2008 May 24

By Sam Smith | As it tries to recover from the most expensive failure in American military history, the Pentagon has its eyes on an easier target. The beauty of this adversary is that it is not from an indecipherable culture, it doesn’t speak a strange language and it doesn’t scatter IEDs in the path of Hummers. In fact, it’s not even armed and its headquarters, far from concealed in the mountains of Pakistan, are easily found in the high rises of Washington, DC. The new foe: The State Department, USAID and other civilian diplomatic and development operations - proving once again that our military leaders’ real skill set is not fighting mile by mile on some foreign battlefield but line by line in the domestic budget.

There is no doubt that the domestic surge is working. Between 2002 and 2005, the share of government development assistance flowing through the Pentagon rose from 6% to 22%.

Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown, in a paper last fall for the Center on Global Development, outlined the problem:

A less polite way of looking at it is that the military is aggressively and greedily invading territory that traditionally has been left to civilians. Of course, anyone familiar with the militarization of law enforcement will not be surprised, but the new stakes should not be underestimated. Do we really want to turn civilian development activities that have lent our country honor over to a crowd that is in no small part to blame for America’s current pitiful world reputation?

A decade later, a Pentagon office still sported a sign that read, WANTED: A GOOD ENEMY. It was not long after the Cold War, in fact, that the military went out shopping for new enemies to buck up the welfare fathers of the defense industry. It had not yet received the budgetary blessing - heralded by a handful of young men with box cutters - of Iraq and Afghanistan. Who could have imagined that so few could cause so much fear among so many? Who would have thought that, instead of pursuing the perps, you could turn the whole affair into the most expensive war in history and the first to be waged against a perpetual abstraction - terror - rather than an actual country? Who would have dreamed that the public could be sold the notion that the way to deal with guerillas was to engage in warfare that would increase the number of their allies?

Instead, mostly unreported, America’s political and military planners worked hard developing an external threat to compensate for the disappearance of the USSR. Although in the short run, the Pentagon had been remarkably successful in exempting itself from the deficit-cutting hysteria, there was always the danger that the public and politicians might start asking too many questions.

So uncertain was the trumpet, in fact, that planners were forced to resort to abstractions that were not only uninformative, they were truly absurd. Thus, we were told to spend hundreds of billions to protect ourselves against a generic composite peer competitor, myriad formless threats, and even, god forbid, an asymmetrical niche opponent. (What did you do in the last war, Daddy? Well, son, I killed 14 generic composite peer competitors and would have wasted more if a frigging asymmetrical niche opponent hadn’t got me in the chest.)

As Clinton’s budget director Franklin Raines told a meeting of high level Pentagon officials, “We will protect your purchasing power.”

The major media steadfastly ignored the trend despite ample evidence lying about. For example, Defense Week reported that “Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer said the Army needs to focus more on homeland defense and welcomes a ‘mission creep’ into that area.” A 1996 article by military historian and strategist Martin van Creveld in the Los Angeles Times argued that

As the 20th century draws to an end, it is time that military commanders and the policy makers to whom they report wake up to the new realities. In today’s world the main threat to many states, including specifically the US, no longer comes from other countries. Either we make the necessary changes, or what is commonly known as the modern world will lose all sense of security and dwell in perpetual fear.

Perhaps most startling was an article in the Winter 1992 issue of Parameters, a quarterly published by the US Army College. The author was Lt. Col. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a graduate of Villanova School of Law, the Armed Forces Staff College, and a distinguished graduate of the National War College. He had been named by the Judge Advocates Association as the USAF’s outstanding career armed services attorney. In short, not your average paranoid conspiracy theorist. Dunlap’s article was called “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.”

In it, Dunlap quoted one of Washington’s journalistic cherubs, James Fallows, who wrote in a 1991 article

Fallows was not alone within the Washington establishment. Stephen Rosenfeld of the Washington Post wrote a column praising an Army advocate of Dunlap’s nightmare. Rosenfeld described US Army Major Ralph Peters this way:

What Dunlap described and Peters advocated was not a bold military stroke against the civilian society, but simply a coup by attrition. Something similar seems to be going on now, only the target is not our domestic, but our foreign, affairs. The goal: all war all the time, with the Pentagon in charge of as much as possible.

One example of how the military has infiltrated civilian diplomacy has been the new African Command. You may not have noticed too many wars against the U.S. in that part of the world, but the Pentagon has managed to con Congress into a grand operation that includes, according to its website, achievements such as the following:

- U.S. service members from the Combined Task Force-Horn of Africa gathered with residents of Mikocheni on May 15 to celebrate the completion of a newly built health clinic. The Jaypal Singh Babhra Memorial Clinic was completed by U.S. service members of the CJTF-HOA. . .

– A group of 20 sailors from the U.S. Navy’s USS Momsen visited a school in the port city of Mombasa on May 7, as part of a community relations program called Project Handclasp. Project Handclasp is a U.S. Navy program that provides donated items such as books, clothes, toys, and medical. . .

– The Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa funded the renovation of the Mokowe Primary School in Mokowe, Kenya,and helped construct a fence to secure the facility.

Patrick and Brown cautiously describes the Pentagon’s African mission this way

To be sure, there is far from total agreement on the nature and distance of this shift in the military, even within the Pentagon. There are, for example, plenty of Army and Marine officers who would just as soon not be running day care centers in Tanzania.

Even Defense Secretary Gates seemed to side with traditional diplomatic and development approaches in a recent speech in which he praised the role of civilian agencies. According to the Pentagon release:

Speaking at the Academy of American Diplomats in Washington, the secretary said there is bipartisan support on Capitol Hill to devote more resources to the State Department and other civilian agencies.

Which all sounds comforting until you discover who’s going to be assigned to whom:

And he also called the civilian agencies a “combat multiplier,” hardly a reassuring description of peaceful diplomacy.

As the American media has found in Iraq, embeddedness is not the repose of equals.

Still another way it all might look is described in American Diplomacy by Sam J,. Holliday, a West Pont graduate and a former director of Stability Studies [sic] at the Army War College, and a retired army colonel.

Key to the concept of irregular warfare and a Department of Stability is the assumption of perpetual conflict, a chronic absence of peace and America’s continued colonial dominance, which others that see shrinking by the day. A Department of Stability would certainly seem as odd to young students a century from now as reading about the bureaucracy of British colonialism under Queen Victoria does today.

Besides, all morality aside, if there is one thing our time should have taught us it’s that war is about the dumbest way to go about anything that there is. After all, even the exceptionally well equipped and righteous America hasn’t won a real war against a comparable enemy since WWII and when you add in Vietnam, Korea and Iraq and then find yourself falling back on Grenada for props, it may finally be time to think of other approaches.

This has not, of course, been the fault of the troops, but of the star bedizened galaxy under which they serve, of presidents with testosteronic insecurities, and of toy boys on Capitol Hill willing to gamble our nation to satisfy another defense contractor aka campaign contributor. After all, even the best boatswain’s mate can’t save a ship from the rocks if those on the bridge can’t, or won’t, read the chart.

The tragedy of modern military history is how much courage has been sacrificed for so many puerile, pointless or psychopathic ends. Which is one good reason you want the better part of your foreign policy run by civilians and not generals.

There are plenty who won’t be all that happy having to deal with a military surge into diplomacy, including international non-profits, some of our allies and UN organizations. It is also hard to imagine rock stars throwing themselves into global fundraising fests when they know the money will go to pad the budget of a General Petraeus.

Here is how one civilian professional - who represents others who do a lot work for the Pentagon - reacted to the proposed new directive:

The military takeover of traditionally civilian foreign policy roles is part of a mission creep that has been going on a long time. My first article on the topic was 12 years ago when the concerns were the military’s expansion of the futile and terribly damaging drug war and its growing interference with domestic civil liberties.

Things have only gotten worse since. Now diplomacy and international development are joining the target list for the mission creep, by a military that has finally found a battleground it truly likes. And we, the citizens funding it all, will once again lose the war.

Gordon Brown faces ‘quit now’ calls as Labour MPs panic

By Philip Webster | Gordon Brown was facing public and private pressure to consider quitting for the sake of his party last night after the Crewe by-election “catastrophe” left ministers and Labour MPs convinced that they could not win with him at the helm.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, was being earmarked by senior backbenchers as the figure to tell Mr Brown that they had lost confidence in him and that he should step aside unless there was a swift improvement in Labour’s fortunes.

Graham Stringer was the first Labour MP to call for Mr Brown to go, saying that the party needed a new leader to save it from “disaster” at the next election.

Ivan Lewis, the Health Minister, said that Crewe & Nantwich, where the Conservatives overturned a 7,000 Labour majority to win with their own majority of nearly 8,000, could mark the “beginning of the end” for Labour.

Cabinet sources said that a majority of ministers now doubted whether Labour could turn around its current deficit with Mr Brown in charge. Senior ministers were among those who told The Times privately that the party could not do nothing if it seemed to be heading towards certain defeat.

They said that a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on June 2 would be critical to Mr Brown’s future. If the Prime Minister fails to impress, there is speculation that a senior party figure is ready to go public and call for him to quit.

One former Cabinet minister said there was a 20 to 30 per cent chance that Mr Brown would himself offer to step down if he believed that doing so would help his party.

No immediate move against Mr Brown appeared likely. Most ministers believe that he must be given until at least the conference season to re-establish himself. But last night Labour MPs were canvassing the names of candidates — Mr Straw, David Miliband, Alan Johnson, James Purnell and Andy Burnham — who they would expect to step forward if Mr Brown were persuaded to move out.

The Prime Minister brushed aside questions about his leadership and promised to steer the country through difficult times after the formerly safe Cheshire seat fell to the Conservatives with a 17.6 per cent swing.

David Cameron hailed the result as the “end of new Labour” and promised to build his own “coalition for change” to take the Tories back to power.

Mr Brown seemed highly unlikely to face a leadership challenge from former Cabinet ministers such as Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn, who have been deeply critical of him. MPs believe that such a move would scar Labour and mean certain defeat at the general election. But they said it was the role and duty of the Cabinet to tell Mr Brown that he had become a liability if they perceived that to be the general view in the party.

Mr Straw, as the most senior figure in the Cabinet, was being advanced as the ultimate “man in a grey suit” to tell the Prime Minister that he should consider quitting, a job he was unlikely to welcome because he would almost certainly regard himself as a potential leader to replace Mr Brown.

Cabinet ministers insisted there was no malevolence towards Mr Brown, and there there was a sadness for him that things had gone so wrong. But they said that Crewe had shown that people were no longer prepared to respect Mr Brown.

One senior critic of Mr Brown said the Crewe result was a catastrophe, particularly after the Government had suddenly come up with £2.7 billion to appease taxpayers — to no effect — in the middle of the campaign. That was the sum announced by Alistair Darling to compensate people who lost out from the 10p tax rate abolition.

The renewed burst of speculation about Mr Brown’s future dismayed No 10 and other ministers. Ed Balls, Mr Brown’s closest ally, went to his defence. The Schools Secretary said: “These are difficult times, times when you need strong leadership, values and experience. Gordon Brown has the right values and experience as a leader but it is not going to be turned around in a week.”

Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, said: “If people think we are more interested in turning in on ourselves rather than facing up to dealing with the problems that people face in their daily lives, they will punish us for it.”

But Mr Stringer, a former whip, gave public voice to the private expressions of many ministers when he said: “Is it more damaging for the party to change the leader or cross our fingers and hope that things get better?” It was time, he said, for a senior Cabinet figure to mount a leadership bid to save the party from a “disaster” at the next election.

100 arrested in Indonesia over fuel protest

AFP | Police arrested more than 100 protesters in the Indonesian capital Saturday after some burnt tyres and threw molotov cocktails during a rally over fuel price rises, police said. Indonesia hiked the cost of fuel by nearly 30 percent from Saturday in response to soaring global oil prices, and a ballooning subsidy bill, leaving hard-pressed households facing even more economic woes.

“More than 100 people have been detained for questioning,” a police officer identified only as Ari told AFP.

He said that hundreds of students staged the rally early Saturday in front of the National University in South Jakarta over the price rise decision.

“Protesters have thrown small fuel bombs (molotov) towards the police and burned tyres on the streets,” he said.

Police also arrested about 26 protesters who rallied outside the presidential palace at midnight on Friday, when the price rise came into effect, Detikcom News Website reported.

In Bandung city in West Java, 1,000 protesters from hardline Muslim group Hizbut Tahrir held a protest Saturday morning to condemn the government’s move on prices, local ElShinta radio reported.

Many ordinary Indonesians say higher fuel prices combined with the recent surge in the cost of food will put an intolerable strain on family budgets.

The price hike sparked protests across the sprawling archipelago of 234 million people when it was flagged earlier this month by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The government defended the decision on Friday, saying in a statement that even with the hike, fuel was still subsidised and “lower than in poor countries such as East Timor.”

Time to bin ID cards? Calls for Brown to “bite the bullet”

By Nick Heath | The government is facing calls to cancel its ID card scheme after it announced that all of the five remaining IT suppliers have now been short-listed to deliver the system.

Opponents questioned whether the complex £2bn system has any chance of being run effectively or competitively when the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has just five companies left to choose from and five parts of the contract to fill.

CSC, EDS, Fujitsu, IBM, and Thales made the shortlist to win the five parts of the single “framework contract”, including a £500m deal to replace the existing passport application system, the £500m biometric fingerprint and photograph database, the £500m card production scheme, a £10m self contained scheme to produce the cards for “critical” workers such as airport staff and a scheme to provide parts of a UK Border Agency case management system.

The IPS will award the three- to 10-year procurement deals starting with critical workers scheme this year and will continue to award procurements through to late summer next year.

IPS executive director Bill Crothers said they had about 150 technical meetings with the final candidates to establish their suitability.

He told silicon.com: “We decided on the five because all of them are qualified to do what we want.

“We have definitely got a great range and each contractor brings with them a host of talent from five to 15 sub-contractors.”

Crothers said he was confident the different suppliers could gel together to deliver different parts of the ID card system, saying this was guaranteed by shared commercial terms, codes of practice and financial incentives and sanctions.

But shadow home secretary David Davis said: “Along with growing evidence of the risks and costs of ID cards, we have seen declining commercial interest, reflected in the dwindling numbers bidding for contracts.

“The case for ID cards has collapsed. Gordon Brown must now take a decision, bite the bullet and cancel this ill-fated project.”

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of ID card pressure group NO2ID, said: “How are they expecting to get best value for money when they are awarding contracts to every single company staying in the process.

“They need to get a proper specification for what they want to do and retender to get a proper competitive process, this is a recipe for disaster.”

Crothers said the ID scheme would be rolled out over the next four years, starting with about 10 million “critical” workers in 2009, young people in 2010 and the rest of the UK public in 2011/12, when people will have a choice of a passport or ID card or both.

He denied the early mini system for critical workers would be any less robust than the full ID card programme.

Foreign nationals coming to the UK will be issued with ID cards from November this year under a scheme run by the UK Border Agency.

London bus drivers to get DNA ‘spit kits’

London’s bus drivers who are spat at will be able to collect the saliva in a DNA ‘spit kit’ so the assailant can be identified when their saliva samples are sent off to the police national database for analysis. The kits have been used in Tube stations for years.

At the same time, the Metropolitan Police Service’s Transport Operational Command unit is setting up a work place violence unit to investigate violence against bus drivers across London. And new guidelines for courts have recommended tougher sentences for those who assault people working in the public sector or provide a service to the public such as bus drivers and tube staff.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: “We have the finest bus drivers in the world in London and it saddens me that they may find themselves the victims of this disgusting activity. These kits will increase the likelihood of being able to track down perpetrators and sends them a clear message that this foul behaviour will not be tolerated.

“We are determined to make public transport a safer place through measures such as the ban on passengers carrying open containers of alcohol and I am aware that this will ask more of our drivers. However, I hope they will agree that by providing support such as the new workplace violence unit we are fulfilling our pledge to protect them.”

Steve Burton, director of community safety and enforcement at Transport for London, added: “Spitting at drivers is unacceptable and will not be tolerated and with these DNA kits … London’s bus drivers can collect the DNA evidence needed for a successful prosecution.”

• The London Assembly’s transport spokesperson Val Shawcross has accused Boris Johnson of ignoring people with disabilities by replacing bendy buses with a new generation of Routemaster style vehicles. The Mayor’s comment that conductors would help people on and off the platform was “deeply patronising” and offensive to people with disabilities, parents with buggies and elderly people. “It’s a pretty Victorian attitude,” she said.

• Transport unions are not happy at the appointment of Tim Parker as TfL head. Parker was once dubbed “the Prince of Darkness” by unions and has a reputation for cutting costs. He will also become First Deputy Mayor and Chief Executive of the GLA Group and will be paid a £1 salary.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said: “This is a scary moment for London’s commuters. Tim Parker is one of the multimillionaire elite private-equity buccaneers who asset- stripped the AA by cutting jobs and cutting services and raising prices to customers.”

Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, said: “The world’s finest metro system does not need an asset-stripper or a Prince of Darkness.”

McCain’s Plan - Millions Will Lose Insurance Coverage

By Jo Hartley | Americans need to be aware of what Senator John McCain’s health care plan entails. Under the guise of fighting health care inflation, he is targeting the employer-provided system that currently covers over 60 percent of the non-elderly population. This would effectively force people who now have health insurance through their employers to purchase individual health care plans through unregulated insurance companies. Instead of reducing health care costs, this would increase it.

In the effort to create his health care policy, McCain appears to have turned to his financial supporters in the health care industry for advice and direction. What they have come up with is an extremely ideological plan based on the premise that the problem in our health care industry is that we have too much insurance. Their thoughts is that if we have to buy our health care with money directly out of our pockets instead of through employers we will force physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies to become more efficient.

Most Americans already pay at least a part of their premiums out of their own pockets. There are also the ever increasing co-payments that we are running into more and more. This is already resulting in people who have what is considered “good insurance” to carefully weigh each doctor visit. The end result is that even now millions of Americans aren’t getting the health care they need. This is driving health care costs up, not down.

McCain also has a plan to tax workers’ health care premiums that are employer provided. The consensus among both conservatives and liberals is that this will likely result in employers ending the health care benefits they provide for their employees.

Here’s the kicker. McCain doesn’t argue these facts. The huge ordeal that would result because of his health plan (millions of families losing their insurance coverage and needing to find alternative coverage) is not an unintended consequence. He would prefer that Americans purchase insurance as individuals.

McCain would also like to do away with regulations that require companies to insure patients with pre-existing conditions, require benefits to be provided that do not exclude certain medical conditions, and prevent companies from charging exorbitant premiums for substandard benefits. He would give you the “freedom” to buy your insurance through private companies that may be in other states with differing regulations. Obviously many of the big insurance companies are doing their homework right now to determine which states would be the most advantageous to place their corporate headquarters if McCain wins the presidency.

Part of McCain’s plan is a refundable tax credit to help pay for health insurance ($2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families). Last year the average annual expense for the most common type of insurance plan was $11,765. This means that the average family would pay roughly $6,765 after subtracting the $5,000 tax credit –- approximately double what the average employee pays for their share of their current premiums.

To reiterate, McCain’s goal is for Americans to pay more for their health care because he believes this will lead them to think harder before seeking medical care.

McCain and his supporters in the insurance industry would also create something they are calling a Health Savings Account. This is a savings account attached to an insurance plan with very high deductibles making it essentially a catastrophic health plan. For normal doctor visits, you would deduct money from your savings account until it’s empty. After there is nothing left are you wondering how you will pay for your health care? Good question!

This combination is known as “consumer-directed health care.” Although it is promoted as a way to save money, the impact on our economy and society will not be positive. This will leave millions of people with substandard medical coverage, more health problems, and higher incidences of health cost-related financial problems.

It would also place the insurance industry and the drug industry in ever more control of America’s health care system.

The release of McCain’s health care plan is a test for our country’s mainstream media. Health care experts who are grounded in reality will have to tell reporters that there is nothing to support McCain’s claims that his plan will reduce health care costs. Will the media get to the bottom of the story?

The bottom line is this: McCain’s health plan is set to greatly increase the number of uninsured Americans and it will likely do nothing about high health care costs. The number of Americas who cannot afford good health insurance for their families is going to increase. Will the mainstream media get this story right?

25 USA Military Officers Challenge Official 9/11 Account

Pakistan Daily | Twenty-five former U.S. military officers have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation. They include former commander of U.S. Army Intelligence, Major General Albert Stubblebine, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Col. Ronald D. Ray, two former staff members of the Director of the National Security Agency; Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, and Major John M. Newman, PhD, and many others. They are among the rapidly growing number of military and intelligence service veterans, scientists, engineers, and architects challenging the government’s story. The officers’ statements appear below, listed alphabetically.

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD “A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

“There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up,” continued Col. Bowman. “Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible. Who gained from 9/11? Who covered up crucial information about 9/11? And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.”

Regarding the failure of NORAD to intercept the four hijacked planes on 9/11, Col. Bowman said, “I’m an old interceptor pilot. I know the drill. I’ve done it. I know how long it takes. I know the rules. … Critics of the government story on 9/11 have said: ‘Well, they knew about this, and they did nothing’. That’s not true. If our government had done nothing that day and let normal procedure be followed, those planes, wherever they were, would have been intercepted, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive.”

During his 22-year Air Force career, Col. Bowman also served as the Head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. He also flew over 100 combat missions in Viet Nam as a fighter pilot.

Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom Former U.S. Air Force pilot Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom wrote in a 2007 statement to this author, “When 9/11 occurred I bought the entire government and mainstream media story line. I was a lifelong conservative Republican that voted for Bush/Cheney, twice. Curiosity about JFK’s death, after a late night TV re-run of Oliver Stone’s movie, got me started researching and digging for the truth about his assassins.

“My research led me to a much more important and timely question: the mystery of what really did happen on 9/11. Everything that seemed real, turned out to be false. The US government and the news media, once again, were lying to the world about the real terrorists and the public murder of 2,972 innocents on 9/11.
“The ‘Patriot Act’ was actually written prior to 9/11 with the intention of destroying the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was passed by Congress, based upon the government’s myth of 9/11, which was in reality a staged hoax. 9/11 was scripted and executed by rogue elements of the military, FAA, intelligence, and private contractors working for the US government.

“In addition to severely curtailing fundamental rights of Americans, the 9/11 crime was then used by this administration, the one I originally voted for and supported, to justify waging two preemptive wars (and most likely a third war), killing over 4,500 American soldiers, and killing over one million innocent Afghan and Iraqi people.

“It was all premeditated. Treason, a false flag military operation, and betrayal of the trust of the American people were committed on 9/11 by the highest levels of the US government and not one person responsible for the crimes, or the cover-up, has been held accountable for the last six years.

“After reading fifteen well-researched books, studying eight or nine DVD documentaries, and devoting months of personal research and investigation, I have arrived at one ultimate conclusion: The American government and the US Constitution have been hijacked and subverted by a group of criminals that today are the real terrorists. They are in control of the US government and they have all violated their oaths of office and committed treason against their own citizens.”

Capt. Daniel Davis Capt. Daniel Davis is a former U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director. After his military service, Capt. Davis served for 15 years as a Senior Manager at General Electric Turbine (jet) Engine Division and then devoted an additional 15 years as founder and CEO of Turbine Technology Services Corp., a turbine (jet engine) services and maintenance company.

In a statement to this author, Capt. Davis wrote, “As a former General Electric Turbine engineering specialist and manager and then CEO of a turbine engineering company, I can guarantee that none of the high tech, high temperature alloy engines on any of the four planes that crashed on 9/11 would be completely destroyed, burned, shattered or melted in any crash or fire. Wrecked, yes, but not destroyed. Where are all of those engines, particularly at the Pentagon? If jet powered aircraft crashed on 9/11, those engines, plus wings and tail assembly, would be there.”
Decorated with the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal for bravery under fire and the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in Viet Nam, Capt. Davis also served in the Army Air Defense Command as Nike Missile Battery Control Officer for the Chicago-Milwaukee Defense Area.

Capt. Davis continued, “Additionally, in my experience as an officer in NORAD as a Tactical Director for the Chicago-Milwaukee Air Defense and as a current private pilot, there is no way that an aircraft on instrument flight plans (all commercial flights are IFR) would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control. No way! With very bad luck, perhaps one could slip by, but no there’s no way all four of them could!

“Finally, going over the hill and highway and crashing into the Pentagon right at the wall/ground interface is difficult for even a small slow single engine airplane and no way for a 757. Maybe the best pilot in the world could accomplish that but not these unskilled ‘terrorists’. Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State’.”

Major Jon I. Fox is a former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot and a retired commercial airline pilot for Continental Airlines with a 35-year commercial aviation career. In 2007, in support of the Architects and Engineers[3] petition to reinvestigate 9/11, he wrote, “On hearing the military (NORAD/NEAD) excuses for no intercepts on 9/11/2001, I knew from personal experience that they were lying. I then began re-checking other evidence and found mostly more lies from the ‘official spokesmen’. Jet fuel fires at atmospheric pressure do not get hot enough to weaken steel. Structures do not collapse through themselves in free fall time with only gravity as the powering force.”

Commander Ralph Kolstad Retired U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot Commander Ralph Kolstad started questioning the official account of 9/11 within days of the event. In a statement to this author, he wrote, “It just didn’t make any sense to me,” he said. And now six years after 9/11 he says, “When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story.”

Commander Kolstad was a top-rated fighter pilot during his 20-year Navy career. Early in his career, he was accorded the honor of being selected to participate in the Navy’s ‘Top Gun’ air combat school, officially known as the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School. The Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun” reflects the experience of the young Navy pilots at the school. Eleven years later, Commander Kolstad was further honored by being selected to become a ‘Top Gun’ adversary instructor.
Commander Kolstad had a second career after his 20 years of Navy active and reserve service and served as a commercial airline pilot for 27 years, flying for American Airlines and other domestic and international careers. He flew Boeing 727, 757 and 767, McDonnell Douglas MD-80, and Fokker F-100 airliners. He has flown a total of over 23,000 hours in his career.

Commander Kolstad is especially critical of the account of American Airlines Flight 77 that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon. He says, “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described.”

Commander Kolstad adds, “I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!”

He points to the physical evidence at the Pentagon impact site and asks in exasperation, “Where is the damage to the wall of the Pentagon from the wings? Where are the big pieces that always break away in an accident? Where is all the luggage? Where are the miles and miles of wire, cable, and lines that are part and parcel of any large aircraft? Where are the steel engine parts? Where is the steel landing gear? Where is the tail section that would have broken into large pieces?”

But no major element of the official account of 9/11 is spared from Commander Kolstad’s criticism. Regarding the alleged impact site of United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, PA, he asks, “Where is any of the wreckage? Of all the pictures I have seen, there is only a hole! Where is any piece of a crashed airplane? Why was the area cordoned off, and no inspection allowed by the normal accident personnel? Where is any evidence at all?”

Commander Kolstad also questions many aspects of the attack on the World Trade Center. “How could a steel and concrete building collapse after being hit by a Boeing 767? Didn’t the engineers design it to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing 707, approximately the same size and weight of the 767? The evidence just doesn’t add up.”

“Why did the second building collapse before the first one, which had been burning for 20 minutes longer after a direct hit, especially when the second one hit was just a glancing blow? If the fire was so hot, then why were people looking out the windows and in the destroyed areas? Why have so many members of the New York Fire Department reported seeing or hearing many ‘explosions’ before the buildings collapsed?”

Commander Kolstad summarized his frustration with the investigation and disbelief of the official account of 9/11, “If one were to act as an accident investigator, one would look at the evidence, and then construct a plausible scenario as to what led to the accident. In this case, we were told the story and then the evidence was built to support the story. What happened to any intelligent investigation? Every question leads to another question that has not been answered by anyone in authority. This is just the beginning as to why I don’t believe the official ‘story’ and why I want the truth to be told.”

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski A Pentagon eye-witness and a former member of the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret), is a severe critic of the official account of 9/11. A contributing author to the 2006 book 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, she wrote, “I believe the [9/11] Commission failed to deeply examine the topic at hand, failed to apply scientific rigor to its assessment of events leading up to and including 9/11, failed to produce a believable and unbiased summary of what happened, failed to fully examine why it happened, and even failed to include a set of unanswered questions for future research.”

She continued, “It is as a scientist that I have the most trouble with the official government conspiracy theory, mainly because it does not satisfy the rules of probability or physics. The collapses of the World Trade Center buildings clearly violate the laws of probability and physics.”
Col. Kwiatkowski was working in the Pentagon on 9/11 in her capacity as Political-Military Affairs Officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense when Flight 77 allegedly hit the Pentagon. She wrote, “There was a dearth of visible debris on the relatively unmarked lawn, where I stood only minutes after the impact. Beyond this strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the Secretary of Defense [Donald Rumsfeld], who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a ‘missile.’ [Secretary Rumsfeld also publicly referred to Flight 93 as the plane that was "shot down" over Pennsylvania.]

“I saw nothing of significance at the point of impact - no airplane metal or cargo debris was blowing on the lawn in front of the damaged building as smoke billowed from within the Pentagon. … [A]ll of us staring at the Pentagon that morning were indeed looking for such debris, but what we expected to see was not evident.

“The same is true with regard to the kind of damage we expected. … But I did not see this kind of damage. Rather, the facade had a rather small hole, no larger than 20 feet in diameter. Although this facade later collapsed, it remained standing for 30 or 40 minutes, with the roof line remaining relatively straight.

“The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon. … More information is certainly needed regarding the events of 9/11 and the events leading up to that terrible day.”

The improbability of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 is a major concern of these officers and a growing number of scientists, engineers and architects. The building was 610 feet tall, 47 stories, and would have been the tallest building in 33 states. Although it was not hit by an airplane, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 7 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11. In the 6 years since 9/11, the Federal government has failed to provide any explanation for the collapse. In addition to the failure to provide an explanation, absolutely no mention of Building 7’s collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission’s “full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), an attack pilot with over 300 combat missions, wrote in 2007 to the Michigan Daily, “Our government has been hijacked by means of a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ and a lot of otherwise good and decent people who are gullible enough to think that the first three steel-framed buildings in history fall down because they have some fires that the fire fighter on the scene said could be knocked down with a couple of hoses and through which people walked before they were photographed looking out the holes where the plane hit. One of these, Building 7, was never hit by a plane and even NIST is ashamed to advance a reason for its collapse. And, miracle of miracles, these three buildings just happened to be leased and insured by the same guy who is on tape saying they decided to ‘PULL’ the last one to fall.”
During his 20 year military career, Col. Lankford’s decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross, and 32 awards of the Air Medal.

In a statement to this author, Col. Lankford wrote, “September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes. The evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment. It has been used to justify all manners of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad. Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.”

Lt. Col. Jeff Latas Another harsh critic of the official account of 9/11 is Lt. Col. Jeff Latas, U.S. Air Force (ret). A former combat fighter pilot, Col. Latas is currently a commercial airline pilot.

Col. Latas is a member of Pilots for 9/11 Truth. In 2007 he was interviewed by the group’s founder, commercial airline pilot, Rob Balsamo, regarding the group’s documentary video, Pandora’s Black Box, Chapter 2, Flight of American 77, which focuses on the 9/11 Commission’s account of the impact of Flight 77 at the Pentagon and discrepancies with the data from the Flight Data Recorder alleged by the NTSB to be from Flight 77.
In the interview, Col. Latas said, “After I did my own analysis of it, it’s obvious that there’s discrepancies between the two stories; between the 9/11 Commission and the flight data recorder information. And I think that’s where we really need to focus a lot of our attention to get the help that we need in order to put pressure on government agencies to actually do a real investigation of 9/11. And not just from a security standpoint, but from even an aviation standpoint, like any accident investigation would actually help the aviators out by finding reasons for things happening.”

A highly decorated fighter pilot, Col. Latas was awarded the Distinguish Flying Cross for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals. His combat experience includes Desert Storm and four tours of duty in Northern and Southern Watch. During his 20-year Air Force career, he also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer, as a member of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, and as President, U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board.

Col. Latas concluded, “And I think that we Americans need to demand further investigation just to clarify the discrepancies that you’ve [Pilots for 9/11 Truth] found. And I think that we need to be getting on the phone with our Congressmen and women and letting them know that we don’t accept the excuses that we’re hearing now, that we want true investigators to do a true investigation.”

Capt. Eric H. May, U.S. Army (ret), is a former Army Intelligence Officer who also served as an inspector and interpreter for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty team. He is one of many signers of a petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11. In 2005, he wrote: “As a former Army officer, my tendency immediately after 911 was to rally ’round the colors and defend the country against what I then thought was an insidious, malicious all-Arab entity called Al-Qaida. In fact, in April of 2002, I attempted to reactivate my then-retired commission to return to serve my country in its time of peril. …

Now I view the 911 event as Professor David Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor, views it: as a matter that implies either

A) passive participation by the Bush White House through a deliberate stand-down of proper defense procedures that (if followed) would have led US air assets to a quick identification and confrontation of the passenger aircraft that impacted WTC 1 and WTC 2, or worse …

B) active execution of a plot by rogue elements of government, starting with the White House itself, in creating a spectacle of destruction that would lead the United States into an invasion of the Middle East …”

Commander Ted Muga, U.S. Navy (ret), is a Navy aviator, who, after retirement, had a second career as a commercial airline pilot for Pan-Am.
In a 2007 interview on the Alex Jones Show, Commander Muga stated, “The maneuver at the Pentagon was just a tight spiral coming down out of 7,000 feet. And a commercial aircraft, while they can in fact structurally somewhat handle that maneuver, they are very, very, very difficult. And it would take considerable training. In other words, commercial aircraft are designed for a particular purpose and that is for comfort and for passengers and it’s not for military maneuvers. And while they are structurally capable of doing them, it takes some very, very talented pilots to do that. … I just can’t imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature.
“And as far as hijacking the airplanes, once again getting back to the nature of pilots and airplanes, there is no way that a pilot would give up an airplane to hijackers. … I mean, hell, a guy doesn’t give up a TV remote control much less a complicated 757. And so to think that pilots would allow a plane to be taken over by a couple of 5 foot 7, 150 pound guys with a one-inch blade boxcutter is ridiculous.

“And also in all four planes, if you remember, none of the planes ever switched on their transponder to the hijack code. There’s a very, very simple code that you put in if you suspect that your plane is being hijacked. It takes literally just a split-second for you to put your hand down on the center console and flip it over. And not one of the four planes ever transponded a hijack code, which is most, most unusual. …

“Commercial airplanes are very, very complex pieces of machines. And they’re designed for two pilots up there, not just two amateur pilots, but two qualified commercial pilots up there. And to think that you’re going to get an amateur up into the cockpit and fly, much less navigate, it to a designated target, the probability is so low, that it’s bordering on impossible.”

“In all my years of direct and indirect participation, I never witnessed nor even heard of an aircraft loss, where the wreckage was accessible, that prevented investigators from finding enough hard evidence to positively identify the make, model, and specific registration number of the aircraft — and in most cases the precise cause of the accident,” wrote Col. George Nelson, MBA, U.S. Air Force (ret), a former U.S. Air Force aircraft accident investigator and airplane parts authority.

“The government alleges that four wide-body airliners crashed on the morning of September 11 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view,” continued Col. Nelson, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force War College and a 34-year Air Force veteran.
“With all the evidence readily available at the Pentagon crash site, any unbiased rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon as alleged. Similarly, with all the evidence available at the Pennsylvania crash site, it was most doubtful that a passenger airliner caused the obvious hole in the ground and certainly not the Boeing 757 as alleged. …

“As painful and heartbreaking as was the loss of innocent lives and the lingering health problems of thousands more, a most troublesome and nightmarish probability remains that so many Americans appear to be involved in the most heinous conspiracy in our country’s history.”

Col. Ronald D. Ray Maj. John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army (ret), is the former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency. In testimony before a 2005 Congressional briefing, he said, “It falls to me this morning to bring to your attention the story of Saeed Sheikh, whose full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and his astonishing rise to power in Al Qaeda, his crucial role in 9/11, which is completely, utterly, missing from the 9/11 Commission report…

“The 9/11 Commission which studied US intelligence and law enforcement community performance in great detail, (maybe not so much great detail, but they did), neglected to cover the community’s performance during the weeks following the attacks to determine who was responsible for them, not a word about that in the Report.

“The Report does discuss the immediate US responses but the immediate investigation is never addressed, and anyone who has closely studied the post-9/11 investigation knows that the first breakthrough came two weeks into the investigation when the money transfers from the United Arab Emirates to the hijackers were uncovered.

“Furthermore, if you have studied that investigation, you know there is no disputing that while investigators may have struggled with the identity of the paymaster, they were clear about one thing, he was Al Qaeda’s finance chief. For this reason alone you have to ask why the 9/11 Commission Report never mentions the finance chief’s role as the 9/11 paymaster.”

Capt. Omar Pradhan, U.S. Air Force, is a former AWACS command pilot and Flight Instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. In a 2007 statement to this author, Capt. Pradhan wrote, “As a proud American, as a distinguished USAF E-3 AWACS Aircraft Commander (with 350+ hours of combat time logged over Afghanistan and Iraq), and as a former U.S. Air Force Academy Flight Instructor, I warmly endorse the professional inquiry and pursuit of comprehensive truth sought by the Pilots for 911 Truth organization and the PatriotsQuestion911 website.”

Another senior officer questioning the official account of 9/11 is Col. Ronald D. Ray, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan. A highly decorated Vietnam veteran (two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart), he was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to serve on the American Battle Monuments Commission (1990 – 1994), and the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. He was Military Historian and Deputy Director of Field Operations for the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C. (1990 – 1994).

In an interview on Alex Jones’ radio show on June 30, 2006, Col. Ray described the official account of 9/11 as “the dog that doesn’t hunt”, meaning it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In response to Alex Jones’ question, “Is it safe to say or is the statement accurate that you smell something rotten in the state of Denmark when it comes to 9/11?” Col. Ray replied,“I’m astounded that the conspiracy theory advanced by the administration could in fact be true and the evidence does not seem to suggest that that’s accurate. That’s true.”
“After 4+ years of research since retirement in 2002, I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government. It is now time to take our country back,” wrote Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer, MS, U.S. Air Force (ret), in a statement to this author.

A retired fighter pilot, Col. Razer served as an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School and NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program and flew combat missions over Iraq. He continued, “The ‘collapse’ of WTC Building 7 shows beyond any doubt that the demolitions were pre-planned. There is simply no way to demolish a 47-story building (on fire) over a coffee break. It is also impossible to report the building’s collapse before it happened, as BBC News did, unless it was pre-planned. Further damning evidence is Larry Silverstein’s video taped confession in which he states ‘they made that decision to pull [WTC 7] and we watched the building collapse.’

“We cannot let the pursuit of justice fail. Those of us in the military took an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’. Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it,” he concluded.

Maj. Scott Ritter, U.S. Marine Corps, is a former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer who also served as Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq 1991 - 1998. In 2005, he said: “I, like the others, are frustrated by the 9/11 Commission Report, by the lack of transparency on the part of the United States government, both in terms of the executive branch and the legislative branch when it comes to putting out on the table all facts known to the 9/11 case.”

Maj. Douglas Rokke, PhD, U.S. Army (ret), former Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project and 30-year veteran, had this to say about the explosion at the Pentagon on 9/11, “When you look at the whole thing, especially the crash site void of airplane parts, the size of the hole left in the building and the fact the projectile’s impact penetrated numerous concrete walls, it looks like the work of a missile. And when you look at the damage, it was obviously a missile.”

The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that only three of the alleged hijackers were known to U.S. intelligence agencies prior to 9/11: Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, and Khalid al-Mihdar. There is no mention in the Report that the names and photographs of alleged hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi and alleged ring-leader Mohamed Atta had been identified by the Department of Defense anti-terrorist program known as Able Danger more than a year prior to 9/11 and that they were known to be affiliates of al-Qaida. Able Danger also identified Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in 2006, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve, former Chief of the Army’s Controlled HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Program, overseeing Army Intelligence and Security Command’s global controlled HUMINT efforts, stated: “[B]asic law enforcement investigative techniques, with 21st Century data mining and analytical tools … resulted in the establishment of a new form of intelligence collection – and the identification of Mohammed Atta and several other of the 9-11 terrorists as having links to Al Qaeda leadership a full year in advance of the attacks. …

“After contact by two separate members of the ABLE DANGER team, … the 9-11 [Commission] staff refused to perform any in-depth review or investigation of the issues that were identified to them. … It was their job to do a thorough investigation of these claims – to not simply dismiss them based on what many now believe was a ‘preconceived’ conclusion to the 9-11 story they wished to tell. … I consider this a failure of the 9-11 staff – a failure that the 9-11 Commissioners themselves were victimized by – and continue to have perpetrated on them by the staff as is evidenced by their recent, groundless conclusion that ABLE DANGER’s findings were ‘urban legend’.”
A 23-year military intelligence veteran, Col. Shaffer was recently awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in Afghanistan. In a 2005 interview on Fox News, Col Shaffer asked, “Why did this operation, which was created in ‘99 to target Al Qaeda globally, offensively, why was that turned off in the Spring of 2001, four months before we were attacked? I can’t answer that, either. I can tell you I was ordered out of the operation directly by a two-star general.”

Supporting Col. Shaffer’s statement, Capt. Scott J. Phillpott, U.S. Navy, currently Commanding Officer of the guided-missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and former head of the Able Danger data mining program, stated in 2005: “I will not discuss this outside of my chain of command. I have briefed the Department of the Army, the Special Operations Command and the office of (Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence) Dr. Cambone as well as the 9/11 Commission. My story has remained consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger in January/February 2000.” Capt. Phillpott is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, who during his 23 years of Navy service has been awarded the Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, three Meritorious Service Medals, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, two Navy Commendation Medals, and the Navy Achievement Medal.

Gen. Albert Stubblebine Former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot Joel M. Skousen also questions the official account of 9/11. After his military service, Mr. Skousen served as Chairman of the Conservative National Committee in Washington DC and Executive Editor of Conservative Digest.

“In the March 2005 issue, PM [Popular Mechanics] magazine singled out 16 issues or claims of the 9/11 skeptics that point to government collusion and systematically attempted to debunk each one. Of the 16, most missed the mark and almost half were straw men arguments - either ridiculous arguments that few conspiracists believed or restatements of the arguments that were highly distorted so as to make them look weaker than they really were. …

“I am one of those who claim there are factual arguments pointing to conspiracy, and that truth is not served by taking cheap shots at those who see gaping flaws in the government story … There is significant evidence that the aircraft impacts did not cause the collapse [of the Twin Towers] …

The issues of the penetration hole [at the Pentagon] and the lack of large pieces of debris simply do not jive with the official story, but they are explainable if you include the parking lot video evidence that shows a huge white explosion at impact. This cannot happen with an aircraft laden only with fuel. It can only happen in the presence of high explosives.”

Major General Albert Stubblebine, U.S. Army (ret), former Commanding General of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), is a strong critic of the official account of 9/11. In a 2006 video documentary he said, “One of my experiences in the Army was being in charge of the Army’s Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence during the Cold War. I measured pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. It was my job. I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole’. So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What’s going on?”

During his 32-year Army career, Gen. Stubblebine also commanded the U.S. Army’s Electronic Research and Development Command and the U.S. Army’s Intelligence School and Center. Gen. Stubblebine is one of the inductees into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.
“There is a well-organized cover-up of the events of 11 Sep 2001. The 9/11 Commission was a white-washed farce. There is evidence that US Government officials had advance knowledge of and are probably implicated in the events of 9/11,” wrote retired military physician, Col. James R. Uhl, MD, U.S. Army (ret), in a statement to this author.

“A huge body of physical evidence has been ignored, suppressed, and ridiculed by the media and by our Government. Why did WTC 7 collapse? It was never hit by an airplane and was apparently brought down by explosives. How could Al-Qaida terrorists have had access and time to plant bombs in a top secret installation? Why did the 9/11 Commission fail to seek the reason for the WTC 7 collapse?” continued Col. Uhl, a 38-year Army veteran, who served in several theaters of operations, from Viet Nam through Iraq.

Capt. Russ Wittenberg Capt. Russ Wittenberg, U.S. Air Force, is a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with over 100 combat missions and a retired commercial pilot, who flew for Pan Am and United Airlines for 35 years.

According to Capt. Wittenberg, “The government story they handed us about 9/11 is total B.S., plain and simple.

In the 2007 documentary video, 9/11 Ripple Effect,he said “I flew the two actual aircraft which were involved in 9/11; the Fight number 175 and Flight 93, the 757 that allegedly went down in Shanksville and Flight 175 is the aircraft that’s alleged to have hit the South Tower.
“I don’t believe it’s possible for, like I said, for a terrorist, a so-called terrorist, to train on a [Cessna] 172, then jump in a cockpit of a 757-767 class cockpit, and vertical navigate the aircraft, lateral navigate the aircraft, and fly the airplane at speeds exceeding its design limit speed by well over 100 knots, make high-speed high-banked turns, exceeding — pulling probably 5, 6, 7 G’s. And the aircraft would literally fall out of the sky. I couldn’t do it and I’m absolutely positive they couldn’t do it.” Regarding Flight 77, which allegedly hit the Pentagon, Capt. Wittenberg said, ”The airplane could not have flown at those speeds which they said it did without going into what they call a high speed stall. The airplane won’t go that fast if you start pulling those high G maneuvers at those bank angles. … To expect this alleged airplane to run these maneuvers with a total amateur at the controls is simply ludicrous … It’s roughly a 100 ton airplane. And an airplane that weighs 100 tons all assembled is still going to have 100 tons of disassembled trash and parts after it hits a building. There was no wreckage from a 757 at the Pentagon. … The vehicle that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77. We think, as you may have heard before, it was a cruise missile.”

Capt. Gregory Zeigler Another senior officer questioning the official account of 9/11 is Col. Ann Wright, U.S. Army (ret), who said in a 2007 interview with Richard Greene on the Air America Radio Network, “It’s incredible some of these things that still are unanswered. The 9/11 Report — that was totally inadequate. I mean the questions that anybody has after reading that.”

Col. Wright is one of three U.S. State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. She served for 13 years on active duty and 16 additional years on reserve duty in the U.S. Army. She joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served for 16 years as a U.S. Diplomat. She served as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan and she helped reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001.

She continued in her interview: “How could our national intelligence and defense operations be so inept that they could not communicate; that they could not scramble jets; that they could not take defensive action? And I totally agree. I always thought the Pentagon had all sorts of air defense sort of equipment around it; that they could take out anything that was coming at it. And for a plane to be able to just fly low right over Washington and slam into that thing is just — I mean, you still just shake your head. How in the world could that happen?”

Capt. Gregory M. Zeigler, PhD, is a former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer. In a 2006 statement to this author, Capt. Zeigler wrote, “I knew from September 18, 2001, that the official story about 9/11 was false. That was when I realized that the perpetrators had made a colossal blunder in collapsing the South Tower first, rather than the North Tower, which had been hit more directly and earlier.

“Other anomalies poured in rapidly: the hijackers’ names appearing in none of the published flight passenger lists, BBC reports of stolen identities of the alleged hijackers or the alleged hijackers being found alive, the obvious demolitions of WTC 1 and 2 and WTC 7, the lack of identifiable Boeing 757 wreckage at the Pentagon, the impossibility of ordinary cell phone (as opposed to Airfone) calls being made consistently from passenger aircraft at cruising altitude, etc., etc., etc.”

Shortly after the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, a group of over 100 prominent Americans signed a petition urging Congress to immediately reinvestigate 9/11. In addition to two former senior CIA officials and several U.S. State Department veterans, the signers included Lt. Col. Robert Bowman and Capt. Eric H. May, both mentioned above.

1. Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?

2. Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?

3. Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the schoolchildren?

4. Why hasn’t a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?

5. Why haven’t authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?”

These questions and many others still remain unanswered three years after the petition was submitted and six years after the terrible events of 9/11. As the statements of these twenty-five former U.S. military officers demonstrate, the need for a new thorough, and independent investigation of 9/11 is not a matter of partisan politics, nor the demand of irresponsible, deranged, or disloyal Americans. It is instead a matter of the utmost importance for America’s security and the future of the entire world.

Schneier: Our Data, Ourselves

By Bruce Schneier | In the information age, we all have a data shadow. We leave data everywhere we go. It’s not just our bank accounts and stock portfolios, or our itemized bills, listing every credit card purchase and telephone call we make. It’s automatic road-toll collection systems, supermarket affinity cards, ATMs and so on.

It’s also our lives. Our love letters and friendly chat. Our personal e-mails and SMS messages. Our business plans, strategies and offhand conversations. Our political leanings and positions. And this is just the data we interact with. We all have shadow selves living in the data banks of hundreds of corporations’ information brokers — information about us that is both surprisingly personal and uncannily complete — except for the errors that you can neither see nor correct.

This shadow self doesn’t just sit there: It’s constantly touched. It’s examined and judged. When we apply for a bank loan, it’s our data that determines whether or not we get it. When we try to board an airplane, it’s our data that determines how thoroughly we get searched — or whether we get to board at all. If the government wants to investigate us, they’re more likely to go through our data than they are to search our homes; for a lot of that data, they don’t even need a warrant.

It’s true. Whoever controls our data can decide whether we can get a bank loan, on an airplane or into a country. Or what sort of discount we get from a merchant, or even how we’re treated by customer support. A potential employer can, illegally in the U.S., examine our medical data and decide whether or not to offer us a job. The police can mine our data and decide whether or not we’re a terrorist risk. If a criminal can get hold of enough of our data, he can open credit cards in our names, siphon money out of our investment accounts, even sell our property. Identity theft is the ultimate proof that control of our data means control of our life.

Our data is a part of us. It’s intimate and personal, and we have basic rights to it. It should be protected from unwanted touch.

We need a comprehensive data privacy law. This law should protect all information about us, and not be limited merely to financial or health information. It should limit others’ ability to buy and sell our information without our knowledge and consent. It should allow us to see information about us held by others, and correct any inaccuracies we find. It should prevent the government from going after our information without judicial oversight. It should enforce data deletion, and limit data collection, where necessary. And we need more than token penalties for deliberate violations.

This is a tall order, and it will take years for us to get there. It’s easy to do nothing and let the market take over. But as we see with things like grocery store club cards and click-through privacy policies on websites, most people either don’t realize the extent their privacy is being violated or don’t have any real choice. And businesses, of course, are more than happy to collect, buy, and sell our most intimate information. But the long-term effects of this on society are toxic; we give up control of ourselves.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

By Vincent Bugliosi | With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I’ve been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for “the little guy”), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain’s run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I’m giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read.Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That’s almost too self-evident to state. But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That’s just common sense. If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he’d still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did.

Let’s look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush’s cardinal sins. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about “the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war.” Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? For doing what Krugman believes Bush did, doesn’t Bush have to be punished commensurately in some way? Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?

Al Franken, on the “David Letterman” show, said, “Bush lied to us to take us to war” and quickly went on to another subject, as if he was saying “Bush lied to us in his budget.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy, condemning Bush, said that “Bush’s distortions misled Congress in its war vote” and “No president of the United States should employ distortion of truth to take the nation to war.” But, Senator Kennedy, if a president does this, as you believe Bush did, then what? Remember, Clinton was impeached for allegedly trying to cover up a consensual sexual affair. What do you recommend for Bush for being responsible for more than 100,000 deaths? Nothing? He shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions? If one were to listen to you talk, that is the only conclusion one could come to. But why, Senator Kennedy, do you, like everyone else, want to give Bush this complete free ride?

The New York Times, in a June 17, 2004, editorial, said that in selling this nation on the war in Iraq, “the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/11 … inexcusably selling the false Iraq-Al Qaeda claim to Americans.” But gentlemen, if this is so, then what? The New York Times didn’t say, just going on, like everyone else, to the next paragraph, talking about something else.

In a Nov. 15, 2005, editorial, the New York Times said that “the president and his top advisers … did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It’s obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein’s weapons and his terrorist connections.” But if it’s “obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans” in taking them to a war that tens of thousands of people have paid for with their lives, now what? No punishment? If not, under what theory? Again, you’re just going to go on to the next paragraph?

In early December of 2005, a New York Times-CBS nationwide poll showed that the majority of Americans believed Bush “intentionally misled” the nation to promote a war in Iraq. A Dec. 11, 2005, article in the Los Angeles Times, after citing this national poll, went on to say that because so many Americans believed this, it might be difficult for Bush to get the continuing support of Americans for the war. In other words, the fact that most Americans believed Bush had deliberately misled them into war was of no consequence in and of itself. Its only consequence was that it might hurt his efforts to get support for the war thereafter. So the article was reporting on the effect of the poll findings as if it was reporting on the popularity, or lack thereof, of Bush’s position on global warming or immigration. Didn’t the author of the article know that Bush taking the nation to war on a lie (if such be the case) is the equivalent of saying he is responsible for well over 100,000 deaths? One would never know this by reading the article.

If Bush, in fact, intentionally misled this nation into war, what is the proper punishment for him? Since many Americans routinely want criminal defendants to be executed for murdering only one person, if we weren’t speaking of the president of the United States as the defendant here, to discuss anything less than the death penalty for someone responsible for over 100,000 deaths would on its face seem ludicrous.** But we are dealing with the president of the United States here.

On the other hand, the intensity of rage against Bush in America has been such (it never came remotely this close with Clinton because, at bottom, there was nothing of any real substance to have any serious rage against him for) that if I heard it once I heard it 10 times that “someone should put a bullet in his head.” That, fortunately, is just loose talk, and even more fortunately not the way we do things in America. In any event, if an American jury were to find Bush guilty of first-degree murder, it would be up to them to decide what the appropriate punishment should be, one of their options being the imposition of the death penalty.

Although I have never heard before what I am suggesting — that Bush be prosecuted for murder in an American courtroom — many have argued that “Bush should be prosecuted for war crimes” (mostly for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. But for all intents and purposes this cannot be done.

*Even assuming, at this point, that Bush is criminally responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people in the Iraq war, under federal law he could only be prosecuted for the deaths of the 4,000 American soldiers killed in the war. No American court would have jurisdiction to prosecute him for the one hundred and some thousand Iraqi deaths since these victims not only were not Americans, but they were killed in a foreign nation, Iraq. Despite their nationality, if they had been killed here in the States, there would of course be jurisdiction.

**Indeed, Bush himself, ironically, would be the last person who would quarrel with the proposition that being guilty of mass murder (even one murder, by his lights) calls for the death penalty as opposed to life imprisonment. As governor of Texas, Bush had the highest execution rate of any governor in American history: He was a very strong proponent of the death penalty who even laughingly mocked a condemned young woman who begged him to spare her life (”Please don’t kill me,” Bush mimicked her in a magazine interview with journalist Tucker Carlson), and even refused to commute the sentence of death down to life imprisonment for a young man who was mentally retarded (although as president he set aside the entire prison sentence of his friend Lewis “Scooter” Libby), and had a broad smile on his face when he announced in his second presidential debate with Al Gore that his state, Texas, was about to execute three convicted murderers.

In Bush’s two terms as Texas governor, he signed death warrants for an incredible 152 out of 153 executions against convicted murderers, the majority of whom killed one person. The only death sentence Bush commuted was for one of the many murders that mass murderer Henry Lucas had been convicted of. Bush was informed that Lucas had falsely confessed to this particular murder and was innocent, his conviction being improper. So in 152 out of 152 cases, Bush refused to show mercy even once, finding that not one of the 152 convicted killers should receive life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. Bush’s perfect 100 percent execution rate is highly uncommon even for the most conservative law-and-order governors.

Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

By Sam Gardiner | Earlier in the week the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) issued another of its dossiers. This one addresses nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Remember the IISS track record with dossiers? Their most famous report came in September 2002 when we were told Iran could be as close as two years to having a nuclear weapon. Remember the interviews with the authors of the study?

The study became a major tool of those arguing for the invasion of Iraq in both the UK and the United States. It was used by Tony Blair and was a favorite of the US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

In September 2005 IISS did another study. This one was “Iran’s Strategic Weapons Programs: A Net Assessment.” Although the authors of this study were more cautious, they did declare that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in five years or so.

In neither the press materials or in the press conference did IISS make reference to the serious errors that had been made in the assessment of Iraq’s WMD programs.

Now we have the most recent study. The caution has gone. The editor of the study boldly declared, “We take it for granted that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.” Without explanation, he dismisses he US National Intelligence Estimate that did not take that for granted.

Again, there is no reference to the previous bad assessment or the assessment Iran could have a weapon in just two years from now.

The Telegraph, the Times and the Guardian carried stories this week on the IISS study. All three had frightening headlines: “Middle East in nuclear race to match Iran,” “Iran’s nuclear programme ‘may spark Middle East weapons race,’” and “Iran’s nuclear programme could be triggering a race to develop atomic weapons in the Middle East, a study warned.”

All three of the stories were probably good journalism. The reporters, two of them diplomatic editors, represented the IISS study well. None of them, however, reminded us of the history of previous IISS mistakes or of their own newspaper’s mistakes in covering previous studies.

* These statements are from a phone interview by LA Weekly with Colonel Terence Taylor on September 20, 2002. Taylor was one of principal authors of the study.

“Immoral Hazard” - A review of Jeremy Grantham’s book

By Stephen Lendman - RINF | So says Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of Boston-based investment firm Grantham, Mayo and Van Otterloo, now known as GMO. Some call him the philosopher king of Wall Street because of his highly insightful views on markets and the economy, usually with a longer-term perspective. In a profession of touts, fast-buck and scam artists, Grantham’s commentaries are notably refreshing. They’re detailed, scholarly, sober, clear and especially important at a time of unparalleled excesses, great economic uncertainty, voices ranging from gloom and doom to blue skies and all clear ahead, so who knows what to believe. Few people sort things out better than he, and whether right or wrong, he makes consummate sense and should be taken seriously.

He calls his latest commentary “Immoral Hazard” and takes straight aim at the perpetrators. It’s not the first time, and with good reason. Bad policy yields bad results with former Fed Chairman Greenspan Exhibit A.

Grantham notes: “It’s not that the former Fed boss…was incompetent that is remarkable. (It’s that even now) so many people (still) don’t seem to get it.” Do they “just believe high-quality, self-justifying blarney?” Or do they think top jobs ipso facto “attract great talent by divine right?” Often, the most important jobs get “mediocrities” like Greenspan and the current White House occupant. Even worse, Washington is infested with them.

Grantham first learned of Greenspan in the late 1960s when he headed economic consulting firm Townsend-Greenspan & Co. Even then, his assessment was unsparing: “To be brutally honest, he was considered run of the mill by anyone I knew then or have met later who knew” of his work. Consider his “famous” January 1973 call that “it is rare that you can be as unqualifiedly bullish as you now can.” It was right at the start of a punishing recession and 60% two-year market decline in real terms, second only at the time to the 1929 crash.

Never one to equivocate, Grantham cuts to the chase and draws blood: Greenspan’s call “was one of the first of a long line of terrible prognostications for which he has remarkably ‘not’ been remembered,” except by a few historians and analysts like Grantham. He seemed to pop out of nowhere to become Fed Chairman in 1987, not for his professional skills but for plenty of political ones. The Greenspan years and what’s so far followed haven’t been “our finest hour in the US.”

A smattering of skilled leaders handled things way back compared to the “rudderless” kind under Greenspan and today. Moments (far too few) showed “vision, leadership and backbone.” They then gave way to political opportunism and “easy paths taken” for short-term gains - most notably since the Reagan era. Referring to when Greenspan became Fed Chairman, Grantham continued saying we’re “get(ting) ready to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Great Moral Hazard.” Asset bubbles are tolerated because of who wins and loses. If managed well, speculators and Wall Street profit hugely, bail out at tops (the old pump and dump scheme), then let the public take the pain. No problem though if they miscalculate. Fed Chairmen like Greenspan and the current maestro step in with bailouts.

It’s called “moral hazard,” and the term goes way back - to the 1600s. English insurance companies then used it in the late 17th century. In the modern era, it got more study in the 1960s, but at the time didn’t imply fraud, immoral behavior or outsized excess. Economists used the term to describe market inefficiencies when risks are displaced. It was before what became known as the “Greenspan put,” or the idea that Fed Chairmen provide insurance - to bail out investors who take imprudent risks, so take even greater ones since winning is always guaranteed. But only for high-rollers.

Take Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), for example, and its dream team management:

– a former highly respected Salomon Brothers fixed income chief who became tainted by the firm’s auction-rigging scandal; no matter, he remained highly regarded by Wall Street;

They played high-stakes poker with little regulatory oversight and used their good names to do very risky things - like putting on interest rate swaps at market rates for no initial margin; borrowing 100% of value of top-grade collateral held; using that cash to buy more securities, then using them as collateral for more borrowing. In other words, it was a scheme to theoretically leverage to infinity, LTCM practically did it, and for a while it worked.

Things began unravelling in 1998. It started in July when Salomon Smith Barney announced it was liquidating its dollar interest arbitrage positions. LTCM took a hit, then things got worse when in August Russia declared a moratorium on its rouble and domestic dollar debt. Panic ensued, it spread to other markets, risky investments fled to high quality ones, then they were sold to raise cash.

LTCM was one of many large investors affected. By September, it dropped 52% in value and needed new capital to avoid a dilemma that could impact all of Wall Street if not addressed. LTCM’s balance sheet assets were leverage thirtyfold to $125 billion, then tenfold more by off-balance sheet transactions for a total valuation of around $1 trillion - or too big to fail. If they folded, a financial panic could ensue, so the situation was critical. Enter the Fed after some initial high-stakes maneuvering failed. It engineered a multi-billion dollar bailout to avoid a greater financial market collapse.

It worked, but it’s no way to run an economy. Bad examples keep getting repeated and each time show up worse. That’s precisely today’s dilemma. The stakes are enormous. No one for sure knows to what degree, and there’s even less assurance how things will play out.

He’s passed but surely smiling and saying I warned you. His economic writings were mostly ignored in the prosperous 1980s and 1990s, but current market turbulence proved him right. He constructed a “financial instability hypothesis” building on the work of John Maynard Keynes. It showed how speculative bubbles grow out of outsized greed. Finally, asset values collapse in the end-game part of a seven-stage up-then-reverse journey downward. It’s a “Minsky Moment” when euphoria turns to panic, investors bail out, and meltdown ensues.

That’s how markets reacted to the Greenspan-caused tech bubble. They sold off hugely, then reinflated from outsized monetary and fiscal stimulus. Last summer, they peaked, dropped sharply, stabilized in April after a lesser Minsky reversal, but there’s no way to know if it’s over. Grantham doesn’t think so. Neither do others. More on that below.

Hudson is an economist and President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET). He’s also a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics, a former Wall Street financial analyst, and a no-nonsense critic of the current economic environment. He notes how recent events show that “economic royalists” and “money changers” run things and have “mismanage(d) our economy into dire straights of unprecendented risk - (a combination of reckless) debt creation, euphemized as ‘leveraging’ and ‘wealth creation.’ “

Few regulatory checks remain, and anything goes “under the guise of ’saving the system.’ ” If money manipulators hadn’t endangered it, no fix would be needed. Now with systemic trouble of undetermined proportions, trillions of dollars are being misdirected. They’re going for wars and bailouts instead of helping beleaguered homeowners who were manipulated for profit, face possible foreclosure, job loss, and likely hard times ahead.

Hudson says what’s going on is “an economy-wide Ponzi scheme (for) creditors to lend debtors enough money (for their) interest costs so as to keep current on their loans.” The idea was for various asset prices (stocks, bonds, real estate) to be inflated enough so debtors could pledge them as collateral at higher market valuations for more loans.

It worked as long as valuations rose. When they fell, all bets were off, and here’s how trouble started and spread:

– cracks in the multi-trillion dollar US securitization markets showed up last summer; they created liquidity crises for two Bear Stearns hedge funds; they were heavily into sub-prime mortgages; Bear Stearns was a Wall Street outlier; it was much unloved on the street, notorious for taking outsized risks, and that made it very vulnerable for a run on its assets when the opportunity came; it happened in March and forced the firm to sell out for pennies on the dollar after 85 years in business;

– the initial damage spread to a little-known German bank, IKB; it forced the European Central Bank (ECB) to provide large amounts of liquidity to stem the damage;

– it became apparent that trouble was systemic; it could touch down anywhere and likely hardest where greatest risks were taken - in America; and

– intervention wasn’t working; panic didn’t stop; reserve hoarding took hold instead; and a run on commercial paper began - the kinds international banks issued in Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs).

The bottom began to fall out, and the problem was how to stop a growing debacle from becoming catastrophic. The solution, of course, was “immoral hazard” by bailing out transgressors, and the bigger they are, the greater the bailout amounts. Hudson calls it a “trillion-dollar bailout of bad mortgage debt” while homeowners go begging.

It began in March with heaps of hyperbole selling it. Multi-billions poured out. Money supply growth exploded. It now averages a near-monthly 18%. Deficits are mounting, and fiscal spending is just as outsized, but not much of it reaches households even with the so-called “rebate.” In the meantime, real wages keep falling. Oil and food prices are skyrocketing. Real unemployment tops 12%. Consumer inflation is nearly as high, and real GDP (not the phony official number) hovers around -2%. Most other economic numbers are just as worrisome, so manipulating magic fixes them.

We’re in uncharted territory, problems are huge, they’re systemic and structural, and Hudson says “the Fed and Treasury officials seem to be making up new rules on a daily basis - that receive only….perfunctory” congressional oversight. Speculation is being rewarded, anything goes, and bailing out Wall Street and big banks takes top priority.

It gets worse. It costs trillions. No one knows where it will end or if it will work, and there’s nothing left over for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other essential social and national infrastructure needs.

Hudson puts it this way: “The historic road to serfdom is that of debt peonage to a financial oligarchy concentrating wealth in its own hands….The problem for society….is that finance finds its major gains to lie not in raising living standards, but in promoting a free lunch for its customers — while turning corporate profits, monopoly rent-seeking and real estate price gains into a flow of interest to itself, by advancing the credit to finance the purchase of these assets and privileges.”

The only way out is to “scale back existing mortgages (especially ones with negative equity) to reflect the plunge in property values today.” Once principal is “reduced to realistic levels,” fixed rate mortgages would replace ARMs.

Financial institutions won’t accept this or whatever other ways it costs them, and therein lies the problem. Blaming victims is much simpler along with bailing out culprits - when they’re too big to fail. Hudson calls for some high-octane populism to change things. Unfortunately, not a hint of it is in sight, and debt levels are so high they “cannot be paid….given the nation’s heavy military and trade deficits.” It’s hammered the dollar and “rais(ed) dollarized prices for oil and other raw materials.”

It gets worse. Foreign central banks and investors keep funding our excesses, and US spending, of course, depends on them. The more they lend us, the more we need in a never-ending dependency cycle. It bankrupted Medici bankers in the Renaissance era and got Adam Smith to conclude that governments don’t repay outsized debts. They either default, declare a moratorium, or repudiate them. Not fit subjects for discussion, but you can bet foreign debt holders weigh them as they debate whether to keep the daisy chain going.

It’s got plenty of US investors concerned as well, and a notable one is bond guru Bill Gross. In an April commentary he wrote: In his judgment, “the private credit markets have forfeited their privileged right to operate relatively autonomously because of incompetence, excessive greed, and (at times) fraudulent activities.”

In an earlier Financial Times interview he also criticized government quick fix schemes. He further blasted hedge funds as “unregulated bank(s)” and a “con” and said complicated financial instruments “exacerbated” credit problems, and over-leveraging “lead(s) to an implosion at the edges….of this new financial marketplace.”

He’s also very worried about declining home prices that many on Wall Street publicly pooh-pooh. He calls a 20% valuation decline “much more” of an economic shock than falling equities “because the amount of homeowner leverage is so much greater. A 20% negative adjustment not only wipes out all ownership equity for millions of Americans, it turns their homes ‘upside down’ - incentivizing them to let their gardens grow weeds instead of lettuce.” He believes systemic crisis is possible if the decline isn’t stopped. He’s not alone in that judgment, but few agreeing get heard.

Consider damage already done. The current Case-Schiller Index shows home prices declining at a 32% annual rate. A year ago, it was 8%. The risk is a huge 4.6 million home inventory or nearly double the 2.6 million past 20 year average. Even more worrisome is that 2.27 million homes sit empty and that’s besides all the others banks own from foreclosures. It’s double the year ago number.

If these properties keep deflating and hit the dangerous 20% level Gross mentions, millions will lose their equity, consumption and credit will be hit, and banks will keep writing-off greater amounts no one wants to contemplate. Robert Shiller believes home prices may equal or exceed the 30% drop of the 1930s. That’s $6 trillion in today’s dollars, or $80,000 for every US homeowner. The Fed can keep injecting liquidity but only for so long, and it may not work. If bank losses are great enough, they’ll need all they can get to stay afloat, but for some it may not be enough. Not a pretty picture and no way to know how bad things may get.

Grantham looks back at 2007 and awarded three prizes for “odd prognostications.” They’re named in Greenspan’s honor. First prize went to Citicorp’s CEO Chuck Prince for enthusiastically taking on more credit at a time markets were over-extended and peaking. He subsequently wrote off billions of worthless assets, $17 billion in first quarter 2008 alone, risked the bank’s solvency, and got himself replaced by a new CEO.

Current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke took second prize for “incomprehensible misreading of obvious data by an apparently well-informed source.” In late 2006, he said what he now regrets (or should) - that “US housing prices merely reflect a strong US economy.” His cohort at Treasury, Hank Paulson, got third prize for his spring 2007 comment that subprime problems were “contained.”

Not if you own one or too many of those junk assets written down to a fraction of their original value. Grantham calls the crisis the most important one since World War II. It’s more global than others. Its tentacles are everywhere. Speculative greed and broad asset overpricing caused it. Loose regulatory and irresponsible Fed policies allowed it. Perpetrators point fingers elsewhere, and no one’s got backbone enough to fess up to their to their own mistakes and transgressions.

Before this ends, according to Grantham, it’s “likely to make the S & L crisis look contained.” As a per cent of GDP, write-downs this time are on the order of two to three times greater now than then. But there’s no precise way to know their full impact or to what degree monetary and fiscal stimulus will contain the damage or delay its final resolution. They won’t be papered over, and writer/economist William Engdahl puts it this way:

Greenspan was a tool of the monied interests who gave him his job. He “knew who buttered his bread” and returned their favors manyfold. He engineered many crises and used them all to “advance and consolidate the influence of US-centered finance over the global economy, almost always to the severe detriment of the economy and broad general welfare of the population.” His 18 year tenure was undistinguished to say the least. “It can be described as rolling the financial markets from successive crises into ever larger ones…”

It remains to be seen if his “securitization revolution was a ‘bridge too far,’ ” spelling the beginning of the end of US dominance as an economic power. The “true significance” of today’s crisis (nowhere near resolved) lies right in his lap. Engdahl lists his menu of malpractice in serving the “Money Trust,” meaning Wall Street and big banks. In each case, it yielded big short-term gains, greater long-term losses, and successively greater crises. A new Fed Chairmen has to solve them. Bailout is his strategy. It may help in the short-term. The jury is still out. The policy is flawed. It assures greater crises ahead, and at some point the music stops.

Bernanke may end up being too smart by half. We’re awash in problems that one analyst calls three simultaneous imploding bubbles:

– an alphabet soup of CDOs, SIVs, SPVs, and a whole menu of levered-up, high-risk securitized assets amounting to financial alchemy.

Grantham also takes aim at them and sees lots more write-downs and defaults ahead before it ends. He cites a longer-term problem as well - “that all debt standards fell so that losses will accumulate right across the entire credit system.” Even worse, it came at a time equities were overpriced, still are, and particularly higher-risk ones. Further, “profit margins are spectacularly above average” in some sectors, margins are being squeezed, and markets finally caught on that “all risk is dangerous.”

Grantham’s research shows that all markets eventually revert to their means and for months have been “well into a massive repricing of both risk and asset prices” to get there. Before it started last July, we reached “the lowest risk premium, by far, ever recorded.” It needs lots of heaving lifting to return it to more normal levels. And, of course, it’s a painful process, a drag on the economy, and will likely take years to fix. In Grantham’s judgment, through 2010 “to clean house completely,” and when it ends “the amount of write-downs (may likely) start with a ‘T.’ “

Blame it on a Fed Chairman whose name starts with “G,” and Grantham has been unsparing on him before. Referring to the 1990s dot.com and tech excess, he blamed him for engineering the largest ever stock market bubble and bust in history through incompetence, timidity, dereliction of duty or a combination of all three. It didn’t matter because Wall Street types made fortunes, then got plenty of early warning to exit to let small investors take the pain.

Undeterred, Greenspan was at it again in the current cycle that’s now being unwound. But this time, multiple bubbles were created, with housing and mortgage ones most affecting households. Grantham (like Gross) calls them “much rarer and more dangerous than stock bubbles” because they affect so many people. Even worse, with over half of all housing wealth borrowed and “on much less credit-worthy terms,” it’s very much “more dangerous than normal.”

– off balance sheet commercial banking that should have been stopped or curtailed.

“And what did Alan Greenspan do this time? Absolutely nothing” except whine about a little excess in housing when it was already out of hand. Even then he implied not to worry because “the housing boom will soon simmer down.” And Bernanke is even more feckless with comments like “The housing market merely reflects a strong US economy.” Grantham portrays him as a Greenspan clone, just as incompetent, and someone having “extraordinary faith in efficiency to the point of denial.” Above all, like Greenspan, he’s there to serve the “Money Trust” that appointed him.

And he’s done it since taking over. First, by “stimulat(ing) at all costs” and repeating the same mistakes as his predecessor. Grantham calls 2008 “the year of Santayana: we ignored history and (are) condemned to repeat it.” Housing price deflation is its most notable feature. It’s what affects households most, and that, in turn, reverberates through the economy. Greenspan and Bernanke paid it no heed. Each now accepts no blame, and Grantham calls it “shameful.” It’s far worse than that at a time people are suffering, and the current Fed Chairman gets accolades for bailing out bankers while paying only lip service to homeowners.

By creating asset bubbles, Fed policy caused their dilemma, and Grantham believes their deflating may be the greatest of all threats to financial and economic stability. It stands to reason that efforts must be made to avoid the worst possible outcome. That means curbing speculation is key. Minsky was right that short of that financial crises are inevitable and excess is always the cause.

Grantham sums it up saying: it’s important or even vital “to our financial well-being that the Fed recognizes a responsibility to move against” this behavior that comes with a huge price. Greenspan’s response: “I have no regrets on any of the Federal Reserve’s policies that we initiated….” Grantham calls that “chutzpah that even Paul Bremer would have to admire.”

Engdahl calls it a “financial tsunami.” It triggered a “crisis of confidence.” High-risk securities were most affected. So were sub-prime mortgages. Then the whole “edifice of securitized debt” began unravelling, triggered by its weakest link collapse. Its effect is global and “a crisis not even comparable to the 1930s Great Depression.”

High-quality municipal debt got hit. Interest rates on them “rose to the highest ever relative to Treasuries.” It makes financing unaffordable and caused states and local agencies to “pull out of the $330 billion floating (auction-rate) market where costs have doubled since January.” New York and London bond fund managers say it’s the worst they ever saw. High interest rates aggravate fiscal crises even with the Fed cutting fed funds and discount rates. Some call it pushing on a string. Time will tell if it’ll work. Engdahl is dubious. He sees depression spreading. It creates “a self-reinforcing downward spiral. The process is in its early stages….”

With market turbulence somewhat quieted after a sharp April rebound after months of declines, unanswered questions remain. Is it a lull, a turnaround, or the eye of the storm before its harshest side hits? Grantham and Engdahl see trouble. Bernanke’s fingers are crossed. European central bankers as well, while Americans fear losing their homes and jobs the longer the crisis goes on and deeper it gets.

Direst forecasts have it in its early innings with the worst of things ahead. Only in the fullness of time will we know, but some things are clear. None of this happened by chance. Nor should it have in the first place. A combination of financial malpractice, outright fraud, and greed are to blame. The same mistakes keep getting repeated. The costs keep going higher. Sooner or later they matter, and some day it’ll be too late to fix them. Some day may be closer than smart money folks think. Stay tuned, be cautious, and ignore Fed Chairmen and politicians promising miracles. If things were sound and improving, they wouldn’t have to keep reminding us

Billions of Dollars Unaccounted For in Iraq

MotherJones | Want to see a signature worth $320 million? Click here. It belongs to Jack Gardner, an official with the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, who in July 2003 authorized that amount to be transferred to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance for the payment of Iraqi salaries. There are no other records of the transfer, just Mr. Gardner’s John Hancock. Now that’s power.

The payment is but one example of the process by which U.S. dollars have disappeared without a trace into the confusion (and, yes, corruption) of Iraq reconstruction, confounding Pentagon auditors who are now trying to find out where all that money went… and what exactly, if anything, the U.S. got in return.

One such auditor is Mary L. Ugone, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for audit. Her testimony this morning before Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) Committee on Oversight and Government Reform coincided with the release of a new report from Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General, which reviewed over 180,000 payments made by the Pentagon to contractors in Iraq, Kuwait, and Egypt, totaling approximately $8.2 billion. Of that, the Pentagon admits that it cannot properly account for how $7.8 billion—“a stunning 95% failure rate in following basic accounting standards,” Waxman said in his opening statement.

The IG report details how $135 million was paid to the governments of the United Kingdom, South Korea, Poland, and others contributing troops to Iraq without any mechanism for determining how it was used. Another $1.8 billion in seized Iraqi assets were also simply given away, without any accountability. IG investigators examined 53 payment invoices. Not one made note of the money’s ultimate destination.

Together with a separate Pentagon IG report released last November, which showed the Defense Department could not account for at least $5 billion issued to Iraqi security forces (causing it to lose track of nearly all of the 13,508 rifles, machine guns, and RPGs it provided to Iraqi troops), today’s report sets the new total of Pentagon Iraq funds lost or stolen at almost $15 billion.

Rice’s Lies About Torture

By Dave Lindorff | Is anyone surprised that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush/Cheney administration’s authorization of torture of captives has been consistently legal and in compliance with all treaties the US has signed, including the Geneva Conventions?

After all, she was at the meetings in the White House in 2001 at which various acts of torture, ranging from waterboarding to exposure to extreme heat and cold, to enforced long periods in stress positions, and to treatments which have not been disclosed (no doubt because they are so outrageous and offensive to common decency) were imagined, proposed and approved for use-—meetings that were manifestly criminal in nature and in violation of international and US law.

The US was “a different place” in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, Rice told a group of people at a town hall meeting in Mountain View, Calif. on Thursday. But even though the administration’s “top priority” at the time was allegedly “preventing new attacks and not necessarily observing fine legal points,” the woman who at that time was Bush’s National Security Advisor, says “President Bush made clear that we were going to live up to our obligations at home and to our treaty obligations abroad.”

Well of course she’d say that. But in fact, let’s look at those “fine legal points.”
The Third Geneva Convention Relating to the Treatment of Prisoners of War defines prohibited torture as follows:

“No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.”

It’s kind of hard to see how that rather thorough definition of torture—which as a treaty signatory is the definition by which the US is supposed to live—can accommodate the waterboarding, sexual humiliation, months in solitary confinement, faked executions, days in stress positions, etc. which were approved by Rice and her fellow inquisitors and the nation’s commander in chief.

But no matter. Rice says that even if things were kind of harsh back in 201 and 2002, today “the ground is different.” She says soothingly, “We now have in place a law that was not there in 2002 and 2003.”

Well, actually no. Because when that new law was put in place by Congress, the president issued a signing statement saying that he would not be bound by it. Asserting a claim of “unitary executive,” created out of thin air by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John You and Assistant Attorney General (and now federal appeals court judge) Jay Bybee, Bush has claimed that for the duration of the so-called “War on Terror” he has all the powers of the executive, legislative and judicial branches rolled into his own hands, and as such is not bound by acts of Congress, or by orders of the court. (Yoo and Bybee are also the mob attorneys who advised Bush that any interrogation methods that fell short of causing death or “pain equivalent to death or organ failure” would not be torture.)

The truth is that the Bush/Cheney administration, with the clear knowledge and authority of the president and vice president and of Rice herself, went on to torture captives in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo Bay, and in countless “black sites” around the globe, well into 2006 at least, and continues to torture captives now. Those tortured have even included children.

Condi Rice seems to be hoping to return to Stanford University after she leaves office at the end of this benighted and criminal administration this coming January. If she does, she will, I am sure, have to at some point confront my colleague Barbara Olshansky, who has just spent her first year there at the Stanford Law School as a professor of international human rights. Barbara, who co-authored “The Case for Impeachment” with me (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), was for several years the lead attorney for several hundred of the detainees at Guantanamo, and has also looked into the conditions under which US prisoners are being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan—another torture center that got its start down that road with the capture and torture of John Lindh back in October, 2001—the first documented case of such abuse.

One would hope that the students of Stanford would raise such a stink about having a war criminal like Rice running their school that they would either prevent her from getting the job, or drive her from the campus.

Until then, the least we can do is make her explain how waterboarding and other measures applied under her guidance and with her approval as National Security Advisor, can possibly comply with the Geneva Conventions which the US has signed.

FBI files indict Bush, Cheney and Co. as war criminals

By Bill Van Auken | The most stunning revelation in a 370-page Justice US Department Inspector General’s report released this week was that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had formally opened a “War Crimes” file, documenting torture they had witnessed at the Guantánamo Bay US prison camp, before being ordered by the administration to stop writing their reports.

The World Socialist Web Site, together with human rights groups and other opponents of US militarism and repression, has long insisted that the actions of the Bush administration—the launching of wars of aggression, assassinations, the abduction and detention of civilians without trial and, most repugnant of all, torture—constitute war crimes under any legitimate interpretation of longstanding international statutes and treaties.

To have this assessment confirmed, however, by the IG of the Justice Department, the only senior official there not answerable directly to the White House, and by agents of the FBI, an agency not known for its sensitivity to questions of democratic rights, is an indication of the rampant character of these crimes as well as the crisis they have engendered within the US government and America’s ruling elite as a whole.

The report makes it absolutely clear that torture was ordered and planned in detail at the highest levels of the government—including the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Attempts to stop it on legal or pragmatic grounds by individuals within the government were systematically suppressed, and evidence of this criminal activity covered up.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House on these new revelations. Responses from other agencies directly implicated in the crimes at Guantánamo were indicative of the general atmosphere of impunity in which the torture detailed in the IG’s report continues to this day.

“There’s nothing new here,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. A State Department spokesman, meanwhile, described the charges contained in the report as “pretty vague.”

Pretty vague? One can’t help but wonder what the spokesman would consider explicit. The report contains page after page of testimony by FBI agents on the sadistic and sickening practices carried out at Guantánamo.

In one section, the report states: “[An FBI Agent] recalled that, at some point during the interrogation, the military officer ‘put water down’ a seated detainee’s throat. He said he guessed that the purpose of the water was to give the detainee the sensation that he was drowning, so that he would provide the information that the interrogator wanted. [The agent] stated that the detainee was gagging and spitting out water. He said that the detainee appeared to be uncomfortable, and assumed that he had trouble breathing.”

Consider the account of the interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national who was arrested by his own government, turned over to US forces and brought to Guantánamo in 2002:

“He was left alone in a cold room known as ‘the freezer,’ where guards would prevent him from sleeping by putting ice or cold water on him…

“He was subjected to sleep deprivation for a period of 70 days by means of prolonged interrogations, strobe lights, threatening music, forced intake of water, and forced standing.

“Two female interrogators touched him sexually and made sexual statements to him;

In addition, the document says, he was “led to believe he was going to be executed, and urinated on himself,” and was told that his mother and family would be detained and harmed.

In addition, the report cites: several agents who reported instances of beatings, 30 agents who reported witnessing prolonged shackling of detainees in stress positions, 70 agents who reported detainees being subjected to sleep deprivation, 29 agents who had information on the use of extreme temperatures in order to “break the detainees’ resolve to resist cooperating” and 50 agents reporting the use of extended isolation to “wear down a detainee’s resistance.”

In addition, four agents reported the kicking and beating to death of two detainees in Afghanistan who had been subjected to prolonged shackling in a standing position.

They do not include the treatment of Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen born in Germany, who was arrested during a trip to Pakistan in the fall of 2001 and was handed over to US officials for a $3,000 bounty. First taken to the US base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, he was then transferred to Guantánamo. While by 2002 the US authorities concluded that Kurnaz had nothing to do with terrorism, he was imprisoned until the middle of 2006 and released only because of pressure from the German government.

Barred from entry to the US, he testified via video link to a sparsely attended hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week.

“I did nothing wrong and I was treated like a monster,” he said. He told how he was subjected to electric shocks, being suspended by his wrists for hours and subjected to the ‘water treatment,’ in which his head was stuck into a bucket of water and he was punched in the stomach, forcing him to inhale the liquid. (The Justice Department Inspector General’s report, it bears noting, affirmed that this last form of torture did not constitute “waterboarding,” but did represent “an effort to intimidate the detainees and increase their feelings of helplessness.”)

“I know others have died from this kind of treatment,” said Kurnaz. “I suffered from sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, religious and sexual humiliations. I was beaten multiple times.”

“There was no law in Guantánamo,” Kurnaz concluded. “I didn’t think this could happen in the 21st century…. I could never have imagined that this place was created by the United States.”

The inmates held at Guantánamo represent barely 1 percent of those detained at US prison camps and secret jails run by the military and the CIA in Iraq, Afghanistan and other points around the world. An estimated 27,000 people are being held without charges, much less trials, many of them simply having disappeared into Washington’s global gulag. Some are held on prison ships, others in secret dungeons run jointly by the CIA and regimes to which it “outsources” detainees, like Egypt, Jordan and Morocco, where other, cruder forms of torture—being buried alive, given electric shocks or slashed with scalpels—are employed.

The report also reconfirms that the revolting scenes captured in the photographs taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that came to light four years ago—naked and hooded men being subjected to torture and sexual humiliation by US guards—were no aberration. The methods described in the report—forced nudity, the use of attack dogs in interrogations, chaining detainees in “stress” positions, leading them around on dog leashes, draping them in women’s underwear—were identical to those officially blamed on a “few bad apples” at Abu Ghraib.

Indeed, as ABC News revealed last month, top administration officials on the so-called Principals’ Committee—Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft and National Security Council Adviser Condoleezza Rice—conducted detailed discussions on “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which, according to ABC, “were almost choreographed—down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.”

Bush subsequently told ABC that he was “aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”

The report establishes that FBI and Justice Department officials advised the White House National Security Council of their concern that the practices witnessed by the agents were “gravely damaging … the rule of law” at Guantánamo.

In the end, however, they were told to back off, and they complied, thereby becoming accomplices in this criminality and its cover-up.

The revelations in the FBI report have provoked no significant protests or demands for action from the Democrats in Congress, or for that matter from the party’s presidential contenders, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, neither of whom have made torture an issue in their campaigns.

The New York Times Tuesday carried a lead editorial titled, “What the FBI agents saw,” which laid out the details of the report and stated that it “shows what happens when an American president, his secretary of defense, his Justice Department and other top officials corrupt American law to rationalize and authorize the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners.”

The paper’s conclusion: “The Democrats must press for full disclosure” through hearings to uncover “the extent of President Bush’s disregard for the law and the Geneva Conventions.” This, they tell their readers, “is the only way to get this country back to being a defender, not a violator, of human rights.”

Such is the impotence of erstwhile American establishment liberalism. The extent of the Bush administration’s outright criminality has been thoroughly exposed over the course of several years.

The wholesale and deliberate violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture are, under international law, war crimes—just as the FBI recognized they were. What is demanded is not another toothless congressional hearing, but rather the constitution of a war crimes tribunal. Those responsible must be held accountable.

Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet and Ashcroft should be placed on trial. Those like former White House counsel and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington and Justice Department deputy assistant secretary John Yoo, who crafted the pseudo-legal arguments legitimizing torture, should be prosecuted as well, together with those military and intelligence officials who directed the criminal practices at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other CIA and military camps and prisons.

The Democratic leadership has no desire or intention to fight for such a reckoning. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders have repeatedly insisted that impeachment of the president and vice president is “off the table.” They have no interest in pursuing the administration on the issue of torture because they themselves are complicit, with Pelosi and other senior congressional Democrats having been briefed extensively on the criminal methods employed at Guantánamo, which they approved and concealed from the American people.

On a more fundamental level, the Democrats have been complicit in a policy of global militarism and aggression—carried out under the mantle of a “global war on terrorism”—which is directed at using armed force to further the interests of America’s ruling oligarchy. It is this criminal strategy—resulting in the loss of over 1 million Iraqi lives—that has given rise to the crime of torture itself.

Nonetheless, the deepening crisis of American capitalism is creating the conditions for profound shocks and changes in political and social relations that may well result in Bush, Cheney and Co. standing in the dock as war criminals.

Such a trial is vitally necessary from the standpoint of halting these ongoing crimes, preventing the use of similar methods against political opposition within the US itself and politically educating the American people.