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America's First Terror War
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Today's Stories May 4, 2007 Patrick Cockburn May 3, 2007 Jeff Halper Christopher
Brauchli Dave Zirin Corporate Crime
Reporter Robert Fisk Mike Ferner Mike Whitney Pham Binh Dave Lindorff Michael A.
Johnson Website of the Day
May 2, 2007 Saul Landau Dr. Susan Block Carla Blank Margaret Kimberly Kevin Zeese Carlos Villareal Michael Dickinson Tim Shorrock Alevtina Rea William S.
Lind Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Fred Gardner Chase Madar Ralph Nader John V. Walsh Joshua Frank Leslie Radford Shaun Harkin Dave Lindorff Peter Rost,
MD Peter Linebaugh Website of
the Day
April 30, 2007 Frank Menetrez Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Diana Johnstone Sherwood Ross Peter Rost, MD Robert Jensen Kevin Zeese Jane Stillwater Website of
the Day
April 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Fred Gardner David Orchard
Alan Maass Joe Bageant Robert Fantina Hanan Ashrawi Ron Jacobs Nicole Colson Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Harvey Wasserman Cindy Beringer Mike Roselle RAWA James McEnteer Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Eva Liddell Phyllis Bennis Mike Whitney Michael F.
Brown Jordan Flaherty Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Jacob Mundy Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Roger Morris Henry Siegman Alevtina Rea Paris Nikolas Kozloff Alan Farago Matthew S. Miller Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith David Price Diana Johnstone Brendan Cooney Sonja Karkar Brian Concannon Lee Gaillard Leah Fishbein Dave Lindorff Neal Galloway Website of the Day
April 24, 2007 Ishmael Reed Lila Rajiva Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Website of the Day
April 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Robert Fantina Sam Husseini Corporate Crime Reporter Elizabeth Lalasz Harvey Wasserman Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Fred Gardner Kristoffer Larsson Barbara Rose
Johnston Manuel Garcia, Jr. John Scagliotti Marjorie Cohn Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Ron Jacobs Evelyn Pringle BANCO Paul Richards Dan Bacher Ben Terrall Sherwood Ross Remi Kanazi Aseem Shrivastava Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 20, 2007 Doug Peacock Diane Farsetta Tom Clifford Amira Hass Nicole Colson Sonja Karkar Heather Gray Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban Agustin Velloso Matthew Koehler Website of
the Day
April 19, 2007 Emad Mekay
/ Patrick Cockburn Larry C. Johnson Norman Solomon Saul Williams Sunsara Taylor Harvey Wasserman Christopher
Brauchli Anthony Papa Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
April 18, 2007 Lila Rajiva Landau / Hassen Charles Fisher
/ Diane Christian Kevin Prosen China Hand Peter Rost,
MD Justin Akers Chacón Jerry Kroth Sherwood Ross Niranjan Ramakrishnan Alice Cherbonnier Website of
the Year?
April 17, 2007 Jean Bricmont
/ Paul Craig
Roberts Frida Berrigan Alison Weir John Walsh Jason Hribal Evelyn Pringle Ben Terrall Stan Cox Soren Ambrose Website of the Day
April 16, 2007 John F. Sugg Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Carl G. Estabrook Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Ralph Nader Eamon McCann Lee Sustar Mike Whitney Don Fitz Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
April 14 / 15, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jorge Mariscal Jeffrey St. Clair Dave Marsh Dr. Trudy Bond Joe Bageant Fidel Castro Alfredo Molano Alan Farago Michael Neumann Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Gail Dines Linda Ford Missy Beattie Dan La Botz Giuliana Sgrena Laura Carlsen Abu Spinoza Elizabeth Schulte Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Stephen Soldz George Ciccarriello-Maher Laith al-Saud Dave Zirin John Ross Ramzy Baroud Harvey Wasserman Lopez, Olivo and Garcia Dols, Fukumori,
Judd and Tillett-Saks Website of the Day
April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Joe DeRaymond Nicola Nasser Nikolas Kozloff William S.
Lind Siegfried L. Sassoon Website of
the Day
R. T. Naylor Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Jack Balkwill Alan Farago Russell D.
Hoffman Peter Rost, MD Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Susie Day Website of the Day
April 10, 2007 James G. Abourezk Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Joshua Frank Lee Sustar Joseph Grosso Nirmal Ghosh Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Paul Rockwell Mario Joseph
and Fred Wilhelms Website of
the Day
April 9, 2007 Saul Landau Uri Avnery Nicole Colson Gideon Levy Corporate Crime Reporter Evelyn Pringle Hill Kemp Martha Rosenberg Keith Rosenthal Jane Stillwater Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Sara Roy Arno J. Mayer Jeffrey St.
Clair Vicente Navarro Fidel Castro Fred Gardner Ralph Nader David N. Rahni Arthur Neslen Pratyush Chandra Missy Beattie Marc Levy Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
April 6, 2007 Franklin Lamb Gloria La Riva Corporate Crime Reporter Ron Jacobs Felice Pace Walter Brasch David Swanson Sylvia Syracuse
Patrick Cockburn Tom Barry Richard W. Behan Nicola Nasser Bernadine Dohrn Laray Polk Helen Redmond
April 4, 2007 Col. Dan Smith Joshua Frank Margaret Kimberly Sharon Smith Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon Martin Luther
King,Jr. Bill Quigley Dave Zirin Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD Website of the Day
April 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Marjorie Cohn Brian M. Downing Corporate Crime
Reporter Carol Norris Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Scott Bontz Thomas Dolby Website of
the Day
Gary Leupp Uri Avnery James Petras Norman Solomon Robert Fisk Stanley Heller Sherwood Ross Monica Benderman Stephen Fleischman Anne McElroy
Dachel Website of the Day
Cockburn /
St. Clair Fred Gardner Greg Moses Gary Leupp Robert Fisk Roger Morris Conn Hallinan Kristin J.
Anderson Jason Hribal John Ross Christopher Brauchli David Underhill Elizabeth Schulte Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Sonja Karkar Daniel Wolff David Vest Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
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May 4, 2007 Will Accountability Prevail?From Watergate to GonzogateBy Col. DAN SMITH April 27 on Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television saw an all-too-brief and much-too-rare analysis of the ever-shifting influences that drive policy formulation and program implementation of an administration under siege. Should you have missed the program--the inaugural of a new series, "Bill Moyer's Journal" for Friday, April 27--it undoubtedly can be purchased from PBS. The segment of interest comes near the beginning, and it is so trenchant that a number of Internet sites carry it on-line. Moyers, a veteran journalist who also was a White House insider in the Johnson administration, discusses political developments of the week just ended with Jon Stewart, host of the fake news program "The Daily Show" carried on Comedy Central. When Moyers refers to Stewart as a journalist, Stewart demurs and reiterates his comedic profession and calling. Perhaps, but he is a comedic commentator and societal gadfly in the serious tradition of Will Rogers and, to an extent, Mark Russell and even Bill Maher--a tradition that has its roots in the biting satire of Jonathan Swift in Britain and Voltaire in France. The specific event that Moyers and Stewart discussed was the testimony of the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, April 19, relative to the role Gonzales played in the December 2006 firing of eight federal prosecutors. The public record, including sworn testimony from current and past Justice Department officials was full of contradictions and missing documents. The entire procedure suggested that the choice of these eight (of 93 nationwide) and the timing of the dismissals was quite intentional, political, and possibly done in some cases because the prosecutors were investigating allies of the Bush White House. If the dismissals were timed to occur when Congress was in recess, the Senate would not have the opportunity to review the qualifications of the new prosecutors and render its "advice and consent." Gonzales had at least three weeks notice of the hearing in which he reportedly "rehearsed" his answers to questions posed by Justice Department officials role-playing as the Senate committee. The shooting incident at Virginia Tech on April 16 prompted the Senate committee to postpone Gonzales' appearance from April 17 to April 19. Despite all that time available to search records and calendars, the Attorney General, under oath, responded 74 times--45 times before the committee broke for lunch--with some version of "I don't recall specifically," "I have no recollection," "I don't recall remembering," or "I can only testify as to what I recall." (Alternate counts say 64 "I don't know" answers over five hours--either way, quite a few.) Were that not frustrating enough for both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Gonzales went out of his way to assert and reassert: "I firmly believe that nothing improper occurred." This is virtually an epistemological miracle: even though he could not remember any details of meetings he attended and conversations he had, he is sure everything done was proper. Stewart's satiric streak was on display when Moyer's ran an excerpt from the April 19 "Daily Show" broadcast. But the real depth of Stewart's insight was his assertion on Moyer's program that Bush administration officials seem to believe that the American public gets one chance every four years to "say its piece." Once an election is over, the public--as well as the Congress--ought to simply slip into the background scenery of democracy and leave the executive branch run the country, according to the president's gang. In this administration's view, Congress, of course, does have responsibilities under the Constitution, and these are best fulfilled by quickly approving all requests from the White House. The Senate may hold hearings to consider presidential nominees for office, but, again, the process should be rapid and should not pry too deeply into what the administration is doing or plans to do. Neither Moyers nor Stewart claims that the policy the Bush White House is following is fundamentally different from attempts by previous administrations to control what information reaches the public or to conceal events that might be embarrassing or even on the margins of illegality. But they both seem to be of the view that the Bush administration has been more intent, more aggressive, than other recent administrations in refusing to provide records and send officials to testify before Congress in open session as that body seeks to exercise oversight necessary for a meaningful system of checks and balances that protect individual rights. By chance, PBS also broadcast on April 28 the classic film "All the President's Men," the Hollywood version of the Nixon administration Watergate scandal. The film was followed by a 2003 PBS documentary, "Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History." This looked at both the events of Watergate and the investigation and hearings before the Senate Watergate Committee (formal title in the enabling legislation is the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities) in 1973-1974. What was eerie about the documentary are the parallels between then and now:
On the last point, I must concede that, as often as Alberto Gonzales could not remember what he did or what he said, even though he firmly believed everything done was done properly, the frequency of his memory lapses pale when compared to the 130 times that Nixon Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, during his appearance under oath before the Watergate committee, claimed he could not recall events or conversations about Watergate or the cover-up. Haldeman, unrepentant for his role in subverting justice, went to jail for his role in the planning and cover-up of criminal activity. Alberto Gonzales, by denying any recollection of events surrounding the dismissal of presidential appointees, may well be remembered in the annals of the second George W. Bush administration as one of the nation's most politically loyal and, therefore, most ineffective Attorney Generals ever to hold that office. As disgraceful as Haldeman's activities were and those of Nixon, in the end, justice was served: one man went to jail and the other resigned in disgrace. For Gonzales and Bush, what the outcome is remains unclear. At the very least, however, placing political loyalty above loyalty to the Constitution remains a dangerous threat to the integrity of constitutional processes designed to hold both elected and appointed officials accountable for what they do or fail to do. In this regard, both president and attorney general ought to refresh their individual memories about two principles of law: The first has its origins in Rome, reads "Ignorantia juris non excusat"--"Ignorance of the law does not excuse." The second is known as "willful blindness." This occurs when a person with a responsibility to know whether something was or was not done, and was in a position to ask the status of a policy or an action, deliberately chooses not to ask so that he could deny any knowledge (and responsibility for) an outcome. Such "willful blindness" under the law would be the equivalent of the diplomats "plausible deniability;" both are figments. And, in some locales and justice systems, purposely practicing "willful blindness" is regarded as equivalent to possessing knowledge, for how else would one know what it is that he or she is trying to remain ignorant of? Which, ironically, leads back to Watergate and the ranking Republican committee member Senator Howard Baker's famous summary question--"What did the president know and when did he know it?" Gonzales' loyalty to the president has led Ccongress, now, to that question. Col. Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for
Foreign Policy In Focus ,
a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military
affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Email
at dan@fcnl.org. |
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