Republicans: You Don't Have To Vote Bush-Cheney!

At least this is the way many senior Republicans feel.

If the United States had major media that covered politics, as opposed to the political spin generated by the Bush White House and the official campaigns of both the Republican president and his Democratic challenger, one of the most fascinating, and significant, stories of the 2004 election season would be the abandonment of the Bush reelection effort by senior Republicans. But this is a story that, for the most part, has gone untold. Scant attention was paid to the revelation that one Republican member of the U.S. Senate, Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, will refrain from voting for his party's president -- despite the fact that Chafee offered a far more thoughtful critique of George W. Bush's presidency than "Zig-Zag" Zell Miller, the frothing, Democrat-hating Democrat did when he condemned his party's nominee. Beyond the minimal attention to Chafee, most media has neglected the powerful, and often poignant, condemnations of Bush by prominent Republicans.

The observation Nichols makes above about the shortcomings of the media is I think very apt. But that is a side point. The important thing is, in my humble opinion, that many Republicans have realized how much they differ from neo-conservatives now in power. Frankly, I don't even understand why the party has not split up,- but I am not going to address this issue at the moment.

Says Nichols,

Former Republican members of the U.S. Senate and House, governors, ambassadors, aides to GOP Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush have explicitly endorsed the campaign of Democrat John Kerry. For many of these lifelong Republicans, their vote for Kerry will be a first Democratic vote. But, in most cases, it will not be a hesitant one.

Angered by the Bush administration's mismanagement of the war in Iraq, record deficits, assaults on the environment and secrecy, the renegade partisans tend to echo the words of former Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen, who says that, "Although I am a longtime Republican, it is time to make a statement, and it is this: Vote for Kerry-Edwards, I implore you, on November 2."

Many of the Republicans who are abandoning Bush express sorrow at what the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies in Congress have done to their party: "The fact is that today's 'Republican' Party is one that I am totally unfamiliar with," writes John Eisenhower. But the deeper motivation is summed up by former U.S. Senator Marlow Cook, a Kentucky Republican, who explained in a recent article for the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper that, "For me, as a Republican, I feel that when my party gives me a dangerous leader who flouts the truth, takes the country into an undeclared war and then adds a war on terrorism to it without debate by the Congress, we have a duty to rid ourselves of those who are taking our country on a perilous ride in the wrong direction. If we are indeed the party of Lincoln (I paraphrase his words), a president who deems to have the right to declare war at will without the consent of the Congress is a president who far exceeds his power under our Constitution. I will take John Kerry for four years to put our country on the right path."

I second Senator Cook's sentiment, and hope that tomorrow we indeed do put the country on a path that is closer to being right.

What US$400 Billion Buys You

It certainly looks like one can afford to get quite a number of toys on Pentagon's budget. And toys are certainly there,- GPS-guided bombs, Navy carrier groups, tanks, submarines...

However, some things a soldier might really need in battle are in rather short supply:

With a $400 billion defense budget you might think U.S. troops have everything they need to fight the war, but that's not always the case.

Correspondent Steve Kroft talks to a general, soldiers in Iraq, and their families at home about a lack of armored vehicles, field radios, night vision goggles, and even ammunition - especially for the National Guard and reserve units that now make up more than 40 percent of U.S. troops.

I have commented on this problem before and it certainly looks like it has been there for awhile, has been reported on for awhile, but is still to be resolved.

What can I say? On several occasions, the aftermath of 9/11 being one of them, I considered signing up with the US military. Now I am glad I did not. And that is not because of fear,- it is certainly there, which is natural, but I am perfectly comfortable with the notion that everyone dies one day. No. The reason for that change of attitude is that I consider soldiers human, and I believe that protecting them to a reasonable extent is the nation's responsibility, a basic measure of respect and care for someone sent into the harm's way. And if $400B can't provide soldiers with enough bullets,- that says it all.

I consider those responsible for this outrage guilty of imperial arrogance, their attitude being that of "legionaires are paid to fight and die". And wasn't this Republic founded specifically to make sure this sort of governance never happens?

Who Is Truly in Power in The US?

The answer might be obvious,- the President, of course, George W Bush. However, a more thorough analysis might reveal that another figure, Vice President Dick Cheney, is the person who really is behind this Administration's key decisions.

As Robert Sheer observes in this article of his,

Whatever one thinks of George W. Bush--do you see a smile or a smirk?--it is now patently obvious that the most powerful vice president in US history is in charge of the White House. Cheney's ultra-secretive, anti-democratic and crony-capitalist instincts have defined this Administration.

I think this assessment is not entirely groundless. After all, Bush openly admits to listening to his advisers for words of wisdom,- as he admits to mostly forgoing reading the news himself. The incurious President is likely to a large extent dependent upon the opinions of his second-in-command.

Writes Scheer,

Perhaps we should have expected all this from a man who, as head of the Bush vice presidential search team, selected himself. It was a forewarning of the Machiavellian arrogance that has made him the leading individual in an Administration that has consistently believed that self-serving ends--such as helping Enron at the expense of California's energy needs or boosting Halliburton's profits at the expense of American troops--justify lying, secrecy and pre-emptive war.

In the hours after the 9/11 massacres, some Americans may have been reassured to have the older Cheney around at a time when the "real" President was confusedly sitting in a classroom listening to a story about a pet goat. However, in hindsight, this was clearly misguided faith in a man who presents himself as a stern father figure but is just an irresponsible ideologue whose disrespect and disregard for the US Constitution are manifest in all his actions.

It was the Vice President who served as the power behind a tiny group of fringe right-wing lawyers that secretly created a system of unaccountable White House-controlled military tribunals. Despite indelibly staining America's reputation as a leader in democratic principles and endangering the lives of American prisoners of war in current and future conflicts, these proceedings have proved totally useless in the war on terror, with zero terror convictions to date.

Never mind: After the tribunals decree was signed by Bush, Cheney was off leading a new misguided crusade, deploying a slew of manipulated and misrepresented intelligence factoids, clever innuendoes and outright lies to fool Congress and the public into supporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

There are, all in all, few things that bother me more than the notion of a nation going to war just because a small group of people happens to think that this is "the thing to do",- on top of that, knowing that they are going to personally benefit from that "thing". We are the nation "by the people" and "for the people",- and this sort of thing simply does not stand.

While some of Robert Scheer's views are too leftist to my liking, I certainly would agree with him on the point that a policy secretly cooked up by Dick Cheney and his clique is not what should become the official policy of the United States of America.

Vice President Cheney certainly believes that persistence is key to making his views believed.

As recently as June and contrary to the 9/11 commission's final report, to give but one of many examples, Cheney was still insisting that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta had a meeting in Prague with a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence agent before the 9/11 attacks. This is an unconscionable and obviously knowing use of the Big Lie technique, given that the CIA and FBI repudiated that baseless yet titillating claim in 2002.

Well, I suppose Mr Cheney is entitled to his views. And if reality gets in his way, he has a right to disregard it. However, we the people are free to go to the polls and express our will, too.

Here is how Scheer concludes his article on Cheney:

Next Tuesday, voters should retire this malevolent force.

What can I say? Let us try and make it happen!

Why Are Iraqi Explosives Missing?

The news has recently broken out that 380 tons of explosives that belonged to the Saddam Hussein's military has disappeared after the 2003 invasion by the US and Coalition forces.

(CNN) -- Some 380 tons of explosives powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency says.

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the interim Iraqi government reported to the agency several days ago in a letter that the explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa complex south of Baghdad.

The explosives -- considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads -- were under IAEA control until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. IAEA workers left the country before the fighting began.

"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong hands, they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the bombings that we've seen," Fleming said.

Fleming's concerns certainly do not seem overblown. Personally, if someone were to put together a truck bomb consisting of a mere ton of plastique, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the point of detonation.

This sort of news is naturally followed by an attempt to make sense of such an enormous event. Clearly, many were quick to blame the US military for failing to secure the facility.

According to this WorldNetDaily report, the military counters such accusations by stating that the explosives were removed prior to their arrival at the storage depots were the materiel had been previously stored. The photos presented to back up this argument display pickup trucks alleged to transport the explosives out of the storage facilities.

The photos show fedayeen, Saddam's most loyal paramilitary troops, in white pickup trucks transporting weapons, likely including missiles, from a storage facility a few kilometers north of Bayji and 100 kilometers north of Tikrit, as part of what the officer says was a coordinated effort to empty country-wide storage facilities before U.S. troops arrived in various areas. He said facilities in the south were likely emptied by fedayeen earlier in a similar fashion.

In one picture, two men in the back of a white pickup truck are seen sitting on three green ammunition crates. The truck's body, particularly toward the rear, is dragging low, an indication it was carrying a heavy load. The officer says the fedayeen regularly used such pickup trucks, which are less conspicuous than military trailers.

In one photo the officer says was taken seconds later, a separate truck can be seen driving from an area of the same facility which looks identical to al-Qaqaa, transporting a green box of what appears to be missiles. The truck passes a former Iraqi checkpoint at the facility entrance.

The US military stands accused of using excessive force in many incidents during the war in Iraq. And in light of that, it seems especially baffling that, according to what we know today, the force was not used to prevent the enemy from spreading around a humongous arsenal of explosives which can now be put to deadly use just about any place in the world.

Read Before You Vote on November 2

This is a nice set of points to think over before you vote on Tuesday. I am especially fond of this one:

No individual, party or ideology has cornered the market on truth or God's blessing.

As I said earlier, I think if you are eligible to vote, you should vote in this election. Vote your conscience,- but please think over the points listed above.

Cannon Fodder

Or, perhaps, I should have titled this one "Tax Cuts At Work". Here is the essence of it,- the US troops in Iraq are still not properly fitted with the armor protection, GPS's and other items they need to do their job and stay alive doing it. At times, soldiers (or their families) end up buying the gear themselves.

Here is yet another piece on this problem in The New York Times. The gist of it can be surmised from the first two articles.

When the 1544th Transportation Company of the Illinois National Guard was preparing to leave for Iraq in February, relatives of the soldiers offered to pay to weld steel plates on the unit's trucks to protect against roadside bombs. The Army told them not to, because it would provide better protection in Iraq, relatives said.

Seven months later, many of the company's trucks still have no armor, soldiers and relatives said, despite running some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq and incurring the highest rate of injuries and deaths among the Illinois units deployed there.

Every time I read an article of this sort, my first reaction is, predictably, the issuance of a stream of invective directed at those responsible. The invective grows in its intensity as days and months of the occupation of Iraq tick by.

The problem is not something that just popped up. Col. David Hackworth, one of the highest decorated US warriors of all times, has written about these same issues previously, as have many others.

In every street in the US one gets to see the "Support Our Troops" banners. But without real action, these banners are bound to remain just that,- a bunch of pieces of plastic with lettering on them.

The US, 2000-2004

As the Election Day approaches, it is certainly a good idea to take a look at what the last presidential term has brought us. In his Baltimore Chronicle article Chris Knipp attempts to do just that.

The term of George W Bush started in a controversy.

First the period brought us a president who was, in the view of at least half the population, not elected but slipped in over the wire through shifty maneuvering.

Personally, I do believe that the 2000 Election was stolen. That belief is based primarily on the research by investigative reporter Greg Palast whose findings were widely reported on just about everywhere throughout the world excluding the US. In this article of his Palast describes the process in considerable detail.

But let us for now disregard this fact and move on as Mr Bush's Presidency has been a fact of life, whether you like it or not. As Knipp correctly observes, at least at one point during his presidency George W Bush enjoyed an overwhelming popular support,- and that fact in itself lends some considerable legitimacy to his presidency.

A lackluster, shaky leader, he rallied and gained confidence as a public speaker and a figurehead after the shock of the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks.

However, the question emerges: was that support earned. The answer to this question is, most likely, in the negative.

The 9/11 Commission revealed to everyone the strongest warnings, well prior to the event, ignored by Bush, yet the Commission's final report rapped knuckles but ultimately blamed no one. A new, even more Bush-friendly, arguably even more incompetent CIA director was appointed.

I might add that concerns voiced by many insiders, people like Sibel Edmonds, only serve to further affirm the smokescreen nature of both the 9/11 Commission Report and the measures taken by the US Government in connection with it.

Here is what Knipp has to say about the wars our government has launched as part of its "war on terror".

Afghanistan, Osama's headquarters, was attacked, thousands of civilians were killed, the Taliban were put to flight, but Osama wasn't caught. A Gucci-clad leader whose siblings run American restaurants was put in to head a nonexistent government. The country went back to tribal chaos and opium exportation.

The next push was for Iraq, bombed and invaded without UN or general European approval in spring of 2003. The new "democracy" thus allegedly created was "turned over" to an unelected puppet government in the summer of 2004, and now, in late October, Iraq grows more dangerous every day for the "Coalition," for newsmen, businessmen and mercenaries, and last but not least for Iraqis.

Knipp also makes a good point about the administration's measures diminishing the civil liberties of both Americans and foreigners in the US custody, and the critical perception of this process by the rest of the world.

September 11, 2001 has been the pretext for widespread US human rights abuses. These are of many kinds. Most visible are the crypto-Nazi-named Homeland Security, the civil rights-crushing Patriot Acts I and II, and Attorney General John Ashcroft's Gestapo-esque arrests and lengthy imprisonments of suspect foreigners. Even worse is the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, but it will have an echo when practices at Guantanamo, where prisoners are held in overt violation of the Geneva Convention, are fully revealed. These are, alas, homemade horrors: investigative reporters say similar conditions already prevailed in US prisons, whose population is the world's largest. All these things are increasingly visible blights on the US's image as a "showplace of western democracy."

In my opinion, a critically important issue is largely absent from the public discourse in the US: how much are we willing to sacrifice in terms of our freedoms in order to defeat the world's evil forces,- if they are indeed attacking us.

In Knipp's article one finds many a critical remark. And this moves us to the next issue,- what to do about this? With the Election only two short days away, it is clearly important to review that issue too. Here is Knipp's take,- and it happens to be one with which I largely agree and which I implore you to consider in the remaining two days.

Does this election matter?

Is Kerry, then, a man from the same background of wealth and privilege and posh schools, even the same establishment secret society (far wealthier, by marriage, than any previous presidential candidate ever) "the lesser of two evils"? Yes, certainly, he is that. But the gap between greater and lesser evil promises to be larger than usual this time, because it's not simply Bush the US and the world need to be freed from, but that dangerous and destructive crew and world view for which he is the figurehead, and whose aims we have seen writ large over the last four years.

The War in Iraq: What Are The Benefits?

The Iraq War has caused a massive split of opinions within the American society. The Administration attempted to bind it to the terror attacks of 9/11 and,- at least on the emotional level,- those attempts were largely successful. I myself must admit to the sense of fear when I heard the pre-war intelligence data indicating that Iraq had a capability to launch an attack with a weapon of mass destruction on a 45 minute notice.

Given that such intelligence has since been proven to have little basis, if any, I share blame for being too uncritical and too given to blind trust in what the government says. Such weakness is all the more reason to listen to those who, like Jacob G. Hornberger have made an eternal distrust of government part of their credo.

In this article of his, Mr Hornberger takes a look at how America may have benefited from the war in Iraq. In it, he asks two key questions regarding the issue.

In determining whether the invasion of Iraq has been in the interests of America, two questions naturally arise:

One, has the invasion made Americans safer from terrorism? and

Two, has the invasion made Americans freer with respect to their own government?

The answer to both questions, in Hornberger's opinion, is a resounding "no".

Firstly, he asks why Americans are hated in the Middle East and elsewhere.

When the 9/11 attacks occurred, Americans were horribly angry, despite the fact that most of them did not personally know the victims. This phenomenon of empathy, sympathy, and anger was actually shared by people all over the world.

On 9/11, the immediate response of U.S. officials, which they have steadfastly maintained since that day, was that the terrorists attacked America because of their hatred for America’s “freedom and values”—the First Amendment, Wal-Mart, and rock and roll.

As three years have passed, most Americans are coming to the realization of how truly nonsensical that position is — that actually terrorism against the United States is rooted in hatred of the U.S. government’s foreign policy, specifically in the Middle East, including the support of brutal, unelected dictators such as Saddam Hussein, to whom the United States delivered those infamous weapons of mass destruction, and the current unelected military dictator of Pakistan.

The invasion of Iraq is simply a continuation of that U.S. foreign policy.

The invasion has taken the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including ordinary Iraqi soldiers — innocent in the sense that they had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

What is fascinating about U.S. officials is that they cannot fathom the notion that people in Iraq and surrounding countries become just as angry when their loved ones, relatives, friends, and countrymen are killed as Americans and others around the world become when innocent Americans are killed. It’s a blind spot that afflicts the minds of U.S. officials.

In a sense, this is an invitation to think along the "how would you feel?" lines. And, given that, according to some estimates, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the US-led invasion, the picture is not rosy.

While I fully support the notion that a dictator like Saddam Hussein is fully illegitimate and his removal from power is a welcome development, one must be aware that this is not a benefit to be obtained at any price. The data regarding the repression under Saddam's rule suggests that about 15,000 Iraqis were being killed by the regime every year. If it is true that over a 100,000 died after the invasion began, than the occupying authorities have thus far managed to kill Iraqis at the rate six times that of Saddam.

Now, let us take a look at what the effect of this war has been at home.

No one can deny that we now live in a country where the ruler has the omnipotent power to send the entire nation into war by attacking any sovereign and independent country for any reason whatsoever or no reason at all.

“That ruler has weapons of mass destruction. Or I think he does. Or he might. He surely is thinking about it. He’s got children contemplating it. He is dangerous. Order the attack, even if it kills tens of thousands of innocent people in the process.”

That type of omnipotent power — the power to both declare and wage war — has been associated with the biggest dictatorships in history.

Why is this important? Because as Madison pointed out, war is the biggest threat to our liberty — the liberty of the American people — because it encompasses all the other threats of liberty. War is the parent of armies, militarism, centralization of power, unrestrained government spending, taxes, regulations, debasement of the currency, bureaucracies, and bureaucrats.

The Framers tried to protect us from that omnipotent power. They divided the power to declare war and the power to wage war. In the Constitution, they vested the power to declare war in the Congress, not the president, and the power to wage war in the president.

That constitutional provision, as everyone knows, is now knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally ignored. And a congressional resolution that unconstitutionally delegates the power to declare war to the president is no substitute for the congressional duty to determine whether war should be declared.

Why is that important? Two reasons:

One, the Constitution is designed to protect our liberty — the liberty of the American people, and it is the supreme law of the land, the law that we the people have imposed on our government officials.

Two, make no mistake about it: When government officials are permitted to ignore one constitutional limitation on power, they will ignore more.

Did you ever think you’d live in a country where the military, following in the footsteps of their counterparts in Argentina and Chile, would actually claim and exercise the power to seize any American and foreigner anywhere in the world, including right here on American soil, and send him to a military brig for the rest of his life, claiming that no federal court had the power to interfere with such operations, denying the accused habeas corpus, right to counsel, and due-process principles that stretch all the way back to Magna Carta? Or even worse, subjecting the accused to torture, sex abuse, or rape? Or more ominously, claiming the power to ship the accused in the dead of night to a secret military base in Cuba to be put on trial before a Cuban-style, Soviet-style military tribunal before being executed?

Our judicial system now has secret court proceedings, secret search warrants, secret courts, redacted court pleadings.

These are all the attributes of some of the 20th century’s greatest dictatorships.

I think this pretty much sums it up as far as the current state of affairs in the US as a result of the current policy. And the only way out of the trap is for all of us to openly think of what is being done in our name,- and whether or not this is truly what we want.

Full Circle?

A nice piece of reminiscence by Max Blumenthal.

101 Points to Ponder over The Next Week

The US Presidential Election is only a week away. This is a nice collection of issues which I think every US citizen ought to consider prior to that time.

This is a critically important election,- personally, I believe that it is about the preservation of the American democracy itself. I don't think this is a good time to be just sitting on the fence. Whatever your political preferences, you should vote them,- at least that way you are not going to have an option of excusing yourself by claiming that you had nothing to do with what is happening.