On Monday, there was an editorial in the New York Times lamenting the apparent indifference of the Bush administration to the rebuilding of New Orleans, the levees in particular. On Tuesday, there was another editorial, excoriating the shameful behavior of the Bush negotiators at the Montreal conference on global warming. The gist of both editorials was that without national leadership, two chances are about to be lost--the chance to rebuild the city of New Orleans and the chance to mitigate the effects of global warming. Then at the end of the week, we learned that Bush has been wiretapping the phones of his own citizens--an impeachable offense. The Times writes as if it is possible still to alter the direction of Bush administration policy, but obviously it is not.

The Bushies have a pattern and they stick to it in spite of every apparent reason to change course. it's not as if we don't know what pattern it is, and it's not as if they haven't advertised what the pattern will be--it is to break down the government so completely that it can't be put back together again. Let's take a look at the 'mistakes' the Bush administration is said to have made, and, instead, ask ourselves if they are actually realized intentions:

1. Hobbling the government with debt by combining an expensive, prolonged war with perennial rounds of tax cuts.

2. Destroying the bureaucracy by making it impossible for neutral, expert, or objective bureaucrats to keep their jobs, replacing them with incompetents.

3. Destroying the integrity of the election system, state by state, beginning with Florida and Ohio.

4: Defanging the media by paying fake reporters, co-opting members of the MSM (why did the New York Times refrain from publishing stories unfavorable to the Bush administration before the 2004 election?) and allowing (or encouraging) huge mergers and the buying up of independent media operations by known conservative media conglomerates.

5. Destroying the middle class by changing the bankruptcy laws and the tax laws.

6. Destroying the National Guard and the Army by deploying them over and over in a futile war, while at the same time failing to provide them with armor and equipment.

7. Precipitating Iraq into a civil war by invading it.

8. Accelerating the effects of global warming by putting roadblocks in the way of mitigating it's effects.

9. Denying healthcare and prescription medication to an increasing number of Americans, most specifically by ramming the prescription drug legislation through Congress, but also by manipulating Medicare and Medicaid so that fewer and fewer citizens are covered.

10. Encouraging the people in the rest of the world to associate the US with torture, military incursion, and fear, by a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation, by vociferously maintaining the right of the US to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, and by refusing to accept international laws.

Or, to put it another way, the Bush administration apparently wishes for and is working toward a chaotic Iraq, a corrupt American election structure with openly corrupt influence-peddlers like Delay and Abramoff in charge of policy, a world in which people suffer and die from weather-related catastrophes, a two-tiered economic structure in the US (with most people in the lower tier), and the isolation of the US as a rogue state from the other nations of the world.

How else are we going to interpret the satisfaction the President continually expresses in the results of his policies so far? As an example, when Bush said, 'Heckuva job, Brownie', outsiders generally assumed he was making a mistake--that he didnt know what a bad job Brownie was doing. But let's say that he knew perfectly well that Brownie had abandoned New Orleans to the forces of nature, and that THAT was the essence of the heckuva job he was doing.

In the same way, many people assume that the administration is embarrassed that the extent of the American rendition gulag or the techniques of torture used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have gotten into the news along with the use of white phosphorus in Falluja, as if torture and rendition and white phosphorus were something that Bush does not want to do. But let's say that torture and rendition are something that the Bush administration is happy to do, and doesn't mind others knowing about. Likewise, many observers, let's say Jack Murtha, for one, assume that the president does not want to destroy the army. But if the army is destroyed, then the services that the army provides at a relatively moderate expense to the taxpayer can be farmed out to companies like Halliburton. Lets say that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush have cast their lot not with the draft, or even the volunteer army, but with the mercenary army, which is more profitable, less subject to Congressional and public oversight, and, really, the appropriate army for a rogue state. And, with a mercenary army, there is no problem when a fallen soldier is sent home as a piece of freight. It is only citizen-soldiers who make the ultimate sacrifice out of patriotism. When we get rid of citizen soldiers, then we don't have to respect them.

When Grover Norquist said he wanted to strangle the shrunken government in the bathtub, he was not kidding. He meant that the taxpayers and and voters would not be able to look to the government for any services what'soever, but also that they would not have any control over the government does. The drowned and strangled government, having ceased to exist, would not only offer no benefit's to citizens, it would offer no obstacle to those who wished to break the laws (for example against internal spying), because there would be no law to break. It is for this reason that the Bush administration pays absolutely no attention to the polls--they have already discounted the preferences of the citizens. When the government has been shrunk to nothing and drowned in the bathtub, the citizenry will be entirely powerless--that is the real goal, not an unintended consequence. Norquist and his fellow theorists understand perfectly that in a modern democracy, there are two competing modes of voting: there is 'one person, one vote' and there is 'one dollar, one vote'. They not only prefer 'one dollar, one vote', they want to entirely get rid of 'one person, one vote'.

The outcome of such policies will be a dictatorship or a tyranny. Such policies cannot be reconciled with the US as we know it, or with the vision of the Founding Fathers. It is true that rogue elements have stolen elections before, as the slave interest stole the election in Kansas in 1856 by openly ferrying fraudulent voters across the river from Missouri, and then bullying the Congress into certifying the election in spite of plenty of evidence that the election was corrupt. It is also true that the public has been fed lies in the past so that they would support a questionable war (remember the Maine!). Corrupt administrations probably outnumber clean ones in US history.

But the ten "successes" I cite above come together to present, I think, the greatest threat to the US since the Civil War. The US is not like much of the rest of the world: France has always been France, and England has been England for many centuries, and Russia defined it'self during the reign of Ivan the Terrible as Russia in contrast to the Tartars and Europe. Chinese history is, supposedly, the longest continual history of any people in the world, but the US is based on an abstraction--a certain set of ideas that divide up and share out power so that it does not become concentrated in the hands of a single tyrannical entity, either party or person. We are expected to participate as citizens in our government at the local, state, and national level, and our government has been expected, from the beginning, to be a shared enterprise, not an engine of power and wealth for a single oligarchic group. Our government was devised as a set of ideas about how to avoid kings, aristocracies, and tyrannies. If it fails at that, or is manipulated into producing tyranny, then we are no longer living in the US, we are living in a no man's land, without an actual identity. This set of ideas, political techniques, and beliefs that holds together immigrants from every continent and every culture.

I began considering the possibility that what we see around us might indeed constitute success, as far as the Bushies are concerned, when I read in a post by Karen Kwiatkowski that three witnesses had confirmed that Bush referred to the Constitution as a "just a god damned piece of paper." Then there was the article in The Guardian in which six American pundit's were invited to reflect upon the meaning of the last five years of the Bush administration. Two commentators said interesting things. Howell Raines pointed out that four generations of Bushes and Walkers (since 1850) have shown a willingness to do anything for money and power, but no interest of any kind in the common good. R. Emmett Tyrell implied more than he stated when he maintained that the anger that people like me feel toward Bush is mere psychological projection, expressing "the need of the passing Old Order to have enemies." What was striking in Tyrell's section is his assumption that the Old Order (legal elections, citizen soldiers, healthy middle class, commonly agreed upon morality, laws, and regulations, useful beaurocracy) IS passing.

He must know something I don't know, because I had been thinking the country we used to have was still salvageable. In addition to these signs, though, we have several others, among them the fact that Bush and Cheney attempt to communicate only with their base (and remember, in 'Farenheit 911', Bush told a group of wealthy contributors that they WERE his base). Their base is fairly small and getting smaller, but they seem to have no desire, even when campaigning, to enlarge their base. it's as if they know that the voters don't matter, and, of course, according to the president of the Diebold Company, the voters don't matter (see Avi Rubin's post about voting machine certifcation).

In the face of the administrations successes, it seems that it is the responsibility of the Democrats to save the republic, and to prevent the government from being shrunken and drowned, but they have been very lax about stepping up to the plate. With the nation beginning to wake up to the injustice and futility of bringing chaos to the Middle East, the most prominent Democrats choose to distance themselves from the citizens and to link themselves more tightly to the administration. Hillary Clinton, for example, refuses to denounce the war and takes up the issue of flag burning! John Kerry refuses to confront the probability that his honor was besmirched and his own election was stolen. The DNC takes the time to denounce the peace movement, even though the peace movement was right about the futility of the war. Bill Clinton seems to be of two minds. He's willing to speak out about global warming, which is a plus, but every time he takes a stand about any other issue, he soon backpedals. How to understand this? Democrats outside of Washington widely infer that Democrats in Washington are simply cowardly or deluded, but it is also a possibility that they are in on the shift from what Tyrell calls the "Old Order" (democracy) to the "New Order" (what shall we call that?).

We normally think of American political thought running along a single continuum, from right to left, from, let's say from the Ku Klux Klan to the American Communist Party. Most Americans fall in the middle. Moderate Republicans live next door to moderate Democrats, and the way moderation expresses it'self shifts, and is expected to shift, from region to region. In an ethnically diverse country where ideas, and ideology, are important, Americans generally understand, almost without realizing it, that moderation is what holds things together. But American political thought runs along another continuum, too, not a continuum of ideas but a continuum of power. What differentiates various groups on this continuum from one another is their embrace or rejection of power as a goal in it'self. Essentially ideological thought seeks power in order to achieve certain ideas; power-oriented groups use ideas in order to achieve power.

In the conservative movement today, this split is evident--old-line conservatives distrust the Bush administration because small government, low debt, and isolationism are about circumscribing the power of government. Bush is about enhancing the power of--well, I almost said government. But any government is essentially a smoothly-operating bureaucracy. Bush is about enhancing the power of himself and his cronies and dismantling any countervailing entity. The Bushies are not shy about acting on their craving for power (as in the K Street Project) or about talking about it-- "Permanent Republican control of the three branches of government." In addition, Bush himself tends to express his desire for power when he's joking about how it's easier to be a dictator than a president, or how the Chinese sure know how to treat journalists. The only reason the Bushies are called "conservative", as many conservatives will themselves tell you, is that the theorists of Bushism managed to graft themselves onto the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s, when the Republican party was the party of disgruntled racists, fundamentalists, workers, and farmers left behind by Civil Rights, feminism, the sexual revolution, the end of the manufacturing sector, and the abandonment of a rural way of life. Many of the neo-cons are former leftist student radicals because when they were student radicals, power was what they wanted. They needed to be converted from one ideology (Marxism) to another (capitalism), but the essential goal--gaining power--remained the same.

If we add the power continuum, then, the American political scene starts looking like a coordinate plane. There is the x-axis, from left to right, and the y-axis, from bottom (power dispersing) to top (power consolidating). Institutions and entities that are power dispersing would be the Libertarian Party, the Novel, the blogosphere, and democracy it'self. If we plot the Bush administration point, it would be at the top of the y-axis, but not necessarily very far right, in terms of small government, low debt, and isolationism. In fact, it is this apparent moderation in expressed Bush ideas that makes him seem relatively harmless to many Americans. But the ruthless drive for power of Bush and his cronies is really not about ideas, and in fact views ideas as a kind of trash, even, according to witnesses, the ideas expressed in the Constitution. the reason I never support any Bush policy, no matter how 'moderate' on the surface is that every Bush policy is designed to enhance thepower of Bush and his cronies. The grab for absolute power must be resisted absolutely. No doubt the Democrats who are in sympathy with the Bush crowd are high on the power axis, too, at least in their own minds.

My point is not to psychoanalyze Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. How they came to think as they do, and how things look to them are not actually very interesting. What is important is that average Americans come to comprehend how dangerous they are, and how destructive their plans are. Do they actually plan to disenfranchise everyone but their reliable base? Well, yes they do. Can they? If they have control of the electronic voting machines, they can. Do they actually plan for their associates and cronies to skim off vast quantities of the taxpayers' money? Well, yes they do. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, and the major war industries already are doing so, and they have taken plenty from the Indian tribes and foreigners, too Do they actually plan to let New Orleans, that blue spot in a red state, slip away? Looks like it. Do they actually plan to destroy the middle class? They are making good progress--poverty was up twelve percent last year, and the 'booming economy' is strangely low on job growth, at least for Americans.

The catalogue of their 'successes', or, as average Americans might term it, their 'failures', is pretty long. Given the sympathy the Democrats afford them, we can stop them in only a few ways, it seems--by constantly bearing witness to their crimes, and prosecuting them if and when we can, by never underestimating the ruthlessness of their motives and the enormity of their goal, by being immune to their habitual public relations tools: fear, accusations of betrayal, false patriotism, appeals to populist and religious resentments, use of political red herrings like gay marriage. Most important, we must make every effort to oversee and guarantee the credibility of our elections.

I also have a philosophical bulletin for the Bush crowd--the 'Thousand Year Reich' doesn't exist, and neither does 'permanent Republican control of all three branches of government', especially if that control is based on stealing elections. Power is the most ephemeral possession of them all because retaining power means exerting ever more control. Control, of course, operates according to the law of diminishing returns. When you threaten and then torture that first guy, it's shocking and intimidating, not only to the guy himself but to everyone who hears about it. To maintain that level of intimidation, however, requires ever more threats and ever more torture, and pretty soon you have threatened and tortured, and even killed, hundreds (what's the count on Iraqis who have died in American custody--121?) or thousands of people, and you are actually losing power because the very thing you thought you could toss out the window in your quest for power, namely morality, comes back to haunt you in the form of disgust (the disgust that others feel toward you) and common decency (that quality that others have retained and you have lost). The US has lasted this long, and survived and thrived because of power dispersal, not power consolidation. Which is not to say that the Bushies can't do a lot of damage--they have and they can.

The loss of our moral compass is devastating. The scattering of beaurocratic talent is a huge hidden cost of the Bush plan, as is the destruction of the volunteer army both as a military entity and as a population of young people who have been required to be ruthless themselves and to be ruthlessly preyed upon by the Iraqi insurgency. Our debts to the Chinese are a price we do not yet know the cost of, and our resistance to the idea of global warming might doom us all. Arousing the foot soldiers of the religious right, whipping them up with ideas of 'the Rapture', then arming them with weapons of mass destruction seems on the face of it to be a first class folly. And all for what? Life is short. Reputations are long.

Here's a list of horrible things that 'they' are doing to us:

1. They damage the environment, virtually for the fun of it, by causing earthquakes, hurricanes, and forest fires.

2. They instill fear and panic by actually carrying out a terrorist incident, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks.

3. They kill off potential leaders such as Sen. Paul Wellstone who died in a plane crash (Note: bumping someone off used to mean shooting them or arranging a car accident, nowadays it can include giving them cancer, heart attack, or infections).

4. They deliberately destabilize society, both by planting drugs among young people and by imprisoning millions, which breaks up families.

5. They outright attack us with biological or chemical weapons for example, it is said that about 50 percent of the American soldiers who went to the Gulf in 1991 are very ill from an intentionally harmful vaccination that was supposedly to protect them against anthrax.

6. They disrupt normal communication and thought via a barrage of lies, hoaxes, and disinformation.

Six Old-Fashioned Types of Scandals

I shall analyze the above conspiracy-type scandals in a moment, but for now please look at a different sort of six scandals. These old-fashioned ones have been considered normal over many generations and are unlikely to make us feel overwhelmed. Three of the most common kinds of scandal in democratic nations are related to voting, money, and sex. Another three involve aggrieved citizens (rather than naughty politicians) given that the strong arm of the state can be cruel, and the benefits of the state can be handed out inequitably. Thus:

1. Elections are rigged whether by miscounts, by concealed funding, or by last minute smearing of one's opponent.

2. With huge resources just waiting to be abused, financial scandals tend to take the form of bribes, hush money, and padded expense accounts.

3. In the old days, marital infidelity was itself sufficient enough to bring down a leader; today, something more imaginative may be required.

4. Brutality is often reported where police or prison guards assault or humiliate those in their custody.

5. Medical experiments may be carried out on a captive group, such as mentally retarded children or ghetto dwellers.

6. Since favoritism is not allowed in meritocracies, nepotism is the subject of many scandals. One person receiving an undeserved favor means another is overlooked.

A glance through newspapers over the years will show that these six types of scandal are ever recurring, and by now they barely evoke a yawn. Human nature assures us that there will always be competition for office, desire for money and sex, and an urge to mistreat underlings when there are no observers present. And which of us hasn't tried to get a summer job for a nephew?

A New Analysis of the Conspiratorial Scandals

By contrast, the six conspiratorial-type scandals evoke much more than a yawn. In those people who are receptive to the ideas at all, they induce shock. In most, of course, they induce disbelief. Can the head of our own armed forces have played a game in the air to let skyscrapers topple over on the people of New York? "Of course not!" "Don't be absurd!" Reviewing the six conspiratorial scandals again, note that human nature cannot be the explanation. Human nature does not predict that an elected government would wreck the human habitat, terrorize the population, kill off potential leaders, destabilize society by furnishing drugs and dislocating families, spread disease, and disrupt rational thought.

But wait! I think I do detect human nature at work here. Those six things are ones that a nation does to its enemies, and it does so without shame or inhibition. After all, when you're out to defeat the other population, you may as well go about it in a comprehensive manner. I'll grant that international law forbids it, but it is nevertheless standard practice on the part of certain nations, including our own. For example, we used the scorched earth policy in Vietnam (having tried it out earlier in Guatemala); we boasted of our terrorizing intent via the 'shock and awe' display in Baghdad; and we have 'dispatched' many leaders such as Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile, and we are openly contemplating the fate of Chavez in Venezuela.

With the other three items, also, British examples will show that human nature does predict certain behaviors when we deal with enemies. The British used opium in China to ruin that society during the Opium Wars; it gave disease-ridden blankets to indigenous people during the French and Indian War in Canada, and during WWII it beamed radio programs into Germany (in the German language, natürlich) laced with disinformation. None of us in the Anglo-American world fell into a state of disbelief upon hearing these things. We are hard-wired to feel no sympathy for the enemy and indeed rarely credit the enemy with being human. We are also hard-wired to rejoice with our fellow warriors when we have 'bloodied the bastards to bits.'

Excuse Me, Who's the Enemy Here?

So then, if it is perfectly believable to envision a group harming its enemy, do we Americans today need to merely to relabel the people of the United States as an enemy in the eyes of their government? Would that solve the problem of the unbelievability of the six conspiratorial scandals? Indeed it would.

Say what? American people as the enemy of the US government? Isn't that so patently false that we must discard it without further consideration? Not necessarily. The hidden clue could lie in the fact that members of the US government may owe their allegiance to a nation other than the USA. And what might that nation be? I'm not thinking of a particular territorial state, such as Israel (although the US government is too obeisant to Israel). I am thinking of that supra-nation called Globalia or Club Med or whatever we name the hangout of the high-class people. Many of the members of this supra-nation happen to be American; many are not.

So as not to name names, let's call any three of these persons A, B, and C. Now why would A, B, and C want to disrupt American society, terrorize the people, or harm the habitat? As noted above, when you're out to defeat an enemy, you might as well do it comprehensively. But why in the world would A, B, and C have an interest in defeating the American people? I believe the answer is simply because we are their competitors. They want their will to prevail, but so long as we citizens have rights and ambitions, they cannot be assured of smooth sailing.

But isn't it absolutely wild to propose that they might do horrible things to us when in the course of a week or a month they deal with us as neighbors, alumni, or even friends? My answer is that the human brain is so able to switch off its altruism when it encounters 'enemy people' that it should be no problem. My guess is that they are able to do horrible things.

Of the six conspiratorial scandals mentioned at the beginning, it is perfectly believable that our government is guilty of two of them: it disrupts normal communication via a barrage of lies and it destabilizes families and society through many of its policies. Does it also do the other four? If it does, then I claim that my human nature analysis must be taken seriously. We must acknowledge that the US government has adopted the position of 'enemy of the American people' and is acting accordingly. The four scandals that you would have to accept as real are government participation in 9/11; the killing of Paul Wellstone; the deliberate use of a harmful anthrax vaccine on soldiers; and environmental devastation.

Mary Maxwell, Ph.D. P.O. Box 4307, Ann Arbor, MI, USA 48106, is a political scientist. She can be emailed as 'mary' at her website: marymaxwell.us She hereby permits anyone to copy or distribute this article as long as it remains unaltered and contains this notice.

While previous presidents have at various times claimed the legal right to authorize searches and electronic surveillance without court warrants so as to gather foreign intelligence, those decisions have undergone scrutiny by either courts or congressional hearings.

It's fair to say that Bush had no intention of allowing public scrutiny of his act, since he personally summoned the top executives of The New York Times to a private meeting on December 6 and pressured them not to run the story about the domestic spying. The paper had held the story for a year at the administration's pleading but decided, after second thoughts and more reporting, that its importance required publication. It appeared on the Times' front page on Friday, December 16.

Some Bush supporters have attacked the Times for running the piece. On the other hand, some journalists have attacked theTimes for holding it for a year. From where I stand (I'm a Times alumnus), the paper should get credit for digging it out and publishing it. But whatever one's journalistic point of view, the Times' decision-making is not the central story here. The president's secret directive is.

The president and others in his White House said the leak of his decision to bypass existing law was a serious national security matter and hinted at an investigation. They argued that the existing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires court warrants and does not allow domestic spying by the National Security Agency, was not designed for an era of terrorism.

Since 9-11, Bush and his inner circle have insisted vehemently that all of the administration's anti-terrorism acts at home and overseas have been done in accordance with U.S. law and the Constitution.

But listen carefully to the president's own earlier statements, keeping in mind that the domestic spying operation has been in effect since early 2002.

On April 19, 2004, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Bush said, speaking of anti-terrorism wiretapping: " . . . Everything you hear about [wiretapping] requires [a] court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example." Of note: A member of the FISA court just resigned from the 11-member federal panel in protest against Bush's secret domestic-spying program. The Washington Post reported that U.S. District Judge James Robertson sent his resignation letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on December 19.

On April 20, 2004, in Buffalo, New York, Bush said: "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires, a wiretap requires a court order." He added: "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

On December 16, 2005, the day the Times story appeared, the president-interviewed on Jim Lehrer's NewsHour-would not discuss his domestic-spying directive ("We . . . don't talk about ongoing intelligence operations"). "But," he said, "it's important for the American people to understand that we will do-or I will use my powers to protect us, and I will do so under the law."

All the president's above statements about observing the court-order requirement and thus acting "under the law" would appear to be false.

They are false by the same measure that showed his weapons-of-mass-destruction claims to be false-after he misled the nation into war. And what about the misdirections and untruths the White House has promulgated about secret CIA prisons on foreign soil, or about violations of the Geneva Conventions against torture of prisoners, or about an operational link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, or about blaming the press for alerting Osama bin Laden to U.S. electronic surveillance techniques when the information has been in the public domain for years?

The lies-after all, that's what they really are-have become so numerous that reasonable people are beginning to hear echoes of the Nixon presidency and impeachment. Think about all those rosy "trust me" speeches Bush has been delivering.

As for his drumbeat claims that he is honoring the Constitution and the nation's laws, then why did a FISA judge resign, and why are his colleagues now demanding intelligence briefings on the president's secret sidestepping of their jurisdiction? Why are moderate Republicans leaving Bush's side over these issues-all of which have their origin in the president's self-expansion of power as he devised the invasion and ongoing war in Iraq?

George Bush and his ultra-conservative Republicans didn't invent the art of presidential spinning and hiding of truths and the "modified limited hang-out." We've been lied to before. But this presidency has lifted these arts to new and scary heights. It has effectively sneered at the Founders' basic principle of checks and balances. A few days ago, Vice President Dick Cheney explained the rationale behind the secret domestic spying by saying that Watergate and Vietnam significantly eroded presidential powers and the Bush regime is merely trying to restore them. He actually said that.

The words and deeds of these White House residents point to other conclusions. They seem to be reaching for virtually unchecked power-power even to override laws at will in a nation founded on the rule of law.

This president promised to restore "honor and integrity" to the White House. And when he was elected to a second term, he said happily and boldly to a press conference: "You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way. I earned capital in the campaign, political capital-and now I intend to spend it."

His bypassing the law, was that what he meant by those promises? Could the president actually have forgotten that in this country, the monarchy was abolished-and any autocracy forbidden-more than two centuries ago?

A spokeswoman at the White House who refused to give her name also would not comment, and pointed to a March 3, 2003 press briefing by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer when questions about U.N. spying were first raised.

"As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence," Fleischer said. "So I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no."

Disclosure of the wiretaps and the monitoring of U.N. members' email came on the eve of the Iraq war in the British-based Observer. The leak -- which the paper acquired in the form of an email via a British translator -- came amid a U.S. push urging U.N. members to vote in favor of a resolution that said Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolution 1441, asserting that it had failed to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.

News of the NSA spying on the U.N. received scant coverage in U.S. newspapers at the time. But with the explosive domestic spying report published in the New York Times last week, a closer examination of pre-war spying may shed light on whether the Bush administration has used the NSA for its own political purposes, as opposed to tracking down communications regarding potential terrorist threats against the U.S.

The leaked NSA email detailing the agency's spy tactics against the U.N. was written Jan. 31, 2003 by Chief of Staff for Regional Targets Frank Koza. In the email, Koza asked an undisclosed number of NSA and British intelligence officials to "pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms (home and office telephones) for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations."

One intelligence source who spoke to RAW STORY said top White House officials and some Republican members of Congress had debated in December 2002 whether to step up the surveillance of U.N. officials to include eavesdropping on home telephone and personal email accounts. Some feared that in the event it was discovered, it would further erode relations between the U.S. and the U.N.

The source added that U.S. spying on the U.N. isn't new.

"It's part of the job," the intelligence source said. "Everyone knows it's being done."

Eavesdropping on U.N. diplomats is authorized under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Services Act. However, it's still considered a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which says that "The receiving state shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes... The official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable."

According to one former official, "The administration pushed the envelope by tapping their home phones."

Koza's email, a copy of which is included at the end of this report, says the "Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc."

"The whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters."

The email was sent out just four days after Blix filed his Iraq weapons report with the U.N. through a top secret surveillance network set up by the NSA, the British Government Communication Headquarters and similar intelligence agencies based in Australia, New Zealand and Canada known as Echelon.

It was leaked to a handful of media outlets in the U.S. and U.K. by Katharine Tersea Gun, a former translator for British intelligence. Gun was arrested in November 2003 and charged with violating her country's Official Secrets Act. She said she felt compelled to leak the memo because she believed the U.S. and Britain were about to launch an illegal war.

"Any disclosures that may have been made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. Government who attempted to subvert our own security services and, to prevent wide-scale death and casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war," she said in a statement at the time.

In his book "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward, deputy managing editor of the Washington Post, said the administration was also spying on Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector sent to Iraq to look for WMDs.

"One of the things that's gone unnoticed is national intelligence assets spying on Hans Blix," Woodward told the Council on Foreign Relations on June 9, 2004 "And Bush was getting these reports and felt that there was incongruity between what Blix was saying publicly and what he was actually doing. It makes it very clear we were wiretapping Hans Blix."

In an article for Counterpunch, media critic Norman Solomon noted that the U.S. media barely covered the U.N. spying.

"Nearly 96 hours after the Observer had reported it, I called Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale and asked why not," Solomon writes. "'We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,' Smale replied. She added that 'we could get no confirmation or comment.' In other words, U.S. intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss the memo -- so the Times did not see fit to report on it."

The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N," while the Los Angeles Times emphasized from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing," Solomon wrote.

Solomon says his research turned up only one story which took the spying seriously -- a Mar. 4, 2003 piece in the Baltimore Sun.

The leaked NSA email which revealed the spying follows.

To: [Recipients withheld]
From: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets)
CIV/NSA
Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16
Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions
Importance: HIGH
Top Secret//COMINT//X1
All,
As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.

We've also asked ALL RT topi's to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognize that we can't afford to ignore this possible source.

We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState's presentation to the UNSC.
Thanks for your help

www.jasonleopold.com

Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit Leopold's website at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.

Ex-hippies talked of a wired age of Aquarius. The fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of the internet, we were told, had ushered in Adam Smith's dream of overflowing abundance, expanding liberty and perpetual peace. Fukuyama speculated that history was over, leaving us just to hoard and spend. Technology meant a new paradigm of constant growth without inflation or recession.

But darker dreams surfaced in America's military universities. The theorists of the "revolution in military affairs" predicted that technology would lead to easy and perpetual US dominance of the world. Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters advised on "future warfare" at the Army War College - prophesying in 1997 a coming "age of constant conflict". Thomas Barnett at the Naval War College assisted Vice-Admiral Cebrowski in developing "network-centric warfare". General John Jumper of the air force predicted a planet easily mastered from air and space. American forces would win everywhere because they enjoyed what was unashamedly called the "God's-eye" view of satellites and GPS: the "global information grid". This hegemony would be welcomed as the cutting edge of human progress. Or at worst, the military geeks candidly explained, US power would simply terrify others into submitting to the stars and stripes.

Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance - a key strategic document published in 1996 - aimed to understand how to destroy the "will to resist before, during and after battle". For Harlan Ullman of the National Defence University, its main author, the perfect example was the atom bomb at Hiroshima. But with or without such a weapon, one could create an illusion of unending strength and ruthlessness. Or one could deprive an enemy of the ability to communicate, observe and interact - a macro version of the sensory deprivation used on individuals - so as to create a "feeling of impotence". And one must always inflict brutal reprisals against those who resist. An alternative was the "decay and default" model, whereby a nation's will to resist collapsed through the "imposition of social breakdown".

All of this came to be applied in Iraq in 2003, and not merely in the March bombardment called "shock and awe". It has been usual to explain the chaos and looting in Baghdad, the destruction of infrastructure, ministries, museums and the national library and archives, as caused by a failure of Rumsfeld's planning. But the evidence is this was at least in part a mask for the destruction of the collective memory and modern state of a key Arab nation, and the manufacture of disorder to create a hunger for the occupier's supervision. As the Suddeutsche Zeitung reported in May 2003, US troops broke the locks of museums, ministries and universities and told looters: "Go in Ali Baba, it's all yours!"

For the American imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading terror they could take power. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the recently indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise. They read Le Bon and Freud on the relationship of crowds to authority. But most of all they loved Hobbes's Leviathan. While Hobbes saw authority as free men's chosen solution to the imperfections of anarchy, his 21st century heirs seek to create the fear that led to submission. And technology would make it possible and beautiful.

On the logo of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, the motto is Scientia est potentia - knowledge is power . The IAO promised "total information awareness", an all-seeing eye spilling out a death-ray gaze over Eurasia. Congressional pressure led the IAO to close, but technospeak, half-digested political theory and megalomania still riddle US thinking. Barnett, in The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action, calls for a "systems administrator" force to be dispatched with the military, to "process" conquered countries. The G8 and a few others are the "Kantian core", writes Barnett, warming over the former Blair adviser Robert Cooper's poisonous guff from 2002; their job is to export their economy and politics by force to the unlucky "Hobbesian gap". Imperialism is imagined as an industrial technique to remake societies and cultures, with technology giving sanction to those who intervene.

The Afghanistan war of 2001 taught the wrong lessons. The US assumed this was the model of how a small, special forces-dominated campaign, using local proxies and calling in gunships or airstrikes, would sweep away opposition. But all Afghanistan showed was how an outside power could intervene in a finely balanced civil war. The one-eyed Mullah Omar's great escape on his motorbike was a warning that the God's-eye view can miss the human detail.

The problem for the US today is that Leviathan has shot his wad. Iraq revealed the hubris of the imperial geostrategy. One small nation can tie down a superpower. Air and space supremacy do not give command on the ground. People can't be terrorised into identification with America. The US has proved able to destroy massively - but not create, or even control. Afghanistan and Iraq lie in ruins, yet the occupiers cower behind concrete mountains.

The spin machine is on full tilt to represent Iraq as a success. Peters, in New Glory: Expanding America's Supremacy, asserts: "Our country is a force for good without precedent"; and Barnett, in Blueprint, says: "The US military is a force for global good that ... has no equal." Both offer ambitious plans for how the US is going to remake the third world in its image. There is a violent hysteria to the boasts. The narcissism of a decade earlier has given way to an extrovert rage at those who have resisted America's will since 2001. Both urge utter ruthlessness in crushing resistance. In November 2004, Peters told Fox News that in Falluja "the best outcome, frankly, is if they're all killed".

But he directs his real fury at France and Germany: "A haggard Circe, Europe dulled our senses and fooled us into believing in her attractions. But the dugs are dry in Germany and France. They deluded us into prolonging the affair long after our attentions should have turned to ... India, South Africa, Brazil."

While a good Kleinian therapist may be able to help Peters work through his weaning trauma, only America can cure its post 9/11 mixture of paranoia and megalomania. But Britain - and other allied states - can help. The US needs to discover, like a child that does not know its limits, that there is a world outside its body and desires, beyond even the reach of its toys, that suffers too.

Dr Richard Drayton, a senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University, is the author of Nature's Government, a study of science, technology and imperialism

Equally important given the positions of power which this cabal occupied, and the influence they exercised in the mass media as well as in designing strategic policy, what forces were engaged in bringing criminal charges against a key operative of the cabal?

Libby's rise to power was part and parcel of the ascendancy of the neo-conservatives to the summits of US policymaking. Libby was a student, protégé, and collaborator with Paul Wolfowitz for over 25 years. Libby along with Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Kagan, Cohen, Rubin, Pollack, Chertoff, Fleisher, Kristol, Marc Grossman, Shumsky and a host of other political operators were long term believers and aggressive proponents of a virulently militaristic tendency of Zionism linked with the rightwing Likud Party of Israel. Early in the 1980's, Wolfowitz and Feith were charged with passing confidential documents to Israel, the latter temporarily losing his security clearance.

The ideologues begin their "Long March" through the institutions of the state. In some cases, advisers to rightwing pro-Israel congressmen, others in the lower levels of the Pentagon and State Department, in other cases as academics or leaders of conservative think tanks in Washington during the Reagan and Bush senior regimes. With the election of Bush in 2001, they moved into major strategic positions in the government, and as the principal ideologues and propagandists for a sequence of wars against Arab adversaries of the Israeli State. Leading neocons, like Libby, drew up a war strategy for the Likud government in 1996, and then recycled the document for the US war against Iraq before and immediately after 9/11/01. Along with their rise to the most influential positions of power in the Bush administration, the neocons attracted new recruits, like New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

What is striking about the operations of the 'cabal' is the very open and direct way in which they operated: former Director of the National Security Agency (under Reagan) Lt. General William Odom, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (former chief of staff of Powell), retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, National Security Adviser to President George Bush (the First) Brent Scowcroft, and numerous disenchanted officials, including veterans of the intelligence agencies, high level observers, and former diplomats openly criticized the neocon takeover of US policy and the close relationship between them and Israeli officials.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz and Libby were the architects of the military strategy for Rumsfeld and Cheney, their bosses. Douglas Feith established the "Office of Special Planning" to fabricate the lies to justify the war. Judith Miller, David Frum and Ari Fleisher served to disseminate the lies and war propaganda through articles, interviews, press conferences, and speechwriting for President Bush.

The neocons pushed to manipulate and marginalize many of the key institutions in the US imperial state. To circumvent intelligence from the CIA that didn't promote the Israeli agenda of war with Iraq, neocon Douglas Feith (number 3 in the Pentagon) established the Office of Special Planning, which fabricated propaganda and channeled it directly to the President's Office bypassing and marginalizing any critical review from the CIA. Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld marginalized the leading generals, promoting nondescript "loyalists" and outsiders to the top positions, and discarding any advice which opposed or conflicted with their plans for war with Iraq. The Secretary of State referred to a speech prepared for him by Libby as "bullshit" because of its falsehoods. His chief aide, Colonel Wilkerson has written disparagingly of the cabal, which marginalized the State Department including his boss Powell.

The prosecution of Libby however reveals the intense internal struggle over the control of the US imperial state between the neocons and the traditional leaders of its major institutions. Along with the indictment of Libby by a grand jury at the request of the special prosecutor, the FBI has arrested the two leading policy makers of the most influential pro-Israeli lobby (AIPAC) for spying for the State of Israel. These are not simply isolated actions by individual officials or investigators. To have proceeded against Libby and AIPAC leaders , they had to have powerful institutional backing; otherwise the investigations would have been terminated even before they began.

The CIA is deeply offended by the neocon usurpation of their intelligence role, their direct channels to the President, their loyalty to Israel. The military is extremely angry at their exclusion from the councils of government over questions of war, the disastrous war policy which have depleted the armed forces of recruits, devastated troop morale, and the neocons' grotesque ignorance of the costs of a colonial occupation. It is no wonder that General Tommy Frank referred to Douglas Feith as "the stupidest bastard I have ever met."

The current institutional war recalls an earlier conflict between the rightwing Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Defense Department. At the time during the mid 1950's, Senator McCarty was accumulating power first by purging trade unions, Hollywood, the universities, and promoting likeminded conservative officials. He successfully extended his investigations and purges to the State Department and finally tried to do the same to the military. It was here that Senator McCarthy met his Waterloo, his attack backfired, the Army stood its ground, refuted his accusations and discredited his fabrications and grab for power.

In the meantime, the neocons are not at all daunted by the trials of their colleagues in AIPAC and the Vice President's office: they are pressing straight ahead for the US to attack Syria and Iran, via economic sanctions and military bombing. On October 30, 2005 the former head of the Israel Secret Police (Shin Bet) told AIPAC to escalate their campaign to pressure in the US to attack Iran (Israel National News.com). There was a near unanimous vote in the US Congress in favor of economic sanctions against Syria. Despite mass demonstrations, and because of a 'captured' congress, it appears paradoxically that the only force capable of defeating the neocon juggernaut, like the earlier Joe McCarthy, are powerful voices in the state threatened by new disastrous wars not of their making.

-James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, will be published in October 2005. He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu

While in New York recently, his nightmare commenced when families of the victims of the Qana massacre charged him for war crimes and human rights violations in a US court.

The class action lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights [CCR] is in connection with the hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries in the 1996 bombing of a United Nations compound in Qana, in the south of Lebanon.

Gen Ya'alon who retired in June 2005 as the IDF's Chief of Staff, was then the head of the IDF Intelligence Branch, when the IDF deliberately bombed a place crowded with civilians seeking refuge from Israeli attacks in neighboring towns and villages.

CCR Attorney Maria LaHood said that despite knowing that hundreds of civilians had fled their homes to seek shelter at the UN compound, Ya'alon and the Intelligence Branch he headed then targeted its bombardment directly at the compound. 'Almost ten years later, the hundreds of victims of the IDF shelling have an opportunity to seek justice.'

The April '96 tragedy has become known as the Qana Massacre. In a military operation code-named 'Grapes of Wrath', Israeli forces directed the bombing, strafing and shelling of villages intended to force thousands of Palestinian inhabitants to flee their homes. The indictment alleges that forces under Yaalons command were deliberately and wantonly attacking and killing internally displaced civilians in a clearly-marked UN compound.

This class action lawsuit in an American court follows an earlier charge - filed a week before - against a former Shin Bet chief, Avi Dichter for his role in dropping a one-ton bomb onto a residential block of flats in July 2002 which resulted in the death of a senior Hamas leader, Salah Shehadeh and fourteen civilians.

Both legal actions have been brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights in what is emerging to be a major setback for pro-Israeli pressure groups in the US.

While it is expected that pro-Israeli lobby groups may resort to charges of anti-semitism in order to discredit the plaintiffs, Judith Chomsky, a CCR Cooperating Attorney has firmly assured that "no official in any country is above the law".

"I'm really surprised people in this day and time would try to take advantage of the system that's intended to help those in need," said Jackie Smith, whose brother-in-law was named in the indictment on charges of wire fraud.

Officials said they planned to widen the investigation.

"Our investigation is going to be expanded to include other parts of California and other states, and there are thousands of claims made in other states," FBI Special Agent Javier Colon said.

McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said about $200,000 in lost funds had been traced to the 49 people indicted, and that the total is expected to reach between $300,000 and $400,000.

"We anticipate in the coming weeks and months that we will indict a large number of people, perhaps even doubling the present number," Scott said.

"These are people who lack certain moral guidance in their lives to think that they would undertake a fraud to essentially steal from the victims."

Alleged scheme

The Bakersfield claim center processed calls from up to 16,000 people a day who were scattered across the country after Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the Gulf Coast in August.

Red Cross workers said that because of the volume of calls, people were asked to provide only their name, address and birth date.

Call center agents would then have to confirm and approve those details before issuing a claim number, so the evacuees could receive payment at local Western Union outlets -- $360 for individuals and more than $1,500 for families.

Officials accuse the contract workers under indictment of tapping into the system by creating fake accounts.

Suspicious Red Cross employees called the FBI to investigate after an audit found a disproportionate number of disbursements for evacuees going to the Bakersfield region, thousands of miles away from the area ravaged by Katrina.

One Western Union store manager said an employee grew suspicious when the same person came in three times to collect money.

"She was the one who found out," he said. "She contacted the authorities."

Assistant U.S. attorney Jonathan Conklin told CNN that scams are a fact of life, even in such dire circumstances as the wake of Katrina.

"Unfortunately, the fraud schemes are ever-present, and in this case, while we hoped no one would be willing to take advantage of the situation, people have," Conklin said.

Colon said he was surprised by the number of confessions authorities obtained.

"In many cases they've openly admitted that they have never been to the state of Louisiana and they were never entitled to the money," Colon said.

Red Cross: Safeguards weren't enough

The Red Cross had safeguards in place after Katrina, but "they were not fully adequate," spokesman Steve Cooper said.

He told CNN that the group was aware after Katrina that "there was some small possibility of fraud" in the system for distributing funds.

"We put the appropriate safeguards in place as best we could," Cooper said. "But we made the decision to take that risk in order to help as many people as possible."

Cooper said that about 4,000 cases of assistance out of 1.4 million were being investigated, involving about $400,000 of the $1.4 billion the Red Cross distributed.

Both figures represented a "small percentage" of the totals, he said.

The Red Cross said it is devising new systems with the help of the FBI and Secret Service so that such fraud will be easier to detect in the future.

"Should we ever find ourselves with a disaster of the scope and complexity of a Hurricane Katrina," Cooper said, "the American public can continue its high level of confidence that the American Red Cross will protect the funds that we receive and will properly distribute those."

Experts said two rivers of lava, both about 1.5 miles (2 km) long, were flowing down the volcano's slopes, although they posed no threat to villagers in the area. A column of ash rose 1.5 miles and ash fell on areas south of the capital.

The volcano stands 40 miles southwest of Guatemala's capital and its peak is about 12,000 feet (3,700 metres) above sea level. It is one of the most active of Guatemala's 33 volcanoes.

British motoring organisations urged people only to make essential journeys, while hundreds of drivers in France spent the night in their cars after 30cm of snow fell in parts the country.

In Austria, a blizzard resulted in power cuts to homes and was blamed for numerous road accidents across eastern parts of the country.

In the UK, Kent and eastern England suffered the worst of the freezing conditions, which brought road closures and train cancellations.


The coldest place in Britain last night was Benson, Oxfordshire, where temperatures plunged to -8.2C. Forecasters said temperatures were likely to drop further tonight.

"Temperatures tonight could fall as low as -10C where snow lies on the ground, and they could be down to -7C in other places," PA WeatherCentre spokesman Paul Knightley said.

"Tomorrow looks like being the coldest day of this cold spell, with daytime temperatures not rising above freezing in many places."

He said there would be snow today from north-east Scotland down the eastern side of England to the Wash, with snow showers in Kent.

"There could be some heavy snow in northern England and Scotland ahead of another weather system which will bring rain and higher temperatures on Friday and Saturday," Mr Knightley added.

The RAC said lanes on sections of the M20 in Kent were closed because of the snow, and that there was also disruption on the A20 between Dover and Folkestone.

Canterbury was hit by severe black ice, while part of the A3 at Milford, Surrey, was closed, as was a section of the A14 in Cambridgeshire.

"There are hazardous driving conditions throughout northern and eastern counties of England," an RAC spokesman said.

South Eastern Trains urged passengers from coastal areas in Kent and East Sussex not to travel at all this morning. No train services were running from Hastings to Tonbridge, Dover to Folkestone, Ashford to Swanley, Tonbridge to Redhill or Strood to Maidstone West.

Passengers using Arriva Trains Wales and Central Trains faced long delays after a road vehicle hit a railway bridge in the Oakengates area between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury.

Signalling problems at Tulse Hill, south London, led to delays for passengers on Southern and Thameslink services.

In France, hundreds of motorists were stranded overnight after heavy snowfall blocked roads, forcing some to abandon their cars and others to sleep in their vehicles.

Scores of travellers spent the night in community centres and hotels near Nancy, where road crews worked to clear up to 30cm of snow, according to the Regional Road Information and Coordination Centre in nearby Metz.

Several cars were abandoned on the A31 highway, which remained heavily congested heading north toward Luxembourg. Officials ordered trucks to remain parked in rest areas until normal traffic flow was restored, and advised drivers not to travel.

Hundreds of people were stranded overnight in the Calvados region in western Normandy, where the A84 highway was closed in both directions.

"There were 600 vehicles blocked, which amounts to around 600 or 800 people [stranded]," road security official Remi Fromont told the French television channel LCI.

In Austria, at least 15cm of snow fell in eastern areas, creating treacherous conditions blamed for numerous road accidents.

Authorities said at least 11 trucks had jack-knifed in the province of Lower Austria, causing long tailbacks, and at least 300 homes were without power.

Four trucks collided on the motorway linking the Czech capital, Prague, with the southern city of Brno, blocking traffic, while officials in Slovakia warned of a heightened avalanche risk in some areas.

Heavy snow and icy rain in Croatia forced officials to close local roads, effectively cutting off access to dozens of central villages. Snow also created traffic and rail havoc in Hungary, where nearly 120 trains were running behind schedule.

Most of northern Italy was under a blanket of snow, causing traffic disruption, and a motorway from Parma to La Spezia was closed as a precaution.

There was no immediate word on whether anyone had been killed or injured in the airstrike.

Late Tuesday, three rockets landed in a residential neighbourhood in the town Kiryat Shemona, near the Lebanese border.

The Israeli army said no one was injured in the explosion but the ensuing explosions damaged property.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Violence often breaks out in the border region and both Hezbollah and Palestinian militants are active in southern Lebanon.

In November, Hezbollah launched mortar and rocket attacks from south Lebanon, injuring 11 Israeli soldiers and damaging an Israeli house.

Israel retaliated by attacking a Hezbollah command post in south Lebanon.

Congressman John Conyers has just released an extensive report titled "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War." Pages 73 - 81 address the Bush Administration's claims regarding aluminum tubes allegedly acquired by Iraq for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons.

On page 78, the report notes: "Our investigation has also found that classified intelligence information supporting the Bush Administration's position regarding the aluminum tubes was leaked to the press. For example, on Sunday, September 8, 2002, the lead story in The New York Times, written by Judith Miller and Michael R. Gordon, quotes 'anonymous' Administration officials as stating that 'Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb.'"

The headline of that article was "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts."

Conyers' report continues: "The article goes on to source 'administration officials' for the proposition that '[i]n the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium' and that '[t]he diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program.'"

So, someone in the Administration was leaking classified information. Of course, it was false information, but that made it all the more damaging. But who was the leaker(s)?

According to Conyers' report, "Subsequent media accounts have traced the story, at least in part, to Paul Wolfowitz:

"'In the summer of 2002, [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz convened a secret meeting [concerning the tubes] in his office with Francis Brooke, the I.N.C. adviser, and Khidir Hamza, a former chief of Saddam's nuclear program, who had defected to America in 1994 . . . Wolfowitz circulated his conclusions to his administration allies. A few days later, the story of the "nuclear" tubes was leaked to The New York Times, where it landed on the front page.'

"On the CNN Documentary, Dead Wrong, an anonymous source characterized the dissemination of this biased and slanted information to Miller and Gordon as 'official leaking': 'I would call it official leaking because I think these were authorized conversations between the press and members of the intelligence community that further misreported the nature of the intelligence community's disagreement on this issue.'

Of course, a front page story in the New York Times gets everyone's attention, and - if the lies are glaring enough - can lead to a reporter resigning in disgrace. But the Bush Administration has often promoted stories into the "mainstream" media by first establishing them in the super-right-wing outlets.

"The Constitution in Crisis" continues: "Our investigation has also learned that administration officials appear to have leaked classified information to the press well before the New York Times article. A July 29, 2002, article in the Washington Times, titled 'Iraq Seeks Steel for Nukes' reported:

"'Procurement agents from Iraq's covert nuclear-arms program were detected as they tried to purchase stainless-steel tubing, uniquely used in gas centrifuges and a key component in making the material for nuclear bombs, from an unknown supplier, said administration officials familiar with intelligence reports . . . U.S. intelligence agencies believe the tubing is an essential component of Iraq's plans to enrich radioactive uranium to the point where it could be used to fashion a nuclear bomb.'"

With impeccable timing, on the eve of the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks, top Bush officials appeared on the Sunday talk shows to discuss the aluminum tube story that someone among them had just planted in the New York Times.

Knight Ridder explained how this worked: "[the leaks] appearance in the nation's most influential paper also gave Cheney and Rice an opportunity to discuss the matter the same day on the Sunday television talk shows. They could discuss the article, but otherwise they wouldn't have been able to talk about classified intelligence in public." ("CIA leak illustrates selective use of intelligence on Iraq [The Aluminum Tubes]," by Jonathan S. Landay, Knight Ridder Newspapers.)

And who can forget the horrifying comments that the Bush Administration made?

Condoleezza Rice: "[Iraq has obtained] high quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs" and "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
-- CNN Late Edition (CNN television broadcast, Sept. 8, 2002).

Vice President Dick Cheney: "I do know with absolutely certainty that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon"
-- Meet the Press (NBC television broadcast, Sept. 8, 2002).

Donald Rumsfeld: "Imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction."
-- Face the Nation (CBS television broadcast, Sept. 8, 2002).

http://www.davidswanson.org

DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997.