..LEFT & RIGHT.
POWER PUMMELING PRINCIPLE-DESTABILIZATION OF A NATION RISKING THE
WELL-BEING OF IT'S CITIZENS AND SUBJUGATING GOOD, JUST FUTURE POTENTIALS, INVITING PERIL.
*~~~"This is the objective environment that facilitates the Bush administration's employment of the type of "covert propaganda" techniques against the American people that in an earlier epoch were reserved for the use of the CIA in destabilizing foreign governments.!"
"Domestic and international decisions should not be made in a secret way. That's a very, very provocative statement, I think. All my life I've been taught to guard the nation's secrets. All my life I have followed the rules. I've gone through my special background investigations and all the other things that you need to do, and I understand that the nation's secrets need guarding, but fundamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret."
~
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, USA (RET.)
FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 2002-2005
...documenting a lying-down-on-the-JOB.
Colonel LAWRENCE WILKERSON (FULL statement:-intro box permits INSUFFICIENT Space!) ~
Now let me tell you why I say that. Decisions that send men
and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn't have to suffer. Domestic and international decisions should not be made in a secret way. That's a very, very provocative statement, I think. All my life I've been taught to guard the nation's secrets. All my life I have followed the rules. I've gone through my special background investigations and all the other things that you need to do, and I understand that the nation's secrets need guarding, but fundamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret.
"That is not the case today. And when I say that is not the case today, I stop on 26 January 2005. I don't know what the case is today; I wish I did. But the case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. And then when the bureaucracy was presented with the decision to carry them out, it was presented in a such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn't know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out."
~
~~
Congress reduces its oversight role
Since Clinton, a change in focus
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | November 20, 2005
~WASHINGTON -- Back in the mid-1990s, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, aggressively delving into alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration, logged 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether former president Bill Clinton had used the White House Christmas card list to identify potential Democratic donors.
In the past two years, a House committee has managed to take only 12 hours of sworn testimony about the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
The jarring comparison reflects the way Congress has conducted its oversight role during the GOP's era of one-party rule in Washington.
While congressional committees once were leaders in investigating the executive branch and powerful industries, the current Congress has largely spared major corporations and has done only minimal oversight of the Republican administration, according to a review of congressional documents by The Boston Globe.
An examination of committees' own reports found that the House Government Reform Committee held just 37 hearings described as ''oversight" or investigative in nature during the last Congress, down from 135 such hearings held by its predecessor, the House Government Operations Committee, in 1993-94, the last year the Democrats controlled the chamber.
Party loyalty does not account for the difference: In 1993-94, the Democrats were investigating a Democratic administration.
Representative Tom Davis, the current chairman of the Government Reform Committee, the chamber's chief watchdog for government waste and abuse, said his panel had not abdicated its oversight role, which many consider critical to the separation of powers in government.
''What aren't we doing? We aren't going after the mini scandal du jour, to try to embarrass the administration on a hearing that's going nowhere," said Davis, Republican of Virginia.
Across the House, panels that once aggressively scrutinized the workings of the government are now restricting themselves largely to subjects that advance a particular goal or a cause favored by the GOP leadership, such as recent oversight hearings on the benefits of having social services provided by faith-based organizations and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
~''I'm not sure they're stepping up to the plate on the more pressing issues of the time," former representative William F. Clinger, a Pennsylvania Republican, said of his party's leaders.
~''Congress has enormous power and it does nothing," said Frank Silbey, a former investigator for the Senate Labor Committee under both parties. ''It is absolutely the worst situation I have ever seen in my life. Congress shows no inclination to expand the public's right to know. That's one of the reasons for government oversight."
Controversies such as the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, abuses at US detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons, and the revealing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's name have gone largely unscrutinized on Capitol Hill.
Instead, congressional committees have directed oversight at such topics as steroid abuses in sports and ''diploma mill" universities -- topics critics say are worthy, but which do not fulfill Congress's responsibility to be a check on the executive branch.
~But the agenda was different during the Clinton administration. The government reform panel alone, for example, issued 1,052 subpoenas related to investigations of the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee from 1997 to 2002, and only 11 subpoenas related to allegations of Republican abuse.
The panel received more than 2 million pages of documents and heard from 44 Clinton administration officials, including two White House chiefs of staff, according to statistics culled by Democratic staff on the Government Reform Committee.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has found that from October 1996 to March 1998 -- well before the impeachment hearings -- the Clinton White House staff had spent more than 55,000 hours responding to more than 300 congressional requests, and had produced hundreds of video and audio tapes, along with hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, to congressional investigators.
''When Clinton was in office, there wasn't an issue too small to hold a hearing on and embarrass the Democrats," said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee. ''Now, there isn't a scandal big enough to ignore."
Lawmakers in both parties said that the oversight process has become very partisan.
~An inquiry into enforcement of laws against environmental crimes continued into the Clinton administration, and the panel, under Dingell, did not spare its party's president, chastising the Clinton Justice Department for being uncooperative in the investigation.
''We believed we had something to do, to [assure] that public money was being spent appropriately, that laws were being enforced, and we did. Our country was better for it," Dingell said. But now, ''everything seems to be run out of the White House.".....
...The Energy and Commerce panel has not conducted aggressive inquiries into powerful industries under its jurisdiction such as oil, gas, and tobacco companies, Dingell and others have said.
Nor has the panel done a comprehensive inquiry into Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which played a critical role in giving tax breaks to a number of oil, gas, and nuclear companies.
Government watchdogs want to know how much influence the industry had in developing the legislation.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders are reported to have hindered the Democrats' efforts to investigate Bush administration activities, and have balked at giving the Democrats a room in which they can interview witnesses.
Republican leaders are also seeking to reverse a law that allows any group of seven House members to demand documents without the approval of the majority party.
Since the minority party does not have subpoena power, the law is one of the few tools Democrats have to influence investigations.
Government watchdog groups say that just a few lawmakers -- Republican senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and John McCain of Arizona, and Waxman, Government Reform's senior Democrat -- have pushed for investigations of politically sensitive issues. Grassley took on both the pharmaceutical lobby and the Bush administration when he held hearings on prescription drug safety and the FDA's relationship with the companies that manufacture them.
McCain, who chairs the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, has led hearings into the activities of a prominent Republican lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.
~"They're clearly not doing the big stuff," Stockton said.
Waxman, who held his own unofficial hearing into Iraq contracting, has been rebuffed in his efforts to conduct bipartisan investigations on a number of topics that involve members of the administration and powerful industries. The rejected list includes: the administration role, if any, in condoning detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the use of government funds for ''covert propaganda" in the media, the politicization of science policy, government secrecy, industry influence in rule-making at the Environmental Protection Agency, the decline of FDA enforcement against drug companies, and the case of naming Plame Wilson, the CIA operative.
~"It appeared to me that the House hearings were called in order to defend Halliburton, which is a pretty pathetic way to do investigative oversight," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who led shadow hearings. "To the extent that the Republican-controlled Congress has done any oversight at all, it has largely been done to support Halliburton and to allege that anyone looking into these things has been partisan."
http://www.boston.com/...
~~~~~
Published on Monday, May 31, 2004 by the New York Times
Even Some in G.O.P. Call for More Oversight of Bush
by Carl Hulse
WASHINGTON - Members of Congress have a proud tradition of asking witnesses tough questions at famous inquiries like the Watergate and Iran-contra hearings. Now the Iraqi prison abuse scandal has some lawmakers asking a hard question of themselves: What doesn't Congress know and why doesn't it know it?
The disclosures about the treatment of detainees, coupled with complaints from some quarters about the Bush administration's handling of antiterrorism money, have ignited a debate over whether Congress is keeping a close enough eye on the White House and staying adequately informed on developments in Iraq.
Democrats, not surprisingly, think much more scrutiny is necessary and have been complaining for months that the Republican leadership in Congress is refusing to hold its allies in the administration accountable on a range of subjects. Now even some Republicans say they worry that Congress is abdicating its oversight responsibility.
"I believe our failure to do proper oversight has hurt our country and the administration," said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who traveled to Iraq to get a view of the situation outside administration control. "Maybe they wouldn't have gotten into some of this trouble had our oversight been better."
~"We really do need to preserve the important role that Congress plays," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, as the Armed Services Committee examined the administration's request. "It is our duty."
http://www.commondreams.org/...
~~~~~
Clinton Impeachment Polls
By Bob Fertik
Created 2005-06-30 21:44
Phase I: Aug-Sept 1998 (Before Impeachment)
Average support for impeachment and removal (10 polls): 26%
Average support for hearings (6 polls): 36%
Phase II: Nov-Dec 1998 (During Impeachment in the House)
Phase III: 1999 (Senate Acquittal and afterwards):
ABC News Poll. Latest: Conducted Monday night, August 17, 1998.
"If he does not resign, do you think Congress should or should not impeach Clinton and remove him from office?"
Should impeach 25
Should not 69
No opinion 6
Pew Research Center Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. August 21-24, 1998. N=1,001 adults nationwide.
"Bill Clinton has told the American people that he had an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky but misled the public earlier to protect his family. In your opinion, should Clinton's statement be enough to end the matter OR do you think Congress should still consider impeachment hearings?"
Enough to end matter 61
Still consider impeachment hearings 32
Don't know 7
http://www.democrats.com/...
It's Time to Demand More Polls on Impeaching Bush
By Bob Fertik
Created 2005-08-24 02:09
On 6/30/05, a Zogby poll found 42% of Americans said "if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should hold him accountable through impeachment."
http://www.zogby.com/...
On 10/11/05, the members of AfterDowningStreet.org paid for a poll by Ipsos Public Affairs that found Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq by a margin of 50%-44% - virtually a majority!
On 11/4/05, the members of AfterDowningStreet.org paid for a second poll by Zogby that found Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq by a margin of 53%-42% - now a solid majority!
If impeachment support continues to grow by 3% each month, it will reach 60% in January, 65% in March, and 70% in April.
It's time for other pollsters to ask about impeaching George Bush. When the Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998, just about every pollster in the business started polling on impeachment:
http://democrats.com/...
Now that the Downing Street Memos prove Bush lied about war - which is infinitely worse than lying about sex - why is Bush being treated differently?
http://www.democrats.com/...
~~~~~
Waxman on congressional oversight
Posted By Carpetbagger On 6th July 2004 @ 14:11
During the Clinton administration, Congress spent millions of tax dollars probing alleged White House wrongdoing. There was no accusation too minor to explore, no demand on the administration too intrusive to make.
[...]
Committees requested and received communications between Clinton and his close advisers, notes of conversations between Clinton and a foreign head of state, internal e-mails from the office of the vice president, and more than 100 sets of FBI interview summaries. Dozens of top Clinton officials, including several White House chiefs of staff and White House counsels, testified before Congress. The Clinton administration provided to Congress more than a million pages of documents in response to investigative inquiries.
This stands in stark contrast, Waxman notes, with the complete abdication of responsibility since.
Republican Rep. Ray LaHood aptly characterized recent congressional oversight of the administration: "Our party controls the levers of government. We're not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."
Funny, I don't recall "don't cause heartburn for Republican presidents" being part of the congressional oath of office.
As Waxman noted, there's plenty of areas for the House to explore.
Republican leaders in Congress have refused to investigate who exposed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration's claims that Iraq sought nuclear weapons. They have held virtually no public hearings on the hundreds of misleading claims made by administration officials about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.
They have failed to probe allegations that administration officials misled Congress about the costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill. And they have ignored the ethical lapses of administration officials, such as the senior Medicare official who negotiated future employment representing drug companies while drafting the prescription drug bill.
The House is even refusing to investigate the horrific Iraq prison abuses. One Republican chairman argued, "America's reputation has been dealt a serious blow around the world by the actions of a select few. The last thing our nation needs now is for others to enflame this hatred by providing fodder and sound bites for our enemies."
Compare the following: Republicans in the House took more than 140 hours of testimony to investigate whether the Clinton White House misused its holiday card database but less than five hours of testimony regarding how the Bush administration treated Iraqi detainees.
Lawmakers, even Republicans, surely realize that one of Congress' key responsibilities is to serve as a check on presidential power. With Congress effectively ceding that role for four years, we're left with the consequences -- a White House that believes it can do literally anything it wants.
The congressional leadership is wrong to think that its current hands-off approach protects President Bush. In fact, it has backfired, causing even more harm than the overzealous pursuit of President Clinton. Lack of accountability has contributed to a series of phenomenal misjudgments that have damaged Bush, imperiled our international standing and saddled our nation with mounting debts.
Some Republicans, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) admit that Dems are better at executive branch oversight. That's nice, I suppose, since admitting you have a problem is the first step to correcting it.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/...
~~~~~
Congressional Record: July 27, 2005 (Senate)
Page S9059-S9086
PROTECTION OF LAWFUL COMMERCE IN ARMS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED
[...]
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I take a moment to explain the effect of
our proceeding to this gun bill. We are putting aside an important
debate on national security and the needs of our troops in a time of
war. Last Friday I listed a number of the amendments that still were
pending that would affect the National Guard and our Reserve troops and
also provide additional kinds of protections for the service men and
women.
The decision by the Republican leadership was that we had spent
enough time on the legislation, even though we chose to spend 2 weeks
earlier in the year on the credit card industry and on bankruptcy and a
similar amount of time on the class action legislation which benefited
special interest groups. The credit card industry will profit about $6
billion more this year than last year because of the actions taken. We
also spent time on the special interest legislation dealing with class
actions. We spent the time on that, but we are not on the Defense
authorization bill.
We had an important amendment on the whole policy of the
administration in developing new nuclear weapons which has profound
implications in terms of the issues of nuclear proliferation and
nuclear safety. We looked forward to having an opportunity to debate
that issue. That was put aside by the Republican leadership because
they were concerned about a provision that had been introduced to the
Defense authorization bill last Thursday. Senator Levin, Senator Reed,
Senator Rockefeller, and I introduced an amendment to create an
independent commission to examine the administration's policy
surrounding the detention and interrogation of detainees as an
amendment to the Defense authorization bill.
The response of the White House was instant and negative.
The
President announced he would veto the Defense authorization bill, all
$442 billion of it, if it included any provisions to restrict the
Pentagon's treatment of detainees or creating a commission to
investigate detainee operations. No other response could have
demonstrated so
[[Page S9066]]
clearly the urgent need to establish a commission than that this
imperial White House considers itself immune from restraints by
Congress on its powers no matter what the Constitution says.
It is appalling that the administration is so afraid of the truth
that they are even willing to veto the Defense bill which includes
billions of dollars for our troops, pay raises for our troops, and
funds for armored humvees to protect our troops in Iraq. But the
administration was prepared to veto that legislation because of this
amendment that had been offered by Senator Levin, Senator Reed, Senator
Rockefeller, and myself.
Now the Senate Republican leaders have pulled the Defense bill from
the floor. It is interesting that Republican leaders hatched this plan
after Vice President Cheney visited with Senate Republicans last week.
He told them the White House does not want votes on amendments to
require an inquiry into their detention policies and practices. The
White House has not only threatened to veto a national defense bill to
avoid accountability, but is preventing us from voting on the issue. It
is already obvious that the administration's detention and
interrogation policy failed to respect the longstanding rules that have
guided our policy in the past, rejecting the collective wisdom of our
career military and State Department officials. In today's newspapers
we see the result of this action once again with the use of dogs
against detainees.
We need to return to our core values of openness and accountability.
The facts we know so far about torture and other abuses, about
indefinite detention, have already become recruiting tools for
terrorists. But if we act now to uphold our principles, we can end the
outrage, we can end the coverups, and hold officials accountable at the
highest levels. We need to disavow the abuses and harsh techniques. We
need to ensure our actions do not become an excuse for our enemies to
torture American troops when they are captured in the future or to
attack innocent Americans in any part of the world.
THE DESIRES, DEMANDS~ OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE....MATTER
WE CARE...WE ARE OF Good Heart
~The reality is our safety and security depend on accountability. It
is not enough to pretend that problem does not exist, but that is how
the President has responded to the flow of reports about abuses.
~The administration and its proxies in the coverup have vilified
anyone who calls for a full inquiry into the policies. They even
stooped to claiming a request for full accounting is somehow a smear
against our troops. The real smear is that the administration continues
to prosecute only a few low-level offenders without holding accountable
the higher-ups who laid the groundwork for all the abuses. The real
disservice to our troops and to our country is done by those who leave
those at the bottom of the chain of command holding the bag while
officials at the top are promoted and rewarded.
~In avoiding accountability, the administration has
made it clear it won't accept responsibility for giving our Nation the
clear answers it deserves. As Benjamin Franklin said, half a truth is
often a great lie. Until now we have been fed half truths and coverups
by the administration.
With the recent veto threat, the White House has declared war on any
full and honest accounting of responsibility. The safety of our troops
and our citizens depends on finding out the whole truth and acting on
it. An independent commission of respected professionals with
backgrounds in law and military policy and international relations is
the only way we can learn the truth about what has happened so we can
end the suppression and establish a policy for the future that is
worthy of our Nation and worthy of our respect of all nations.
Administration secrecy doesn't stop with their interrogation policy.
This administration has a systematic disregard for oversight and
openness. Government is intended to be ``of the people, by the people,
and for the people.'' Democracy requires informed citizens, and to be
informed, citizens need to have information about the government.
Congress and the executive branch are supposed to be open and
accountable, so the American people know what is being done in their
name. But under the Bush administration, openness and accountability
have been replaced by secrecy and evasion of responsibility. They abuse
their power, conceal their actions from the American people, and refuse
to hold officials accountable.
~It has now been 744 days without a White House investigation into the
CIA leak case. It took 85 days for the administration even to require
its staff to turn over evidence relating to the leak. Senate
Republicans held 20 hearings on accusations against President Clinton
and the Whitewater case, but they have held zero hearings on the leak
of the covert identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. So far, no one has
been held accountable.
Last week, the Defense Department refused to cooperate with a federal
judge's order to release secret photographs and videotapes of prisoner
abuse at Abu Ghraib. The ACLU had sued to obtain release of 87
photographs and 4 videotapes, but the administration filed sealed
documents resisting the order. They are so obsessed with secrecy that
they even make secret arguments to keep their secrets. So far, no one
has been held accountable.
~Why the urgency to take up this bill now? This is a critical moment
in this country's future. Surely, the Republican leadership can take
some time to address other priorities before attempting to give a free
pass to the gun industry. Why aren't we completing our work on the
Defense authorization bill? That is what was before the Senate. Why
have we displaced a full and fair debate on the issue of the Defense
authorization bill--which has so many provisions in there concerning
our fighting men and women in Iraq and about the National Guard and
defense--in order to consider special interest legislation?
That is what is before the Senate, and that is what we are
considering at the present time, as a result of the Republican
leadership. Surely, the Congress can do more for our citizens than rush
to pass unprecedented special interest legislation. We can and should
be acting to meet our real challenges.
Last year, the Federal Government recalled a water pistol, the Super
Soaker, just a few days before the assault weapons ban expired. America
does more to regulate the safety of toy guns than real guns, and it is
a national disgrace. The gun industry has worked hard to avoid Federal
consumer safety regulation. Where are our priorities? Where is the
logic in passing a bill that makes it harder to sue for harm caused by
real guns than harm caused by a plastic toy gun?
http://www.fas.org/...
~~~~~
The scandal sheet
Print it out, send it to Harry Reid, or just read it and weep. Here are 34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency -- every one of them worse than Whitewater.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Peter Dizikes
Jan. 18, 2005 | (.....) Indeed, here are 34 Republican scandals worthy of further attention, gathered into one place. The list focuses on scandals involving apparently illegal activity or violations of ethics codes. Not everything that is politically, legally or ethically scandalous constitutes a scandal. It is scandalous, for instance, that House Republicans have further weakened their own ethics committee. But that is not, properly speaking, a political scandal. It is just contemptible governance.
This list is also limited to events of the past four years, or those coming to light in that time. It covers both the executive branch and the Congress, since the latter, especially the Senate, is increasingly a mere adjunct to the White House. However, the items are not arranged in terms of moral or historical gravity. Abu Ghraib might create years of anti-American hatred abroad, but it and some other headline-generating events appear near the end of the list, to help familiarize readers first with lesser-known or now-overlooked scandals. Recall how John Ashcroft broke the law? Know why Dick Cheney wants to keep those energy task force documents secret? Read on. You too, Harry Reid.
read more= http://www.thenoiseboard.com/...
~~~~~
Reid: "It's a slap in the face to the American people that this investigation has been stymied" »
November 01, 2005
"No Oversight"
From the FT:
...Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the panel, said the White House had "sent down an edict" to Republicans to block the inquiry, and accused Republicans of being "willing to take orders" from the Bush administration.
Pat Roberts, the Republican vice-chairman of the panel, said his staff had been proceeding with the investigation. As the Senate returned to open session, he announced that the committee would begin hearings next Tuesday on the inquiry.
The Democrats' move diverted the Senate from its scheduled business for nearly three hours, as security officials cleared the Senate chamber. When it was over, a bipartisan team was charged with reporting back by November 14 on progress on the investigation. ...
Here's a recent piece of mine on the issue, and a recent piece by Murray Waas on the administration stonewalling the investigation. Have written about this issue here and here as well.
More from Reuters:
...Reid said the Republican-led Congress did nothing to keep a check on the Bush administration. "This Republican Senate does no oversight. None. None. It is all part of a plan. They obstruct, they take orders from the White House," Reid said.
Knight Ridder's take.
http://www.warandpiece.com/...
~~~~~
Republican Oversight Failures Demonstrate Need for Independent Commission to Investigate the Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina
October 7, 2005
Since President Bush took office in 2000, Republicans have had control of both the House and Senate for all but a very brief period of time. During the time that Republicans have controlled Congress, there have been a number of highly questionable actions by the Bush Administration that have demanded congressional oversight. Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress has refused to carry out its constitutional oversight duties, frequently working instead to provide excuses and political cover to the Administration.
According to the Washington Post, "Government scholars and watchdog groups say the decline of congressional oversight in recent years has thrown out of kilter the system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers created to keep no one branch of government from becoming too powerful." (See Appendix A, "The Poor Republican Record on Oversight") Given this poor record of performance and its consequences for the American people, it is not surprising that the overwhelming majority of the American people do not trust Congress to carry out a thorough investigation of the Bush Administration's actions on Katrina, but instead support establishing a blue ribbon, bipartisan, independent commission.
Republicans fail to investigate the Bush Administration's use and abuse of pre-war intelligence relating to Iraq. The Bush Administration justified its decision to invade Iraq by repeatedly claiming that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. Two-and-a-half years after the invasion, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. The Administration has sought to blame bad intelligence for its false claims. While there is substantial evidence that the intelligence community made many mistakes in developing its assessments of Iraq's WMD capabilities, there is also an abundance of evidence suggesting that the Bush Administration interfered with the intelligence community's work by repetitively tasking intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that Iraq possessed WMD capabilities, by ignoring warnings from the intelligence community that doubts existed about certain conclusions, by circumventing standard vetting procedures, and by making claims not supported by the intelligence community's findings.
Despite evidence that the Bush Administration may have interfered with the intelligence community's work, Congressional Republicans have refused to investigate the evidence. The Senate Intelligence Committee began an investigation that Republican Committee Chairman Roberts promised would include two phases: an investigation of the intelligence community's conclusions, and an investigation of the Administration's use of the intelligence. Instead:
Chairman Roberts has refused to carry out the second phase of the investigation, examining possible mistakes by the Bush Administration;
Senate Republicans have twice voted down efforts to create an independent commission to do the work Chairman Roberts refuses to do. (S. Amdt. #1275, 7/16/03; S. Amdt. #1882, 10/17/03); and
House Republicans have refused to hold any investigation whatsoever, and have twice voted down efforts to require oversight. (H. Amdt. #s 194 and 195, 6/26/03)
http://democrats.senate.gov/...
~~~~~
They Don't Want to Know About It:
Republican Senators Block Investigation
Into Torture and Abuse by Bush Administration
America didn't hear much about it from the mass news media, but there was an important vote in the Senate yesterday, a vote which could have changed the history of our country - for the better. As it turned out, the vote stymied the progress of the American nation, and reflected the bitter division in American culture that has brought the United States into disrepute.
The vote was on an amendment offered by Michigan Senator Carl Levin. The amendment would have established "a national commission on policies and practices on the treatment of detainees since September 11, 2001."
We've been waiting years for the establishment of such a commission, which would finally bring about an independent investigation into the secret torture prisons of the Bush Administration. We have been of the opinion that the American people deserve to know whether their government is torturing prisoners and committing other war crimes in the name of the United States of America.
There is a great deal of evidence for the existence of secret torture prisons established with the knowledge of President George W. Bush. Seeing this mass of evidence, the rest of the world has already judged the United States of America to be a threat to human rights around the world.
The USA's once exemplary reputation has been sullied by the operation of torture prisons, but we do have the chance to clean up this mess, and return America to its former place of honor and pride in the world community. We, the American people, have the power, through Congress, to launch investigations independent of George W. Bush's influence. We can investigate these secret prisons, and hold President Bush and his aides legally accountable for their crimes in organizing and operating these prisons. If it comes to it, we can impeach Bush for his role.
But, it all starts with an independent commission, which is what Senator Carl Levin's amendment would have created. The commission would have had the power to finally get the whole truth from the Bush Administration about its involvement in secret prisons of torture set up around the world.
Sadly, a small majority of right wing senators stood in the way of justice and the restoration of America's reputation. When asked whether they wanted to know what has been going on in Bush's secret torture prisons, these senators said NO. They prefer to remain ignorant, and to pretend that nothing is happening.
The vote was close - just 55 against and 43 in favor.
Wouldn't you know it? Not one single Republican senator voted in favor of creating the commission to investigate the secret torture prisons. No, not even Senator John McCain, who talks tough on torture sometimes, but other times seems just to look the other way. No, Senator McCain just turned his back on this vote, and walked away, neglecting to cast a vote either way.
Only one Democrat caved in to pressure from the ruling Republican elites and voted against the establishment of the commission to investigate abuse and torture of prisoners in Bush's secret prisons. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska did the cowardly thing, and voted along with the Republicans, showing that he just doesn't want to know about torture in American prisons - he'll just avert his eyes and walk away from the problem.
We all have a right to know what kind of torture George W. Bush has been committing in the name of our nation. Because the Republican senators shamefully avoided their responsibility of oversight in this instance, we all have the right to know how our own senators voted on this historic occasion.
For that reason, we at Irregular Times have compiled two lists, found below. The first is a list of the senators who betrayed their duty and voted to block an investigation of torture authorized by George W. Bush. The second list shows the senators who did the right thing, and voted to authorize the independent commission to investigate these war crimes, and restore America's reputation in the world.
In both cases, we have included here a link to each senator's congressional scorecard, and the senator's telephone number. Please, call your senators and let them know that you were watching when this vote went down.
Senators who betrayed liberty and voted against investigating torture in Bush's secret prisons:
http://www.irregulartimes.com/...
~~~~~
Bush administration defends use of covert propaganda in US
By Bill Van Auken
17 March 2005
The Bush administration last week instructed US government agencies to ignore a ruling by the comptroller general of the United States barring the dissemination of "covert propaganda."
The phrase--generally associated with police-state dictatorships--was used by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, in describing the proliferation of video news releases produced by the Pentagon, State Department and at least 18 other US agencies. The GAO ordered a halt to the dissemination of such videos on the grounds that they "conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."
In a front-page article published Sunday, the New York Times detailed the government's increasing use of the videos, which simulate genuine television news segments. They include the use of public relations employees posing as on-the-spot reporters and "interviews" with government officials that have been scripted and rehearsed.
The Times cited a report issued by Congressional Democrats estimating that during its first term the Bush administration spent $254 million on public relations contracts that pay for the production of these videos, nearly doubling the amount spent by the Clinton administration in its last four years.
It described a system in which thousands of such video news releases, or VNRs, are produced annually. They are sent out to television networks as well as local stations, which in turn broadcast them to tens of millions of viewers as if they were the independent product of the stations' news departments.
In some cases, television producers edit out brief lines identifying the segments as having been produced by a government agency. In others, they have had their own reporters do new audio voice-overs, reading directly from scripts provided by the government.
Included in this massive propaganda operation is the production by the State Department and the Pentagon of video news segments aimed at selling the US war in Iraq to the American people. Various agencies have done television spots that attempt to cast controversial programs pushed by the Bush administration in the best possible light.
The US Defense Department has set up its own "Pentagon Channel," providing fake news reports, interviews and video clips to US television stations. The State Department runs a vastly expanded Office of Broadcasting Services with the same purpose.
US Comptroller General David Walker drafted a February 17 memo denouncing the practice as a violation of appropriations laws that bar the use of government money to pay for covert propaganda directed against the American people.
~~~This is the objective environment that facilitates the Bush administration's employment of the type of "covert propaganda" techniques against the American people that in an earlier epoch were reserved for the use of the CIA in destabilizing foreign governments. !
http://www.wsws.org/...
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House Refuses to Prevent Use of Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Covert Propaganda
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
WASHINGTON, DC -- The House today voted against a proposal offered by Representative George Miller (D-CA) that would have blocked the Bush Administration from using funds from a vocational education and job training bill to pay for covert political propaganda. The motion came during House consideration of H.R. 366, the Vocational and Technical Education for the Future Act.
"The Bush Administration has refused to end the deceptive, wasteful, and illegal practice of producing fake news, and today the House failed to adopt a commonsense measure to do something about it," said Miller, the senior Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee.
http://www.house.gov/...
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Bush's War On The Press
Nov. 18, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The Nation) This column was written by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney.
(....)
Faking TV News
Under Bush Administration directives, at least twenty federal agencies have produced and distributed scores, perhaps hundreds, of "video news segments" out of a $254 million slush fund. These bogus and deceptive stories have been broadcast on TV stations nationwide without any acknowledgment that they were prepared by the government rather than local journalists. The segments -- which trumpet Administration "successes," promote its controversial line on issues like Medicare reform and feature Americans "thanking" Bush -- have been labeled "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.
In his famous opinion in the 1945 Associated Press v. U.S. case, Justice Hugo Black said that "the First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a condition of a free society." In other words, a free press is the sine qua non of the entire American Constitution and republican experiment.
The Bush Administration's attack on the foundations of self-government demands a response of similar caliber. Under pressure from media-reform activists Congress has begun to push back, with a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate Commerce Committee to limit the ability of federal agencies to produce covert video news segments and to investigate Defense Department spending on propaganda initiatives.
But until the Administration is held accountable by Congress for all its assaults on journalism, and until standards are developed to assure that such abuses will not be repeated by future administrations, freedom of the press will exist in name only, with all that suggests for our polity.
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
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NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
AMERICAN STRATEGY PROGRAM
POLICY FORUM
-WEIGHING THE UNIQUENESS OF
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S
NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION-MAKING PROCESS:
BOON OR DANGER TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY?
...WITH
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, USA (RET.)
FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 2002-2005
MODERATED BY:
STEVEN CLEMONS
DIRECTOR, AMERICAN STRATEGY PROGRAM,
NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
AND
PUBLISHER, WWW.THEWASHINGTONNOTE.COM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2005
12:15 P.M. - 2:00 P.M.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
(.....)
~ COL. WILKERSON: On the other hand, as a practitioner and as a citizen of this great republic, I kind of believe that I have an obligation to say some of these things, and I believe furthermore that the people's representatives over on the Hill in that other branch of government have truly abandoned their oversight responsibilities in this regard and have let things atrophy to the point that if we don't do something about it, it's going to get - it's going to get even more dangerous than it already is.
~ So we need a system of checks and balances and institutional fabric that can withstand anybody - or at least nearly so. (Laughter.) You know, you laugh, but I'm not trying to solicit your laughter. I think it's a real problem in our democracy. You have to have a system that is so elastic, so resilient, so able to take punches that at one time one branch can supplant another, or one branch can come up and check another. It's the old business of checks and balances.
~~~-COLONEL WILKERSON (continued)
Now let me tell you why I say that. Decisions that send men and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn't have to suffer. Domestic and international decisions should not be made in a secret way. That's a very, very provocative statement, I think. All my life I've been taught to guard the nation's secrets. All my life I have followed the rules. I've gone through my special background investigations and all the other things that you need to do, and I understand that the nation's secrets need guarding, but fundamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret.
~That is not the case today. And when I say that is not the case today, I stop on 26 January 2005. I don't know what the case is today; I wish I did. But the case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. And then when the bureaucracy was presented with the decision to carry them out, it was presented in a such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn't know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.
Q: -Second, I also think that the cabal really has a leader and the leader is George W. Bush, and I think that it's the president who's driving the ship of state. We had a referendum about a year ago and the public decided they would go with him, not with the other guy.
My question is this: I agree with you entirely that the absence of responsibility, authority, and most of all accountability is dereliction of duty in the highest degree. What would you do to try to reestablish some degree of responsibility, authority and accountability in both branches of government?
COL. WILKERSON: (...) The other reason - again, I spoke to it but I'll elaborate a bit - I really think we have to protect ourselves against institutional imperfections, and in particular we have to protect ourselves against the institutions of humans and the imperfections that they bring. And the way you do that, in my view anyway, is with firm laws. They're not perfect. Goldwater-Nichols isn't perfect but - and Harry Truman might say it this way, and really diligent oversight. And if you're going to exercise diligent oversight, then you better damn well have your own act together in terms of exercising that oversight.
transcript of Forum here:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/...
~~~~~
No Oversight, No Shame
How Congress has abdicated its Constitutional responsibilities while using its power to carry out a partisan witch hunt
July 23, 2004
http://www.americanprogress.org/...
see this link for list of BLOCKED oversight inquiries
~~~~~
Whether this suit will ultimately be successful in holding Mr. Rumsfeld personally accountable is questionable. But if it is thoroughly argued in the courts, it will raise yet another curtain on the stomach-turning practices that have shamed the United States in the eyes of the world.
The primary aim of the lawsuit is quite simply to re-establish the rule of law. "It's that fundamental idea that nobody is above the law," said Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First. "The violations here were created by policies that deliberately undermined the rule of law. That needs to be challenged."
Lawlessness should never be an option for the United States. Once the rule of law has been extinguished, you're left with an environment in which moral degeneracy can flourish and a great nation can lose its soul.
Is No One Accountable?
By Bob Herbert
03/28/05 "New York Times" - - The Bush administration is desperately trying to keep the full story from emerging. But there is no longer any doubt that prisoners seized by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been killed, tortured, sexually humiliated and otherwise grotesquely abused.
These atrocities have been carried out in an atmosphere in which administration officials have routinely behaved as though they were above the law, and thus accountable to no one. People have been rounded up, stripped, shackled, beaten, incarcerated and in some cases killed, without being offered even the semblance of due process. No charges. No lawyers. No appeals.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/...
~~~~~
USDC Case # 04CV01211
The Lawsuit To Restore
Constitutional Order
OBJECTIVE: Reclaim Popular Sovereignty by Enforcing
The "Long-Forgotten" First Amendment Right To Petition
Almost Two Thousand Americans
Confront A Government
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For More Details, News,
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Go To The
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The case is currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals in DC, Case 05-5395
http://www.givemeliberty.org/
Hearts are Broken, but...at-least....NOW...they are~~~~~o-PEN
*
http://www.ursaminor.org/...
*
PLUTOCRATS DID NOT GIVE THEIR MOMS THE RIGHT TO VOTE ...till 1920
an aid in COMPREHENDING a Billion dollar$ :
if you were to receive $1 dollar per each SECOND at birth, you would finally accrue 1billion dollars at the age of.....32 and 1/2 years !
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