threatens to leave no policy whatsoever -- and threatens to leave his war on terror in a twilight zone beyond the rule of law."

This is one more example of why military families of America and those they love in service would receive far more fairness, respect and support from Democrats in Congress.

This latest outrage follows a long list of areas of neglect. The Republican Congress did not provide adequate body armor, helmets and bandage to troops under fire. They do not provide adequate support for military and veterans health care programs. There are even attempts to cut back on support for emergency brain trauma injuries for wounded troops. Military pay scales are too low, troop rotations create major problems because of inadequate levels of troop strength and those who serve in the Army, Marine Corps and Reserves have been victimized by involuntary service that borders on a backdoor draft.

A Democratic Congress would work hard and diligently to put an end to these wrong and unfair practices that harm our troops, disrupt their families, and endanger our national security.

This practice of tolerating abusive interest rate gouging of hard pressed active duty troops and miltary famlies must end right now. There has been pressure on the Republican Congress to set a cap on these interest rates, yet, so far, Republicans in Congress have been more interested in going to fundraisers, taking long recesses, using public institutions for politically partisan electioneering, and going on fancy trips to faraway places, than doing the business of standing up for troops and their families.

We should write letters to every newspaper in America pushing for news coverage, editorial support and direct criticism of a Republican Congress that permits those who heroically serve our country, and the families that love them, to be treated worse than Mafia loan sharks treat their victims.

It is sickening, disgusting, nauseating and grotesquely unpatriotic for Americans who bravely serve our country, and for American mlitary families who make enormous sacrifices with the highest patriotism, to be forced to pay interest rates for emergency loans that are 300%, 400%, even close to 800%.

We should demand the Republican Congress act immediately and not take election year recess until they do.

We should call for those who let this shameful abuse continue be defeated by voters in their reelection campaigns.

We should insist that Republicans in Congress who have let this continue return to taxpayers their pay raises for the last three years. If if they fail to support the troops and families, if they allow American heroes to be treated worse than Mafia victimes with abuses such as this, they certainly do not deserve generous pay raises from taxpayers, who support the heroism of our troops, and respect the sacrifice of their families, and not the derelictions of our politicians who let these abuses continue.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Brent Budowsky served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management. He can be reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.

The German MEP called on the EU to fill the gap and vacuum created in the Middle East because of the failure of US policies.

Addressing the 2-day conference on "Middle East : Ways for Dialogue and Peace, a role for Europe," Schulz underlined that the Middle East conflict can only be solved by dialogue and
multilateralism.

On his part, Abdallah Abdallah, chairman of the political committee in the Palestinian legislative Council, said the recent war in Lebanon proved three things: there can be no military solution, there is no unilateral solution and thirdly the root cause of the Middle East problem which is the Palestine issue has to be tackled.

The Palestinian legislator said despite the Oslo agreements and the Roadmap, Israel is continuing the expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian lands.

Abdallah Abdallah noted that the West's sanctions on the Hamas- led government are not hurting Hamas alone but every Palestinian.

Einat Wilf from the Labour Party of Israel said following the war in Lebanon there is a complete crisis of faith in the Israeli leadership.

"A gloom is overcoming the country," she added.

"Politics and Religion in the Muslim world" is the theme of the second-day of the conference on Thursday.

A delegation from the Socialist Group, the second-largest in the EP, visited Damascus last week and had meetings to discuss recent events in the region and Syria's role in a prospective regional negotiation process in the Middle East.

Within minutes of the news, President Bush hailed the breakthrough on what he called the "top legislative priority" of what remains of the current Congress. He called on lawmakers to pass the measure before they adjourn next week for the election campaign.

The deal, he said, "preserves the most important tool we have to protect us" - the CIA "programme" of special secret camps outside the US where suspects, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other senior al-Qa'ida personnel were held.

It also resolves differences over the conduct of the tribunals at which Mohammed and fellow prisoners will be brought to trial. The Republican rebels, as well as almost every Democrat, had objected to the administration's insistence that evidence obtained under coercion should be admissible and that, if necessary, details of evidence against them should be withheld from defendants - even if they faced the death penalty.

John McCain, the most influential of the rebels, said "the integrity and letter and spirit of the Conventions have been preserved."

The firearm was discovered shortly before 7 a.m. and did not make it through the screening, said Carrie Harmon, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration.

The airport's terminals A and B were closed and passengers were being brought out from these areas and rescreened, Harmon said by telephone.

The gun was turned over to law enforcement officials, she said.