Investigations

A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

dlindorff — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:34:51 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Before the odor of burned gunpowder has left the air of the Taj
Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the US is lecturing India not to go off
half-cocked and attack Pakistan, simply because all of the attackers in
the terrorist assaults in that city arrived by boat, apparently from
neighboring Pakistan. US officials, including Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, are calling on India to engage in a “transparent” and
“thorough” investigation into the attacks to establish who was
responsible.

How different this is from the American government’s response to the 9-11 attacks in the US!

`Instead of a “transparent” investigation, we got secret sessions
of the Congressional intelligence committees, closed-door interviews of
key officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney by
the 9-11 Commission, and of course the secret round of thousands of
mostly Islamic people living in the US, many of whom were held of
months incommunicado and without charge, some of whom were subjected to
torture, and many other of whom were deported to likely arrest, torture
and even death.

Instead of a calm assessment of what had happened and who was
responsible, the Bush Administration rounded up Saudi members of the
Bin Laden family, and others connected to the regime in Saudi Arabia,
whence came most of the people reportedly involved in the hijacking of
the four planes used in the attacks, and, with no attempt at
interrogation, flew them home to Saudi Arabia. Then, again with only
minimal evidence, the US launched an all-out war within days upon
Afghanistan, with the goal of ousting and destroying the Taliban
government of that country. Shortly after that aggressive move, the
Bush/Cheney administration shifted its focus and launched an even
larger all-out war against Iraq, a nation that had no connection
whatsoever with the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

So much for transparency and measured responses.

Here again, we have an example of the US expecting one mode of behavior for the rest of the world, and another for itself.

We Americans, it would appear, are not required to operate in a
logical manner, are not required to think through the consequences of
our actions, are not required to obey international laws, and are not
required to listen to the counsel of others. If the United Nations will
not support our plan to attack and topple the government of another
sovereign nation, we will just do it ourselves. But other countries may
not behave in this manner.

There is another way that India and the US are different which has
come to light in this latest atrocity. Following the Mumbai attacks,
India’s minister of security resigned, in an admission that his
department had failed to discover an attack that was clearly at least
six months in planning, and had failed to prevent the massive loss of
life because of inadequate preparation of police and troops for such an
eventuality (police and soldiers were not equipped even with sniper
rifles and scopes that might have enabled them to shoot and kill some
of the 10 terrorists with minimal threat to their hostages).

Nobody resigned for the manifold failings that led up to and allowed
for the 9-11 attacks. Nobody resigned for intelligence failures, nobody
resigned for air defense failures, nobody resigned for investigative
failures, nobody resigned for the lies that were the basis for the
attack on Afghanistan and the war against Iraq. There has indeed been
zero accountability in the US for the biggest national security
disaster since Pearl Harbor. But in India, it took only days for the
chief person responsible for security in the Indian government to
resign his post in disgrace.

Let us hope that saner heads prevail in India when it comes to Pakistan, as the story of this latest terror action is exposed.

And let us hope that Americans finally demand an honest accounting
of what happened on 9/11/2001 and that those who are guilty of allowing
it to happen, and of sending the country off on a pointless, bloody and
seemingly endless jihad in the Middle East as a result are exposed and
forced to pay for their ineptness and their crimes.
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

"Toward a Brighter Future"

Jonathan Schwarz — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:14:06 -0500

Judge Patricia Wald, former chief judge for the D.C. Court of Appeals and jurist on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, writing in the new report "Guantánamo and Its Aftermath" (pdf):

There are bound to be casualties when any nation veers from its domestic and international obligations to uphold human rights and international humanitarian law. Those casualties are etched on the minds and bodies of many of the 62 former detainees interviewed for this report, many of whom suffered infinite variations on physical and mental abuse, including intimidation, stress positions, enforced nudity, sexual humiliation, and interference with religious practices. Indeed, I was struck by the similarity between the abuse they suffered and the abuse we found inflicted upon Bosnian Muslim prisoners in Serbian camps when I sat as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, a U.N. court fully supported by the United States. The officials and guards in charge of those prison camps and the civilian leaders who sanctioned their establishment were prosecuted—often by former U.S. government and military lawyers serving with the tribunal—for war crimes, crimes against humanity and, in extreme cases, genocide.

From an AP story, June 30, 2001:

The dramatic decision to deliver Milosevic to the tribunal in defiance of an order by the Yugoslav Constitututional Court staying any extradition threatened to plunge the Balkan country into a political crisis.
Milosevic's successor, Vojislav Kostunica, denounced the handover as ''illegal and unconstitutional.'' Others accused Serb Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who spearheaded the decision, of ''treason'' and knuckling under U.S. pressure....
President Bush praised Yugoslavia for handing over Milosevic, saying the move showed the Balkan nation wants to turn away from ''its tragic past and toward a brighter future.''
U.S. officials said the administration planned to make a pledge in the range of about $100 million for a Yugoslav assistance package, to be discussed Friday in Brussels at a conference of international aid donors.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the handover as ''a thoroughly good thing.''

The full statement by Bush, available on the White House website:

I applaud today’s transfer of indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. This very important step by the leaders in Belgrade ensures that Milosevic can finally be tried for his war crimes and crimes against humanity. During various visits by Yugoslav authorities to Washington, they pledged that Yugoslavia was committed to cooperating with the Tribunal. Milosevic’s transfer is a strong sign of that commitment. We are confident that the government of Yugoslavia will continue down the path of cooperation with the Tribunal.
The transfer of Milosevic to the Hague is an unequivocal message to those persons who brought such tragedy and brutality to the Balkans that they will be held accountable for their crimes. Milosevic’s transfer further signals the commitment of the new leadership in Belgrade to turn Yugoslavia away from its tragic past and toward a brighter future as a full member of the community of European democracies.
The United States stands ready to assist the people of Yugoslavia as they continue to take the difficult steps to advance its democratic and economic reform.

(Suggested by Glenn Greenwald's reference here: "[T]here were early statement from the Bush White House in 2001 about how critical it was to prosecute these Yugoslav leaders for war crimes...")

Pelosi Confesses Knowing the Truth About Bush's War Based on Lies: "I don't know what could have been done..." Tell her!

Chip — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:38:56 -0400

Begins at 4:51.

Q: If you were to go back and change anything from your political career, what would it be?

A: Well, of course, the biggest disappointment for me is that we are still in this war in Iraq, and, ah, I had always thought at the time that, that, ah, people knew the truth they would not vote for this war and, I don't know what else, er, not have been supportive of this, I don't know what else we could have done, ah, but this has been the most damaging to us: loss of life, over 4,000, tens of thousands injured, many thousands of them permanently, cost in dollars, which is small compared to the loss of life and limb but the cost in dollars to the tune of trillions of dollars, the cost of reputation in the world, the cost in our military readiness, our capabi...eroding our...undermining our military capability to protect our interests wherever they are threatened, undermining our ability to fight the real war on terror which is in Afghanistan, uh, I don't know what else could have been done, ah, but I keep revisiting that every step of the way to think what could we have done to stop this President from taking us into a war on the basis of a false premise, without the proper preparation of our troops, without a plan for success, a strategy to leave, ah, that is where we have been for more than 2 years, we're there 2 years longer than we were in World War II.

Friday's House Judiciary Hearing on Impeachment: A Victory and a Challenge

dlindorff — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:34:40 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The dramatic hearing on presidential crimes and abuses of power
held on Friday by the House Judiciary Committee was both a staged
farce, and at the same time, a powerful demonstration of the power of a
grassroots movement in defense of the Constitution. It was at once both
testimony to the cowardice and self-inflicted impotence of Congress and
of the Democratic Party that technically controls that body, and to the
enormity of the damage that has been wrought to the nation’s democracy
by two aspiring tyrants in the White House.

As Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the committee, made clear
more than once during the six-hour session, this was “not an
impeachment hearing, however much many in the audience might wish it to
be” He might well have added that he himself was not the fierce
defender of the Constitution and of the authority of Congress that he
once was before gaining control of the Judiciary Committee, however
much his constituents, his wife, and Americans across the country might
wish him to be.

At the same time, while the hearing was strictly limited to the
most superficial airing of Bush administration crimes and misdemeanors,
the fact that the session—technically an argument in defense of 36
articles of impeachment filed in the House over the past several months
by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)--was nonetheless a major victory for the
impeachment movement. It happened because earlier in the month, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has sworn since taking control of the
House in November 2006, that impeachment would be “off the table”
during the 110th Congress, called a hasty meeting with Majority Leader
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Rep. Conyers, and Rep. Kucinich, and called
for such a limited hearing.

It was no coincidence that shortly before Pelosi’s backdown, peace
activist and Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan announced that her campaign
had collected well over the 10,000 signatures necessary to qualify for
listing on the ballot as an independent candidate for Congress against
Pelosi in the Speaker’s home district in San Francisco. Sheehan has
been an outspoken advocate of impeaching both Bush and Cheney. “Pelosi
is trying to throw a bone to her constituents by allowing a hearing on
impeachment,” said Sheehan, who came to Washington, DC to attend. “It’s
just like her finally stating publicly that Bush’s presidency is a
failure—something it has taken her two years to come to, but which
we’ve been saying for years.”

So determined were Pelosi and Conyers to limit the scope and
intensity of the hearing that they acceded to a call for Republicans on
the Judiciary Committee to adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s Rules of the
House, which prohibit any derogatory comments about the President,
which was interpreted by Chairman Conyers as meaning no one, including
witnesses or members of the committee, could suggest that Bush had lied
or deceived anyone. Since a number of Rep. Kucinich’s proposed articles
of impeachment specifically charge the president with lying to Congress
and the American People, this made for some comic moments, with witness
Bruce Fein, a former assistant attorney general under former President
Ronald Reagan, to say he would reference his listing of crimes to the
“resident” of the White House.

In the end, the rule imposing a gag on calling the president a
criminal fell by the wayside, with witness Vincent Bugliosi. A former
Los Angeles deputy district attorney, accusing Bush of being guilty of
the murder of over 4000 American soldiers and of hundreds of thousands
of innocent Iraqi civilians because he had “lied” the country into an
illegal and unnecessary war, and with committee member Shiela Jackson
Lee (D-TX) suggesting that the president may have committed treason in
invading Iraq, and that he appeared to be preparing to do it again with
an unprovoked invasion of Iran.

Conyers also acquiesced in a Republican effort to minimize public
monitoring and involvement in the hearing, allowing the minority party
to fill most of the available seats in the hearing room with office
staffers who showed little interest in the proceedings. Only a few
dozen of the hundreds of pro-impeachment activists who had come to the
Rayburn Office Building at 7 am in order to get seats in the Judiciary
Committee hearing room were allowed in, with the rest having to remain
in the hall or go to two remote “overflow” rooms to watch the
proceedings on a TV hookup. Conyers also went along with a call by
Republican members of the committee to have some of those who did make
it into the hearing ejected simply for wearing buttons on their shirts
calling for impeachment (the Republican members referred to these as
“signs”), though such small personal tokens are routinely allowed in
congressional hearing rooms.

It was clear that this was to be a tightly controlled and strictly limited hearing.

It was also clear that it was intended to go nowhere.

At one point, after hearing witnesses like Fein, Bugliosi, former
representative and Nixon impeachment committee member Elizabeth
Holtzman, former Salt Lake City mayor and impeachment activist Rocky
Anderson, former House Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr, former
Watergate Committee counsel and current senior counsel of the Brennan
Center for Justice Frederick A.O. Schwartz, and Elliott Adams,
president of the board of Veterans for Peace, lay out the
administration’s crimes and abuses of power—which included charges of
usurping the legislative powers of Congress, violating international
treaties, war crimes, lying to Congress, an illegal war, felony
violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth
Amendment, defying Congressional subpoenas, obstruction of justice and
more, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chair of the Constitution
subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, appeared convinced that the
abuses were real and serious.

But Nadler, who for two years has been a major obstacle on the
Judiciary Committee to any efforts to move impeachment to a formal
hearing, said, “No president has been removed from office through
impeachment.” He asked the witnesses, “How would you approach
impeachment today so it would be a viable option?”

Former Rep. Holtzman responded, “The real remedy to a president who
believes he is above the law is impeachment. There is no running away
from that.” She said, “An impeachment inquiry, handled fairly, could
work. Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I believe it could work.”

The basic point, made by Holtzman, by Fein and by many others,
including this writer, is that worrying about the political opposition
to impeachment, both in the House, and in the Senate, not to mention
among the broader public, is completely wrongheaded. Even when
impeachment articles were first filed against Nixon, the public and the
bulk of the Congress were against the idea. It was during the hearings
that the tide turned, as evidence of malfeasance, criminality and abuse
of power became evident through hearing testimony. The same would
happen in the case of President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney. Most
Americans don’t even know that the president made up evidence to
justify the war against Iraq out of whole cloth. They don’t know what
the Geneva Conventions are with regard to torture. They don’t know why
Congress passed the FISA act, which Bush has been feloniously violating
to spy on them (it was passed because Nixon was using the National
Security Agency to spy on Americans without judicial warrants!). They
don’t know the Bush has been refusing to enact laws passed by the
Congress. Public hearings by an impeachment panel would make all these
high crimes and misdemeanors clear on national TV to all sentient
Americans. Moreover, as Holtzman pointed out, the president would not
be able to use the claim of “executive privilege” to withhold testimony
from aides in an impeachment inquiry, the way he has done when they
have been subpoenaed by other House and Senate committees. Impeachment
would be about violations of the very executive actions he would be
claiming privilege on. As well, an impeachment committee, unlike any
other committee of the Congress, is specifically sanctioned and
empowered in the Constitution, meaning that even strict
“constructionist” Federalists on the bench would have a hard time
backing presidential obstruction.

As Holtzman noted, “There is no executive privilege in impeachment,
because refusing to testify is itself an impeachable offense.”

Committee Republicans, aided by two law professors they had brought
in to testify, Stephen Presser of Northwestern University School of Law
and Jeremy Rabkin of George Mason University School of Law, tried to
argue that impeachment was only meant for crimes in which the official,
or the president, was seeking personal gain. This nonsense was knocked
down by most of the speakers, who quoted numerous founders who made it
clear that what high crimes referred to were actions—even taken with
the noblest of intentions—that undermined the Constitution or abused
the powers of the office. As Rep. Nadler said, “Impeachment has nothing
to do with intentions or with good faith. Impeachment has to do with
abuse of power which weakens the balance of power.”

In the end, the hearing petered out, taking no action of any
kind—exactly the result that Pelosi, Hoyer and Conyers cynically
intended.

Now it is up to the public and the impeachment movement to call
their bluff and take impeachment to the next level. Noting that even
Rep. Conyers ended the hearing by saying, “We are not done yet, and we
do not intend to go away until we achieve the accountability that
Congress is entitled to and that the American people deserve,” Rep.
Kucinich and five other co-sponsors of his articles of impeachment
(Robert Wexler, Tammy Baldwin, Keith Ellison, Maurice Hinchey, Sheila
Jackson-Lee, and Hank Johnson) are calling on all Americans to contact
their representatives (202-224-3121) and urge them to join in
co-sponsoring those articles and in calling for a formal impeachment
hearing.

They are also calling on everyone to contact their local and
national media, nearly all of whom have blacked out news of
impeachment. Incredibly, the New York Times, for example, has not even
reported on Friday’s hearing, even as a news “brief.” Those news
organizations, like the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer,
that did report on the hearings did so only in short, inside articles.
Though the hearing was aired in full on C-Span (and is still available for download), many Americans don’t even know it happened.

Time is short, but even at this late date, it would be a simple
matter to impeach the president on some issues. As several of Friday’s
witnesses pointed out, President Bush has essentially dared Congress to
act, admitting that he openly violated the FISA law—a felony, and
openly admitting that he has refused to enact laws passed by the
Congress, claiming a power—unitary executive authority—not even
mentioned in the Constitution. He has openly admitted to having known
about, and approved, “enhanced interrogation techniques” devised by his
subordinates—techniques like waterboarding which clearly violate the
Geneva Conventions and US law. No hearings would be required to
establish these high crimes and misdemeanors. They could simply be
voted on by an Impeachment Committee and sent to the full House for a
vote.

Even if there were no time for a Senate trial, the simple act of
impeaching the president for one or more abuses of power would serve
notice on future presidents that future such abuses would not be
tolerated. Failure to do so, and allowing this administration to leave
office unimpeached, would send the opposite message: that Congress is
no longer a co-equal branch of government, but is merely a consultative
body, at best, and that a president is in effect a dictator.

That Pelosi buckled and permitted a hearing on impeachable crimes
by the Bush/Cheney administration is a major victory for the
impeachment movement, but it must not be the end of the line.
Impeachment activists need to now redouble their efforts to make
Congress do its Constitutional duty, and initiate a formal impeachment
proceeding.

As former Republican representative Bob Barr, now the Libertarian
candidate for president, told Friday’s hearing, “We had a nuclear clock
during the Cold War. In the ‘90s we had a debt clock. Now we have a
Constitution Clock.”

That clock is getting close to midnight, and it is ticking.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Bush/Cheney and special contracts with Big Oil in Iraq - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

seandiego — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:32:23 -0400

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE TODAY (7/2/08). THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST UNITE TO SHOW THE WORLD WE DID NOT SUPPORT OR APPROVE OF THE INJUSTICES OF THIS ADMINISTRATION AND THE CRIMES IT COMMITTED AGAINST IRAQ, THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD. TO REGAIN OUR STATURE IN THE WORLD, WE MUST CHARGE BUSH AND CHENEY WITH WAR CRIMES BEFORE THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES IT FOR US. CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPERSONS TODAY!

Opening Iraq's oil fields to Big Oil

By Bob Herbert
THE NEW YORK TIMES

July 2, 2008

It's getting harder and harder to remain deluded. With each day comes new facts to drag our heads out of the sand.

Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that four Western oil giants were on the verge of signing no-bid contracts that would return them to Iraq, the third-most bountiful petroleum playground on the planet. It was the kind of news that big oil lives for.

Giddy executives singing “Oh Happy Day” could be heard in the corporate offices of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, which had been shut out of Iraq for three and a half decades.

We also learned this week that a group of American advisers, led by a team from the State Department, played a key role in drawing up the contracts between the companies and the Iraqi government. Chevron and several smaller oil companies also got contracts.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney, both former oil company executives, have long tried to tell us this war was about terrorism, about weapons of mass destruction, about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, about anything but oil.

Said Bush: “We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He didn't wait. It didn't matter that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States. Or that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The troops were sent into battle in early 2003 and there is still, after more than five years and more than 4,000 American deaths, no end to the war in sight.

One of the starkest examples of U.S. priorities came during the eruption of looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. With violence and chaos all about, U.S. troops were ordered to protect one particularly treasured target – the Iraqi Oil Ministry. As David Rieff wrote in The New York Times Magazine in November 2003:

“This decision to protect only the Oil Ministry – not the National Museum, not the National Library, not the Health Ministry – probably did more than anything else to convince Iraqis uneasy with the occupation that the United States was in Iraq only for the oil.”

How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its unusual no-bid contracts with big oil.

The contracts themselves are not huge. They are like the keys on a coveted ring that will begin opening the doors to Iraq's vast oil reserves. As the Times reported Monday, “At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world's largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry.”

A prize, yes. But at what cost?

In addition to the terrible toll of Americans and Iraqis killed and wounded, the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from critical problems here in the United States, where the housing market has been crippled, the stock market has tanked, gasoline has soared past $4 per gallon, unemployment is increasing and an extraordinary number of debt-ridden working families are staring into a financial abyss.

Even as oil companies are enjoying staggering profits, many Americans – in July! – are already worried sick about the potentially ruinous cost of heating their homes next winter.

And then there's the so-called war on terror.

The latest news is that al-Qaeda, the terror network that actually did attack the United States, has successfully regrouped in the tribal areas of Pakistan and has reconstituted its ability to institute terror attacks from the region.

For an administration joined at the hip to the oil industry, the lure of Iraq's enormous reserves was stronger even than the impulse to conquer an enemy that murdered more than 2,700 civilians on Sept. 11, a toll greater than the number of Americans killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Referring to al-Qaeda members who regrouped in Pakistan, the Times reported on Monday:

“Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.”

Who knows how long it will be before the United States disengages in any significant way from Iraq. What you can take to the bank is that this country will not make any major advances in energy policy, in health coverage, in rebuilding its infrastructure, in improving its public schools or in curtailing runaway public and private debt until our open-ended commitment to this catastrophic multitrillion-dollar war comes to an end.

How long will it take before that finally sinks in?

Immunity for Jose Rodriguez is a go free ticket for everyone involved.

philosart — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:00:20 -0500

Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Press-Enterprise Riverside, CA.

Head Line: Ex-CIA official wants immunity

The article says once given immunity any information gathered by House Intelligence Committee can not be used against Jose Rodriguez in court. It also said Lawmakers are typically reluctant to grant immunity requests because doing so could torpedo a criminal investigation. Anything Rodriguez spoke about would be off-limits to the Justice Department, as would any secondary evidence built on his tesimony. Anyone involved in destroying the tapes of the CIA interrogation of the two al-Qaida suspects will go free and any information about them will be covered up . Here we go with another "Watergate cover up" and we are watching them do it. Instead of immunity offer him 15 years for cooperation and life for with holding information. That should be the only deal he should be given just like he was any other citizen.

Philo Miller

2007 - Look Back in Anger!

RegAv — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 12:29:40 -0500

http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=675

2007 - Look Back in Anger !!!

... Americans seem to be a people with a very short memory span and a very limited sense of outrage. I don’t know what it will take to shake them into any semblance of collective outrage or united action. I do know however, that I am angrier at the close of this year than at the end of any other ear that has passed.

As you might well imagine, I am furious with the usual suspect:: the corporate thugs, the PNAC warmongers and the religious fanatics who have wreaked such irreparable havoc on us all. TVNL has raged against what they have done to destroy the lives of so many.. But this time around I am ever more unforgiving in my despair and pessimism because of what has NOT been done by those who could have and should have lived up to the promise of change
.
It was a year of stunning inaction, during which so much that might have been done, and that could have been done, was NOT done, 2007 was heralded as a year of hope and progress. It was not. At year’s end, the crimes of the Bush administration still were business as usual. At year’s end, every outrage against the nation and the world remained uninvestigated and unpunished.

And by the year’s end, members of both parties had joined forces to do nothing at all that might lead to a Happy New Year for anyone..

Just think about it for a minute. Here are some of the issues that could have been dealt with in 2007 and are OFF THE TABLE for any legislative action as I write. Even if every one of them had failed to pass a divided Congress, in the very least, the facts finally would have been placed in the public arena. In the very least, they would not have been swept under the proverbial rug of our shamefully intimidated and cowardly elected legislators.

As 2008 begins, here are SOME of the issues that have endangered our democracy and the lives of so many around the world. For all of 2007, there was no action, nor were there any plans to:

READ THE LIST OF NEGLECTED AND REJECTED ISSUES HERE:

http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=675

We Did It! 50,000 Signatures Calling for Immediate Cheney Impeachment Hearings Collected in 1 Day!

dlindorff — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 09:46:52 -0500

It's not being reported in the corporate media, which also refused to publish an opinion piece penned by six-term Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). But a whopping 50,000 people responded in just one day to Rep. Wexler's call for people to sign his on-line petition supporting an immediate start to hearings on Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Cheney Impeachment bill (H Res 799)

As of Sunday morning, 54,000 people had signed the petition at WexlerWantsHearings.com calling for action now. And names are being added at a rate of one every one or two seconds!

Wexler has said he wanted at least 50,000 signatures. But why stop there? If people get behind this, and if the impeachment movement spreads the word, he could easily get closer to 500,000 signatures over the next few days.

And if each of us were to send out a call to sign to ten of our friends, then we'd have half a million signatures, which would be hard for Conyers and the Democratic leadership, Speaker Nancy Pelosi included, to ignore.

So let's do it!

Go to WexlerWantsHearings.com and sign the petition!

Kucinich's impeachment bill was filed on April 24 and has been ignored now for almost eight shameful months. On Nov. 7, a bipartisan majority of 218 members of the House voted to send it from the floor of the House back to the Judiciary Committee for action. Now it's sat there for over four weeks.

We need to tell Congress, and particularly the Democrats who are stalling on this important defense of the Constitution and of democracy itself that time's up. We the American People want action. We want impeachment hearings!
________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

3 House Judiciary Members Call for Impeachment of Cheney NOW

dlindorff — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:52:24 -0500

Faced with an obstructionist leadership in the House, and a mainstream media that have forsaken their role as a Fourth Estate monitor of government abuse, three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee are calling on the public to demand that the Congress initiate impeachment hearings immediately against Vice President Dick Cheney.

Speaking at a telephone press conference Friday organized by Democrats.com, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) said that following a bi-partisan vote Nov. 7 by the full House to send Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s Cheney impeachment bill (H Res 799, formerly H Res 333)opinion article penned by himself and two Judiciary Committee colleagues, Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), which was sent to a number of leading newspapers, including the Miami Herald, the Washington Post and the New York Times, was rejected for publication—an astonishing act of censorship for a document authored by three members of congress on an issue of such significance as impeachment of the vice president.

In that article, Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin write:

The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.

Now that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has indicated that the Vice President and his staff purposefully gave him false information about the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent to report to the American people, it is even more important for Congress to investigate what may have been an intentional obstruction of justice. Congress should call Mr. McClellan to testify about what he described as being asked to “unknowingly [pass] along false information.” In addition, recent revelations have shown that the Administration including Vice President Cheney may have again manipulated and exaggerated evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- this time about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Asked why he thought leading publications had refused to publish the op-ed piece calling for an immediate start to impeachment hearings, Wexler says, “I think the mainstream media, at least thus far, have bought the notion that impeachment hearings are outside the bounds of what Congress ought to be doing.”

He adds that there may be a fear, on the part of corporate media executives and editors, and on the part of Democratic Party congressional leaders, of having been “complicit” in many of the administration’s constitutional crimes. “There may be some significant conflicts of interest,” he says, that could make them feel uncomfortable about the idea of impeachment hearings.

To push back against this unseemly resistance Rep. Wexler and his two House colleagues have decided to go public with their message. Wexler has set up a website, called WexlerWantsHearings. He is urging Americans from across the country to go to the sign and sign on to his call for an immediate start to hearings. “I want to be able to go to my colleagues in the house and say I have 55,000 people calling for hearings,” he says.

People should also be contacting their local and national media outlets—and especially the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald—demanding that they report openly and honestly on the growing impeachment movement, and that they publish the Wexler, Gutierrez Baldwin op-ed.

While he does not say where he thinks House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) stands at this point on the subject of starting hearings on the long-stalled Kucinich impeachment bill, which has languished in a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee for over half a year, Rep. Wexler said he has spoken with Conyers about the matter. “I have a lot of confidence in John,” he says.

Wexler’s, Gutierrez’s and Baldwin’s new push on impeachment comes just as Kucinich, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has announced that he is preparing to file a major bill of impeachment against President Bush. Kucinich is reportedly working on a sweeping 50-page impeachment bill containing over 20 counts of high crimes and misdemeanors against the president.

Asked about this, and whether it would alter his push for early hearings on Cheney’s impeachable crimes, Wexler says no. While pointedly agreeing that the president is likely guilty of the same abuses of power that are being alleged against Cheney, “and probably others in addition,” he says it makes sense to focus first on the vice president. “Strategically, I think we are on stronger ground pursuing the vice president.”
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006, and available now in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Two Brothers and Two Scandals

dlindorff — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:38:52 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The State Department’s top internal investigator, Inspector General Howard Krongard, revealed in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Tuesday, that his brother, Alvin B. Krongard, was a member of the advisory board of Blackwater, the very private mercenary company whose bloody, murderous behavior the IG office was supposed to be investigating.

Unmentioned in reports on this tainted relationship was the fact that Alvin Krongard, the former third-ranking leader of the CIA from 2001-2004, has also been the subject of some speculation regarding possible foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks by some within the intelligence establishment.

Alvin Krongard joined the CIA in 1998, leaving a post at Bankers Trust, which, in 1997 acquired the venerable investment-banking house of Alex Brown. Prior to the acquisition, Krongard had been CEO and chairman of the board of Alex Brown. In the merged firm, he became head of private banking for Bankers Trust, where he was responsible for the bank’s relations with extremely wealthy (and extremely private) clients.

What makes this history of particular interest is that Alex Brown was the investment bank that handled most of the suspicious short-selling “puts” that were placed on the stocks of four companies—United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch—that were pummeled by the 9-11 attacks.

As has been reported in Bloomberg Financial News Service reports and in the San Francisco Chronicle, in the several days preceding September 11, 2001, unidentified investors placed an unusual number of “puts” on the stocks of the two airlines whose planes were hijacked that day, as well as on the two investment banks, one of which occupied 22 floors of one of the World Trade Center towers and the other of which owned a building directly across the street which was significantly damaged and forced to close down.

According to news reports, between Sept. 6 and Sept. 9, some 4744 put orders were placed on United Airlines, compared to just 393 calls (bets that the stock would rise). On September 10, 4516 puts were placed for American Airlines stock, vs. only 748 calls. These orders were six times the normal volume of puts and calls on the Chicago Board Options Exchange for those firms. Moreover, there were no such puts placed on any other airlines, and there was no news justifying such orders at the time. In the three days prior to 9/11, 2151 puts were placed on Morgan Stanley shares, and 12,115 puts on Merrill Lynch, companies that also were not at the time the subjects of any negative news.

The stocks of those four companies, following the attacks and the collapse of the Twin Towers, subsequently tanked, making the combined puts worth about $16 million.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, no one collected the $2.5 million in profits from the puts placed on United Airlines. The identities of the investors in the put orders have never been disclosed by Alex Brown.

Incredibly, there was never any serious investigation of these peculiar and suspicious investments, though they clearly suggest that someone knew something was going to happen that would make those four companies’ stocks plunge in value.

The US corporate news media has never pursued this story or in many cases even reported it, nor was it seriously investigated by the FBI or the 9-11 commission.

Could Krongard, in his role as executive director of the CIA, have had inside information in the days ahead of the attacks, that an attack on the World Trade Center, involving the hijacking of planes operated by UAL and American Airlines, was imminent? Could he have supplied that information to clients of Bankers Trust and its subsidiary Alex Brown, so that the put investments could be made? If so, who else in the federal government knew?

We can’t know, because, amazingly, nobody’s dragged Krongard or officials of the bank before a congressional panel and demanded answers under oath.

So now we see that the Krongard brothers have a level of integrity that is down in the sewer, with one working for a murderous mercenary outfit that has been slaughtering innocent Iraqis in the course of providing “protection” to State Department officials in Iraq, and the other pretending to investigate the activities of that private firm, never mentioning the grotesque conflict of interest of having his brother working for the very firm he’s supposedly investigating.

Maybe, given this sorry picture, House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Henry Waxman will finally see fit to call Alvin Krongard and other witnesses in to question them under oath about whether he also had a conflict of interest in serving as a top ranking CIA executive while perhaps maintaining links with Alex Brown, and whether he had anything to do with those peculiar puts.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative reporter and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net