Detainees sit around the exercise yard in Camp 4, the medium security facility within Camp Delta at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In Camp 4, highly compliant detainees live in a communal setting and have extensive access to recreation. Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Sara Wood

Please support TPR contributor Andy Worthington’s important work on Guantanamo by making a donation to his investigative fund.

When it comes to dealing with the thorny question of how to close Guantánamo, the remaining prisoners have been caught between two competing systems since President Obama took office last January, and the result, to put it mildly, has been confusing.

Under President Bush, prisoners were cleared for release by military review boards, established to review the supposed evidence against them, and to determine whether they constituted an ongoing threat to the US. This appeared to be a maddeningly arbitrary system, but it led to the release of hundreds of the prisoners.

In June 2008, the Supreme Court added a second layer of review, of a more substantial nature, when it gave the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights; in other words, the right to challenge the basis of their detention in a US court. This right had been established by the Supreme Court in June 2004, leading to the filing of habeas petitions on behalf of the majority of the prisoners, but these were all stalled when Congress submitted to the President’s wishes and passed legislation that purported to strip the prisoners of these rights, in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Guantánamo and habeas corpus under George W. Bush

Following the Supreme Court ruling in June 2008, District Court judges began hearing the prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions, and the prisoners secured, for the first time, an objective review of what the government claimed to be evidence proving that they were connected to al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban. The result was a disappointment for the government, although it came as no surprise to those who had been studying Guantánamo closely, and who knew that the majority of the prisoners had been seized by America’s Afghan and Pakistani allies, at a time when substantial bounty payments were being offered, and that the majority of the supposed evidence against the men came from their own interrogations, or those of other prisoners, which were often conducted in conditions where torture, coercion or bribery were prevalent.

From October 2008 to January 2009, 23 prisoners won their habeas petitions, and just three cases were won by the government. In the case of 17 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), the government gave up all pretense that they were “enemy combatants,” having established, soon after they were seized in December 2001, that their only enemy was the Chinese government, and having suffered a humiliating court defeat shortly after the Supreme Court ruling last June. A judge also dismissed the government’s claims against five Algerian-born Bosnian citizens, who had been kidnapped by US agents from Sarajevo in January 2002, in connection with a non-existent plot to bomb the US embassy, and the case against a Chadian national, who was a child at the time of his capture by Pakistani police in a raid on a mosque in Karachi.

In both cases, the judge — Richard Leon, an appointee of George W. Bush — dismissed the government’s supposed evidence by ruling, in the case of the Bosnians, that a supposed informer was unreliable, and in the case of the former child prisoner, Mohammed El-Gharani, that unreliable witnesses in Guantánamo (whose unreliability was known to the authorities) had concocted a fictional story about him.

Judge Leon also ruled that the government had established a case against one of the Bosnians — in connection with purported plans to recruit men to fight in Afghanistan — and against two other prisoners with supposed connections to the Taliban or al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but it was a poor start for the government’s defense of its rationale for holding men for seven years without charge or trial, and these same problems resurfaced under Barack Obama.

Guantánamo and habeas corpus under Barack Obama

In Obama’s first year in office, nine prisoners won their habeas petitions, and six lost. Those who won included a Syrian who had been tortured by al-Qaeda as a spy, an Afghan (also a child at the time of capture) whose confessions were tainted by threats of torture, and a Kuwaiti businessman who had been tortured in Guantánamo until he came up with false confessions that were only finally exposed by a judge last September. In all these cases, false confessions and unreliable witnesses fatally undermined the government’s case.

Moreover, in the majority of cases that the government won, the fault lines in the Bush administration’s rationale for defining men as “enemy combatants” became apparent: most were, at best, peripheral characters in the war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance that preceded al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and should, by any objective measure, have been held as enemy prisoners of war, and protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Although the majority of the nine prisoners who lost their habeas petitions were cast back into the unprecedented world of indefinite detention conceived by the Bush administration, awaiting a substantial overhaul of the very basis of detention policies in the “War on Terror” that has not yet happened, it was clear that the courts provided the first objective review of the Bush administration’s policies. It muddied the waters, therefore, when President Obama established an interagency Task Force to review all the prisoners’ cases, and to come up with its own conclusions about who should be released, and who should be put on trial.

Obama’s Task Force muddies the waters

The Task Force struggled to pull together information about the prisoners that was scattered throughout various department and agencies, and took until January this year to complete its findings, advising the President that 35 prisoners should be put forward for trials, that 47 should continue to be held indefinitely without charge or trial, and that the rest — around 110 prisoners at the time — should be released.

The announcement revealed both the strengths and the weaknesses of the review process. It was, of course, heartening that only 35 prisoners would face trials, as this figure corresponded to analyses revealed by intelligence officials over the previous eight years, demonstrating that less than 5 percent of the 779 prisoners held throughout Guantánamo’s history had any meaningful connection to al-Qaeda, the Taliban leadership or international terrorism. Similarly, the decision to release 110 men was a swifter judgment than the courts were able to achieve — although it should be noted that the progress of the habeas petitions was severely obstructed by the Justice Department, where lawyers dragged their heels providing necessary information to the defense, and also that an executive decision to release a prisoner did not carry the weight of a court verdict, and did not, crucially, remove the stigma of having been held for years as an “enemy combatant.”

However, the biggest disappointment was the Task Force’s recommendation that 47 men be held indefinitely without charge or trial. “Preventive detention” was at the heart of the Bush administration’s baleful experiment in holding prisoners neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects to be put forward for trial on charges related to terrorism, and it was profoundly disturbing to hear President Obama explain, as he did in May last year, that the men in question were those who “cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.” Essentially, what this statement revealed was that the administration was prepared to rely on information obtained through torture as a reason for continuing indefinite detention without charge or trial.

Moreover, the Task Force’s announcement in January — and Obama’s apparent endorsement of it — also ignored the role of the courts, for the simple reason that the majority of these men had outstanding habeas corpus petitions, and that, as a result, it was up to the District Court judges, and not the executive, to decide whether the supposed evidence against them was at all reliable.

Such is the muddle created by the Task Force — and such is the secrecy surrounding its decisions — that it is impossible to know whether the nine men consigned to indefinite detention after losing their habeas petitions in the courts are included in the 47 men that the Task Force advised should be held indefinitely. I can only presume that this is the case, but, as events last week showed, we are now in a position where rulings on prisoners’ habeas petitions no longer stand independently, but are actively compared to the results reached by a Task Force whose findings are secret.

The latest habeas corpus rulings

Last week, judges ruled on the habeas petitions of three Yemeni prisoners. The unclassified opinions have not yet been released, so the judges’ reasoning is not yet available, but in two cases the prisoner’s habeas petitions were denied, and in the third case the petition was granted. The two men who lost their petitions are Suleiman al-Nahdi and Fahmi al-Assani, and the man who won was Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman. To confuse matters further, both al-Nahdi and al-Assani had been cleared by a Bush-era military review board, while Uthman had not. It is, of course, not known what decision had been reached by the Task Force regarding these men.

Although the judges’ unclassified opinions are not yet available, a glance at these men’s stories, as available through publicly accessible Pentagon documents, indicates how the decisions may have been made. As I explained in my book The Guantánamo Files, Othman, who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, “said that he had traveled between Kabul and Khost teaching the Koran from March to December 2001.” Although he “admitted that he had stayed at a Taliban house in Quetta, Pakistan, which was the normal entry point for volunteers who had come to fight with the Taliban,” he stated that this was “only because he had been told that it was the only way for him to enter Afghanistan.”

If Othman had a plausible argument that he had traveled to Afghanistan as a missionary, this was not the case with al-Nahdi and al-Assani. Both had been seized in the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan (where a major showdown between al-Qaeda and the US military’s Afghan proxies had taken place in November and December 2001), and, although it is clear from the cases of many of the men held at Guantánamo that passing through Tora Bora to escape the chaos of Afghanistan did not prove that they were involved in any kind of military activity (because thousands of civilians were also trying to escape), both men came up with accounts which suggested that they were at least peripherally involved in the conflict.

As I explained in The Guantánamo Files, al-Assani, who was 24 years old at the time of his capture:

was a recent recruit to the Taliban cause, a foot soldier in an inter-Muslim civil war that had suddenly gone global. He traveled to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, trained briefly at al-Farouq [a training camp established by an Afghan warlord but associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before the 9/11 attacks] and ended up in Tora Bora, but only, he said, because “I was fleeing for my life with many other people to avoid the bombing that was imminent,” and not, as was alleged, because he “was assigned to augment Taliban and al-Qaeda forces already in defensive positions in Tora Bora.” He added that he was with a group of Pakistanis, trying to get to Pakistan, when they were bombed by US forces and he was “the sole survivor.”

He was then taken by Afghan forces to a hospital in Jalalabad, and delivered to US forces some months later.

Al-Nahdi, who was 27 years old at the time of his capture, explained that he had been inspired to assist the Taliban through a fatwa issued by a notorious cleric, and had spent a month at al-Farouq. He added that:

[He] saw Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, when he “talked about the jihad for approximately one hour and then a senior al-Qaeda operative [identified as Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s No. 2] made a few comments,” and then went into the mountains, where he took turns guarding a foxhole with 15 other people. Responding to an allegation that he “may have fought in Tora Bora,” he said, “I never fired a weapon. I was only sitting,” and, when asked if he would have shot at Americans, he [said]: “I did not see any Americans. If I had seen any Americans, I would not have shot at them. I would have only shot at them if they had shot at me first, to defend myself.”

Guantánamo’s continuing existence as a legal black hole

Over eight years after Guantánamo opened, it is clear from these three rulings that the fate of the men in question is still dictated more by the disgraceful innovations of the Bush administration than it is by any objective notions of justice. Othman may be released, but only when the Obama administration decides that it is politically safe to free any cleared Yemeni prisoners (having capitulated to unprincipled criticism following the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt by suspending all releases to Yemen until further notice). Moreover, it is impossible to know whether any of these three men were cleared for release by Obama’s Task Force, and, if so, what it means if a prisoner loses his habeas petition, when the Task Force had recommended his release.

Behind all this, of course, lies the problem that I have been highlighting ever since Judge Leon ruled, last January, that Ghaleb al-Bihani, another Yemeni, could continue to be held indefinitely because he had worked as a cook for Arab forces supporting the Taliban, and had not magically spirited himself out of Afghanistan on the day that the US-led invasion began, in October 2001. Absurdly, it seems to me, this was when the Taliban’s civil war with the Northern Alliance suddenly became a “War on Terror,” in which US forces, who hooked up with the Northern Alliance after years of indifference to their cause, were conventional soldiers, but those who opposed them were terrorists.

If there were truly any justice, Ghaleb al-Bihani — and Suleiman al-Nahdi and Fahmi al-Assani — would have been held as prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions, and not as special “War on Terror” prisoners whose detention was endorsed by Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which empowered the President to seize and hold anyone he regarded as having a connection to al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban. Crucially, this would mean that they could continue to be held until the end of hostilities (whenever that may be), but it would also mean that they would not have been subjected to the abusive innovations of the “War on Terror,” and would have been shielded from coercive interrogations and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

I have serious doubts about whether it is acceptable to continue holding peripheral figures seized during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 for longer than the duration of the Second World War, but even if this were the case, no one in the Executive branch, Congress or the judiciary has fully addressed the fact that, instead, they are still effectively in the black hole dreamed up by the Bush administration when the President accepted, in February 2002, that he had the right to hold a new category of human being — “enemy combatants” without rights — outside the Geneva Conventions.

This story was originally publishe on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Andy Worthington, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and the definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009. He maintains a blog at andyworthington.co.uk.

Author’s note: This article was written several days before President Obama’s escalation speech at West Point, when it was first leaked that 30,000-plus troops would be bound for Afghanistan.  I offer this as argument that in less than a year, the Obama presidency is a failure, by his own campaign’s definition.  I do so in the hopes of being presented an argument that convincingly counters the evidence of Obama’s policy trajectories presented here.  And, as you will see, Sotomayor and the stimulus bill do not serve a sufficient counterweight to the general body of policy the Obama Administration has so far evinced.

The psychology of previous investment proscribes humans from responding rationally when conditions warrant or even demand.  If the investment has been heavy enough, the psychology behind the investment will insist that people hold on to it, no matter how badly the investment may tank.  This occurs at all scales.  The American public’s investment in Barack Obama is tanking badly.  The question at this point becomes, how much longer can the policy trend lines continue before the body of his political support collapses altogether?

***

President Obama has failed his mandate.

It’s not a happy thing to have to say.  Many won’t agree, desperately fending off the obvious. The campaign sloganeering, well, it turned out to be just that.  All the worse that so many had hoped otherwise. Obama has been embarrassingly supine in dealing with the know-nothings. The end game of which is what, exactly?  Republicans will suddenly — one day — apprehend their misbegotten ways and cuddle the furry kitten? The GOP and their agents continue the attacks, the lies, the filibusters — a well funded font of rancorous, racist, rancid bullshit.  Palin-Beck in 2012!  That’s the ticket.

The last straw was escalation in Afghanistan.  And didn’t he ever drag out the process of doing what the military told him he should do weeks ago?  Perhaps that was suppose to make him look steely-eyed and circumspect.  One wonders what the point of all this review was meant to reveal when the end product is to tap almost all the troops McChrystal wanted in the first place.  In fact, we almost suspect that McChrystal may have high-balled his numbers as a negotiation entry point.  Then again, maybe not.  Because McChrystal knows he is dealing with a Democrat, one who seems especially smitten with getting along.  Which meant, of course, that Obama would meet McChrystal’s opening bid, with the necessary appearance of due diligence of course, because, well, that’s how Democrats roll.  They are the party of looking like they’re for “the people.”  The “review” at this point looks like mere window dressing.  Whether it was or was not is unimportant.  Certainly, it is unimportant to those on the ground.

If this does go down with plus-30,000 troops, Obama can kiss it goodbye.  Here is the short of it.  One way or another, Afghanistan will be the doom of Obama.  Withdrawal is conventionally seen as political suicide. It matters not that the American and Afghan public would like to see this happen.  Obama will be “ravaged” by foes in Washington.  Just like LBJ fretted.  Once Afghanistan turns more deeply unpopular — more than now — political forces will then turn that against Obama, and it will become his Vietnam.  If this escalation is a cave to military pressure and political considerations (and really, what else could it be?), then Obama may think he is staving off a near term political hit.  In reality, he is only delaying political doom.  And worse, he is consigning to their deaths, who knows how many more thousands, ravaging the land and the lives of millions more.

Tellingly, the left are squabbling about whether Obama is worse than Bush.  Indeed, when one finds oneself in a position of defending any president by trying to demonstrate that they are “not worse than Bush,” or even mentioning, in a subjunctive clause, that Obama is not “worse than Bush,” the admission is plain: failure.

***
Obama has pathetically caved to most every Republican yowl on every domestic bill, only to watch no Republicans even vote for the butchered bill anyway.  The health care botch will be the same [see below].

Obama demands Israel halt building on the West Bank, only to watch Israel approve more building on the West Bank.

Obama shamefully and shamelessly pulled a complete one-eighty on the odious FISA amendment.  To his great pleasure now, as he only balloons the already expansive surveillance state [see below].  On the plus side, he did this before he was president.

Obama has adopted all Bush era legal positions and then some — even asserting sovereign immunity — in warrentless wiretap lawsuits and beyond.

Obama has quietly backed renewal of the worst of the PATRIOT Act provisions, and doing so over the objections of fellow Democrats.

Obama has only escalated, atrociously so given his “Si, se puede” campaign, immigration raids and harassment across the country, the American Apparel episode especially mean-spirited in a time of brutal recession.  Only recently, a janitorial company “quietly let go” many illegal immigrants, a move that is part of an Obama administration plan to  “thin the ranks of illegal immigrants by going after the companies that hire them.”  Now, there’s a plan.  All those homeless nurses and accountants piling up in LA tent cities can go work as janitors now that the illegals have been purged.

Obama has continued to assert the power to conduct extraordinary renditions, or, as the Italian court that convicted 23 Americans (22 CIA) of just such an operation called it, “kidnappings”.

Obama has continued to assert the power to hold detainees indefinitely, without charge.  Apparently, he intends to do so.

Obama has continued to assert the power to conduct military tribunals in lieu of trial.  Apparently, he intends to do so.

Obama has continued to assert the power to spy on Americans.  Apparently, he intends to do so. With sovereign immunity.

Obama has continued to assert the power to torture and abuse detainees secretly, specifically within the confines of US SOC base at Bagram, and a similar facility at Balad Air Base in Iraq.

Obama has adopted a position on the Guantanamo detainees so arbitrarily pendulous, it makes Bush look like a model of sober reason: no trials for anyone. Say what you will about that, but it is consistent.  Obama’s “position” is no position at all.  He’s all over the map.  Particle and wave.  “Whatever works.”  Yes, he really is a Democrat.

Obama will fail to close Guantanamo Bay as a detainee prison by his own deadline and admission.  Obama fired the man who was trying to close it according to Obama’s own agenda [see below].  I predict this may go on for years, as Obama attempts to keep the GOP from swatting him on the issue.  And once again, petty domestic politics drive policy.

Obama has overseen the worsening of conditions at Guantanamo Bay.

Obama has upped the US military footprint in South America by bumping up military presence in Colombia, with the lapdog enthusiasm of a visibly excited Uribe on full display.  Pissing off everyone else, of course, but no matter.  Tensions are bound to escalate beyond those already on the rise.

Obama displayed an unaccountable hypocrisy and equivocation regarding the Honduran coup, even as his administration railed against Tehran for election rigging.  Of course, the one-way outrage is not unaccountable at all, and certainly not when one’s own military base is quietly involved.

Obama has continued to embrace long standing US-resistance to treaties banning landmines and other passive, deadly weapons, weapons that kill thousands of children every year.  This, even as the world observed the 20 year anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the passing of which was notable only for the sole company the United States keeps in refusing ratification of that treaty: Somalia.

Obama has deployed private mercenaries in Somalia.

Obama has only continued the escalation of the Pentagon budget, and emergency off-the-books contingency funds.

Obama has more currently deployed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush ever did.  And he is about to up that unhappy fact in Afghanistan again.  Certainly, we will be assured there will be a timeline for withdrawal. And certainly, it will be a sham.

Obama is expanding the US “Embassy” in Islamabad to behemoth proportions, in keeping with the model presented to the world in Baghdad.  Pakistanis are fuming at this project, viewing it rightly as a “military and intelligence command outpost.”

Obama has promoted, rather than denounced and fired, the commander of JSOC, which oversaw extreme abuse and torture of detainees.  Under McChrstyal’s command, many subordinates were convicted of such crimes.  No one above of the rank of major was convicted, despite “the documented role of more senior officers and civilian officials in authorizing and then covering up these crimes.”

Obama intends that the “withdrawal” from Iraq will be as every bit as farcical as has always been planned.  Major permanent military bases (and a billion dollar embassy) holding 50-60,000 troops, scattered hither and pointedly yon.  Oil contracts are in the works.

Obama is escalating a global missile defense shield, first actively begun by Reagan, mandated by the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance and then later by the plowed under Project for the New American Century.  The putative suspension of the installations in Poland and Czech Republic was a technical ruse.  There will be missiles and radar in those places, and elsewhere, such Romania and Bulgaria.  Plans are afoot for footprints in Georgia, Azerbaijan and beyond the Caspian.

Obama has escalated pipeline negotiations throughout Central Asia.  This may not sound bad.  Did I mention that Blackwater and JSOC are conducting military operations in Uzbekistan?  No? Not yet?  [see below.]

Obama has escalated the drone war “dramatically” in Pakistan.  Blackwater appears to be fully involved.  Of course, the whole damned debacle is illegal, but no matter.

Obama continues to embrace the employment of Blackwater, which is roaming wild in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, and elsewhere.  Yes, Uzbekistan. In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

“That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don’t know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan,” he said. “So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?” Obama has overseen a skyrocketing forty percent increase in private contractors in Afghanistan between June and September of this year.  There is some change here: no other president has overseen a war employing more private contractor personnel than Obama.  Private contractor personnel now comprise fifty-seven percent of all US personnel in Afghanistan.

Obama has coddled Wall Street beyond anyone’s wildest fears.  He has said not a word that I can discern about the bailout sham.  Is he sad that the Wall Street brethren who dumped vast sums on his meteoric rise to the White House behaved so badly before, during, and after the bailout? His administration is more vested with Wall Street chums than the Bush White House.  A ghastly embarrassment.

Obama got needlessly shabby on Greg Craig.  Another embarrassment.  A gross performance and easily as bad as anything Bush ever did.  But worse, because Craig was pushing Obama’s own agenda and got burned because Obama discovered some scary things that make that ol’ Constitution just as silly as Bush and Cheney always said it was.

Obama is watching key supporteres flee his administration, either forcibly or by choice: personal matters.

Obama is pushing the Congressional Black Caucus and the GOP together in refusing to address the concerns of the CBC regarding financial reform.  “Waters suggested the CBC’s 43 members could vote with the GOP to scuttle a variety of Democratic bills if Obama and Emanuel don’t address what she thinks is a lack of understanding of the CBC’s wide-ranging goals of reducing urban unemployment, home foreclosures and bank failures.” Obama continues to ignore the Don Siegelman miscarriage, and leaves Bush/Rove DoJ hacks in situ in Alabama.  Siegelman claims that there has  been  “no substantial change in the heart of the Department of Justice from the Bush-Rove Department of Justice.”  The judge who oversaw the travesty, Mark Fuller, is friends with all the DoJ Rovian Canarys, and had a personal grudge against Siegleman.  Fuller is in ownership of a defense contracting company that fuels Air Force One.

Obama stood back on health care reform and watched the carnage from the sidelines.  He stood nowhere, for nothing.  Congress made a hash of it, as is their wont.  Who knows what it will actually do, but it will get tens of millions of new customers for the insurance companies.  In all likelihood, the bill will wind up being a shameless corporate crap shoot, without the snake eyes.  The man who once said single payer was the obvious solution, sat on his hands while a vestigial public option was ravage further, and pernicious C Street amendments popped up like ulcerous sores.  Not a word.  He’ll sign anything at this point.

Obama has ramped up the secret surveillance state beyond mortal reckoning.  There are estimates, of course, wherein numbers drop into the $50-100 Billion* bin. Under Obama, the NSA is building a giant secret facility in Utah that will house a Yottabyte archive.  Surveillance state “Fusion Centers” are spreading like wildfire.

Obama has thrown out a trail balloon about cutting NASA’s budget.  Yes, let’s cut that one half of one percent of the federal budget that goes to that wastrel NASA.  All that fancy pants galavantin’ about the solar system, and … learnin’ stuff.  Can’t recall Bush threatening to cut the NASA budget.  He wanted to kill Hubble — the certitude of that “billions of years” talk shook his biblical bones — but at least he wanted to go to Mars or some crazy shit.  Now, NASA are talking to the Chinese about partnering up.  Change!   Not exactly the change I was imagining.

Obama’s glamour is wearing thin.  In fact, it’s threadbare.  The Chinese know it.  He’s a pushover.  In this, the investment cannot let go; he is so damned likable.

That is over.  Obama’s plain failure is obvious.  Unlike the election of 2000, 2008 was a known, vital cast, one the American public knew was important.  No one really thought or knew what the stakes would become in 2000 (except perhaps for those in on the fix).  Not so in 2008.  We all knew it.  The wreckage is everywhere.

The above is not an agenda bent on fixing any of it, but reeks of acquiescence and inertia. It demonstrates that Santos knew, two years ago, what we know now.

Mr. Obama, if this truly is your path for the United States, you have failed your mandate.  Not your Goldman Sachs mandate — clearly not — but the one entrusted to you by the American public, one that is desperate for a change of course.  One that still believed it was actually possible.  This is not that change of course.  Though admittedly persistent, as many a dead president may testify, this course is a dead end.  Instead of doing or even attempting to take on the necessary tasks at hand, you have folded across the board.  Cowardice in the face of potent adversaries? or were you in on this all along?

***
* Let’s just note the institutional proclivities here. Up to a $100 Billion per year into op tech to spy on Americans is unremarkable,  secret in fact, yet $80 Billion per year on health care for American citizens redounds to gross public spectacle, reason dragged through the shit strewn ditch, spat upon by clotpols with guns fully strapped.  Because health care for Americans, well, that’s some dangerous stuff, there.
—————–

Kenneth Anderson, an astronomer who has worked on a number of NASA projects, devotes his scientific training to observations and inferences about current affairs, politics and the media. He blogs at boneheadcompendium.com and can be reached at ken-AT-boneheadcompendium.com

1. Troop Deployments
2. The Militarized Economy
3. Masters of War
4. Psyops: Wag the Dog and Shake the Mohammed
5. U.S. Insurgency: Violent, Strategic Dislocation Within U.S.

The economic elite have escalated their attack on the U.S. public by surging military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As Obama announced plans for escalating the war effort, it has become clear that the Obama Illusion has taken yet another horrifying turn. Before explaining how the Af-Pak surge is a direct attack on the US public, let’s peer through the illusion and look at the reality of the situation.

Now that the much despised George W. Bush is out of the way and a more popular figurehead is doing PR for Dick Cheney’s right-hand military leader Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is leading his second AF-Pak surge now, and with long time Bush family confidant Robert Gates still running the Defense Department, the masters of war have never had it so good.

Barack Obama, the anti-war candidate, has proven to be a perfect decoy for the military industrial complex. Consider all the opposition and bad press Bush received when he announced the surge in Iraq. Then consider this:

I: TROOP DEPLOYMENTS

The Bush surge in Iraq deployed an extra 28,000 US troops. Under Obama, back in March, a surge in Afghanistan, that also further escalated operations inside Pakistan, deployed an extra 21,000 troops. However, in an unannounced and underreported move, Obama added 13,000 more troops to that surge to bring the total to 34,000 troops. Obama actually outdid Bush’s surge by 6000 troops and brought the overall number of US troops in Afghanistan to 68,000, double the number there when Bush left office.

Where opposition was fierce to Bush’s surge, barely any opposition was expressed during Obama’s surge. Part of the reason for so little political and public backlash was the cleverly orchestrated psychological operation to announce the beginning of US troop withdrawal from Iraq. While the drawdown in Iraq has been greatly exaggerated in the US mainstream media, as of October, Obama still had 124,000 troops deployed in Iraq (not counting private military contractors).

When Obama casts the illusion of a 2011 withdrawal from Afghanistan, one just needs look at the reality of the situation with the over-hyped withdrawal in Iraq.

Now, with Obama’s latest surge announcement he will again be adding a minimum of another 30,000 US soldiers. This means that Obama has now led a bigger surge than Bush… on two separate occasions within the past nine months of his new administration.

Obama has now escalated deployments in the Af-Pak region to 98,000 US troops. So in Af-Pak and Iraq, he will now have a total of 222,000 US troops deployed, 36,000 more than Bush ever had – 186,000 was Bush’s highest total.

PRIVATE MILITARY AND NATO DEPLOYMENTS

The amount of private military contractors deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan is rarely reported on in the US mainstream press, but a Congressional Research Service investigation into this revealed that a record high 69% active duty soldiers are in fact private mercenaries.

Although the administration is yet to disclose how many private mercenaries will be deployed in the latest surge, it is believed that the 69% ratio will remain in tact.

The Pentagon released a report showing that Obama already had a total of 242,657 private contractors in action, as of June 30th. 119,706 of them in Iraq, 73,968 in Afghanistan, with 50,061 active in “other US CENTCOM locations.”

Back in June, Jeremy Scahill reported on these findings: “According to new statistics released by the Pentagon, with Barack Obama as commander in chief, there has been a 23% increase in the number of ‘Private Security Contractors’ working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29% increase in Afghanistan….”

Plus, we must mention, the immense dangers of having private military contractors as 69% of our fighting force. For those of you unaware, private military contractors are hired from all over the world. Any former soldier, from any country, is welcome to come and fight for a salary – a salary that is often significantly more than what we pay our own US soldiers.

These mercenaries have a vested interest in prolonging the war, for as long as there is a war, they have a well paying job. So it is easy to infer that a significant percentage of these contractors will not have the US soldiers, or US taxpayers, best interests at heart.

Obama continues to feed this out of control private army by pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into shady and scandalous companies like Blackwater, who recently changed their name to Xe Services, because they destroyed their reputation by committing numerous war crimes in Iraq. A recent investigation by Jeremy Scahill revealed the extent to which Blackwater is involved in covert operations inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. In some cases, Blackwater is not working for the US, but were hired by covert elements inside Pakistan. When it comes to private contractors, the fog of war grows ominous, exactly who is fighting for whom is unclear. The crucial factor is who paid them the most that particular day.

The US military can give them $1000 today, and an enemy can give them $1000 tomorrow, when you have people who fight for a payday and not for a country, you get chaos. This leads to a breakdown in the chain of command, effectively turning a military operation into a covert intelligence operation, where you’re never really sure if the person you are fighting with is on your side or not.

A federal investigation by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, revealed in June: “More than 240,000 contractor employees, about 80 percent of them foreign nationals, are working in Iraq and Afghanistan to support operations and projects of the U.S. military, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Contractor employees outnumber U.S. troops in the region. While contractors provide vital services, the Commission believes their use has also entailed billions of dollars lost to waste, fraud, and abuse due to inadequate planning, poor contract drafting, limited competition, understaffed oversight functions, and other problems.”

Before this latest surge, there were over 123,000 US and NATO troops in the Af-Pak region, and 200,000 Afghan security forces, supporting the US effort. According to US intelligence sources the total number of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the region was estimated to only be about 25,000, giving the US led forces a minimum of a 12 to 1 troop advantage.

When you add in estimated private soldiers, you get an approximate minimum of a 17 to 1 advantage.

Although Obama opened his war speech by mentioning al-Qaida as the main justification for this war, consider this AP report: “national security adviser James Jones said last weekend that the al-Qaida presence has diminished, and he does not ‘foresee the return of the Taliban’ to power. He said that according to the maximum estimate, al-Qaida has fewer than 100 fighters operating in Afghanistan without any bases or ability to launch attacks on the West.”

Does it seriously take a surge of hundreds of thousands of troops to contain what amounts to “less than 100″ al-Qaida members?

Any serious war strategist will tell you that the most effective way to combat the remains of the al-Qaida network, is through an intelligence operation, and statistics prove that escalating more troops into the region will only fuel further acts of terrorism.

DRONE DEPLOYMENTS

Speaking of fueling hatred toward the US, other than a huge troop increase, there has also been a sharp increase in the use of unmanned drones. The New Yorker reports: “According to a just completed study by the New America Foundation, the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President. During his first nine and a half months in office, he has authorized as many C.I.A. aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W. Bush did in his final three years in office.”

The unmanned drones have caused major controversy due to the high number of civilian causalities they cause. However, as the study stated, the Obama Administration continues to increasingly rely upon them.

So summing up these statistics, we have the most fierce and technologically advanced military force in history, vastly outnumbering what amounts to be a ragtag army of peasant farmers with guns, and our best option is supposed to be an increase in troop levels?

Obviously, something doesn’t add up.

After thinking about all of this, you begin to see through the smokescreen of what this war is said to be about and get a glimpse of some of the sinister forces at play here.

OVER EXTENDED TROOPS

With the rise in deployments, the US military is stretched to a breaking point. Obama is “deploying practically every available US Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve.”

As this war enters its 9th year, many soldiers are forced into deploying on their 3rd or 4th combat tours, and morale is fading fast.

The past year has seen a dramatic increase in US soldier deaths, with the number of wounded drastically rising as well. 928 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan thus far, with last month being the deadliest month since the start.

AP reports that “nearly four times as many troops were injured in October as a year ago. Amputations, burns, brain injuries and shrapnel wounds proliferate in Afghanistan, due mostly to crude, increasingly potent improvised bombs targeting U.S. forces…. Since 2007, more than 70,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury — more than 20,000 of them this year…”

US soldier suicides are also on the rise. In 2008, 197 army soldiers committed suicide. Thus far in 2009, there have been 211 army suicides.

McClatchy recently reported: “An Army task force has found that a growing number of soldiers serving in Afghanistan are suffering from some kind of mental stress and is urging the military to double the number of mental health professionals deployed there. The study, conducted by the Army Mental Health Advisory Team, found that soldiers’ morale in Afghanistan is ’significantly lower’ than it was in 2005 and 2007 studies…”

As wounded soldiers return from Afghanistan and Iraq, they are finding a healthcare system that is increasingly more difficult and costly to get care from. In fact, 2,266 US veterans died in 2008 due to lack of healthcare, and “researchers also found that, in 2008, 1,461,615 veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 lacked insurance.”

Despite all of this, in another devastating example of how the economy is unraveling US society, military enlistment levels have reached a high. In a report by the Washington Post headlined: “A Historic Success In Military Recruiting” they reveal:

“For the first time in more than 35 years, the U.S. military has met all of its annual recruiting goals, as hundreds of thousands of young people have enlisted despite the near-certainty that they will go to war.

The Pentagon… said the economic downturn and rising joblessness, as well as bonuses and other factors, had led more qualified youths to enlist. The military has not seen such across-the-board successes since the all-volunteer force was established.…

‘We delivered beyond anything the framers of the all-volunteer force would have anticipated,’ Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said at a Pentagon news conference.

Overall, the Defense Department brought in 168,900 active-duty troops, or 103 percent of the goal for the fiscal year….”

What we are witnessing here with such high enlistment levels during this economic crisis has many parallels to Germany in the 1930’s. Just like the United States now, the German economy in the 1930’s was devastated by an economic crisis brought on by Wall Street. With rising unemployment and poverty, German men turned to the military for income and health benefits that their family severely needed. With over 25 million US citizens unemployed and underemployed, over 50 million with no healthcare, and over 50 million living in poverty, military service is now a last resort for a growing number of desperate Americans as well. The record-breaking enlistment numbers are expected to continue to rise as the economy continues to decline.

“Such a perfect democracy constructs its own inconceivable foe, terrorism. Its wish is to be judged by its enemies rather than by its results.”
– Guy DeBord, Comments On the Society of the Spectacle, 1988

II: THE MILITARIZED ECONOMY

The amount of money necessary to keep the US military machine growing has reached astonishing levels. Considering the increasing amount of troops and contractors, the White House estimates that it spends one million dollars per soldier, per year in Afghanistan, “not including the added expense of training and maintaining a security force.”

According to these calculations, 30,000 troops for this latest surge will add an additional $30 billion to the annual budget, just in troop related costs. Also consider the price of moving fuel around, AFP reports: “Moving soldiers and supplies across the rugged Afghan landscape costs more than in Iraq, with the military consuming 83 liters or 22 gallons of fuel per soldier per day.” The Hill adds: “Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate.”

Other than in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have an unprecedented number of military bases spread throughout the world. Officially there are “900 military facilities in 46 countries and territories (the unofficial figure is far greater). The US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, with 26,000 buildings and structures, valued at $146bn. The bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose worth is measured in the trillions and whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over. The official figures exclude the huge build-up of troops and structures in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, as well as secret or unacknowledged facilities in Israel, Kuwait, the Philippines and many other places. In just three years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, £2bn was spent on military construction.”

There was public outcry when Bush drastically raised an already bloated military budget to record highs. But in comes the admired anti-war candidate Obama, in the middle of a severe economic crisis, and what happens? Obama drastically increased Bush’s record budget to $651 billion in 2009. Yes, during a severe economic crisis, Obama actually increased Bush’s budget. US military spending is higher than the rest of the world combined. The 2010 budget, which doesn’t account for war-related spending yet, is already set to grow to $680 billion.

However, these budget numbers are deceiving because the Obama Administration has been getting better at hiding extra spending in other budget items. The actual total 2009 budget was over $1 trillion.

And much like the staggering giveaway to the economic elite in the Wall Street banker bailout, no one is really sure where a significant percentage of this money is actually going. On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced that $2.3 trillion in military spending was unaccounted for. As CBS News reported: “$2.3 trillion – that’s $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.”

At that time, Pentagon auditors admitted that they couldn’t account for a staggering 25% of all military spending. And the budget has exploded since then, with fewer people accounting for where this money is going.

Once again, just like the $23.7 trillion that went into propping up the Wall Street elite – which totals $80,000 for every American – you have trillions more in taxpayer money vanishing and very few regulating and accounting for it.

Other than this staggering loss of taxpayer money, any serious economist will tell you “that military spending increases unemployment and decreases economic growth.”

Economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, in their book “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” report that military spending on the war in Iraq has created over a trillion dollars in loses to the US economy.

On top of all the looting of taxpayer money that is occurring, “several powerful House committee chairmen have proposed a surtax on Americans to pay the future military costs.”

With the country already operating at a record $12 trillion deficit, members of congress don’t know how we can afford increasing an already huge war expenditure.

WEAPONS SALES

In this struggling economy, weapon sales have become one of America’s most booming businesses. US weapon sales have hit a record level under the Obama administration. Foreign Policy In Focus reports:

“In fiscal year 2008, the foreign military sales program sold $36 billion in weapons and defense articles, an increase of more than 50% over 2007. Sales for the first half of 2009 reached $27 billion, and could top out at $40 billion by the end of the year. In contrast, through the early 2000s, arms sales averaged between $8-13 billion per year….

But last year, the United States sold arms or military services to well over 100 nations….

… the majority of U.S. arms sales to the developing world went to countries that our own State Department defined as undemocratic regimes and/or major human rights abusers. And over two-thirds of the world’s active conflicts involved weapons that had been supplied by the United States.”

Selling all these weapons, especially during the biggest global financial crisis, will lead to one thing… terrorism.

Given these statistics, it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear how US taxpayer dollars are still funding the Taliban. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban government was funded by the US taxpayer. In fact, the Taliban still receives a significant portion of their funding courtesy of the US taxpayer. As The Nation recently reported: “It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. ‘It’s a big part of their income,’ one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.”

As former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell explained: “Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the US military machine to turn.”

With the war in Afghanistan now entering it’s 9th year, senior military commanders and a growing number of experts have come to the conclusion that this war is unwinnable and will fuel terrorism.

However, they all seem to be missing the point, before explaining this in more detail, let me start by referring you to a quote from a journalist who had firsthand experience operating inside a militaristic empire:

“The war is not supposed to be winnable, it is supposed to be continuous… all for the hierarchy of society… The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent… it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War… is now a purely internal affair.” — George Orwell

III: MASTERS OF WAR

“Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know,
I can see through your mask…”

Many of the weapons manufactures and private military contractors are seen as the primary war profiteers. For an example of grotesque war profiteering, let’s look at Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton. In a report headlined: “U.S. War Privatization Results in Billions Lost in Fraud, Waste and Abuse,” Jeremy Scahill reports on KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary.

“KBR has been paid nearly $32 billion since 2001. In May, April Stephenson, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, testified that KBR was linked to ‘the vast majority’ of war-zone fraud cases and a majority of the $13 billion in ‘questioned’ or ‘unsupported’ costs. According to Agency, it sent the inspector general ‘a total of 32 cases of suspected overbilling, bribery and other violations since 2004.

According to the Associated Press, which obtained an early copy of the commission’s report, ‘billions of dollars’ of the total paid to KBR ‘ended up wasted due to poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies.’

KBR is at the center of a lethal scandal involving the electrocution deaths of more than a dozen US soldiers, allegedly as a result of faulty electrical work done by the company. The DoD paid KBR more than $80 million in bonuses for the very work that resulted in the electrocution deaths.”

With numerous scandals over KBR operations, Halliburton ended it’s relationship with the company. However, “Halliburton reported $4 billion in operating profits in 2008, while KBR recently said its first quarter revenues in 2009 were up 27%, for a total of $3.2 billion. Its sales in 2008 were up 33%, and according to the Financial Times, the company had $1 billion in cash, no debt, and was looking for acquisitions.”

Beyond these blatant examples of war profiteering, there are more insidious forces at play that most people don’t see. These war profiteering companies are funded by the same banks that have destroyed the US economy.

Consider this example concerning Alliant Techsystems and Textron, two manufactures of cluster bombs, the controversial civilian killing WMDs. The Guardian reported:

“The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world’s biggest banks who have loaned or arranged finance worth $20bn to firms producing the controversial weapons, despite growing international efforts to ban them…

Goldman Sachs, the US bank which made £3.19bn profit in just three months, earned $588.82m for bank services and lent $250m to Alliant Techsystems and Textron…

Last December 90 countries, including the UK, committed themselves to banning cluster bombs by next year. But the US was not one of them. So far 23 countries have ratified the convention.”

Before going into further detail on how these banks make a lion’s share of war profits, let’s look back at the origins of these wars.

GEO-STRATEGIC OIL OPERATIONS

With all due respect to people who have been force-fed Pentagon propaganda by the US mainstream media, any serious observer of the Iraq and Af-Pak wars knows that these are geo-strategic conflicts based on controlling the world’s oil supply. Anyone in the “news” media who tells you otherwise is either unaware of what is actually going on, or is a well-paid propagandist working for the very people who profit off of them.

ORIGINS OF THE IRAQ OCCUPATION: CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE

As an AlterNet report put it: “In January 2000, 10 days into President George W. Bush’s first term, representatives of the largest oil and energy companies joined the new administration to form the Cheney Energy Task Force.”

Secret Task Force documents that were dated March 2001, which were obtained by Judical Watch in 2003 after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, contained “a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects…” They also had:

“… a series of lists titled ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts‘ naming more than 60 companies from some 30 countries with contracts in various stages of negotiation.

None of contracts were with American nor major British companies, and none could take effect while the U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iraq remained in place. Three countries held the largest contracts: China, Russia and France — all members of the Security Council and all in a position to advocate for the end of sanctions.

Were Saddam to remain in power and the sanctions to be removed, these contracts would take effect, and the U.S. and its closest ally would be shut out of Iraq’s great oil bonanza.”

Project Censored highlighted a Judicial Watch report that stated: “Documented plans of occupation and exploitation predating September 11 confirm heightened suspicion that U.S. policy is driven by the dictates of the energy industry. According to Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton, ‘These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public.’”

ORIGINS OF THE AFGHANISTAN OCCUPATION: “STRATEGY OF THE SILK ROUTE”

Up until 9/11, oil companies, with the help of the Bush administration, were desperately trying to work out a deal with the Taliban to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. One of the world’s richest oil fields is on the eastern shore of the Caspian sea just north of Afghanistan. The Caspian oil reserves are of top strategic importance in the quest to control the earth’s remaining oil supply. The US government developed a policy called “The Strategy of the Silk Route.”

The policy was designed to lock out Russia, China and Iran from the oil in this region. This called for U.S. corporations to construct an oil pipeline running through Afghanistan. Since the mid 1990s, a consortium of U.S. companies led by Unocal have been pursing this goal. A feasibility study of the Central Asian pipeline project was performed by Enron. Their study concluded that as long as the country was split among fighting warlords the pipeline could not be built. Stability was necessary for the $4.5 billion project and the U.S. believed that the Taliban would impose the necessary order. The U.S. State Department and Pakistan’s ISI, impressed by the Taliban movement to cut a pipeline deal, agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war for control of Afghanistan.

“Until 1999 U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official.”

The U.S., Saudi and Pakistan intelligence alliance that created the terrorist financing bank BCCI reunited to facilitate the rise of the Taliban. BCCI was a US intelligence bank, which served as the financing arm for the creation of the al-Qaida network. BCCI was involved in many covert operations throughout the 80’s. They played a pivotal role in arming Saddam in Iraq, creating the Iran hostage crisis, even selling drugs through Manuel Noriega and other top drug dealers. BCCI gave nuclear weapons to Pakistan, which led to North Korea and Iran obtaining pivotal nuclear secrets as well. BCCI was also a driving force behind the Savings and Loan scandals that were a precursor to our current economic crisis.

Focusing on the creation of the Taliban, let’s read an excerpt from a 2003 book, “ Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks,” by Loretta Napoleoni:

“The alliance between American capitalism and Islamist fundamentalism is not limited to the creation of the Taliban; it also produced business ventures designed to extract favours from the new regime. To strengthen its bargaining power with the newly formed Islamist state, Unocal joined the Saudi Delta Oil Corporation to create a consortium called CentGas. Delta Oil is owned by the bin Mahfouz and al-Amoudi families [pivotal BCCI players], Saudi clans which have strong links with Osama bin Laden’s family…. Mahfouz has been sponsoring charitable institutions used as fronts for bin Laden’s associates through the National Commercial Bank, which his family controls….

Naturally, as soon as George W. Bush was elected president, Unocal and [UK’s] BP-Amoco… started once again to lobby the administration, among whom were several of their former employees. Unocal knew that Bush was ready to back them and resumed the consortium negotiations. In January 2001, it began discussions with the Taliban, backed by members of the Bush administration among whom was Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who had previously worked as a lobbyist for Unocal. The Taliban, for their part, employed as their PR officer in the US Laila Helms, niece of Richard Helms, former director of the CIA and former US ambassador to Iran. In March 2001, Helms succeeded in bringing Rahmatullah Hashami, Mullah Omar’s adviser, to Washington…. As late as August 2001, meetings were held in Pakistan to discuss the pipeline business….

While negotiations were underway, the US was secretly making plans to invade Afghanistan. The Bush administration and its oil sponsors were losing patience with the Taliban; they wanted to get the Central Asian gas pipeline going as soon as possible. The ‘strategy of the Silk Route’ had been resumed….

Paradoxically, 11 September provided Washington with a casus belli to invade Afghanistan and establish a pro American government in the country. When, a few weeks after the attack, the leaders of the two Pakistani Islamist parties negotiated with Mullah Omar and bin Laden for the latter’s extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the 11 September attacks, the US refused the offer….

In November 2001… Hamid Karzai was elected [Afghanistan’s] prime minister… Yet very few people remember that during the 1990’s Karzai was involved in negotiations with the Taliban regime for the construction of a Central Asian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan. At that time he was a top adviser and lobbyist for Unocal… during the anti-Soviet jihad, Karzai was a member of the Mujahedin. In the early 1990’s, thanks to his excellent contacts with the ISI, he moved to the US where he cooperated with the CIA and the ISI in supporting the Taliban’s political adventure.”

So it is not all that surprising to see recent reports revealing that Hamid Karzai’s drug kingpin brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is also on the CIA payroll.

With this, a new Senate investigation just revealed evidence that Donald Rumsfeld made a conscious strategic decision to let Bin Laden escape. AFP reports:

“Osama bin Laden was within the grasp of US forces in late 2001 and could have been caught if then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld hadn’t rejected calls for reinforcements, a hard-hitting US Senate report says….

It points the finger directly at Rumsfeld for turning down requests for reinforcements as Bin Laden was trapped in caves and tunnels in a mountainous section of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.
‘The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the marine corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines,’ the report said.”

So now that we see how these wars are driven by oil, let’s look at how the oil industry is benefiting from them. Since the invasion, the industry has experienced record profits across the board, setting new profit records quarter after quarter, year after year, as these wars rage on.

IRAQI OIL DEALS

With Exxon and Shell just signing new oil contracts in Iraq, it’s obvious why there are still over 100,000 troops in Iraq. In a Daily Mirror report headlined, “Oil Billions and Weapons of Mass Deception In Iraq,” they report on the new oil deals:

“Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell won the development rights of a massive oil field — West Qurna near Basra in Iraq’s south. The two oil giants hope to boost daily production from the current 300,000 barrels to 2.3 million barrels a day at West Qurna, which the ousted and hanged Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wanted to give to a Russian oil company.

Last month, British Petroleum (BP) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) won a contract to develop another oil field. The invitation to China to join the plunder of Iraq is probably a payoff by the US so that this Asian economic powerhouse and rising military power would not rock the pirates’ boat.”

Let’s look back over the years since the start of the War on Terror, here’s a 2005 MSNBC report:

“By just about any measure, the past three years have produced one of the biggest cash gushers in the oil industry’s history. Since January of 2002, the price of crude has tripled, leaving oil producers awash in profits. During that period, the top 10 major public oil companies have sold some $1.5 trillion worth of crude, pocketing profits of more than $125 billion.

“This is the mother of all booms,” said Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit. “They have so much profit, it’s almost an embarrassment of riches. They don’t know what to do with it.

So an oil field that was profitable with oil selling for $20 a barrel is much more profitable with oil trading around $60…. Since January 2002, stocks of major oil companies have gained 88 percent; during that period the Standard and Poor’s 500 index has gained less than half as much.

Oil producers have also given investors a raise by gradually increasing the dividends paid out to shareholders.”

Here’s a 2007 Public Citizen report summing up oil company wartime profits:

“Since George Bush became President in 2001, the top five oil companies in the United States have recorded profits of $464 billion through the first quarter of 2007:

ExxonMobil: $158.5 billion
Shell: $108.5 billion
BP: $89.2 billion
ChevronTexaco: $60.9 billion
ConocoPhillips: $46.9 billion”

In Febuary 2008, CNN reported:

“Exxon shatters profit records

Oil giant makes corporate history by booking $11.7 billion in quarterly profit; earns $1,300 a second in 2007.

Exxon Mobil made history on Friday by reporting the highest quarterly and annual profits ever for a U.S. company, boosted in large part by soaring crude prices.

Exxon, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, said fourth-quarter net income rose 14% to $11.66 billion, or $2.13 per share. The company earned $10.25 billion, or $1.76 per share, in the year-ago period.

The profit topped Exxon’s previous quarterly record of $10.7 billion, set in the fourth quarter of 2005, which also was an all-time high for a U.S. corporation.”

In January 2009, during a severe economic crisis, the Washington Post reported:

“Exxon Mobil finished a roller-coaster year in the oil markets with an all-time record $45.2 billion in profits…

The world’s most far-flung oil giant broke its own record for corporate profits in a year that saw oil prices climb to $147 a barrel in July… Exxon Mobil still beat analysts’ expectations by registering $7.82 billion in profits, or $1.55 a share, for the final quarter of the year. Exxon Mobil and Chevron’s revenue combined for 2008 exceeded the gross domestic product of all but 16 of the world’s nations, according to Bloomberg.

Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil firm… posted a $26.3 billion profit for the year.”

Once again, beyond these blatant examples of war profiteering, there are more insidious forces at play that most people don’t see. When you take a closer look at the oil profits, you see the true driver and ultimate beneficiary of these profits are none other than the same people who benefited the most from the stock market collapse and the ensuing $23.7 trillion taxpayer “bailout.”

As the Washington Post reported, the huge oil profit margins were the result of the soaring price of a barrel of oil, reaching “$147 a barrel in July.”

The InterContinental Exchange (ICE)

In 2000, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and several oil companies “founded the InterContinental Exchange (ICE)…. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate ‘dark pool’ trading in the commodities markets.”

A Congressional investigation into this exchange found that these companies were fraudulently inflating the price of oil by executing “round-trip” trades where one company would sell shares in oil to another company who would then sell the shares right back. This would drive the price of oil to however high they wanted it to go to. “No commodity ever changes hands. But when done on an exchange, these transactions send a price signal to the market and they artificially boost revenue for the company. This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.”

So when oil was selling at $147 a barrel, the actual worth was most likely closer to half that price. Phil’s Stock World summed up the situation:

“How widespread are ’round-trip’ trades? The Congressional Research Service looked at trading patterns in the energy sector and this is what they reported: This pattern of trading suggests a market environment in which a significant volume of fictitious trading could have taken place. Yet since most of the trading is unregulated by the Government, we have only a slim idea of the illusion being perpetrated in the energy sector.

DMS Energy, when investigated by Congress, admitted that 80 percent of its trades in 2001 were ’round-trip’ trades. That means 80 percent of all of their trades that year were bogus trades where no commodity changed hands, and yet the balance sheets reflect added revenue…

…the InterContinental Exchange; that is, the online, nonregulated, nonaudited, nonoversight for manipulation and fraud entity run by banks in this country….

Under investigation, a lawyer for J.P. Morgan Chase admitted the bank engineered a series of ’round-trip’ trades with Enron….

ICE… turned commodity trading into a speculative casino game where pricing was notional and contracts could be sold by people who never produced a thing, to people who didn’t need the things that were not produced. And in just 5 years after commencing operations, Goldman Sachs and their partners managed to TRIPLE the price of commodities.

Goldman Sachs Commodity Index funds accounted for $60Bn out of $100Bn of all formula-managed funds in 2007 and investors in the GSCI lost 15% in 2006 while Goldman had a record year. John Dizard, of the Financial Times calls this process ‘date rape’ by Goldman Sachs…

It is not surprising that a commodity scam would be the cornerstone of Goldman Sach’s strategy. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, rose to the top through Goldman’s commodity trading arm J Aron, starting his career at J Aron before Goldman Sachs bought them over 25 years ago. With his colleague Gary Cohn, Blankfein oversaw the key energy trading portfolio. According to Chris Cook: ‘It appears clear that BP and Goldman Sachs have been working collaboratively – at least at a strategic level – for maybe 15 years now. Their trading strategy has evolved over time as the global market has developed and become ever more financialised. Moreover, they have been well placed to steer the development of the key global energy market trading platform, and the legal and regulatory framework within which it operates….

Before ICE, the average American family spent 7% of their income on food and fuel. Last year, that number topped 20%. That’s 13% of the incomes of every man, woman and child in the United States of America, over $1Tn EVERY SINGLE YEAR, stolen through market manipulation. On a global scale, that number is over $4Tn per year – 80 Madoffs! Why is there no outrage, why are there no investigations. Well the answer is the same – $4Tn per year buys you a lot of political clout, it pays to have politicians all over the world look the other way while GS and their merry men rob from the poor and give to the rich on such a vast scale that it’s hard to grasp the damage they have done and continue to do to the global economy.”

The congressional investigation into ICE concluded that they couldn’t do anything about it because the exchange was set up offshore.

How convenient!

So here we can see, that behind almost all of our societal problems and suffering, you have this small elite group profiting on destruction and misery at record highs.

When Gold Sachs CEO Llyod Blankfien says that he is doing “God’s work,” one has to wonder, who is the God he is praying to?

Famed two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient US Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler accurately summed up the situation when he said: “I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism…. The general public shoulders the bill. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones, Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.”

WHAT IT ALL COMES DOWN TO…

In the global economy, the economic elite don’t need the US public anymore. When you see Obama taking trips to meet with the leader of China, and having his first official White House State Dinner in honor of the Prime Minster of India, you should know that the elite have moved on. There are billions of people in just these two countries that they believe can do all the work we do for much less pay. It is a race to the bottom, and we are considered obsolete to technocratic leaders who think it is better to hire cheaper workers in foreign lands.

As the US continues to collapse, the technocrats have already moved on to the next country to rape and pillage. The economic elite don’t have a home country, to them the entire globe is theirs, and the majority of the US can collapse into poverty for all they care, and that’s exactly what they want to happen.

The US working class is the biggest threat to them and they want us eliminated.

As the IMF would say, there has been a structural adjustment program in place, and the US working class is obsolete.

When you understand this, you can understand how the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are wars against the US public. Wars that weaken and drain the US working class of vital resources and social safety nets.

In the overall picture, the technocratic elite see everyone as a number on a spreadsheet. To them you are what your economic net worth says you are. Considering this perspective, most in the US public have much more in common with an Afghanistan farmer than the billionaires on Wall Street. And the billionaires have put us in the same category as those in Afghanistan. To them it really doesn’t matter if it’s an American life ended or an Afghani life ended in the war, as long as the profits keep coming in… they can care less.

Common sense and statistics demonstrate that the more troops you send into war, the higher the causality count will be, and the more costs will rise, leading, of course, to higher profits.

So as the Obama illusion and the motives behind this war become exposed, and the massive theft by the economic elite becomes known to a critical mass, the elite are ramping up their psychological operations on the US public by turning up their mainstream media distraction machine.

PSYOPS: WAG THE DOG AND SHAKE THE MOHAMMED

With the healthcare debate losing steam, and the people starting to understand that the final bill will do little to create much needed change, and as “health care reform” is exposed as another gift to insurance company executives, and as unemployment rates remain high, the Economic Death Squad vitally needs some new distractions.

Never mind the criminals on Wall Street: It’s time to… Wag the Dog and Shake the Mohammed

By Wag the Dog, I am of course referring to the old political trick of distracting public consciousness away from a crisis by starting, or in this case drastically escalating, a war.

Don’t worry about the $23.7 trillion of public wealth that was given to Wall Street as a reward for destroying the economy, we are at war and it’s time for you to support our troops.

Ah, yes, another racket to pile up more of the economic poor.

Barack W. Obama, once again, bows to… the elite… and serves up yet another gift by sending more US citizens to the Af-Pak region.

50 million US citizens are already living in dire straights, so what’s the big deal if you just throw another 220,000 US lives onto the fire, not to mention the millions of Afghani, Pakistani and Iraqi lives.

But a war in a distant land just isn’t enough, is it?

American public opinion has long been saturated in the distraction of war, and given the severity of the economic crisis, the elite policy makers figured another surge in Eurasia just wouldn’t be enough of a distraction.

So the psychological operations PR department has decided to also Shake the Muhammad. Yes, bring the 9/11 “mastermind,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, back to the scene of the crime and create a New York media frenzy. Now that’s a distraction!

Not only will it cause a media frenzy, it will also reaffirm public opinion in the war effort… win, win!

I don’t know about you, but as someone who grew up a New Yorker and spent the last five years of my life living three blocks from Ground Zero, I have to say, take your psychological operations to a different location.

You are going to have the “9/11 mastermind” in a courtroom right around the corner from the biggest terrorists of all… Wall Street.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Llyod Blankfien, Jamie Dimon and John Mack are all going to be in one place, at the same time! We will have the “9/11 mastermind,” Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley all in the same zip code… HELLO!

Can you say here comes the next Timothy McVeigh?

Yes, the USA… is an insane asylum! So just Wag the Dog and Shake the Mohammed.

U.S. Insurgency: Violent, Strategic Dislocation Within U.S.

Will there be a violent insurgency within the US?

As a growing number of American lives are directly negatively impacted, media propaganda operations will lose their ability to confuse and distract. Studies of societal breakdowns prove that having such a large population experiencing severe and prolonged economic decline will result in violent outbrakes.

Other than the 50 million US civilians living in dire straights, what will happen as thousands of bitter soldiers and US intelligence agents — who have given their lives to these wars, only to return home to find an economy in ruins and a healthcare system that has thrown them overboard — begin to make these connections and understand that a small group of men on Wall Street are at the root of their suffering?

Well, some former military and intelligence agents, including a growing number of current serving members, have already made this connection, and they are organizing, training and strategizing tactical operations. They are factions inside a quickly growing – heavily armed – militia movement that now numbers over 200 active cells, within the US.

The mainstream press gives some passing attention to the fringe factions that make threats against Obama, but the more experienced soldiers understand that he is just a figurehead and they have connected all these dots and have come to the conclusion that this war is actually a war to create profits for the economic elite at the expense of the US public.

Llyod Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and John Mack can arm themselves and hire all the security they can get, but will it actually keep them safe when you have a population of millions living in dire straights as a direct result of their actions? At this point, even their own security members may be conspiring against them.

The Obama illusion is fading fast. Every time you see through it, you get a glimpse of them. The Economic Death Squad is exposed under the bright light of inspection and investigation.

Take a look at many of the major problems facing us today, as a country and as a species, and then you will understand that these problems exist because the economic elite are profiting off of them.

Obama is just their mask, an illusion to pacify the masses. The economic crisis and the wars have now shattered this illusion – it has come crashing down… upon us.

It has become clear that an opinion has emerged among a growing segment of the United States population: If the government will keep pouring money into banks and war, and won’t stop the theft of US taxpayer money by holding accountable those responsible for it, WE MUST.

And the question that arises after that: Can it be done non-violently?

I certainly hope it can.

However, this growing segment of the population uses strong rhetoric and is prepared to take up arms.

With over 200 active militia cells, who are equipped with weapons, training and strategizing, the government must take swift action to rein in the economic elite. Otherwise, we are heading to war, not in a distant foreign land, within the US.

The economic elite are well aware of the threat of a violent uprising within US borders. US Army documents have revealed that strategic plans are already formed for this situation. Chris Hedges explains:

“The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a ‘violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,’ which could be provoked by ‘unforeseen economic collapse,’ ‘purposeful domestic resistance,’ ‘pervasive public health emergencies’ or ‘loss of functioning political and legal order.’ The ‘widespread civil violence,’ the document said, ‘would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.’

‘An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,’ it went on.

‘… this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,’ the document read.

In plain English… this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.”

We could have a situation where the government deploys private soldiers, mostly foreign nationals, on US soil to fight against US citizens. Blackwater and DynCorp already had active duty soldiers deployed within the US when Hurricane Katrina hit.

In New Orleans, they were essentially a foreign occupying force.

LOSS OF FAITH IN POLITICAL PROCESS

In response to the report, “The Critical Unraveling of US Society,” readers primarily critiqued the part in which we call on readers to engage their representatives.

An irate majority of the responses have consistently stated that they have repeatedly contacted their representative through multiple forms of communication, and no action was taken. A growing segment of the US population has now lost all faith in our government and they are on the verge of taking violent action.

Personally, I believe that non-violent action is a much more strategic and effective move. We are 99% of the population, and the enemy is less than 1%. We are a sleeping giant; they are a small group of clueless greed-addicted people who desperately cling to the Administration, Treasury, Fed and a few other firms like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

If we can take action on a mass non-violent scale, the rule of law and economic justice can be obtained. In our nation’s history, the stakes have never been higher. If we cannot organize a mass movement to non-violently oppose outright theft, then violence will ultimately tear our nation apart.

The question on my mind: Can we swiftly mobilize such a heavily propagandized population to take mass non-violent action?

A growing population does not believe we can do so, and is on the verge of launching a heavily armed insurgency.

So in the months ahead, while they are Wagging the Dog and Shaking the Mohammed, the US public vitally needs to understand that the stakes have never been higher.

And the clock is ticking . . .

David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com and director of MediaChannel.org. You can reach him at David@AmpedStatus.com.

This report was originally published on AmpedStatus

This image of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was taken in July 2009 under an agreement with Guantanamo prison camp staff that lets Red Cross delegates photograph detainees and send photos to family members.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate “mainstream” media make quite a pair.

We’re hearing a very “balanced” debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We’re not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime.

We’re not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the “war on terror” might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis.
What effect might that have had on Americans’ willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren’t hearing about that.

Aside from a column by my friend Ray McGovern, not of course published by the corporate media, what are we hearing or seeing about KSM’s motive?
Isn’t motive a traditionally important element in a criminal investigation? We’re told that putting KSM on trial would give him a platform for propaganda, but we’re not told what that propaganda might be.

If it were really so pernicious, why not expose it and refute it? Isn’t that what societies that believe in free speech do with misguided speech? Don’t they defeat it with more and better speech? Or is that only when it can be done without using the word “Israel”?

Outside of progressive blogs, we’re not hearing that giving a somewhat fair, if less than speedy, trial to those most likely to plead guilty or be convicted, and a less fair military trial to others, and no trial at all to others still, reveals this show of justice to be a sham.

If KSM were acquitted, President Obama would order him imprisoned outside the rule of law until he dies. If he is found guilty, as everyone universally expects, he may be officially murdered by the United States, motivating others to take up arms against a nation that wages and funds illegal wars, imprisons people without charge, tortures, kidnaps, renditions, and executes.

If the justice system is bent to ensure that KSM is convicted or permitted little opportunity to speak, will that bending have any permanent repercussions for our justice system? Or, to move in the other direction, having determined that “military justice” is not good enough for alleged mass murders, must we continue to pretend that it is good enough for members of the military?

Can we not admit everyone into a single and improved justice system? We’re not hearing that discussion.

An improved justice system would require the admission into court of videos of all confessions and interrogations. This would not include admissions made to a journalist prior to imprisonment, as in the case of KSM and Al Jazeera, but would include all interrogations since that time.

And in KSM’s case it might include video of the “interrogation” of his children. Years ago, allegations were made that the United States had tortured his children, including in little-heard-of manners, such as locking a child in a box with a supposedly deadly insect.

More recently, secret memos emerged showing the United States to have authorized just those techniques. If this were a story about missing sex tapes, the media would be all over it. A story about the possible torture of children is far less interesting.

It might open up difficult questions, such as whether someone who has been endlessly tortured, and whose children may have been tortured, can — while still in the custody of the torturers — give an un-coerced confession.

Questions might even have to be asked about leniency in sentencing for someone who has already served time and been horribly tortured.

If this were a story about a singer or actor or athlete, we’d see investigations of the time KSM spent attending college in North Carolina. Why didn’t the Americans he lived among persuade him of how horrible it would be to murder people in this country?

Our media pundits are completely incapable of asking such a question without either blaming KSM’s American acquaintances for his crimes or declaring KSM to be an inscrutable monster whose thinking is of absolutely no interest.

Other questions might be asked as well, such as why Dick Cheney and his supporters never talk about the two memos anymore. Remember the two memos that Cheney claimed would show that the torture of KSM and others revealed important information that saved lives.

The memos are now public and show nothing of the sort.

Nor was torture needed in order to prosecute KSM himself. In fact, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the ability of the government to prosecute him without using evidence obtained through torture demonstrates that torture was not needed for that purpose.

But why are we not talking about the two purposes torture actually serves? We know it does not produce useful information, but we also know that it produces desired lies, such as agreement to false rationales for war. And we know that it scares people, both people who fear they might be tortured and people who fear the wild beasts depicted as reachable only through torture.

As Glenn Greenwald has touched on, behaving as though terrorized, irrationally unable to believe an alleged terrorist can be held in a cell and tried in a court, is to give in to the terrorism. Worse, it is to advance it.

More Americans are more terrorized following TV discussions of KSM’s possible prosecution than were beforehand, because the voices on the TV promote the terror rather than the prosecution.

We are hearing about the need to avoid evidence obtained through torture. But at the same time we are hearing absolutely nothing about the need to prosecute the torturers and the creators of the torture program, at least one of whom, John Yoo, is given a platform as one of the disinterested media commentators in the MSM.

This failure is an ideal way to create more KSMs. Why don’t we talk about it?

David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press.  You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book. [This article previously appeared at Afterdowningstreet.org.]

Photo by John Soares via Chomsky.info

Political activist Noam Chomsky says that although President Obama views the Iraq invasion merely as “a mistake” or “strategic blunder,” it is, in fact, a “major crime” designed to enable America to control the Middle East oil reserves.

“It’s [“strategic blunder"] probably what the German general staff was telling Hitler after Stalingrad,” Chomsky quipped, referring to the big Nazi defeat by the Soviet army in 1943.

“There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world,” he added.

In a lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London Oct. 27th, Chomsky warned against expecting significant foreign policy changes from Obama, according to a report by Mamoon Alabbasi published on MWCNews.net. Alabbasi is an editor at Middle East Online.

“As Obama came into office, (former Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice predicted he would follow the policies of Bush’s second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style,” Chomsky said.

Chomsky said the U.S. operates under the “Mafia principle,” explaining “the Godfather does not tolerate ‘successful defiance’” and must be stamped out “so that others understand that disobedience is not an option.”

Despite pressure on the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, Alabbasi reported, Chomsky said the U.S. continues to seek a long-term presence in the country and the huge U.S. embassy in Baghdad is to be expanded under Obama.

“As late as November, 2007, the U.S. was still insisting that the ‘Status of Forces Agreement’ allow for an indefinite U.S. military presence and privileged access to Iraq’s resources by U.S. investors,” Chomsky added. “Well, they didn’t get that on paper at least. They had to back down,” Alabbasi quotes him as saying.

Chomsky said Middle East oil reserves are understood to be “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

Concerning Iran, Chomsky said the U.S. acted to overthrow its parliamentary democracy in 1953 “to retain control of Iranian resources” and when the Iranians reasserted themselves in 1979, the U.S. acted “to support Saddam Hussein’s merciless invasion” of that country.

“The torture of Iran continued without a break and still does, with sanctions and other means,” Chomsky said. According to Alabbasi, Chomsky “mocked the idea” presented by mainstream media that a nuclear-armed Iran might attack nuclear-armed Israel. Iranian leaders would have to have a “fanatic death wish” to attack Israel, which reportedly has 200 nuclear weapons or more.

“The chance of Iran launching a missile attack, nuclear or not, is about at the level of an asteroid hitting the earth,” Chomsky said. He said the presence of U.S. anti-missile weapons in Israel are really meant for preparing a possible attack on Iran, not for self-defense, as they are often presented.

Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sherwood Ross formerly worked for The Chicago Daily News and other major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for “worthy causes”. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

But according to the American Civil Liberties Union, “U.S. policy continues to fall short of ensuring full compliance with the treaty.”

For example, the organization said that an appendix to the Army Field Manual (AFM) can still facilitate cruel treatment of prisoners and detainees at home and abroad.

The Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CAT) is the most comprehensive international human rights treaty dealing exclusively with the issues of torture and abuse. It came into effect in 1987, and has been ratified by 146 countries.

The treaty was initially signed by the Ronald Reagan administration in 1988 and was ratified by the Senate on Oct. 21, 1994, but with reservations, understandings and declarations (RUDs) that failed to make the treaty fully applicable.

The administration of former President George W. Bush exploited these RUDs to justify abusive interrogation policies, including the use of waterboarding, stress positions, extreme isolation and sleep deprivation.

In 2006, the Committee Against Torture, which reviews country compliance with CAT, criticised the U.S. for failure to uphold the treaty and called for full compliance.

After taking office, President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting torture. But under an appendix to the 2006 revised U.S. Army Field Manual – the most recent edition – practices considered incompatible with CAT and international law are still allowed. These include force-feeding, psychological torture, sleep and sensory deprivation.

And under Appendix M to the AFM, detainees can be “separated” or held in isolation from other detainees for 30 days, or longer with authorisation, and allowed only four hours of continuous sleep per night over 30 days, which can be prolonged upon approval.

Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU Human Rights Programmr, told us, “The president’s first nine months in office have signaled a policy shift on human rights and commitment to the rule of law. Certainly his speech to the U.N. and his Nobel Peace Prize have raised the bar of expectation as to his commitment to advancing human rights at home and abroad.”

But, he added, “There is still much more to do, including honouring and expanding U.S. human rights commitments and fully incorporating them into domestic policy. U.S. credibility abroad and commitment to human rights at home will be judged by deeds, not by words.”

“What is needed now is taking concrete actions to translate these commitments to a robust human rights policy. A new presidential executive order to reconstitute the Inter-Agency Working on Human Rights would be an important step forward,” Dakwar said.

“To fulfill its human rights requirements, the administration must also fully investigate crimes of torture committed in violation of U.S. and international law and withdraw the Army Field Manual’s Appendix M,” he added.

Since his inauguration, President Obama has helped restore U.S. standing on human rights by issuing executive orders to close the Guantánamo detention centre, prohibiting CIA prisons and enforcing the ban on torture, joining the U.N. Human Rights Council, signing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and prioritising the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

While welcoming these steps, the ACLU is calling for additional concrete measures to reassert U.S. leadership on human rights, including the full investigation of torture crimes, abandoning the Guantánamo military commissions and renouncing the practice of holding detainees indefinitely without charge or trial.

The ACLU’s Dakwar told us he “expected the administration to announce concrete plans to implement and enforce ratified human rights treaties and the resurrection of the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights – disbanded during the Bush administration – to coordinate and promote human rights within domestic policy.”

He said, “There is hope and expectation within the human rights community that the president will make the announcement on resurrection of the Inter-Agency Working Group on Human Rights as soon as Dec. 10 – international human rights day and the day he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.”

He noted that shortly after the U.S. elections, the ACLU and more than 50 U.S.-based human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and social justice organizations launched the Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda, which identified concrete goals for pushing the administration and Congress to strengthen the U.S.’s commitment to human rights at home.

The campaign have four primary objectives. First is re-creation of the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights, first initiated in 1998 by President Clinton through an executive order, but effectively disbanded by the Bush administration in 2001. The call is for a new executive order to be issued with an improved and strengthened mandate.

Second is transformation of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission into a U.S. Civil and Human Rights Commission. The current commission was created in the 1950s with the mandate of monitoring and enforcing compliance with U.S. civil rights law.

In recent years, it has grown dysfunctional and been largely discredited. Currently there is a push to re-form the commission. The Leadership Conference for Civil Rights has taken the lead on the reform effort, and, along with the Campaign, has called for a new commission with a mandate to monitor the U.S.’s compliance with its human rights (as well as civil rights) commitments.

Third is implementation of recommendations by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and to create a plan of action to enforce them at the domestic level.

Lastly, the Campaign is calling for implementation and coordination of human rights on the state and local level, particularly in partnership with state and local human rights and civil rights commissions.

Department of Defense (DOD) file photo shows an unmanned Predator surveillance plane. Sources close to the jirga said the latest Predator strike, and reports that Washington was intensifying its aerial bombardment, were likely to reinforce sentiment in favour of the militants and make it even more difficult to achieve peace.

Since taking office, President Obama has sanctioned at least 41 Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed between 326 and 538 people, many of them, critics say, “innocent bystanders, including children,” according to a published report.

“Even if a precise account is elusive,” writes Jane Mayer in the Oct. 26 The New Yorker, “the outlines are clear: the C.I.A. has joined the Pakistani intelligence service in an aggressive campaign to eradicate local and foreign militants, who have taken refuge in some of the most inaccessible parts of the country.”

Based on a study just completed by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., “the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President,” Mayer reports.

In fact, the first two strikes took place on Jan. 23, the President’s third day in office and the second of these hit the wrong house, that of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one just five years of age.

At any time, the C.I.A. apparently has “multiple drones flying over Pakistan, scouting for targets,” the magazine reports. So many Predators and its more heavily armed companion, the Reaper, are being purchased that defense manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, of Poway, Calif., can hardly make them fast enough. The Air Force is said to possess 200.

Mayer writes, “the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.” Today, Mayer writes, “there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.” And according to Gary Solis, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Law Center, nobody in the government calls it assassination. “Not only would we have expressed abhorrence of such a policy a few years ago; we did,” Solis is quoted as saying.

David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency warfare authority who co-authored a study for the Center for New American Security, of Washington, D.C., has suggested the drone attacks have backfired. As he told The New Yorker, “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.”

And because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, Mayer writes, “there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”

The New Yorker further reports the Obama Administration has also expanded the sphere of authorized drone assaults in Afghanistan. An August Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the Pentagon’s list of approved terrorist targets held 367 names and included some 50 Afghan drug lords “who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban,” Mayer reports. She quotes the Senate report as stating, “There is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds goes to Al Qaeda.”

It is the military’s version of the drone assaults that operates in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the C.I.A.’s drones hunt terror suspects in countries where U.S. troops are not based and is “aimed at terror suspects around the world,” Mayer writes. The C.I.A. effort was launched by Obama’s predecessor, and a former aide to President George W. Bush says Obama has left nearly all the key personnel in place.

Running the C.I.A. program is a team of operators that handle Predator flights off runways in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once aloft, the Predators are passed over to controllers at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., who maneuver joysticks and monitor events from a live video feed from the drone’s camera.

The magazine article reports the government plans to commission “hundreds more” of the drones, including “new generations of tiny ‘nano’ drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.”

Sherwood Ross formerly worked for The Chicago Daily News and other major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for “worthy causes”. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Some of the new powers that those two stole from Congress, the courts, the states, and us the people are being abused less severely in this new age of Obama; others, more so; but far more crucially, in a pattern followed by recent presidencies, all are being maintained, if not expanded, and thus more firmly cemented into place for future presidents to use. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, you are likely to strongly oppose some major decisions of some future presidents. So it shouldn’t be hard to envision some pretty undesirable consequences that might flow from presidential power that increasingly approaches the absolute.

Our television news and newspapers don’t seem terribly interested in this story, despite scraping its surface with reports on the many “czars” Obama has appointed or lectures on the importance of renewing, or only marginally amending, the PATRIOT Act. And Congress seems, if possible, even less interested. That’s not so surprising, given that we’ve replaced the three branches of government with the two parties, so that at any given time roughly half the members of Congress take as their leader a president who is theoretically supposed to execute the will of Congress. And the other half usually obey their party’s “leaders” in Congress, whose primary interest is in electing one of their own as the next president. Both parties continue to value presidential power itself either for its uses in the present, or for when their candidate is elected. Everyone wants to inherit the imperial presidency, not constrain it.

Under these circumstances, bills to create commissions investigating presidential abuses, to place a judicial check on claims of “state secrets,” limit the use of presidential signing statements, or to allow more than eight members of Congress to be given “security” briefings by the executive branch prove not to be priorities for either party.

These days, the old-fashioned idea of checking executive abuses of existing laws through the issuance of subpoenas or by impeachment is, in Washington, widely considered a scandalous proposition. Congress impeached a judge this year who had groped his employees, but Jay Bybee, who signed secret memos purporting to legalize aggressive war and torture, and who now holds a lifetime seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is protected from such a step by his recent membership in the executive branch (and the displeasure Fox News would express toward his impeachment).

In April, Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Bybee to testify, and the judge refused, just as many of his former colleagues in the Bush administration had in 2007 and 2008. Leahy may be unwilling to follow up by issuing a subpoena that even the new Department of Justice might refuse to enforce. The current department, for instance, allowed the White House Counsel to negotiate partial compliance with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena by former presidential advisor Karl Rove. And if Leahy is like most members of Congress, he will not even consider the option of using the Capitol Police to enforce a subpoena himself — something that no committee has done in 75 years.

All Power to the President

Any quick survey of the powers the presidency now claims would have to include the power to make laws, the power to make wars, the power to spend money, the power to make treaties, the power to grant immunity for crimes, the power to operate in secrecy, the power to spy without warrants, the power to detain without charge, and the power to torture.

Laws are still made by Congress, but they can be rewritten via signing statements; that is, statements announcing a president’s intention to violate particular sections of the very bill he is signing into law. Neither Congress nor President Obama has thrown out all of Bush’s extensive signing statements that did indeed alter laws. In fact, Obama has announced that his subordinates will review his predecessor’s signing statements only as the need arises.

This policy might please those imagining that the Obama administration will always make the right decision about whether to maintain or reject a Bush-made amendment to a law, but it does nothing to strip the presidency of the power to use the mechanism of the signing statement to re-make or amend or alter new laws. As it happens, Obama has already published his own law-making signing statements.

Presidents now also routinely determine national policy through executive orders and, in doing so, run the country out of the White House rather than through departments headed by officials approved by Congress. They also increasingly dictate a legislative agenda to Congress — and both members of Congress and members of the public generally accept without comment or opposition that inversion of our constitutional system. And then there are the secret memos.

In those secret memos, Bush’s lawyers in the Department of Justice dutifully “legalized” numerous illegal acts, including aggressive war and torture. Despite years of public back-and-forth between the White House and the Congress over the question of whether to ban torture, any act of complicity in torture was already a felony in the U.S. code under the Anti-Torture Act, which enforced the Convention Against Torture signed by President Ronald Reagan. However, the secret Justice Department memos were taken as the final word in legality, no matter what the law said.

Obama has directed the Justice Department not to prosecute those at the highest levels responsible for producing those memos, though he has permitted consideration — whether seriously intended or not — of the possibility of prosecuting a handful of low-ranking staffers who strayed beyond the illegal policies outlined in the memos. Not only does this bestow immunity on the most prominent criminals, reversing the approach — starting at the top — that the U.S. took at the Nuremburg war crimes trials after World War II, but it has the potential to create a terrifying precedent for the future. If a president can use his justice department to legalize a crime simply by asking a lawyer to write a memo, then who can doubt that a president has something approaching absolute power?

Presidents, not Congress, do indeed make wars now, whether or not they consult Jay Bybee’s memo on the subject. They make wars without congressional declarations of war, using instead vague bills to maintain a pretense of congressional involvement — and then they don’t even comply with the terms outlined in those authorizations. Illegal (as well as unconstitutional) as they may be, these wars can be expanded into apparently permanent occupations that include the construction of gigantic military bases from which additional wars may be launched. In the process, mercenaries often take the place of soldiers, and as “private contractors” they then operate even further from congressional oversight or the law.

To invade Iraq, President Bush spent money not appropriated for that purpose. He also gave himself the power to transfer money into “black budgets” beyond the purview of all but a few members of Congress, and so use it for secret tasks signed off on by his officials. Of course, massive secret budgets under the control of the president are nothing new, though they’ve grown through the years. Neither are they constitutional or sustainable.

On October 6th, the leaders of the two parties met with President Obama and, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s account, let him know that he could end, decrease, maintain, or escalate the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as he saw fit. The Senate had voted the previous week not to call on war commander Stanley McChrystal for public testimony about that ongoing war until after the president determines his war policy, which of course means a war policy for all of us. Two days later, in a surprising flicker of dissent, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey released a statement suggesting that, contrary to everything he’d said for years, he recognizes that Congress has the power to choose not to fund those wars and thereby to end them.

As his presidency was winding down, George W. Bush concluded an unofficial treaty (though it was called a Status of Forces Agreement) with the government of U.S.-occupied Iraq for three more years of war there without feeling the slightest need for it to be ratified by the Senate. Ever since, the U.S. military has actually violated the terms of that document, while its key commanders continued to publicly state their intention to remain in Iraq beyond the end of 2011, a clear violation of the agreement. In the meantime, this White House has used the treaty as cover for an ongoing illegal occupation of Iraq with, at this point, 120,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of private contractors.

Is Congress Broken?

When many feared that Bush might pardon his subordinates for crimes he had himself authorized, the consensus among members of Congress and scholars was that he could, in fact, do such a thing. In some ways what both Bush and Obama have actually done is worse. With a big assist from Congress in the form of bills like the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, they have worked to grant immunity for crimes without even naming the criminals or revealing what they have done. Obama’s Department of Justice is now arguing, appealing, or re-appealing in various court cases to keep secret the abuses of government officials and corporations involved in torture and warrantless spying. Recently, the Justice Department even argued that, when it comes to denying information to a court or the public, telecommunication corporations must be considered a part of the executive branch of the federal government, and earlier this year the administration threatened the British government with an end to intelligence sharing if it revealed evidence of torture.

President Obama announced that he will only claim the right to hide information from a court on the grounds that important “state secrets” are involved after careful review by lawyers at the Department of Justice. This may be an improvement over the Bush years — not exactly a hard standard to reach — but notably this decision still cedes not an ounce of power to any branch other than the executive, even as Obama’s lawyers make radical “state secrets” claims in attempts to block entire court cases, rather than over particular pieces of information.

While this president is ceding modest amounts of territory claimed by the previous one, he is ceding nothing when it comes to presidential power itself. For example, the president said he would release White House visitor logs (as the Bush administration had not), just not those already recorded, including the ones that held records of the visits of deal-making health insurance executives, nor any future logs that he thinks would endanger “national security.” That offers change of a sort, however modest, but leaves it entirely in the president’s hands to decide which logs to release.

This administration has indeed released some of the secret memos that Bush’s Department of Justice used to justify torture and never shared with the public, but only when compelled by courts. The Justice Department has, in fact, fought fiercely against their release and has redacted significant sections of them before making them public.

Bush claimed for the presidency the power to detain people without charge or legal process — and then used it. Obama stood in front of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives in Washington and asserted the same power, in violation of the right of habeas corpus found in that torn and tattered document. Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta and presidential advisor David Axelrod have similarly made clear that the president still claims the power to engage in “harsh interrogation techniques” but chooses not to use it. Torture in this way has been transformed from a crime into a policy choice, with the intended message apparently being that we can stop torture temporarily by choosing to elect Democrats. This is perilous territory.

Perhaps presidents simply cannot be expected to give back powers gained by the executive branch, but shouldn’t we expect Congress to work to take them back on our behalf? When Alberto Gonzales resigned as attorney general, he did so because a rapidly growing list of members of Congress signed onto a one-sentence bill directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate possible grounds for his impeachment. Such an approach toward Judge Jay Bybee could begin to restore the power of Congress to assert itself in other areas as well, while pressuring the Justice Department to enforce the law, and potentially making public a great deal of information through the subpoenas involved in any impeachment hearing, which does not permit claims of “executive privilege.” Information subpoenaed in an impeachment hearing must be produced, or the failure to produce it can become another impeachable offense.

Many of us probably consider our current president a much nicer guy than our local congressional representative. That doesn’t change the fact that influencing a president, or even a senator, via grassroots pressure is infinitely more difficult than influencing a member of the House of Representatives.

This is not a new discovery. After all, isn’t this, in part, why the House was given the power of the purse and the power of impeachment? Being closer to the ground, that body is, by its nature, going to be more amenable to democratic pressure and direction. If we want once again to have a real hand in making our nation’s policies, our best shot — admittedly still a distinctly uphill course — is to focus on the person who represents us in the House.

Unfortunately, we have to compel each of them to do something they have come to collectively fear: taking back the power originally bestowed on them and not on behalf of their party, but of their branch of government, of the Constitution to which they’ve sworn an oath, and of the proper sovereigns of this nation: we the people. Otherwise the chief legacy of the Obama years will, like those of his immediate predecessors, be the slide from republic into empire and the continuing growth of an imperial presidency.

David Swanson served as press secretary for Kucinich for President in 2004, runs the AfterDowningStreet.org website, and is the creator of Impeachbybee.org. His new book is Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (Seven Stories Press). He is now touring the country for the book. You can find out when the tour will be in your town by clicking here.

This New Left Media film was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviews) and Erick Stoll (camera).

They started out by immediately blackballing any discussion of real health reform in the form of an expansion of Medicare to cover everyone of every age, which of course would have ended the problem of the uninsured, while cutting the nation’s overall health bill by at least a third, but in the process shutting down the private health insurance business.

Then they chipped away and are at this point on the verge of eliminating any so-called “public option” or government-run health insurance plan to even compete with the private insurance sector.

Finally, in a move as breathtakingly accommodating of the insurance industry as was the multi-trillion-dollar bailout financial bailout of Wall Street’s biggest banks, they proposed to require (on pain of a $3800 fine by the IRS) to require everyone in America to buy a health insurance plan from the private sector—a gift to the industry of some 40-50 million new unwilling customers.

But a combination of public outrage at this compulsory program of insurance and recognition that the inevitable government subsidy of low-income insurance buyers would be humongous has led Congress to backtrack, and start backing away from the mandatory aspect of this plan.

And now the private insurance industry, not satisfied that it has managed to practically dictate the terms of the health reform legislation so fare, and angry that it might not get those 40-50 million new forced customers, is reportedly threatening to turn around and knife the president and the Democratic Congress in the back.

They’re threatening to (gasp!) start running attack ads on the “reform” legislation.

Remember the old “Harry and Louise” ads the industry ran attacking Hillary and Bill Clinton’s health reform proposal back in the early 1990s?  Well, this time, it’ll be Harry and Louise attacking Obamacare.

I can see it now. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the lobby for the insurance industry vultures, will set up some nice-sounding front group with a name like People for a Healthier America, and they’ll fund a new ad campaign like this:

Harry will be sitting at the breakfast table, reading the local paper. He’ll look up from his coffee as Louise is puttering around by the sink.

“This ObamaCare looks like it’s gonna drive up our insurance premiums, hon.”

“What do you mean Harry?”

“Well it says here that they’re not going to force the poor folks to buy insurance, so most of ‘em will probably wait until they get sick and then buy it.”

“Well what’s wrong with that, dear?”

“Nothin’ ‘cept that the law would also prohibit the insurance companies from charging those sick folks higher premiums when they do finally come in to buy insurance.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be unfair to charge them more, when they need it?”

“It might seem that way Louise, but if the insurance company has to take a loss on them, they’re going to make it up by charging us good folks who have insurance more.”

“Oh my god, Harry! We’re already paying $6,000 a year for our insurance. What will our premiums go up to?

“Says here they could go up by another $1000 a year!”

Announcer: Don’t let Congress make you pay for the uninsured. Call your Senators and Representatives and the White House, and tell them to demand that every American be required to buy insurance immediately! This announcement is brought to you by People for a Healthier America.

It’s funny really, to see Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the biggest recipient in Congress of insurance industry money, who has spent the last few months working hand-in-glove with the insurance industry lobbyists to craft a bill to their liking, suddenly accusing his erstwhile financiers of doing a “hatchet job” on his bill. Actually, his bill has been a hatchet job itself on the whole concept of health care reform.

All of this, of course, was entirely predictable. Like HillaryCare before it, ObamaCare has been doomed from the start by its unwillingness to address the basic issue behind America’s twin crisis of health care: lack of access for those with lower incomes, and absurdly high cost for everyone.

What makes it all so pathetic is that America already has an excellent model for delivering quality health care: a single-payer system called Medicare. Everyone in America gets this program, just like in Canada, Germany, France, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere. The only difference is that in those other countries, people get it from the day they’re born. In America, you have to wait until you are permanently disabled, or until you reach the age of 65.

Far from having to “start from scratch,” as Obama claimed in his last address to Congress in explaining why he was not proposing a single-payer solution despite its obvious success in other countries, solving America’s health crisis by adopting a single-payer system would be a simply matter of taking a system that works, and expanding it to cover everybody.

But of course that would have made the insurance industry furious. They’d have to go back to just selling life insurance and homeowners insurance and car insurance.

And so we can expect a new round of “Harry and Louise,” and ObamaCare will go down in flames.

You have to laugh at these Democrats. Even when they brazenly try to sell out, they get screwed.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net