"A Coup Has Occurred"

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming war with Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at an American University symposium on Sept. 20.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming war with Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at an American University symposium on Sept. 20.

The following is an edited transcript of Ellsberg’s speech, courtesy of ConsortiumNews.com:

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.

It’s a little hard for me to distinguish the two contingencies; they could come together. Another 9/11 or an Iranian attack in which Iran’s reaction against Israel, against our shipping, against our troops in Iraq above all, possibly in this country, will justify the full panoply of measures that have been prepared now, legitimized, and to some extent written into law.

This is an unusual gang, even for Republicans. [But] I think that the successors to this regime are not likely to roll back the assault on the Constitution. They will take advantage of it, they will exploit it.

Will Hillary Clinton as president decide to turn off NSA after the last five years of illegal surveillance? Will she deprive her administration her ability to protect United States citizens from possible terrorism by blinding herself and deafening herself to all that NSA can provide? I don’t think so.

Unless this somehow, by a change in our political climate, of a radical change, unless this gets rolled back in the next year or two before a new administration comes in – and there’s no move to do this at this point – unless that happens I don’t see it happening under the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic.

The Next Coup

Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.

I could go through a list going back before this century to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, and before that the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 18th century. I think that none of those presidents were in fact what I would call quite precisely the current administration: domestic enemies of the Constitution.

I think that none of these presidents with all their violations, which were impeachable had they been found out at the time and in nearly every case their violations were not found out until they were out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable, they weren’t found out in time, but I think it was not their intention to in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.

It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 70s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but have believed in Executive government, single-branch government under an Executive president – elected or not – with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.

When I say this I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country – but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country and Constitution thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an Executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with signing statements. Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says “I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.”

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the Executive Branch, essentially of the president. A concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the Founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.

Founders Had It Right

Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right.

It’s not just “our way of doing things” – it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody including Americans. On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This Executive Branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran which even by imperialist standards, standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the Executive Branch but most of the leaders in Congress. The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …

But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t, it doesn’t even make it unlikely.

That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress – Democrats and Republicans – and the public and the media, we have freed the White House – the president and the vice president – from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, what can we do about this? We are heading towards an insane operation. It is not certain. It is likely. … I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And … we will not succeed in moving Congress probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small perhaps – anyway not large – possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.

Restoring the Republic

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.

Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9/11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little…

We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, “traitor,” “weak on terrorism” – names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.

I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the United States armed services.

And that oath is not to a Commander in Chief, which is not mentioned. It is not to a fuehrer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada – who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war – is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously in upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. Everybody under him who understands what is going on and there are myriad, are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.

Congressional Courage

On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate – and frankly of the Republicans – that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be Speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.

I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that.

Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.” Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?

I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read in the Washington Post who yesterday threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

We need some way, and Ann Wright has one way, of sitting in, in Conyers office and getting arrested. Ray McGovern has been getting arrested, pushed out the other day for saying the simple words “swear him in” when it came to testimony.

I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from mad men in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves – they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their career or their relation with the president to the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.

U.S. Snipers Accused of 'Baiting' Iraqis

A U.S. soldier holds his sniper position on a rooftop in a Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, in this April file photo. Army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to "bait" their targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords, and then kill whoever picked up the items, according to the defense attorney for a soldier accused of planting evidence on an Iraqi he killed. (AP photo)

The New York Times reports:

Under a program developed by a Defense Department warfare unit, Army snipers have begun using a new method to kill Iraqis suspected of being insurgents, using fake weapons and bomb-making material as bait and then killing anyone who picks them up, according to testimony presented in a military court.

The existence of the classified “baiting program,” as it has come to be known, was disclosed as part of defense lawyers’ efforts to respond to murder charges the Army pressed this summer against three members of a Ranger sniper team. Each soldier is accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi in three separate shootings between April and June near Iskandariya, and with planting “drop weapons” like detonation wires or other incriminating evidence on the bodies of the victims.

In sworn statements, soldiers testifying for the defense have said the sniper team was employing a “baiting program” developed at the Pentagon by the Asymmetrical Warfare Group, which met with Ranger sniper teams in Iraq in January and gave equipment to them.

The Washington Post described the baiting program on Monday.

An Army spokesman, Paul Boyce, said Monday that the Army did not publicly discuss specific methods for “targeting enemy combatants,” and that no classified program authorized the use of “drop weapons” to make a killing appear justified. Army officers involved in evidentiary hearings in Baghdad in July did not dispute the existence or use of a baiting program.

The court-martial of one accused soldier, Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., is scheduled to begin in Baghdad on Wednesday. The two other soldiers facing premeditated murder charges are Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, the sniper team squad leader, and Sgt. Evan Vela. All three are part of the headquarters of the First Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

None of the soldiers deny that they killed the three Iraqis they are charged with murdering. Through their lawyers and in court documents, the soldiers say the killings were legal and authorized by their superiors. But defense lawyers raised the issue of the baiting program in response to prosecutors’ allegations that the soldiers had planted items, like wire for making bombs, on the bodies of the victims.

A transcript of the hearing was provided by a family member of an accused soldier.

Snipers are among the most specialized of soldiers, using camouflage clothing and makeup to infiltrate enemy locations, and high-powered rifles and scopes to stalk and kill enemy fighters. The three snipers accused of murder had for months ventured into some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, said lawyers for Sergeant Vela.

“Snipers are special people who are trained to shoot in a detached fashion, not to see their targets as human beings,” said James D. Culp, one of Sergeant Vela’s lawyers. “Snipers have split seconds to take shots, and he had a split second to decide whether to shoot.”

After visiting the sniper unit in Iraq, members of the Asymmetrical Warfare Group gave soldiers ammunition boxes containing so-called “drop items” like bullets, plastic explosives and bomb detonation cords to use to pinpoint Iraqis involved in insurgent activity, according to Capt. Matthew P. Didier, a sniper platoon leader who gave sworn testimony in the accused soldiers’ court hearings.

Captain Didier, in a sworn statement about the program that was obtained by The New York Times, described baiting as “putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy.”

After placing the bait, snipers observed the area around it, Captain Didier said in his statement. “If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item,” he said, “we would engage the individual, as I saw this as a sign that they would use the item against U.S. forces.” (Engage is a military euphemism for firing on or killing an enemy.)

The Asymmetrical Warfare Group, based at Fort Meade, Md., grew out of a task force created after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 to develop methods to defeat roadside bombs. Not all of the group’s tactics were meant for sniper units, and most of them have not been publicly disclosed.

For instance, the group last year advised “kill teams” from the Third Brigade, Second Infantry Division, to dig holes resembling those used by insurgents to hide roadside bombs, and to shoot Iraqis who tried to place things in the holes, said a soldier who was briefed on the program and who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

The kill teams used the tactic not to kill people, but to wound them with gunshots and then capture and interrogate them, the soldier said. “It’s pretty common, and it’s pretty effective,” the soldier said in an interview. The soldier lamented the disclosure of the baiting and other anti-insurgent combat tactics because “it’s probably saving a lot of soldiers’ lives.”

James Ross, the legal and policy director for Human Rights Watch, said using fake weapons and ammunition as bait to attract and kill insurgents creates blurry ethical boundaries for soldiers fighting in Iraq, and great risk to civilians who are not legal targets in war. International law recognizes that killing “any individual who is directly or indirectly taking part in hostilities” can be justified, Mr. Ross said, but it is not precise about how such distinctions should be applied.

Mr. Ross said the dispersal of ammunition and explosives by American forces as part of an effort to attract insurgents would present obvious human rights problems.

“It seems to me that there are all sorts of reasons that civilians would want to pick up ammunition that is sitting on the ground,” he said.

Specialist Sandoval is the first of the three suspects to be tried in a court-martial. He and Sergeant Hensley were accused of leaving a spool of wire that could be used to detonate roadside bombs in a pocket of the man whom Specialist Sandoval shot in April, on Sergeant Hensley’s command.

Queens, N.Y. Woman Victimized in Brokers' Mortgage Scam

The NY Daily News reports:

The growing wave of foreclosures casting a shadow over the nation's economy just crashed over 63-year-old Eva Murphy of Queens.

The former airport worker says she became a homeowner after a representative of a company called 2000 Homes showed up on her doorstep in December 2005.


The sales rep told her she could afford to buy a house even though she had bad credit and lived on an amalgam of government subsidies.

The 2000 Homes sales rep promised Murphy a house with a mortgage she could afford. She says he suggested a two-family home on Roscoe St. in Jamaica, Queens, for $430,000.

After the closing, she discovered the price was actually $538,000.

Murphy says she was told monthly payments would be about $2,000. She later learned they would be $3,990.

She also learned that even though she has no full-time job, her mortgage application listed her as a $9,000-a-month "marketing manager" for a company owned by her loan officer's husband.

Ten months ago, her house ended up in foreclosure.

"It's a mess," she said.

Murphy's mess is increasingly common among vulnerable low-income borrowers, facilitated by questionable brokers like 2000 Homes, a Daily News investigation has found.

Last month, a survey by state Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) showed foreclosures "rising at an alarming rate" in the city as part of the nationwide subprime mortgage crisis.

Klein's survey found 14,561 foreclosures in the city, with nearly 6,000 in Queens, in the 13 months between July 1, 2006, and last July 31.

Most foreclosures involved subprime borrowers like Murphy, would-be homeowners with low credit ratings who did not qualify for conventional mortgages with lower interest rates.

That risky kind of customer is right up 2000 Homes' alley.

With an office in Queens Village and 20 licensed brokers, 2000 Homes has been fined $3,900 for violating regulations aimed at curbing aggressive sales tactics, officials say.

Next month, the company faces a hearing and possible loss of its real estate broker's license in the 2005 sale of a home in St. Albans, Queens, records show.

In that case, 2000 Homes, which was representing the seller, allegedly didn't disclose that one of its brokers was a principal in the company buying the home - as required by law. The buyers flipped the house five months later at a $160,000 profit.

The News also found two other borrowers who alleged that 2000 Homes brokers inflated income on their loan applications.

One was Darlene Smith, who settled a suit accusing 2000 Homes of exaggerating her and her niece's incomes to back up a subprime mortgage on their $259,000 house in Far Rockaway in 2005.

In Murphy's case, 2000 Homes showed up in December 2005. At the time, Murphy says, she was fighting with a landlord she says wanted to evict her.

A month later, 2000 Homes broker Jacob Atzmon told her she had bad credit - but he could help. She just had to cough up $2,250.

She said she borrowed the money from a friend. A handwritten note signed by Atzmon and dated Jan. 25, 2006, states, "I get $2,250 from Miss Eva Murphy for work on her credit report."

Four months later, Murphy went to 2000 Homes to sign papers. When she pointed out that the papers had not been filled out, she was told not to worry about it.

When she later learned what was put in those blanks, she couldn't believe what she saw.

Murphy says she gets $788 a month from Social Security and Workmen's Compensation, $260 a month in welfare benefits and some extra cash collecting cans.

On one of the mortgage applications, which she says was filled out by a 2000 Homes-affiliated employee, Murphy was listed as a $9,000-a-month "marketing manager" for a Diamond District jeweler. On another, she's listed making $7,875 a month at the same job.

This was news to Murphy.

"I haven't worked since Jan. 29, 1991, and now all of sudden I got a job in the diamond industry," said Murphy. "I'm supposed to be a manager or something. Oh, my God. How did they do that?"

One of Murphy's loan applications was signed by Tikva Davaran, who told The News she was a loan officer at Metro Elite Mortgage Corp., which regularly works in concert with 2000 Homes.

Davaran said she or one of her assistants filled out the application after interviewing Murphy. As it happened, Diamond Galaxy, listed as Murphy's alleged "employer" on her mortgage application, was owned by Davaran's husband, Shahriar.

The Davarans claim Murphy briefly worked for Diamond Galaxy. Shahriar Davaran said Murphy "was supposed to do advertising on a computer for us."

"I do not even know how to use a computer," Murphy countered. "I don't even know the man."

Tikva Davaran could not explain why one application lists Murphy's salary as $9,000 a month but another lists it at $7,875.

"I honestly don't recall what happened," Davaran said.




Murphy said she was in a rush at the May 26, 2006 closing because her girlfriend's daughter had been hit by a car.

"I'm trying to hurry out of this closing and they said, 'Wait, wait, wait,'" Murphy said. "I said, No, 'I got to go. ... I'm just signing these papers to get out.'"

She signed for two loans: a $430,400 adjustable rate mortgage starting with a 7.3% interest rate that would reset in 2008, and a $107,600 mortgage repayable in 15 years with a final $91,735.13 balloon payment and an 11.3% interest rate.

She borrowed $5,000 for the down payment.

What is Subprime?

Subprime loans are mortgages written for people with poor credit. Many are so-called exotic loans, including interest-only mortgages, or ones with low front-end rates that adjust later. Subprime mortgages peaked during the recent housing boom, when lenders relaxed credit requirements for borrowers. Some economists fear that large numbers of subprime borrowers could default on their mortgages, either because rates adjust higher or simply because they were poor risks to begin with.

Murphy said 2000 Homes provided her with a lawyer, Jason Oshins, but at the closing, another lawyer, Dean Mavrides, showed up.

A breakdown of Murphy's closing costs shows each lawyer got $750 for the closing, with another $13,182 listed simply as "Oshins, as atty."

Oshins told The News, "I could not answer any of your questions under the scope of privilege."

Mavrides did not return a call.

Eitan Sror, chairman of 2000 Homes, provided a copy of the sales contract, which was dated May 4, 2006, and signed by Murphy, showing the price of the house was $538,000.

"I can't see how she would think otherwise," he said.

Sror said he didn't know about Murphy's loan documents, adding, "We're not required to keep any information that has to do with the mortgage." He denied the company's brokers encouraged the other two accusers to exaggerate incomes.

Murphy says she doesn't know what she'll do if she loses the house.

"I didn't know there was so many dishonest people that they can just sell you a bunch of garbage," she said. "And this is what this is - a bunch of garbage."

New Fascist World Order

They're watching what you read, they're watching what you write.

The Washington Post:

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.

The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.

But new details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.

The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s, but the collection of data for it has been greatly expanded and automated since 2002, according to former DHS officials.

Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government's ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said.

The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel.

"The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, "may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent."

Gilmore's file, which he provided to The Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book "Drugs and Your Rights." "My first reaction was I kind of expected it," Gilmore said. "My second reaction was, that's illegal."

DHS officials said this week that the government is not interested in passengers' reading habits, that the program is transparent, and that it affords redress for travelers who are inappropriately stymied. "I flatly reject the premise that the department is interested in what travelers are reading," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said. "We are completely uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be reading."

But, Knocke said, "if there is some indication based upon the behavior or an item in the traveler's possession that leads the inspection officer to conclude there could be a possible violation of the law, it is the front-line officer's duty to further scrutinize the traveler." Once that happens, Knocke said, "it is not uncommon for the officer to document interactions with a traveler that merited additional scrutiny."

He said that he is not familiar with the file that mentions Gilmore's book about drug rights, but that generally "front-line officers have a duty to enforce all laws within our authority, for example, the counter-narcotics mission." Officers making a decision to admit someone at a port of entry have a duty to apply extra scrutiny if there is some indication of a violation of the law, he said.

The retention of information about Gilmore's book was first disclosed this week in Wired News. Details of how the ATS works were disclosed in a Federal Register notice last November. Although the screening has been in effect for more than a decade, data for the system in recent years have been collected by the government from more border points, and also provided by airlines -- under U.S. government mandates -- through direct electronic links that did not previously exist.

The DHS database generally includes "passenger name record" (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers. PNR data -- often provided to airlines and other companies when reservations are made -- routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations, and even the type of bed requested in a hotel.

The records the Identity Project obtained confirmed that the government is receiving data directly from commercial reservation systems, such as Galileo and Sabre, but also showed that the data, in some cases, are more detailed than the information to which the airlines have access.

Ann Harrison, the communications director for a technology firm in Silicon Valley who was among those who obtained their personal files and provided them to The Post, said she was taken aback to see that her dossier contained data on her race and on a European flight that did not begin or end in the United States or connect to a U.S.-bound flight.

"It was surprising that they were gathering so much information without my knowledge on my travel activities, and it was distressing to me that this information was being gathered in violation of the law," she said.

James P. Harrison, director of the Identity Project and Ann Harrison's brother, obtained government records that contained another sister's phone number in Tokyo as an emergency contact. "So my sister's phone number ends up being in a government database," he said. "This is a lot more than just saying who you are, your date of birth."

Edward Hasbrouck, a civil liberties activist who was a travel agent for more than 15 years, said that his file contained coding that reflected his plan to fly with another individual. In fact, Hasbrouck wound up not flying with that person, but the record, which can be linked to the other passenger's name, remained in the system. "The Automated Targeting System," Hasbrouck alleged, "is the largest system of government dossiers of individual Americans' personal activities that the government has ever created."

He said that travel records are among the most potentially invasive of records because they can suggest links: They show who a traveler sat next to, where they stayed, when they left. "It's that lifetime log of everywhere you go that can be correlated with other people's movements that's most dangerous," he said. "If you sat next to someone once, that's a coincidence. If you sat next to them twice, that's a relationship."

Stewart Verdery, former first assistant secretary for policy and planning at DHS, said the data collected for ATS should be considered "an investigative tool, just the way we do with law enforcement, who take records of things for future purposes when they need to figure out where people came from, what they were carrying and who they are associated with. That type of information is extremely valuable when you're trying to thread together a plot or you're trying to clean up after an attack."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in August 2006 said that "if we learned anything from Sept. 11, 2001, it is that we need to be better at connecting the dots of terrorist-related information. After Sept. 11, we used credit-card and telephone records to identify those linked with the hijackers. But wouldn't it be better to identify such connections before a hijacker boards a plane?" Chertoff said that comparing PNR data with intelligence on terrorists lets the government "identify unknown threats for additional screening" and helps avoid "inconvenient screening of low-risk travelers."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that "we need to be better at connecting the dots of terrorist-related information." (By Stephanie Kuykendal -- Getty Images)

Knocke, the DHS spokesman, added that the program is not used to determine "guilt by association." He said the DHS has created a program called DHS Trip to provide redress for travelers who faced screening problems at ports of entry.

But DHS Trip does not allow a traveler to challenge an agency decision in court, said David Sobel, senior counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has sued the DHS over information concerning the policy underlying the ATS. Because the system is exempted from certain Privacy Act requirements, including the right to "contest the content of the record," a traveler has no ability to correct erroneous information, Sobel said.

Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about "politically charged" opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, "they had them printed out on the table in front of me."

Hear Zakariya Reed on NPR's program, At Home and Abroad: Shared Sacrifices Since September 11th.

Q&A with Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh

Journalist Seymour M. Hersh, 70, announced his arrival in Washington nearly four decades ago by uncovering the U.S. military massacre of Vietnamese women and children at My Lai and winning the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. As a freelancer for the tiny Dispatch News Service, he did all this without even leaving the country. Newsweek dubbed him the "scoop artist," and from the start he has served as the official executive pain in the neck -- breaking such stories as the CIA's bombing of Cambodia and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's wiretapping of his own staff.

Recently ranked 26th on GQ's list of "50 Most Powerful People in D.C.," Hersh was among the first to expose the Abu Ghraib prison scandal (chronicled in his latest book, "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib"), and he continues today to detail the Bush administration's alleged march to bomb Tehran. Persona non grata in this highly secretive White House, The New Yorker writer was recently dubbed "Cheney's Nemesis" by Rolling Stone magazine, and a former Bush insider told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in early 2003, "Look, Sy Hersh is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist, frankly."

The Jewish Journal recently spoke with Hersh in advance of his Oct. 4 appearance at UCLA Live, at which he will discuss American foreign policy and the abuse of power under the guise of national security:

Jewish Journal: You wrote in The New Yorker in the spring of 2006 that the United States might not have much more time to focus on Iraq because they had started planning to bomb Iran. That hasn't happened yet. Do you still think it will?

Seymour Hersh At that time it was considered far out. But it's not anymore. I'm still writing about Iran planning. It is very much on the table. And I can tell you right now that there are many Shia right now in the south of Iraq, in the Maliki party, that believe to the core that America is no longer interested in Iraq, but that everything they are doing now is aimed at the Shia and Iran.

JJ: You're not a fan of President George W. Bush. Do you look at things in terms of Jan. 20, 2009?

SH: Absolutely. Absolutely. No matter who will be there.

JJ: Do you have one of those countdown clocks on your desk?

SH: No. Somebody gave me one, but I thought it would be too cute. You know, he's got power. He's still president.

JJ: You mentioned that there are plenty of things you know that you can't write about.

SH: The bottom line is nobody in this government talks to me. I've been around for 40 years -- in Bush I, in the Reagan years, certainly in Democratic regimes, but even in Republican regimes where I am more of a pain -- I've always had tremendous relationships with people. This is the first government in which in order to get my stories checked out to make sure I'm not going to kill some American, I have to go to peoples' mailboxes at night, people I talk to and know, and put it in their mailbox before turning it into The New Yorker, to get them to read it and say, "Oh, Page 4, you better not say that, Hersh."

I can't do that with the government. I used to always go and sit down and talk with the heads of the CIA and heads of other agencies. These guys are just really quantitatively different. You are either with us or against us across the board. And this is why I count days.

JJ: New York magazine has a profile this week of Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, and they call him "America's Most Influential Journalist." What have bloggers like Drudge done to journalism, and how do you think it compares to the muckrakers that you came of age with?

SH: There is an enormous change taking place in this country in journalism. And it is online. We are eventually -- and I hate to tell this to The New York Times or the Washington Post -- we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular. And they are really going to cut into daily journalism.

I've been working for The New Yorker recently since '93. In the beginning, not that long ago, when I had a big story you made a good effort to get the Associated Press and UPI and The New York Times to write little stories about what you are writing about. Couldn't care less now. It doesn't matter, because I'll write a story, and The New Yorker will get hundreds of thousands, if not many more, of hits in the next day. Once it's online, we just get flooded.

So, we have a vibrant, new way of communicating in America. We haven't come to terms with it. I don't think much of a lot of the stuff that is out there. But there are a lot of people doing very, very good stuff.

JJ: Some people have a problem with muckrakers. Why do you think it is important to shine a light on filth?

SH: I can't imagine what else there is to do in the newspaper business today right now but to write as much as you can about what is going on. Like it, don't like it, what you call filth is the normal vagaries of government and foreign affairs these days.

JJ: Bush recently compared Iraq to Vietnam in a positive way. What do you think he learned from the Vietnam War?

SH: He seems to have learned from lessons that were not very valid. Nobody wants to be a loser. Bush is going to disengage to some degree, and he's going to claim the country is more stable. He's just going to say whatever he wants, and he's going to get away with it because who knows what is going on in Basra. Nobody I know in their right mind would go down there. You'd get whacked.

And the Democrats have fallen into the trap of saying, "We shouldn't get out." As far as I am concerned, there are only two issues: Option A is to get out by midnight tonight, and Option B is to get out by midnight tomorrow.

JJ: Having grown up in a Yiddish home, the son of Polish and Lithuanian immigrants, how would you describe your Jewish identity?

SH: Vague. I like a lot of the historical stuff; I'm agnostic about the religion. But I certainly understand the power of faith, and I wish the American Jews could talk more to some of the Israelis I know and see how open-minded they are about many issues American Jews are not. There is tremendous diversity in Israel. Here the stuff of conversation ends up in a bloody fight; there you can discuss anything.

My [three] children chose: Some went through the bar mitzvah process; some did not. I'm a believer in you do what you want to do. For me, my Jewish heritage comes mainly in literature. I identify very strongly with the Saul Bellows and Philip Roths of this world. But it's so irrelevant that I am Jewish when I write about Jewish issues. It really is for me. It's just like it is irrelevant what my personal opinion is on things.

JJ: I was going to ask if your being Jewish has in any way affected your coverage of Israeli politics, particularly security?

SH: No, no. It gets me in more fights.

JJ: The book "The Israel Lobby" just came out. How would you characterize Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's assessment of the power of the pro-Israel community?

SH: You can't touch them in terms of being anti-Semitic. They are realists. They are from the realists' school. I haven't read the book, but it's not either/or, either support Israel or don't. It's: try and use the tremendous support and relationship we have to modify their behavior more than we do. But this government and that relationship [with Israel] is really profound, and it is just very secretive between us and Israel. It is not transparent, and that is not healthy for anybody.

JJ: You turned 70 this year. Why keep working so hard?

SH: I don't work that hard. I write four or five pieces a year. Secondly, what do you want me to do? Play professional golf? I can't do that. You do what you can do. And I'm in a funny spot because I have an ability to communicate with people I have known for a number of years. They trust me, and I trust them, so I keep on doing these little marginal stories.

JJ: That's all they are? Marginal?

SH: With these stories, if they slow down or make people take a deep breath before they bomb Iran, that is a plus. But they are not going to stop anybody. This is a government that is unreachable by us, and that is very depressing. In terms of adding to the public debate, the stories are important. But not in terms of changing policy. I have no delusions about that.

For more information and tickets to UCLA Live, call (310) 825-2101.

It's a Holiday Today . . . .

. . . . Somewhere in the world.

A global event centered in San Francisco, it's PARK(ing) Day. Artists, activists, and citizens collaborate to temporarily transform parking spots into public parks.

The PARK that is San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's parking space in front of City Hall.

Have We Had Our Fill of This Asshole Yet?

What about this one?

Are we ready to stop being distracted?

Netanyahu Confirms Secret Attack on Syria:

Israel's opposition leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, has given the first confirmation from his country of a mysterious air strike on an unknown target deep in Syria earlier this month - fuelling frenzied speculation about exactly what happened.

The leader of the rightwing Likud party said he had given the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, his backing for the attack, which Damascus said took place on September 6. Before that, the Israeli government had enforced a news blackout on the story.

Asked during a TV interview, Mr Netanyahu said: "When a prime minister does something that is important and necessary to Israel's security ... I give my backing." He refused to give further details.

Syria protested to the UN about the "flagrant violation" of its airspace. Officials in Damascus have reported that their air defences forced Israeli F15 jets to flee, dropping "munitions" and fuel tanks in the desert near the Turkish border.

US and other officials have claimed that Israel hit Syrian targets that may have had links to North Korean nuclear arms - dismissed by Damascus as "a big lie".

Meanwhile, Mr Olmert last night confronted critics within his centrist Kadima party who fear he may concede too much to Palestinians, and urged them to seize an opportunity to make peace after 60 years of conflict. Mr Olmert said he would free more Palestinian prisoners as part of "measured gestures" toward President Mahmoud Abbas as they try to agree terms for a US-sponsored peace conference.

Israel, U.S. Shared Data on Suspected Nuclear Site

The Washington Post reports:

Israel's decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said.

The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence. Although the administration was deeply troubled by Israel's assertion that North Korea was assisting the nuclear ambitions of a country closely linked with Iran, sources said, the White House opted against an immediate response because of concerns it would undermine long-running negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

Ultimately, however, the United States is believed to have provided Israel with some corroboration of the original intelligence before Israel proceeded with the raid, which hit the Syrian facility in the dead of night to minimize possible casualties, the sources said.

The target of Israel's attack was said to be in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. A Middle East expert who interviewed one of the pilots involved said they operated under such strict operational security that the airmen flying air cover for the attack aircraft did not know the details of the mission. The pilots who conducted the attack were briefed only after they were in the air, he said. Syrian authorities said there were no casualties.

U.S. sources would discuss the Israeli intelligence, which included satellite imagery, only on condition of anonymity, and many details about the North Korean-Syrian connection remain unknown. The quality of the Israeli intelligence, the extent of North Korean assistance and the seriousness of the Syrian effort are uncertain, raising the possibility that North Korea was merely unloading items it no longer needed. Syria has actively pursued chemical weapons in the past but not nuclear arms -- leaving some proliferation experts skeptical of the intelligence that prompted Israel's attack.

Syria and North Korea both denied this week that they were cooperating on a nuclear program. Bush refused to comment yesterday on the attack, but he issued a blunt warning to North Korea that "the exportation of information and/or materials" would affect negotiations under which North Korea would give up its nuclear programs in exchanges for energy aid and diplomatic recognition.

"To the extent that they are proliferating, we expect them to stop that proliferation, if they want the six-party talks to be successful," he said at a news conference, referring to negotiations that also include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Unlike its destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, Israel made no announcement of the recent raid and imposed strict censorship on reporting by the Israeli media. Syria made only muted protests, and Arab leaders have remained silent. As a result, a daring and apparently successful attack to eliminate a potential nuclear threat has been shrouded in mystery.

"There is no question it was a major raid. It was an extremely important target," said Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence officer at Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "It came at a time the Israelis were very concerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects of war. The decision was taken despite their concerns it could produce a war. That decision reflects how important this target was to Israeli military planners."

Israel has long known about Syria's interest in chemical and even biological weapons, but "if Syria decided to go beyond that, Israel would think that was a real red line," Riedel said.

Edward Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and founding director of Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, said that when he was in Israel this summer he noticed "a great deal of concern in official Israeli circles about the situation in the north," in particular whether Syria's young ruler, Bashar al-Assad, "had the same sensitivity to red lines that his father had." Bashar succeeded his Hafez al-Assad as president of Syria in 2000.

The Israeli attack came just three days after a North Korean ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, carrying a cargo that was officially listed as cement.

The ship's role remains obscure. Israeli sources have suggested it carried nuclear equipment. Others have maintained that it contained only missile parts, and some have said the ship's arrival and the attack are merely coincidental. One source suggested that Israel's attack was prompted by a fear of media leaks on the intelligence.

The Bush administration's wariness when presented with the Israeli intelligence contrasts with its reaction in 2002, when U.S. officials believed they had caught North Korea building a clandestine nuclear program in violation of a nuclear-freeze deal arranged by the Clinton administration.

After the Bush administration's accusation, the Clinton deal collapsed and North Korea restarted a nuclear reactor, stockpiled plutonium and eventually conducted a nuclear test. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice convinced Bush this year to accept a deal with North Korea to shut down the reactor, infuriating conservatives inside and outside the administration.

But for years, Bush has also warned North Korea against engaging in nuclear proliferation, specifically making that a red line that could not be crossed after North Korea tested a nuclear device last year. The Israeli intelligence therefore suggested North Korea was both undermining the agreement and crossing that line.

Conservative critics of the administration's recent diplomacy with North Korea have seized on reports of the Israeli intelligence as evidence that the White House is misguided if it thinks it can ever strike a lasting deal with Pyongyang. "However bad it might be for the six-party talks, U.S. security requires taking this sort of thing seriously," said John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who was a top arms control official in Bush's first term.

But advocates of engagement have accused critics of trying to sabotage the talks. China on Monday abruptly postponed a round of six-party talks scheduled to begin this week, but U.S. officials now say the talks should start again Thursday.

Some North Korean experts said they are puzzled why, if the reports are true, Pyongyang would jeopardize the hard-won deal with the United States and the other four countries. "It does not make any sense at all in the context of the last nine months," said Charles "Jack" Pritchard, a former U.S. negotiator with North Korea and now president of the Korea Economic Institute.

Life These Days in Gaza

Throughout 40 years of occupation, collective punishments that violate the fourth Geneva Convention have been commonplace

The BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen:

The other week, I sat in Gaza City with Raji Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).

The Gaza Strip's economy has been hit hard by the Israeli embargo

It was a hot Gaza day, the summer was winding down to the holy month of Ramadan, and outside his office not much was moving on the street.

Why should it? The economy of the Gaza Strip is in a state of collapse. The jobs that are left - and they are few - are disappearing.

Since the militant group Hamas used force to drive out its rivals, Fatah, in June, the crossing used for the passage of goods between Gaza, Israel and the outside world has been closed.

Around 1.4 million people live in the Gaza Strip. Some 1.1 million of them receive UN food rations.

For many Palestinians, it is ironic that President Abbas will talk to representatives of the Israeli government, but not to anyone from Hamas

Israel, like most of its Western allies, regards Hamas as an unreconstructed terrorist organisation bent on the destruction of the Jewish state and believes that embargo and isolation are good ways of dispatching it to the dustbin of history.

Fatah, the other main Palestinian faction, also wants pressure on Hamas kept up.

Publicly, Fatah protests about what the embargo does to Gaza's people, privately it gives tacit approval.

For many Palestinians, it is ironic that their President, Mahmoud Abbas, will talk to representatives of the Israeli government, but not to anyone who comes from the Islamist group which won a democratic election in January 2006.

Collective punishment

Raji Sourani and I discussed all of that. Then he spoke about some orange groves his family owned.

Even though Gaza is one of the most crowded places in the world, there is a surprising amount of open agricultural land.

Israel wants to halt to the continued rocket attacks launched from Gaza

Mr Sourani spoke of how on hot days like the one that was sweltering all around us, they would picnic in the shade of the trees.

They could not do it anymore, he said, because Israeli bulldozers had crossed into Gaza and flattened the orange groves.

A wide strip of land along the border has been cleared, Israel says for security reasons, so its soldiers can spot Palestinian militants who want to kill Israelis.

Many Palestinians say that reasons of security can also be a cover for the collective punishment of property owners.

'Worse things happen'

I was expecting Mr Sourani to talk about the pain of losing something that was full of family memories.

He said it did hurt. But he also described the way that his elderly mother, to all and intents and purposes, had told her family to pull themselves together.

Israel has apologised for killing the three young cousins last month

Listen, she said, they were only trees. They have gone, but they can grow again.

The important thing, she told them, is that none of you are dead.

Now, what is the point of writing about all this?

As Mr Sourani's mother said, many worse things happen in Gaza. Violent death is part of everyone's life.

Later the same day, I went to the home of a family that was mourning three children, two boys aged 10 and 12, and a 12-year-old girl.

The young cousins were mistakenly killed by Israeli soldiers last month because they were playing close to rocket launchers outside Beit Hanoun.

I suppose I am mentioning Mr Sourani's mother because she displays not just a commendable sense of proportion, but also a capacity to endure. You won't get far without it in Gaza.

Israeli frustration

They need it too on the other side of the border wire in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, which is regularly rocketed from Gaza.

A couple of days after I met Mr Sourani, a rocket landed close to the town's nursery school.

Sderot residents have protested against perceived Israeli inaction

Very fortunately, nobody was hurt in that attack. But it filled many Israelis who saw television pictures of terrified infants with rage and frustration.

Newspaper columnists asked what Israel would be doing if the children in the Sderot nursery school had been killed (their answer: re-invading Gaza) and angrily rejected the idea that Israel's policy should be dictated by the kill-rate of Palestinian rockets.

That started calls to find a way to punish Gazans for allowing rockets to be fired at Israel, which deepened after more than 60 Israeli soldiers were hurt in another attack.

This week, the Israeli government produced its answer.

It decided to classify Gaza a "hostile entity", and, pending a legal review, to reserve the right to impose collective punishments by cutting supplies of fuel and electricity, and by restricting the movement of people.

'Big prison'

Gaza's new status institutionalises methods that Israel is already using to ratchet up the pressure.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked Israel to reconsider.

He said Gaza's people "should not be punished for the unacceptable actions of militants and extremists".

The Palestinians to whom I have spoken ask what is new.

For years, they have routinely described the Gaza Strip as a big prison and it is hard to argue with the description.

Throughout 40 years of occupation, collective punishments that violate the fourth Geneva Convention have been commonplace.

Echoing terminal

In Gaza today, supplies of everything are in short supply because of existing Israeli restrictions, and the movement of Palestinians into and out of the territory has already almost ceased.

Israel has built an enormous border terminal with sophisticated layers of security that culminate with a full body scan.

Israel has heavily restricted movement into and out of Gaza

You enter a circular chamber, the doors of which hiss shut behind you.

A loudspeaker voice, owned by a person who presumably is watching what is happening on a TV monitor, tells you to stand with your legs apart and to raise your hands above your head.

Sensors spin and swoop round, looking for dangerous substances that you may have swallowed or inserted into your body.

It does not hurt - nothing touches you and if you pass scrutiny, you walk out into the echoing terminal, glacial with air conditioning, past security people who preside over a building that is almost empty because so few people can cross.

Perhaps the terminal is designed for a better time, of neighbourly relations between two states.

US friends only

And as life for Gaza's civilians becomes worse, Western politicians and diplomats have hopes that for the first time since the collapse of the Camp David summit in 2000, there could be a chance to restart peace talks.

For them, everything has become easier since Hamas took over in Gaza.

Ms Rice has yet to address the problem that her strategy ignores both Hamas and the Syrian government - two entities who have the capacity to wreck anything the conference produces

They can now deal solely with Fatah, which has set up a technocratic "government" without any Hamas participation.

The West - and the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian Authority president - is focusing on a US plan for an international conference in November, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is working towards this week as she tours the Middle East.

She has yet to address the problem that her strategy ignores both Hamas and the Syrian government - two entities who have the capacity to wreck anything the conference produces that they do not like. Only friends of the US are being invited.

An invitation arrived at Mr Sourani's office to meet the new Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair.

It would have meant going through the empty border terminal and to travel up to Jerusalem, but Mr Sourani was not granted a permit by the Israeli authorities.

He was frustrated, but he also cannot get a permit to visit his wife and children, who are in Egypt.

Guess which hurts most. As his mother said, keep everything in proportion.

When's It Going To End?

Senate Approves Resolution Denouncing MoveOn.org Ad

The NY Times reports:

The Senate approved a resolution on Thursday denouncing the liberal antiwar group MoveOn.org over an advertisement that questioned the credibility of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.

MoveOn.org, with 3.2 million members, has become a powerful force in Democratic politics and the advertisement it paid for, which appeared in The New York Times, has come under sharp attack from Congressional Republicans and others as unpatriotic and impugning the integrity of General Petraeus.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, both Democratic candidates for president, voted against the resolution, which passed 72 to 25.

But curiously absent from the vote was Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, also a Democratic candidate for president, who had canceled a campaign appearance in South Carolina so he could be in Washington for votes.

Mr. Obama issued a statement calling the resolution, put forward by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, “a stunt.” Mr. Obama said, “By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against these empty politics.”

Mr. Obama had voted minutes earlier in favor of an extremely similar resolution proposed by Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.

Ms. Boxer’s proposal, which failed, called for the Senate to “strongly condemn all attacks on the honor, integrity and patriotism” of anyone in the United States armed forces. It did not mention the MoveOn.org ad. Mr. Dodd and Mrs. Clinton also voted in favor of Ms. Boxer’s proposal.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination, was in Iowa and did not vote.

At a White House news conference, President Bush called the advertisement disgusting and said it was an attack not only on General Petraeus but also on the entire American military.

“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat Party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad,” Mr. Bush said. “And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org — or more afraid of irritating them than they are of irritating the United States military.”

Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, has urged the House to hold hearings on the MoveOn.org ad and to investigate whether The Times gave the group an improper discount. A New York Times Company spokeswoman has said that the group paid a standard “standby” rate.

MoveOn.org lashed out at Mr. Bush’s comments and pledged to double its spending on ads criticizing Republican lawmakers for blocking efforts by Democrats to change the war strategy. Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, said, “What’s disgusting is that the president has more interest in political attacks than developing an exit strategy to get our troops out of Iraq and end this awful war.”

At Huffington Post, R.J. Eskow lays out how Democrats could have strategically played this and won.

I don't believe any strategic games were necessary to win. MoveOn.org has nothing to apologize for, while the Bush administration and Republicans (and now 22 Democrats) have everything to apologize for. Particularly these Democrats that voted for this resolution condemning MoveOn.org:

Feinstein (D-CA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Johnson (D-SD)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Salazar (D-CO)
Tester (D-MT)
Webb (D-VA)

Not voting were Biden, Cantwell, and Obama (who is playing games with the base, by moments earlier voting yes on a similar resolution by Barbara Boxer that failed). The full list can be found here.

Another day passed with American troops and Iraqi civilians dying for what we all know is the increased wealth from oil for a very few of Bush's and Cheney's family and friends. Mike Stark at Daily Kos has a plan. I think it's a good one and about Goddamned time.

When Resolved Senators Leave The White House Changed Men

I have to wonder what Bush and Cheney offered John Warner, for him to change his mind about his own amendment.

In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank writes:

To paraphrase the immortal words of John Kerry, Sen. John Warner actually did vote to shorten the Iraq war before he voted to lengthen it.

Just two months ago, the courtly Virginia Republican went to the Senate floor and sided with his Democratic colleague from the commonwealth, Jim Webb, on a plan that would shorten troop deployments in Iraq. Yesterday, he went to the same place to announce that he would now vote against the same bill.

"I endorsed it," Warner said. "I intend now to cast a vote against it."

With those dozen words, the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee put a surprise end to the latest efforts in Congress to limit the Iraq war.

Democrats had been hoping that Warner, who last month endorsed the start of a pullout from Iraq, would bring enough Republicans with him to vote for their best plan to accelerate the troop withdrawal: Webb's plan to limit the troops' deployments. But this effort, like previous ones, ended in failure.

"Senator Webb's amendment, I would say without any equivocation, is designed to help protect the concept of the all-volunteer force, and it was for that reason that I joined him," Warner explained in his discursive floor statement, which led to the conclusion that "I will have to cast a vote against my good friend's amendment."

Pro-war Republicans, who had been grumbling about Warner's perfidy for weeks, suddenly celebrated him as an American hero.

"Having now decided to change his vote on this particular amendment is of monumental importance and is the type of decision that makes all of us proud to serve in this great institution," Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) pronounced.

Webb was rather less pleased to discover that Warner had retreated from their shared foxhole. The White House "turned up the political heat, and that made people, like particularly Senator Warner, uncomfortable," he deduced.

And when did Webb learn of the betrayal? "Um," Webb replied, "he told me five minutes before the debate began this morning."

Webb should not have been surprised.

In January, Warner drafted a Senate resolution opposing President Bush's "surge" of additional troops into Iraq. Then, on Feb. 5, he voted against bringing up his own resolution for debate. The surge went ahead, unmolested. In the spring, Warner repeatedly flirted with opposition to Bush, but each time he returned to the fold.

Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008

Project Censored's list is out:

#1 No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person"

#2 Bush Moves Toward Martial Law

#3 AFRICOM: US Military Control of Africa’s Resources

#4 Frenzy of Increasingly Destructive Trade Agreements

#5 Human Traffic Builds US Embassy in Iraq

#6 Operation FALCON Raids

#7 Behind Blackwater Inc.

#8 KIA: The US Neoliberal Invasion of India

#9 Privatization of America’s Infrastructure

#10 Vulture Funds Threaten Poor Nations’ Debt Relief

#11 The Scam of “Reconstruction” in Afghanistan

#12 Another Massacre in Haiti by UN Troops

#13 Immigrant Roundups to Gain Cheap Labor for US Corporate Giants

#14 Impunity for US War Criminals

#15 Toxic Exposure Can Be Transmitted to Future Generations on a “Second Genetic Code”

#16 No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11

#17 Drinking Water Contaminated by Military and Corporations

#18 Mexico’s Stolen Election

#19 People’s Movement Challenges Neoliberal Agenda

#20 Terror Act Against Animal Activists

#21 US Seeks WTO Immunity for Illegal Farm Payments

#22 North Invades Mexico

#23 Feinstein’s Conflict of Interest in Iraq

#24 Media Misquotes Threat From Iran’s President

#25 Who Will Profit from Native Energy?

Home Foreclosures Up 36 Percent in August

The Associated Press reports:

The number of foreclosure filings reported in the U.S. last month more than doubled versus August 2006, and jumped 36 percent from July - a trend that signals many homeowners are increasingly unable to make timely payments on their mortgages or sell their homes amid a national housing slump.

A total of 243,947 foreclosure filings were reported in August, up 115 percent from 113,300 in the same month a year ago, Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc. said Tuesday.

There were 179,599 foreclosure filings reported in July.

The filings include default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. Some properties might have received more than one notice if the owners have multiple mortgages.

August's total represents the highest number of foreclosure filings reported in a single month since the company began tracking monthly filings two years ago.
The national foreclosure rate last month was one filing for every 510 households, the company said.

"The jump in foreclosure filings this month might be the beginning of the next wave of increased foreclosure activity, as a large number of subprime adjustable rate loans are beginning to reset now," RealtyTrac Chief Executive James J. Saccacio said.

The mortgage industry has been rocked by a surge in defaults, particularly among borrowers with subprime loans and adjustable rate mortgages that initially had attractive "teaser" interest rates but then can adjust upward, resulting in a payment shock.

Many of the loans, some of which adjust in as little as two years, were issued in 2005 and 2006 during the height of the housing boom.

Lagging home sales and flat or decreasing home prices have also left homeowners unable to make their mortgage payments hard-pressed to find buyers.

The latest figures also reflect an increase in the number of homes going into foreclosure that are not being picked up in estate sales and are ending up going back to lenders.

The number of bank repossessions jumped to 42,789 in August, compared with 20,116 a year earlier, the RealtyTrac said. In July, there were 26,842 bank repossessions.

Nevada, California and Florida had the highest foreclosure rates in the country last month, the firm said.

Nevada reported one foreclosure filing for every 165 households - more than three times the national average. The state had 6,197 filings in August, an increase of 21 percent from July and more than triple the year-ago figure.

California's foreclosure rate was one filing for every 224 households. The state reported the most foreclosure filings of any single state with 57,875, up 48 percent from July and an increase of more than 300 percent from August 2006.

Florida had one foreclosure filing for every 243 households. In all, the state reported 33,932 foreclosure filings, up 77 percent from July's total and more than twice the year-ago total.

Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Indiana rounded out the 10 states with the highest foreclosure rates.

The End of Privacy As We Known It

You receive a pink slip and a positive HIV test result on the same day? Coincidence, or does your doctor also work for your employer?



The Washington Times reports:

Corporations struggling to stem the rising tide of health care costs are providing on-site medical services that used to be found only in doctors' offices and hospitals.

The National Business Group on Health recently released a survey on the prevalence of on-site clinics among U.S. employers with more than 1,000 employees. Of those surveyed, 23 percent reported offering on-site medical services in 2007, while 29 percent plan to offer a program next year.

"These clinics are also an opportunity to provide services in a more cost-effective way," said Helen Darling, president of the Washington lobbying group. "They will have limited services, and the patient won't get a lot of extra costly services, which the employer would have had to pay for."

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that the premiums businesses pay for their workers' health care have increased 78 percent since 2001. But creating a medical facility is not exactly a cheap solution to the problem, so the trend is predominantly found among large employers.

Automakers and other manufacturers have been incorporating on-site health care into their business plans for years. Mishaps are a fact of life in manufacturing, where nurses are needed to treat occupational injuries.

But over the past several years, white-collar employers, including technology and pharmaceutical companies, are discovering that it is cost-effective to offer a clinic with a family physician who provides care to employees and their families.

World Health Management of Cleveland has offered on-site health care services to employers for more than 20 years. Jim Hummer, founder of the company, said he witnessed an evolution in employers' thinking on health care during that time.

"All of a sudden, it's in vogue to get involved in workers' health care issues," he said. "Health care costs have gone out of sight, so the employers are realizing they must change. For the first time, there is an alignment of interest between the workers and employers on preventing illnesses."

Isn't it funny how the Washington Times ignored patients' medical privacy issues in this article and the downside of having your doctor working for your employer and not for you? How can anyone not believe that with an arrangement such as this one, management won't be reviewing employees' health records before handing out promotions?

U.S. Officials Confirm Israel Strike on Syria

Only in a parallel universe is Israel's act of aggression not considered an act of war.

Reuters reports:

U.S. officials on Wednesday confirmed Israel launched air strikes against Syria last week and said they were to target weapons Israel believes were headed for the militant group Hezbollah.

One defense official dismissed speculation Israel had aimed for any nuclear-related target. Two others said the target included weapons Israeli and U.S. officials have said Iran provides to Hezbollah through Syria.

"They saw a weapons flow," one official said, referring to weapons caches intended for Hezbollah, which fired thousands of rockets into Israel during a 36-day conflict last year.

It was still unclear whether Israel hit its targets in the September 6 air strikes.

Israel has declined comment on the strikes. Syria says the munitions dropped by Israel did no damage.

One U.S. defense official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the significance of the strikes was not whether Israel hit its targets, but rather that it displayed a willingness to take military action.

Syria has protested to the United Nations about the air strikes. On Wednesday, Syria's U.N. ambassador said Israel's motive was to torpedo peace moves.

SYRIA AT U.N.

"We think the Israeli purpose behind such an aggressive act is to torpedo the peace process, to torpedo the idea of holding an international conference," Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters.

Asked about Hezbollah's weapons, Ja'afari said, "This is blah, blah. This is nonsense, this is an unfounded statement. It is not up to the Israelis or anyone else to assess what we have in Syria."

"There was no target," he added. "They dropped their munitions. They were running away after they were confronted by our air defense."

Israeli public radio stations, which like all media in the country are under military censorship, led morning news bulletins with a New York Times report that U.S. officials had said Israel carried out the strikes -- and that U.S. officials believed Syria may have obtained nuclear material.

While some officials speculated that Syria and North Korea had opened some form of cooperation on nuclear weapons, other U.S. officials and former intelligence officials told Reuters that seemed unlikely and technically difficult.

A European diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters satellite surveillance of an alleged nuclear site in Syria had been inconclusive due to poor weather. However, he said monitoring of this site would continue.

Israeli jets last struck in 2003 across a border that remains tense but quiet 34 years after the last war between the two neighbors ended in an edgy ceasefire. In June last year Syrian guns opened fire on Israeli aircraft over Syria.

Israel has urged Syria to stop supporting militant Palestinian groups and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.

Some Israeli intelligence officials also have suggested Syria's government might be ready to try to take by force parts of the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the war of 1967.

Syrian officials have said Syria was seeking peaceful means to recover the Golan, although some also have suggested force remained an option if diplomacy failed. Israeli-Syrian peace efforts have been stalled for seven years.

And notice how the media went to black-out.

Riddle of Chech Body Armor Found with Iraqi Insurgents

Riddle solved . . . . Iraq security forces under suspicion after Prague says equipment was legally supplied to police.

The Sunday Herald reports:

Hundreds OF Iraqi insurgents killed or captured in battle by American-led coalition forces have been found to be wearing state-of-the-art Czech-manufactured body armour. The latest findings have added to mounting concern about the quantity and sophistication of military equipment reaching Islamist fighters, sectarian death squads and al-Qaeda terror gangs inside Iraq.

The riddle of the provenance of the Czech body armour highlights the very thin dividing line between legal and smuggled arms and other war materiel sloshing around in Iraq. According to the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based research organisation, seven million unauthorised guns are now in civilians' hands in a country of 27 million.

For months the US military command in Iraq has suspected that illegal shipments of Czech-made body armour and other equipment have been reaching rebels in increasing quantities.

US Army and FBI investigators probing how the Czech flak jackets came into the hands of Iraqi insurgents compiled an impressive dossier, complete with the serial numbers of vests seized from radicals. Then they turned to Prague for help to uncover the Czech end of the presumed smuggling ring.

Last week, Pavla Kopecka, a spokeswoman for the Czech police headquarters, confirmed America's request for help in the investigation.

"We have received information from the Americans about the fact that Czech-made body armour has been found in the hands of rebels in Iraq. We also received a request to investigate how these vests got to the Iraqi insurgents."

The consignment of 6000 flak jackets had been manufactured by a Czech defence department-approved firm in Jevicko, northwest Moravia, and legally exported to Baghdad, Kopecka said.

The real surprise of the Prague investigation, carried out by the Czech organised crime squad, was that the vests had been legally supplied to the Iraqi police at a cost of $2.7million (£1.33m).

It was, the Czech police spokeswoman emphasised, the first instance of legally exported Czech military supplies ending up in the wrong hands in Iraq."Everything in this case was absolutely legal and in accordance with Czech laws. We had not come across any problems with our own or international laws."

Kopecka added: "The problems occurred in Iraq. I could only speculate as to how the body armour delivered to the Iraqi police reached the insurgents."

The stark and unpalatable truth facing the Americans is that Iraq's police force, infiltrated by Shia militias, death squads and al-Qaeda-linked radicals, must have handed over weapons and protective vests to insurgents.

Recently, hundreds of state-of-the-art high-velocity Austrian sniper rifles exported to Iran were found in the hands of Shia insurgents in Iraq. An investigation in Vienna revealed that these formed part of a consignment of 800 specialist rifles legally supplied to the Tehran police drug squad.

The US defence department this summer estimated that some 190,000 American weapons supplied to the Iraqi security forces "have gone missing". This helps explain, in part, how easily legal weapons become illegal guns in Iraq. It appears that one in every 25 weapons supplied by the Americans to the Iraqi security forces have ended up in the hands of insurgents.

And that will not make it any easier to withdraw some of the troops now boosting America's "surge" in Iraq.

The Czechs' vindication in the Iraqi body armour affair and their police's insistence that no illegal shipments of any Czech military materiel had taken place to Iraq does not, however, exonerate their dealings in the world's arms bazaar.

The Czech government's annual report on arms exports has drawn criticism from Amnesty International. The international human rights group accused Prague of exporting weapons to counties which violate human rights, and drew attention to the fact that there were no guarantees that Czech weapons would not end up in a third country trying to outfox a United Nations arms embargo.

Amnesty's criticism has upset Prague. Vaclav Balek, head of the foreign ministry's security policy department, said: "I find this criticism unfair because we are quite open and we do publish all the information possible. In the process of granting a licence we have to take into consideration various factors and one of these is the commitment of Czech exporters."

He added: "If we are talking about tricky' countries, such as Ethiopia or Nigeria, I have to make clear that the exports in question are exports of spare parts for military equipment exported in the past. In particular, we are talking about spare parts for trainer aircraft."

O, to know then what we know now, that the 'insurgents' are, more accurately, 'counter-insurgents'; Iraqis, fighting the real insurgents, us, the occupying U.S. military.

Wait a minute, we did know:

...Gen Shinseki told a congressional committee that he thought an occupying force in the hundreds of thousands would be required to police postwar Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld publicly repudiated him, saying he was "far off the mark".

In semi-private, the Pentagon's civilian leadership was far more scathing. A "senior administration official" told the Village Voice newspaper that Gen Shinseki's remark was "bullshit from a Clintonite enamoured of using the army for peacekeeping and not winning wars".

Then the general said it again. "It could be as high as several hundred thousand," he told another committee. "We all hope it is something less." Most of the media were too distracted by the build-up to war to notice. Serious analysts, however, were staggered by the insubordination.

This appears to have been round two of another, more immediately relevant, dispute about how many troops are needed to win this war. In this case, the military prevailed over the original civilian notion that fewer than 100,000 could do it. As even more soldiers rush to the Gulf to bring the number closer to 300,000, the original Rumsfeld plan looks in hindsight to be what the army said at the time: a recipe for possible catastrophe.

The full reality on the ground may not become known until Saddam Hussein has fallen, but no one can now seriously believe - as many top Pentagon civilians appear to have done a week ago - that the main problem for an occupying force will be what to do with all the floral gifts.