Peter Mclaren

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Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7328/
Published on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 by Agence France Presse
Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.

“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Military leaders “are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war,” he said.

Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.

South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. “I don’t know why that has not happened already,” he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.

But he is not convinced that robots don’t have a place on the front line.

“Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement,” he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. “And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger,” he added.

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine — even an intelligent one — how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense’s 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme — the largest military contract in US history — provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.

“But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems,” he said.

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. “We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do — and then get an international agreement,” he said.

© 2008 Agence France Presse

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Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7328/
Published on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 by Agence France Presse
Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.

“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Military leaders “are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war,” he said.

Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.

South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. “I don’t know why that has not happened already,” he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.

But he is not convinced that robots don’t have a place on the front line.

“Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement,” he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. “And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger,” he added.

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine — even an intelligent one — how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense’s 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme — the largest military contract in US history — provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.

“But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems,” he said.

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. “We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do — and then get an international agreement,” he said.

© 2008 Agence France Presse

Gloria La Riva answers the Democratic and Republican candidates on Fidel
Castro’s stepping down
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
By: Gloria La Riva

The PSL stands in solidarity with the Cuban revolution and the Cuban people

Fidel with Che

Today’s statements by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain on Fidel
Castro’s stepping down are more of the same. Each candidate would continue the
same policy of the last 11 U.S. administrations: a policy of blockade,
aggression and counter-revolution. Each promises to lift the blockade and
normalize relations only if the sovereign government of Cuba is overthrown.

Obama remarked that Fidel’s announcement “should mark the end of a dark era in
Cuba’s history,” and praised the pro-U.S. counterrevolutionaries in Cuban
prisons as “heroes.” Clinton pledged that as President she would do “everything
possible” to overthrow Cuban socialism and “advance America’s values and
interests.” In thinly veiled language, McCain wrote that the United States must
seize upon Fidel’s stepping down to “hasten the sparking of freedom in Cuba.”

The capitalist candidates speak of bringing “democracy” and “freedom” to Cuba.
But what they mean is the kind of “democracy” that the U.S. government has
imposed on Iraq, which so far has killed more than two million Iraqis and
destroyed the country. It is freedom for the corporations, banks and militarists
to exploit and to rule.

In the name of democracy and freedom, recent U.S. administrations have passed
laws to punish—not help—the Cuban people for daring to to build socialism and be
independent of the United States.

The 1992 Torricelli law, signed by George H.W. Bush, is officially titled “The
Cuban Democracy Act.” The 1996 Helms-Burton law signed by Bill Clinton, is known
as the “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Law.” George W. Bush’s plan,
inaugurated in 2004, is called “The Plan for Assistance to a Free Cuba” of 2003.

Each of these U.S. laws—whose expressed aim is to overthrow the Cuban revolution
in the name of “democracy’—has deliberately targeted the Cuban people and
created suffering for millions.

In a subtle recognition of majority U.S. public opinion—which opposes the U.S.
blockade—Obama and Clinton claim that democratic changes and free elections in
Cuba could be the basis of renewed relations with Cuba.

No one should be fooled by such rhetoric. For the Democrats and Republicans,
acting on behalf of the corporations, banks and militarists, the only Cuban
“democracy” they will accept is the kind that returns the island to capitalism,
as a neocolony of the United States. But in a country that is struggling to
overcome centuries of underdevelopment and colonialism, it is socialism that has
provided the basic rights of free quality healthcare and education, and housing
for all. Here in the United States, the richest country in all of history, such
rights are only a dream.

Obama, Clinton and McCain call for free elections in Cuba. How can candidates
who together will spend more than $1 billion in the presidential race demand
“free” elections in Cuba? In Cuba, on all levels—municipal, provincial and
national—the elections are truly free, and campaign spending by candidates is
prohibited.

While members of the U.S. Congress give themselves large salaries and huge
payoffs from lobbyists, elected officials in Cuba maintain their regular jobs,
and serve without additional compensation for their responsibilities as legislators.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation stands in solidarity with the Cuban
revolution and the Cuban people. Our candidates understand that the first real
democratic act in Cuba was the overthrow of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of
Fulgencio Batista. Despite the blockade, war and terrorist attacks promoted by
the U.S. government, the Cuban people and leadership have struggled to build a
socialist revolution, which they will continue to develop and defend.

Fidel Castro’s statement is not a retirement from the struggle. It is an honest
assessment of his physical limitations to hold government office.

Fidel Castro is admired and loved in Cuba and the world over. His legendary
courage and profound belief—from the earliest days—in the heroism and capacity
of the Cuban people to make history, is what now enables him to retire from his
official posts with confidence.

Read his complete statement here:
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8405

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/keith-olbermann-special-comment-mr-bush-you-are-a-fascist/

Following Orders

By Mark A. Goldman | Information Clearing House, Feb 12, 2008

If I have my facts straight, Hitler killed only one person in his lifetime: himself. All the other atrocities that are attributed to him were carried out by people who were only following orders.

If it is true that the war in Iraq is illegal, as I and others believe it is-including the Secretary General of the United Nations-then all the deaths and atrocities that have occurred to date, inflicted by our coalition forces, are the acts of individuals who, knowingly or unknowingly, with good intentions or not, have been willing to break the law in order to follow the orders of superiors.

Each member of the US military took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Each also took a pledge to follow the legal orders of the Commander in Chief. Under the Constitution, no soldier is required to follow an illegal order. But that’s what many Americans have been doing now for quite some time. And this is not confined to our military personnel, but also to members of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA (the folks who have been carrying out those illegal wire taps), outsourced contractors, the media, and perhaps most egregious of all- elected members of Congress, who for all intents and purposes, put their conscience and oversight responsibilities on hold as they get their marching orders from the Oval Office or from party leaders.

I believe the reason that many of those who do follow illegal orders, or otherwise fall into line under pressure, is that if they refused, they would be subject to severe ridicule and/or punishment. They know that if they subjected themselves to this ridicule or punishment, that we would not do anything to protect them from that injustice.

And so, in pursuit of this war, we have suspended the Constitution. Many members of Congress have supported the administration in carrying out illegal acts, rationalizing that such behavior is in the name of national security. That was Hitler’s rationale too. Innocent people have been killed, wounded, tortured, rendered, humiliated, had their privacy invaded, and their lives dismantled all in the name of national security. Anyone who objects can now be put under suspicion and may be targeted for future intimidation or worse. According to members of Congress, nothing this administration does is egregious enough to qualify them for impeachment.

The stories of individuals who have been damaged by the illegal acts of our government and their agents are beginning to filter through. But the damage that’s been done is far greater than the stories yet told. Damage done to our Constitution and to our self respect will likely take a heavy toll for generations to come.

And yet for most Americans their sensibilities are not disturbed by what’s been happening… many do not want to hear about it. Those who do hear about it, make up their own rationalization of why it’s ok. Many simply don’t know what to think or do.

This all leads me to believe that with every victory this administration experiences, the light of liberty and freedom will dim a little more. If we were to achieve the victory that Bush talks about in Iraq, it would not help the cause of freedom, it would help to kill it. It would only encourage his hubris, his arrogance. He doesn’t want democracy, he only wants stability. He wants the oil. He doesn’t believe in the Constitution or the rule of law. He has the sensibilities of a despot.

Since the atrocities and illegalities for which his administration is responsible have not been repudiated by Congress or the American people, he and his conspirators will continue to conclude that there is no limit to their power… all they have to do is take however much they want… but do it just a little bit at a time. And there is no reason to suspect that they will not do just that and use that power for their own purposes, whatever that might be.

I say to you: the ends do not justify the means. If we do not identify, explore, and repudiate the illegal acts of this government, soon the fist of injustice will come knocking at every door… if history teaches us anything at all, it surely teaches us that.

There is good reason for secrecy in the Bush administration. The reason they don’t want to conduct or discuss their activities in the light of day is because eventually the American people would figure it out: they would come to the conclusion that the reason the so called terrorists are out to kill Americans is because secretly the American government has been responsible for murder and the disenfranchisement of decent people all over the world. The United States has been active in destroying democratic institutions for a long time. We have done this to satisfy American greed for resources that don’t belong to us, oil being supreme among them. We have caused people in middle eastern countries to suffer tyrants like Saddam Hussein and the Saudi family.

American leaders favor tyrants. We help install them. We work very hard to keep them in place. We like tyrants because we can buy them off in a protection racket. We use our money and our military power to support their illegitimate regimes in exchange for cheap oil, or whatever the resource happens to be. In all countries it works pretty much the same. And in these countries it is ordinary people who suffer because of our policies.

When some of these people finally decide to strike out, fight back, to get us to stop, our leaders call it terrorism and then they ask us to send our children to die in battle fighting these ‘bad’ guys. They tell us that we are being attacked for no other reason than that they hate our freedom and our democracy. And we believe them; and we send our children to die and to kill because we don’t have the knowledge or courage not to believe them. We are so afraid, we are even willing to send our beautiful children to die and to kill. What a price to pay for ignorance and blind faith.

No one in Congress has been willing to stand up and say what I just said. It is only the truth that will save us. Nothing less will do. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Stand up. Speak out. Remove the traitors from their perches or they will take our children and turn them into criminals like themselves.

Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.
InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.

“At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector,” the InfraGard website states. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.”

In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that “350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.”

To join, each person must be sponsored by “an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.” The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

In an interview with InfraGard after the conference, which is featured prominently on the InfraGard members’ website, Mueller says: “It’s a great program.”

The ACLU is not so sanguine.

“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” the ACLU warned in its August 2004 report The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.

InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and Homeland Security are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the “trade secrets” exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is supposed to be carefully rehearsed.

“The interests of InfraGard must be protected whenever presented to non-InfraGard members,” the website states. “During interviews with members of the press, controlling the image of InfraGard being presented can be difficult. Proper preparation for the interview will minimize the risk of embarrassment. . . . The InfraGard leadership and the local FBI representative should review the submitted questions, agree on the predilection of the answers, and identify the appropriate interviewee. . . . Tailor answers to the expected audience. . . . Questions concerning sensitive information should be avoided.”

One of the advantages of InfraGard, according to its leading members, is that the FBI gives them a heads-up on a secure portal about any threatening information related to infrastructure disruption or terrorism.

The InfraGard website advertises this. In its list of benefits of joining InfraGard, it states: “Gain access to an FBI secure communication network complete with VPN encrypted website, webmail, listservs, message boards, and much more.”

InfraGard members receive “almost daily updates” on threats “emanating from both domestic sources and overseas,” Hershman says.

“We get very easy access to secure information that only goes to InfraGard members,” Schneck says. “People are happy to be in the know.”

On November 1, 2001, the FBI had information about a potential threat to the bridges of California. The alert went out to the InfraGard membership. Enron was notified, and so, too, was Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley. He notified his brother Gray, the governor of California.

“He said his brother talked to him before the FBI,” recalls Steve Maviglio, who was Davis’s press secretary at the time. “And the governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’ ”

Maviglio still sounds perturbed about this: “You’d think an elected official would be the first to know, not the last.”

In return for being in the know, InfraGard members cooperate with the FBI and Homeland Security. “InfraGard members have contributed to about 100 FBI cases,” Schneck says. “What InfraGard brings you is reach into the regional and local communities. We are a 22,000-member vetted body of subject-matter experts that reaches across seventeen matrixes. All the different stovepipes can connect with InfraGard.”

Schneck is proud of the relationships the InfraGard Members Alliance has built with the FBI. “If you had to call 1-800-FBI, you probably wouldn’t bother,” she says. “But if you knew Joe from a local meeting you had with him over a donut, you might call them. Either to give or to get. We want everyone to have a little black book.”

This black book may come in handy in times of an emergency. “On the back of each membership card,” Schneck says, “we have all the numbers you’d need: for Homeland Security, for the FBI, for the cyber center. And by calling up as an InfraGard member, you will be listened to.” She also says that members would have an easier time obtaining a “special telecommunications card that will enable your call to go through when others will not.”

This special status concerns the ACLU.

“The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment,” says Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program. “There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . . This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.”

When the government raises its alert levels, InfraGard is in the loop. For instance, in a press release on February 7, 2003, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General announced that the national alert level was being raised from yellow to orange. They then listed “additional steps” that agencies were taking to “increase their protective measures.” One of those steps was to “provide alert information to InfraGard program.”

“They’re very much looped into our readiness capability,” says Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “We provide speakers, as well as do joint presentations [with the FBI]. We also train alongside them, and they have participated in readiness exercises.”

On May 9, 2007, George Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 entitled “National Continuity Policy.” In it, he instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with “private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.”

Asked if the InfraGard National Members Alliance was involved with these plans, Schneck said it was “not directly participating at this point.” Hershman, chairman of the group’s advisory board, however, said that it was.

InfraGard members, sometimes hundreds at a time, have been used in “national emergency preparation drills,” Schneck acknowledges.

“In case something happens, everybody is ready,” says Norm Arendt, the head of the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of InfraGard, and the safety director for the consulting firm Short Elliott Hendrickson, Inc. “There’s been lots of discussions about what happens under an emergency.”

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation—and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, “Partnership for Protection.” On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

“The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,” he says. “From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.” These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out.
But that’s not all.

“Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. “I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,” he adds. “I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.”

Though Schneck says that FBI and Homeland Security agents do make presentations to InfraGard, she denies that InfraGard members would have any civil patrol or law enforcement functions. “I have never heard of InfraGard members being told to use lethal force anywhere,” Schneck says.

The FBI adamantly denies it, also. “That’s ridiculous,” says Catherine Milhoan, an FBI spokesperson. “If you want to quote a businessperson saying that, knock yourself out. If that’s what you want to print, fine.”

But one other InfraGard member corroborated the whistleblower’s account, and another would not deny it.

Christine Moerke is a business continuity consultant for Alliant Energy in Madison, Wisconsin. She says she’s an InfraGard member, and she confirms that she has attended InfraGard meetings that went into the details about what kind of civil patrol function—including engaging in lethal force—that InfraGard members may be called upon to perform.

“There have been discussions like that, that I’ve heard of and participated in,” she says.

Curt Haugen is CEO of S’Curo Group, a company that does “strategic planning, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, physical and IT security, policy development, internal control, personnel selection, and travel safety,” according to its website. Haugen tells me he is a former FBI agent and that he has been an InfraGard member for many years. He is a huge booster. “It’s the only true organization where there is the public-private partnership,” he says. “It’s all who knows who. You know a face, you trust a face. That’s what makes it work.”

He says InfraGard “absolutely” does emergency preparedness exercises. When I ask about discussions the FBI and Homeland Security have had with InfraGard members about their use of lethal force, he says: “That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.”

“We were assured that if we were forced to kill someone to protect our infrastructure, there would be no repercussions,” the whistleblower says. “It gave me goose bumps. It chilled me to the bone.”
The FBI Deputizes Business

By Matthew Rothschild, February 7, 2008
http://www.progressive.org/mag_rothschild0308

CIA Likely Let Contractors Perform Waterboarding
By Siobhan Gorman
The Wall Street Journal

Friday 08 February 2008

Interrogation work outsourced heavily; legality uncertain.
Washington - The CIA’s secret interrogation program has made extensive use of outside contractors, whose role likely included the waterboarding of terrorist suspects, according to testimony yesterday from the CIA director and two other people familiar with the program.

Many of the contractors involved aren’t large corporate entities but rather individuals who are often former agency or military officers. However, large corporations also are involved, current and former officials said. Their identities couldn’t be learned.

The broader involvement of contractors, and the likelihood they partook in waterboarding, raises new legal questions about the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of the practice, which is designed to simulate drowning. It also will fuel the contentious debate over the administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.

The role of contractors in sensitive security programs has become a hot issue on Capitol Hill. It isn’t clear what laws govern their work and who is accountable when activities go awry, as they did when employees of the security firm Blackwater allegedly killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded 24 others in September. An investigation of that is under way; Blackwater continues to provide security services to State Department employees in Iraq.

In testimony before the House yesterday, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden was asked whether contractors were involved in waterboarding al Qaeda detainees. He replied: “I’m not sure of the specifics. I’ll give you a tentative answer: I believe so.” An agency spokesman declined to clarify the answer.

According to two current and former intelligence officials, the use of contracting at the CIA’s secret sites increased quickly in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, in part because the CIA had little experience in detentions and interrogation. Using nongovernment employees also helped maintain a low profile, they said. The sites were designed to handle only the most sensitive detainees. Gen. Hayden has said fewer than 100 people have been held at these sites.

In his comments yesterday, Gen. Hayden said that among the reasons the agency eliminated waterboarding from its interrogation program was that the legal landscape has changed.

“In my own view, the view of my lawyers and the Department of Justice, it is not certain that that technique would be considered to be lawful under current statute,” he told lawmakers on the House intelligence panel.

Gen. Hayden maintained that the practice was legal at the time the CIA used it, from 2002 to 2003, on three al Qaeda suspects. “All the techniques that we’ve used have been deemed to be lawful, he said.

The use of outside contractors raises awkward questions about accountability. “The government may be prohibited from doing something, but is a corporation?” asked R.J. Hillhouse, a former political-science professor who has researched the outsourcing of military and intelligence operations for her book “Outsourced.” Ms. Hillhouse said procurement law has traditionally differentiated between the reporting responsibilities of government officers and contractors.

Gen. Hayden, however, said private contractors involved in CIA interrogations “are bound by the same rules” as the agency’s officers.

Lawmakers are concerned that using contractors in interrogations may violate the law, or at least government policy, which states that “inherently governmental activities” must be performed by government personnel.

Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel, said it might make sense to use contractors who have a language specialty to screen detainees, for example. But waterboarding crosses into the realm of activities only the government should perform.

“If we’re going to ask contractors to do these things, then we have to find a way to assure that they comply with the law and that, to the extent we direct them to do activities that violate local law, that we protect them,” Mr. Smith said. He added that he opposes the waterboarding.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Wednesday to ask his views on the legality of involving contractors to program interrogations.

“I believe the interrogation of detainees falls squarely within the definition of an inherently governmental activity,” Sen. Feinstein wrote. The 2006 Detainee Treatment Act includes a legal shield for U.S. government employees who use officially authorized interrogation techniques.

“It is not all that clear to me, given our experiences in Iraq, that private contractors are held to the same standards as are government employees,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, the Illinois Democrat who asked Gen. Hayden about contractors’ use of waterboarding, said in an interview. “People who actually work for us are accountable to us. Using employees of private companies to engage in what most of the world anyway believes is torture, I find problematic.”

The CIA established its detention sites in several countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and multiple countries in Eastern Europe. Waterboarding reportedly took place in Thailand and possibly other countries.

The Justice Department is currently investigating the CIA’s destruction of interrogation tapes that reportedly included footage of waterboarding. Lawmakers have urged the department to expand its inquiry to include a criminal inquiry of the technique. The attorney general told a separate House committee yesterday he wasn’t ready to do that.

Providing additional details about the workings of the once highly secret interrogation program, Gen. Hayden said, “was a very difficult decision.” He described the program as “a covert action,” which is perhaps the most secret type of operation the agency does.

He said, however, it was time to talk more openly about the program because it was being widely debated in public and “it was our strong belief that the political discussion that was going on was misshaped.”

——-

from Truthout

The War Prayer
Par Charles-Antoine Bachand, posté dans Littérature

21082007
«O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale form of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.»

— Mark Twain, The War Prayer.

______________________________________________________
Waterboarding and Inquistion
David M. Gitlitz | The Providence Journal (Rhode Island), February 8, 2008

WHY has the Bush administration been dancing around the question of whether waterboarding is torture?

Waterboarding was one of the most common tortures employed by the Spanish Inquisition for the first half of its 450-year-long history (circa 1480-1834). This has never been a secret. It is attested to by reams of documents - letters, debates, manuals of instruction and copious records of trials that include verbatim accounts of the torture sessions themselves - in the Historical Archives of Spain and Mexico, in which I have worked for the last 30 years. The information about inquisitorial waterboarding has also been available to the English-reading general public since publication of H.C. Lea’s A History of the Inquisition, the last volume of which appeared a hundred years ago this year.

Here is Lea’s description of the inquisitorial waterboarding:

“The patient was placed on an escalera or potro - a kind of trestle, with sharp-edged rungs across it like a ladder. It slanted so that the head was lower than the feet and, at the lower end was a depression in which the head sank, while an iron band around the forehead or throat kept it immovable. A bostezo, or iron prong, distended the mouth, a toca, or strip of linen, was thrust down the throat to conduct water trickling slowly from a jarra or jar, holding usually a little more than a quart. The patient gasped and felt he was suffocating, and at intervals, the toca was withdrawn and he was adjured to tell the truth. The severity of the infliction was measured by the number of jars consumed, sometimes reaching to six or eight.”

The Spanish Inquisition, unlike many American lawmakers and members of the executive branch, did not waffle about labeling waterboarding a torture. Waterboarding was not invented in Spain: Since the middle of the 13th Century it had been used by European civil and ecclesiastical courts, particularly the Papal Inquisition, in Rome. In Spain no one voiced doubts, as did Michael Mukasey during his October confirmation hearings for U.S. attorney general, and at a hearing just the other day, about whether waterboarding might not technically be torture.

President Bush, on the other hand, has no doubts at all. Unlike his nominee, he spoke with inquisitor-like certainty when he proclaimed that our physically coercive techniques “are safe, they are lawful and they are necessary.” He apparently sees no contradiction in simultaneously insisting that these “classified interrogation procedures” be conducted offshore so as to remove them from the jurisdiction and safeguards of the American judicial system.

The Spanish Inquisition guaranteed to the accused many of the legal protections that the current administration has worked so hard to sweep under the rug. Within the context of their times the Inquisition’s stance, succinctly laid out in its 1561 Manual of Instruction to Inquisitors, was remarkable. Both the prosecuting and court-appointed defense attorneys had access to the substance of all of the testimonies relating to the accused. The accused could disqualify the testimony of anyone whom he or she could prove had animus against them. Inquisitors had to weigh the full arguments of the defense and the prosecution before ordering a torture session. The order required a unanimous vote of the judges. If the defense attorney didn’t accept the decision, he could appeal the ruling to the Inquisition’s Supreme Council (though in practice they rarely did).

Gathered in the torture chamber itself were the inquisitors, a bishop’s representative, and a recording secretary adept at speedwriting, which was the videotaping of its day. The attending doctor could rule the accused unfit to be tortured, and could order the procedure stopped at any time. Once the accused was brought into the torture chamber, he was offered several chances - the average seems to have been about six- to make full voluntary confession. Fear in the presence of imminent pain was generally enough to loosen the accused person’s tongue. It was only when fear alone did not work that torture was applied, with each step of the procedure, each jar of water and turn of the winch, each question and each choked-out answer, duly noted by the recording secretary. None of the participants ever destroyed those documents out of fear of embarrassment or indictment for their actions. Nor did their bosses. The original recordings were archived, and after 500 years are still available.

I am not praising the Spanish Inquisition. I know enough about the real Inquisition - not the cartoon version of Monty Python nor the sensationalist horrors of the Black Legend - to know that the Inquisition was heinous in almost every way. Though debates raged then and still rage among scholars about the reliability of the information elicited by these procedures, there is no disagreement about one fact: Waterboarding was torture. That was its intent, and that, in conjunction with a variety of other torments, was how the Spanish inquisitors used it. Even today popular imagination condemns them for it. For the United States to adopt even one of the Inquisition’s torture techniques exposes us, rightly, to moral condemnation.

The United States has long been a beacon to the world for its ethical principles (even when sometimes these have been honored in the breach). Equal treatment under the law. Habeas corpus. Free and open discussion informed by access to information and a free press. Checks and balances to ensure that these rights are protected.

That the Bush-Cheney administration has squandered our human and material resources in this so-called war against terror is a calamity that will affect us for decades. But that they have blown away our moral capital, that they have compromised the principles that define us as a nation, that is a tragedy.

David M. Gitlitz is a professor of Hispanic studies at the University of Rhode Island.
________________________________________________

The Anti-Empire Report
Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life
February 2, 2008
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

NATO is a treaty on wheels — It can be rolled in any direction to suit Washington’s current policy
Have you by chance noticed that NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has become virtually a country? With more international rights and military power than almost any other country in the world? Yes, the same NATO that we were told was created in 1949 to defend against a Soviet attack in Western Europe, and thus should have gone out of existence in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact expired and explicitly invited NATO to do the same. Other reasons have been suggested for NATO’s creation: to help suppress the left in Italy and France if either country’s Communist Party came to power through an election, and/or to advance American hegemony by preventing the major European nations from pursuing independent foreign policies. This latter notion has been around a long time. In 2004, the US ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, stated: “Europeans need to resist creating a united Europe in competition or as a counterweight to the United States.”[1]

The alliance has been kept amongst the living to serve as a very useful handmaiden of US foreign policy as well as providing American arms and airplane manufacturers with many billions of dollars of guaranteed sales due to the requirement that all NATO members meet a certain minimum warfare capability.

Here’s some of what NATO has been up to in recent years as it strives to find a new raison d’être in the
post-Cold War era.

It is presently waging war in Afghanistan on behalf of the United States and its illegal 2001 bombing and invasion of that pathetic land. NATO’s forces free up US troops and assume much of the responsibility and blame, instead of Washington, for the many bombings which have caused serious civilian casualties and ruination. NATO also conducts raids into Pakistan, the legality of which is as non-existent as what they do in Afghanistan.

The alliance, which began with 15 members, now has 26, in addition to 23 “partner countries” (under the reassuring name of (”Partnership for Peace”). Combined, that’s more than one-fourth of the entire United Nations membership, and there are numerous other countries bribed and pressured to work with NATO, such as Jordan which recently sent troops to Afghanistan. Jordan and Qatar have offered to host a NATO-supported regional Security Cooperation Centre. NATO has a training mission in Iraq, and Iraqi military personnel receive training in NATO members’ countries. In recent years, almost all members of the alliance and the Partnership for Peace have sent troops to Iraq or Afghanistan or the former Yugoslavia, in each case serving as proxy US-occupation forces. Israel has had talks with the alliance about the deployment of a NATO force in their country. India is scheduled to participate in upcoming NATO war games. The list goes on, as the alliance’s outreach keeps reaching out further, holding international conferences to bring together new and potential allies, under names such as the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, and the Mediterranean Dialogue (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia), or expanding military ties with existing international organizations such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates).

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, NATO gave the United States carte blanche to travel throughout Europe transporting men to be tortured.[2] It’s like a refined gentleman’s club with some unusual member privileges. NATO also goes around monitoring elections, the latest being in Upper Abkhazia (claimed by Georgia) in January.

The alliance has military bases in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe, and regularly conducts “naval operations in the Mediterranean to actively demonstrate NATO’s resolve and solidarity”, as NATO puts it. This includes AWAC (Airborne Warning and Control) aircraft patrolling the Mediterranean from above and frequently stopping and boarding ships and boats at sea. “Since the start of the operation,” reports NATO, “nearly 79,000 merchant vessels have been monitored (as of 12 April 2006) … The surveillance operation utilizes ship, aircraft and submarine assets to build a picture of maritime activity in the Area of Operations.” The exercise includes “actions aimed at preventing or countering terrorism coming from or conducted at sea and all illegality possibly connected with terrorism, such as human trafficking and smuggling of arms and radioactive substances.” NATO is truly Lord of the Mediterranean, unelected, unauthorized, and unsupervised.

NATO, which has ready access to nuclear weapons from several of its members (only with Washington’s approval), has joined the United States in its operation to surround Russia. “Look,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin about NATO as far back as 2001, “this is a military organization. It’s moving towards our border. Why?”[3] As of December 2007, Moscow’s concern had not lessened. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister lashed out at NATO’s steady expansion into former Soviet-dominated eastern Europe, saying the policy was “a leftover from the time of the Cold War”.[4] Finland — which shares a border with Russia of more than 1300 km — is now being considered for membership in NATO.

Ever since it undertook a Washington-instigated 78-day bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999, NATO has been operating in the Balkans like a colonial Governor-General. Along with the UN, it’s been leading a peacekeeping operation in Kosovo and takes part in the policing of Bosnia, including searching people’s homes looking for suspected war criminals wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The triumvirate of NATO, the United States, and the European Union have been supporting Kosovo’s plan to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia, thus bypassing the UN Security Council where Serbia’s ally, Russia, has a veto. We therefore have the Western powers unilaterally declaring the independence of a part of another country’s territory; this because the Kosovo ethnic Albanians are regarded as much more reliably “pro-West” than is Serbia, which has refused to look upon the free market and the privatization of the world known as “globalization” as the summum bonum, nor shown proper enthusiasm for an American or NATO military installation upon its soil. Kosovo, however, does have a large US military base on its territory. Any attempt by Serbia to militarily prevent Kosovo from seceding would in all likelihood be met by NATO/US military force. You may wonder what a United States military base is doing in Kosovo. People all over the world wonder the same about their local American bases.

You may also wonder: What force exists to slow down the growth of the Mediterranean Monster? Who can stand up to it? The military elite of the triumvirate take such a question seriously. What they apparently fear the most is nuclear weapons in the hands of the wrong people; i.e., those who don’t recognize the triumvirate’s right to dictate to the world. On January 22 the Guardian of London reported that the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands had released a manifesto which insists that a “first strike” nuclear option remains an “indispensable instrument” since there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”. The paper had earlier been presented to NATO’s secretary general and to the Pentagon. It is likely to be discussed at a NATO summit in Bucharest in April, along with the possible extension of the alliance to include five more countries which had been part of, or bordered on, the Soviet Empire: Croatia, Georgia, Macedonia, Albania and Ukraine.

The five generals who authored the report could have advocated a serious international campaign to begin the process of actually creating a nuclear-free world. Instead, they call for an end to the European Union’s “obstruction” of and rivalry with NATO and a shift from consensus decision-taking in NATO bodies to majority voting, meaning an end to national vetoes.

So there you have it. The international military elite are demanding yet more power and autonomy for NATO. Questioning voices in the alliance, in the European Union, or anywhere else should forget their concerns about a nuclear-free world, international law, pre-emptive war, wars of aggression, national sovereignty, and all that other United Nations Charter and human-rights nonsense. We’re gonna nuke all those Arab terrorists before they have a chance to say Allah Akbar.

The arrogance continues, with the manifesto specifying “no role in decision-taking on Nato operations for alliance members who are not taking part in the operations,” calling also for the use of force without UN Security Council authorization when “immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings”. Now who can argue against protecting large numbers of human beings?

The paper also declares that “Nato’s credibility is at stake in Afghanistan” and “Nato is at a juncture and runs the risk of failure.” The German general went so far as to declare that his own country, by insisting upon a non-combat role for its forces in Afghanistan, was contributing to “the dissolution of Nato”. Such immoderate language may be a reflection of the dark cloud which has hovered over the alliance since the end of the Cold War — that NATO has no legitimate reason for existence and that failure in Afghanistan would make this thought more present in the world’s mind. If NATO hadn’t begun to intervene outside of Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission. “Out of area or out of business” it was said.[5]

Democracy is a beautiful thing, except that part about letting just any old jerk vote.
“The people can have anything they want.
The trouble is, they do not want anything.
At least they vote that way on election day.”
Eugene Debs, American socialist leader, early 20th century

Why was the primary vote for former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich so small when anti-Iraq war sentiment in the United States is supposedly so high, and Kucinich was easily the leading anti-war candidate in the Democratic race, indeed the only genuine one after former Senator Mike Gravel withdrew? Even allowing for his being cut out of several debates, Kucinich’s showing was remarkably poor. In Michigan, on January 15, it was only Kucinich and Clinton running. Clinton got 56% of the vote, the “uncommitted” vote (for candidates who had withdrawn but whose names were still on the ballot) was 39%, and Kucinich received but 4%. And Clinton, remember, has been the leading pro-war hawk of all the Democratic candidates.

I think much of the answer lies in the fact that the majority of the American people — like the majority of people all over the world — aren’t very sophisticated politically, and many of them aren’t against the war for very cerebral reasons. Their opposition perhaps stems mainly from the large number of American soldiers who’ve lost their lives, or because the United States is not “winning”, or because America’s reputation in the world is being soiled, or because a majority of other Americans express their opposition to the war, or because of George W.’s multiple character defects, or because of a number of other reasons you couldn’t even guess at. Not much especially perceptive or learned in this collection.

I think there are all kinds of intelligence in this world: musical, scientific, mathematical, artistic, academic, literary, mechanical, and so on. Then there’s political intelligence, which I would define as the ability to see through the bullshit which the leaders and politicians of every society, past, present and future, feed their citizens from birth on to win elections and assure continuance of the prevailing ideology.

This is why it’s so important for all of us to continue “preaching to the choir” and “preaching to the converted”. That’s what speakers and writers and other activists are often scoffed at for doing — saying the same old thing to the same old people, just spinning their wheels. But long experience as speaker, writer and activist in the area of foreign policy tells me it just ain’t so. From the questions and comments I regularly get from my audiences, via email and in person, and from other people’s audiences as well, I can plainly see that there are numerous significant information gaps and misconceptions in the choir’s thinking, often leaving them unable to see through the newest government lie or propaganda trick; they’re unknowing or forgetful of what happened in the past that illuminates the present; knowing the facts but unable to apply them at the appropriate moment; vulnerable to being led astray by the next person who offers a specious argument that opposes what they currently believe, or think they believe. The choir needs to be frequently reminded and enlightened.

As cynical as others may think they are, the choir is frequently not cynical enough about the power elite’s motivations. They underestimate the government’s capacity for deceit, clinging to the belief that their government somehow means well; they’re moreover insufficiently skilled at reading between the media’s lines. And this all applies to how they view political candidates as well. Try asking “anti-war” supporters of Hillary Clinton if they know what a hawk she is, that — as but one example — she’s promised that American forces will not leave Iraq while she’s president. (And Obama loves the empire as much as Clinton.) When Ronald Reagan was president, on several occasions polls revealed that many, if not most, people who supported him were actually opposed to many of his specific policies.

In sum, even when the hearts of the chorus may be in the right place, their heads still need working on, on a recurring basis. And in any event, very few people are actually born into the choir; they achieve choir membership only after being preached to, multiple times.

When I speak in public, and when I can mention it in an interview, I raise the question of the motivations of the administration. As long as people believe that our so-called leaders are well-intentioned, the leaders can, and do, get away with murder. Literally.

“How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against
their interests is very clever. It’s the cleverest ruling class that I have ever
come across in history. It’s been 200 years at it. It’s superb.”
Gore Vidal

Another interesting view of the American electoral system comes from Cuban leader Raúl Castro. He recently noted that the United States pits two identical parties against one another, and joked that a choice between a Republican and Democrat is like choosing between himself and his brother Fidel.

“We could say in Cuba we have two parties: one led by Fidel and one led by Raúl, what would be the difference?” he asked. “That’s the same thing that happens in the United States … both are the same. Fidel is a little taller than me, he has a beard and I don’t.”[6]

Speaking of political intelligence … take a little stroll with Alice through the American wonderland … just for laughs
“This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. … it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad.” — Thomas Friedman, much-acclaimed New York Times foreign-affairs analyst, November 2003[7]

“President Bush has placed human rights at the center of his foreign policy agenda in unprecedented ways.” —
Michael Gerson, columnist for the Washington Post, 2007[8]

The war in Iraq “is one of the noblest endeavors the United States, or any great power, has ever undertaken.” —
David Brooks, New York Times columnist and National Public Radio (NPR) commentator (2007)[9]

If this is what leading American public intellectuals believe and impart to their audiences, is it any wonder that the media can short circuit people’s critical faculties altogether? It should as well be noted that these three journalists are all with “liberal” media.

And when Hillary Clinton says in the January 31 debate with Barack Obama: “We bombed them [Iraq] for days in 1998 because Saddam Hussein threw out inspectors,” and the fact is that the UN withdrew its weapons inspectors because the Clinton administration had made it clear that it was about to start bombing Iraq …

Obama didn’t correct her. Neither did any of the eminent journalists on the panel, though this particular piece of disinformation has been repeated again and again in the media, and has been corrected again and again by those on the left. Comrades, we have our work cut out for us. The chorus needs us. America needs us. Keep preaching.

Teaching political intelligence
If you’re a high school or college teacher, you might want to look at http://www.teachpeace.com/highschoolkit.htm for teaching aids to impart a progressive outlook on US foreign policy and related issues to your students.

NOTES
[1] Jewish Telegraph Agency, international wire service, February 16, 2004

[2] The Guardian (London), June 7, 2007, article by Stephen Grey, author of “Ghost Plane: The inside story of the CIA Torture Program” (2006)

[3] Associated Press, June 16, 2001

[4] Focus News Agency (Bulgaria)/Agence France-Presse, December 26, 2007

[5] Much of the NATO material can be found on NATO’s website: http://www.nato.int/home.htm. Also see an abundance of material at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages

[6] Associated Press, CNN.com, December 25, 2007

[7] New York Times, November 30, 2003

[8] Washington Post, September 7, 2007

[9] Mary Eberstadt, ed., “Why I turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys” (2007), p.73

William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website at “essays”.
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