Bush Is "Biggest Thug" Ever To Occupy White House, Historian Parenti Says

By Sherwood Ross

President George W. Bush is “the biggest thug” ever to occupy the White House, writes historian Michael Parenti, adding that most post-World War II U.S. presidents have also acted like “thugs.”

His “thug” list includes Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Conspicuously absent from his list are Republican Dwight Eisenhower and Democrat Jimmy Carter.

What the thugs have in common, Parenti says, is their dedication “to a U.S. global interventionist policy” and support for “gargantuan, bloated, criminally wasteful military budgets” to execute those interventions.

President Kennedy “undermined the democratic government in Guyana and supported a lot of the counter-insurgency dirty works that were going on in Central America,” Parenti writes in The Long Term View, a journal of informed opinion published by The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.

President Johnson followed him, perpetrating “the first major escalation of Vietnam” and also invading the Dominican Republic “when it threatened to have a reformist left government that would take over and move in a democratic revolutionary course.”

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Senior Pentagon Officials Orchestrating Detainees Prosecutions to Benefit GOP?

By Carol Rosenberg / Miami Herald

The Navy lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a Guantánamo military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign.

The Pentagon declined late Friday to address the defense lawyer's allegations, noting that the matter is under litigation.

The brief filed Thursday by Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer directly challenged the integrity of President Bush's war court.

Notably, it describes a Sept. 29, 2006, meeting at the Pentagon in which Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a veteran White House appointee, asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the campaign.

''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,'' England is quoted as saying.

A senior Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, declined to address the specifics, saying ``the trial process will surface the facts in this case.''

''It has always been everybody's desire to move as swiftly and deliberately as possible to conduct military commissions,'' he added. ``But I can tell you emphatically that leadership has always been extraordinarily careful to guard against any unlawful command influence.''

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U.S. Has Few Options in Iraq's Volatile South

Also see: 19 Tense Hours in Sadr City Alongside the Mahdi Army

As U.S. warplanes attacked targets in Basra yesterday, Bush administration officials acknowledged that their hands-off strategy toward southern Iraq in recent years has left them with little knowledge of the conflicts among competing Shiite groups there and few ways of influencing them.

President Bush yesterday hailed the decision of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to launch a full-scale military offensive against militias in Basra as a "defining moment" for his leadership. But other officials said the administration remains unsure of Maliki's motives and warned that the ongoing battle risks sending the country spiraling back toward the cataclysmic violence levels of 2006 and early 2007.

"This is a precarious situation," a senior official familiar with U.S. intelligence in southern Iraq said, with "a lot to be gained and a lot to lose." This official and others said that even as Maliki takes needed military action in Basra, he appears to be positioning himself and his Shiite political allies for dominance in provincial elections this fall.

Competition for power and resources in the oil-rich south has been ongoing for months among the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest single party in the Iraqi parliament; and the breakaway Sadrist movement known as Fadhila. The Shiite groups are opposed and allied with each other in a tangle of national and local issues, with many divisions reflected in factions of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces.

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Ex-Afghanistan Detainee Alleges Torture by U.S.

A resident of Germany who was imprisoned for two months at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan has told an interviewer that his interrogators hung him from a ceiling for five days and that several doctors periodically checked him before authorizing the torture to continue.

Murat Kurnaz said that shortly after his capture in Pakistan in fall 2001, the American interrogators insisted he admit to being an al-Qaeda operative and associate of 9/11 plotter Mohamed Atta. Kurnaz said when he said he did not know Atta or refused to talk, the interrogators punished him by hanging him by his arms to the rafters of a freezing aircraft hangar.

Kurnaz's allegations about his abusive treatment in a prison at the U.S. military base in Kandahar are to be publicly aired for the first time tomorrow on CBS's "60 Minutes." He was released by the U.S. military in August 2006 after spending nearly five years at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kurnaz made similar allegations of systematic torture in 2005 when he was still a U.S. prisoner, according to newly declassified notes his attorney took during a conversation at Guantanamo. Kurnaz said then that interrogators in Kandahar dunked his head in water, administered electric shocks to the soles of his feet and hung him by his hands -- when he denied being a terrorist.

Kurnaz, who the U.S. military eventually freed without giving a reason, is publishing a book in April that describes his experiences in custody. An ethnic Turk raised in Germany, Kurnaz traveled to Pakistan to study Islam in 2001. He was seized by Pakistani police after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and was turned over to U.S. troops as a terrorism suspect for a cash bounty, military records show.

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Residents of Maine & South Carolina in Jeopardy With Federal ID Law

Starting in May, driver’s licenses issued in Maine and South Carolina may not be accepted as identification at airports and federal buildings unless the states work out a last-minute agreement with the federal Department of Homeland Security.

The states are refusing to ask the agency to extend the deadline for applying new layers of security in their identification systems as required under the federal Real ID Act. Congress passed the legislation in 2005 with the intention of making it harder for terrorists to obtain driver’s licenses.

The final Real ID regulations were released Jan. 11, and states have until Monday to request an extension of the compliance date. Without an extension, driver’s licenses from Maine and South Carolina will no longer be deemed valid as identification at airports and federal buildings starting May 11, the original date of compliance. As an alternative, travelers could use passports.

“If an individual shows up at an airport on May 11 or later and their licenses are from any state not in compliance, it’s effectively showing up without federal identification of any kind,” said Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “Individuals in those scenarios will have to have added security and screening.”

Maine and South Carolina are among a number of states that have passed laws barring participation in the Real ID program. The others have all won extensions, and Maine and South Carolina hope to be granted extensions as well, without formally requesting them.

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Unconstitutional Federal Reserve to be Given Major New Powers!!!

Editor's Note: This is an admission that the Bear bail out was illegal and that the Fed had no authority to bail out a security broker! The Emergency Banking Act of 1933 restricted government assistance to commercial banks. Bear Stearns is primarily engaged in business as a securities broker and dealer. Now, the government wants to give the Federal Reserve the power to do what they've already done...illegally!

The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the way the government regulates the nation's financial services industry from banks to mortgage brokers and insurance companies.

The plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a 22-page executive summary obtained by The Associated Press.

The Fed would be given broad authority to oversee financial market stability. That would include new powers to examine the books of any institution deemed to represent a potential threat to the proper functioning of the overall financial system.

The proposal, which will be outlined Monday in a speech by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is certain to set off heated debates within different sectors of the financial services industry and in Congress, where some Democrats are likely to complain that the proposal does not go far enough to crack down on abuses.

The administration divided its recommendations into short-term goals that could be adopted quickly, intermediate recommendations and an "optimal" regulatory framework, which contains a radical restructuring of how the government supervises banks and other financial institutions.

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Database of DNA Nears Passage

Despite last-minute objections from Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, legislation to expand collection of DNA samples from suspects charged with violent crimes moved a step closer to final passage yesterday, as a House committee made only minor changes to the version of the bill that passed the Senate last week.

The Judiciary Committee voted 18-3 to approve the DNA bill, a top crime-fighting priority of Gov. Martin O'Malley, after defeating a series of amendments that would have delayed or limited the initiative. Proponents say an expanded DNA database would help solve crimes.

Members of the Legislative Black Caucus, who had protested the bill loudly when a version of it first reached the House floor, appeared satisfied with the measure, as changes they had negotiated to increase protections for defendants remained largely untouched.

Del. Jill P. Carter, a Baltimore Democrat, was the only caucus member on the committee to vote against it, joining two Republican lawmakers.

The panel's chairman, Del. Joseph F. Vallario Jr., brushed aside concerns raised about the bill by Jessamy's office, which sent one of its veteran prosecutors to Annapolis yesterday to meet with committee members before they voted on the legislation.

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2001 Anthrax Attack Linked To Army Bioweapons Lab in Maryland

The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed.

The anthrax attacks began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, further alarming a nation already reeling from the deaths of 3,000 Americans. Five people were killed and more than a dozen others were infected by the deadly spores in the fall of 2001.

A leading theory is that the anthrax was stolen from Fort Detrick and then sealed inside the letters. A law enforcement source said the FBI is essentially engaged in a process of elimination.

Much of the early public focus fell on a Fort Detrick scientist named Steven Hatfill, who is suing federal authorities for identifying him as a person of interest. Now the FBI is focusing on other scientists at the facility.

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Politicians Race to Avoid All-Out War Between Feuding Shiite Factions

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki backed off its ultimatum to the Mahdi Army militia of fiery Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday, giving the group's members 10 more days to lay down their weapons in return for amnesty and financial rewards.

The move comes as US forces began launching airstrikes in both Baghdad and the southern oil port of Basra, joining Iraqi forces in their recent effort to cripple Mr. Sadr's militia, which the Pentagon accuses of links to Iran.

The softening of Mr. Maliki's position comes after what started on Tuesday as an operation limited to Basra but quickly escalated into a confrontation with Mr. Sadr's powerful and well-armed militia in Baghdad and most of the predominantly Shiite southern cities. Iraq's Parliament held an emergency session Friday and set up a committee to mediate an end to the deadly clashes that now risk drawing US forces to the government's side in an all-out war that would shatter some of the security gains achieved in recent months.

Maliki's concession also follows a late night meeting on Thursday in Baghdad by Shiite politicians trying to broker a solution to the crisis. Former deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi and former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari met members of Parliament from Sadr's political wing, who have labeled Maliki the "new dictator" and call for his resignation. Notably absent from this meeting were senior politicians from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) party and its affiliates, which are strongly backing the Maliki-led offensive against its archrival Sadr's armed wing.

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Pulitzer Prize Winner Hersh: 'U.S. In Real Trouble in Iraq'

When the American government says the US is winning in Iraq and is not torturing prisoners, they are just words, Hersh told his audience of journalism students in Regina, Canada. "We are in real trouble [in Iraq]."

Pointing to the changes reporting has undergone since the Vietnam War, the award-winning journalist explained that reporters are now imbedded with troops who cloud their judgment and therefore do not touch the same kind of issues.

"It has led to a lot of lousy reporting," continued Hersh. "I don't think it is bad for a journalist to come back (from covering a war) and say it s***s."

Hersh said media outlets spread 'fake' news and suggested his audience resort to translations of local media sources when learning about issues concerning the Middle East.

Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Myron Hersh first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War.

Call For New 9/11 Investigation Reaches Crescendo

By Paul J. Watson / Prison Planet

Calls for a new 9/11 inquiry are reaching a crescendo, with well-respected authorities and celebrities alike adding their voices to the cause, as the official 9/11 story crumbles under the weight of revelations of White House ties to the 9/11 Commission, and other cover-ups on behalf of authorities staffed with investigating the attacks.

The corporate media's insistence on ignoring hundreds of professional experts who are calling for a new 9/11 investigation has spurred many celebrities to use their public platforms to speak out, knowing that the press will at least have to address the issue.

The latest to do so is top comedian Margaret Cho, who told the Alex Jones Show yesterday that the public were going to become very angry when it was fully disclosed that the attacks were a conspiracy, concurring with fellow comedian George Carlin who also questioned the official story last year.

The path was trailblazed by Charlie Sheen in March 2006 when he spoke of his doubts about the official story and questioned the collapse of WTC Building 7. Sheen was endlessly smeared for weeks after but he prompted a national debate about 9/11 and the 9/11 Truth Movement enjoyed what many consider to be its most productive year.

In September 2006, former Governor, actor and wrestling star Jesse Ventura questioned 9/11 during an on-camera interview with Alex Jones and also cited Operation Northwoods and the Gulf of Tonkin as examples of how the government has planned and carried out staged war provocations in the past.

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GMO & Morgellons Disease: GM Plants Causing a New Human Disease?

By Barbara H. Peterson / Global Research

Since the Clinton administration made biotechnology "a strategic priority for U.S. government" (1) , giant transnational agri-business concerns have aggressively taken over the global food chain by flooding it with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) without regard for the consequences to the earth or its inhabitants. This takeover not only has the potential for global economic devastation, but threatens the earth’s population with far-reaching health concerns as well. One health concern that seems to coincide with the GMO revolution is Morgellons disease. What if the advent of Morgellons disease has something to do with the ingestion of GMO foods?

Little information has been revealed concerning the long-term health effects of GMO crops on humans or animals, and even less information can be had regarding research correlating Morgellons with GMO foods. This is suspicious right off the bat, because it would seem that there would be a natural curiosity regarding a link between Genetically Modified Organisms that people ingest regularly and inorganic fibers that protrude from a person’s skin. This would be right up a geneticist’s alley, and quite worthy of intensive research. So, why aren’t there a ton of published studies? Why is it so difficult finding anything related to this? Could it be that companies such as Monsanto have enough clout to effectively squash these stories?

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Tapes’ Destruction Hovers Over Detainee Cases

When officers from the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting harsh interrogations in 2005, they may have believed they were freeing the government and themselves from potentially serious legal trouble.

But nearly four months after the disclosure that the tapes were destroyed, the list of legal entanglements for the C.I.A., the Defense Department and other agencies is only growing longer. In addition to criminal and Congressional investigations of the tapes’ destruction, the government is fighting off challenges in several major terrorism cases and a raft of prisoners’ legal claims that it may have destroyed evidence.

“They thought they were saving themselves from legal scrutiny, as well as possible danger from Al Qaeda if the tapes became public,” said Frederick P. Hitz, a former C.I.A. officer and the agency’s inspector general from 1990 to 1998, speaking of agency officials who favored eliminating the tapes. “Unknowingly, perhaps, they may have created even more problems for themselves.”

In a suit brought by Hani Abdullah, a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal judge has raised the possibility that, by destroying the tapes, the C.I.A. violated a court order to preserve all evidence relevant to the prisoner. In at least 12 other lawsuits, lawyers for prisoners at Guantánamo and elsewhere have filed legal challenges citing the C.I.A. tapes’ destruction, said David H. Remes, a Washington lawyer representing 16 prisoners.

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MoD Admits Troops Abused Iraqi Prisoners

By Luke Baker / Reuters

The Ministry of Defense will admit on Friday that British troops tortured and breached the human rights of nine Iraqi men they detained in southern Iraq in 2003, opening the way to potentially large compensation claims.

The decision follows years of legal wrangling in which the family of Baha Musa, an Iraqi hotel worker who was beaten and died in British custody, and eight other Iraqis who survived the beatings, have sought justice.

The ministry, which will make the admission in the High Court, said on Thursday it was doing so to try to smooth the process of paying compensation to Musa's family and the eight other Iraqis and end lengthy court proceedings.

The case was one of the British military's darkest episodes in Iraq. All nine detainees suffered 36 hours of violent interrogation before Musa died with 93 injuries to his body, including a broken nose and ribs.

"I deeply regret the actions of a very small number of troops and I offer my sincere apologies and sympathy to the family of Baha Musa and the eight others," armed forces minister Bob Ainsworth said in a statement issued along with the ministry's admission of its breach of human rights.

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Husband & Wife Deployed To Iraq Leaving 1-Year-Old For Year

A U.S. Army married couple in Florida being deployed together to serve their country will have to be away from their 1-year-old son for a year. Yvette and William Sims will soon be heading to Iraq as members of the Army Reserve's 345th combat-support hospital. While that means they'll be together overseas, it also means the couple only has a few more play dates with their 1-year-old son, Connor.

"It's going to be heartbreaking to leave him," Yvette Sims said. "We're going over there, of course, to support the mission over there and to take care of soldiers."

The Sims have been deployed in the past, but have never gone together. The Sims said Connor will celebrate his second birthday with other family members, but his greatest present won't come until this time next year when his parents return home just in time for his third birthday. "I'm just hoping that he's proud of us and what we've done," Sims said.

Source: http://www.local6.com/news/15729725/detail.html

Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice

In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush and his top advisors declared that the struggle against terrorism would be nothing less than a war–a new kind of war that would require new tactics, new tools, and a new mind-set. Bush’s Law is the unprecedented account of how the Bush administration employed its “war on terror” to mask the most radical remaking of American justice in generations.

On orders from the highest levels of the administration, counterterrorism officials at the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA were asked to play roles they had never played before. But with that unprecedented power, administration officials butted up against–or disregarded altogether–the legal restrictions meant to safeguard Americans’ rights, as they gave legal sanction to covert programs and secret interrogation tactics, a swept up thousands of suspects in the drift net.

Eric Lichtblau, who has covered the Justice Department and national security issues for the duration of the Bush administration, details not only the development of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program–initiated by the vice president’s office in the weeks after 9/11–but also the intense pressure that the White House brought to bear on The New York Times to thwart his story on the program.

Bush’s Law is an investigative report on the hidden internal struggles over secret programs and policies that tore at the constitutional fabric of the country and, ultimately, brought down an attorney general.

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Eric Lichtblau received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, for his stories on the NSA's wiretapping program. He has worked in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, covering the Justice Department, since 2002. From 1999 to 2002 he covered the Justice Department for the Los Angeles Times. He is a graduate of Cornell University and lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

FBI's $500 Million Wiretap Retrofitting Fund Empty

The FBI has gone through nearly all of its $500 millon budget for making old telephone switches wiretap friendly, but an FBI survey showed that nearly 40 percent of the nation's switches still aren't up to federal wiretapping standards, according to a new report from the Justice Department's inspector general.

A 1994 law known as the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act or CALEA requires all telephone switches installed after 1995 to comply with detailed wiretapping rules, and Congress set aside a half billion dollars for the FBI to dole out to help carriers make older landline switches compliant.

Cell phone switches, however, are all compliant and nearly all FBI surveillance targets cell phones and pagers. In 2005, the feds got some 1800 criminal wiretap court orders, along with nearly 2,200 court orders for anti-terrorism and foreign intelligence wiretaps.

According to a redacted report (.pdf) from the DOJ's Inspector General, the FBI has only a little more than $5000 left in dedicated CALEA funds, which mostly went towards paying switch manufacturers to write wiretapping software and issue licenses to use that software for older switches.

The audit says it is not possible to tell if the money was well-spent, since neither the telecoms nor the switch makers are keen on sharing information.

Though the FBI has a well-earned reputation for bungling large technology projects, the FBI successfully built a sprawling surveillance network that taps into key telecom facilities around the country.

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New Hampshire Joins Montana in Real ID Victory

Détente has arrived in the fight between independence-minded states and a federal bureaucracy keen to claim a unanimous victory in its drive to create a de facto national identity database.

The key? The renegade states send a nice letter that is not a request for an extension of a looming deadline but touts the security of their driver's licenses, which the Department of Homeland Security accepts as an official extension request. That lets DHS save face, even as it backs down from repeated threats to punish the citizens of rogue states.

On Thursday, New Hampshire became the second of the four holdout states to get an unasked-for extension, following the path blazed by Montana's feisty Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer last Friday. Schweitzer told Threat Level he sent DHS "a horse, and if they want to call it a zebra, that's up to them."

The legislators in the Live Free or Die state, like those in Montana, banned the state from complying with the Real ID mandates, citing state's rights, the inequity of unfunded federal mandates, and privacy issues. Under the rules, almost all license holders will have to return to the DMV with notarized "breeder documents" like birth and marriage certificates, and states will have to interlink their databases of digital photos and personal information. Citizens of states that opt out can't use their licenses for federal purposes, such as entering airport screening lines or going to a Social Security office.

DHS says the new licenses will prevent terrorism and identity theft, and Secretary Michael Chertoff says it's one of his top priorities in his last nine months in office.

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Was polonium-210 being smuggled for a dirty bomb?

By Paul Craig Roberts

In the recently published thriller, The Shell Game, Steve Alten weaves a tale of a neoconservative plot to attack Iran. To overcome resistance, a black op group associated with a Republican administration arranges for nuclear devices to be exploded in two American cities, with planted evidence pointing to Iran.

Recent developments make one wonder if fact is following fantasy.

The Bush regime’s propaganda against Iran is going full blast and obviously has a purpose. The foreign press reports that the reason for Cheney’s latest trip abroad is to cajole, threaten, and purchase support for a US attack on Iran.

The Israeli government continues to see an Iranian nuclear weapon on the horizon and to agitate for US action against Iran.

According to John McGlynn in Japan Focus(March 22, 2008), the Bush regime is already attacking Iran with Treasury Department actions to cut off Iran’s banking system from all international banking relationships, thereby preventing Iran from importing and exporting. McGlynn calls the US Treasury’s action a "US declaration of war on Iran."

Cheney’s trip shows that the Bush regime is undeterred by the National Intelligence Estimate’s conclusion that Iran abandoned several years ago any nuclear weapons program that it might have had. The International Atomic Energy Agency has never found evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all the facts and without evidence, the Bush Regime continues to assert that Iran has a nuclear weapons program that warrants an American attack on Iran.

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Will Kosovo be turned over to the Pentagon?

Predictions made by experts before Kosovo's illegal declaration of independence are coming true - the territory seized from Serbia is turning into a big military base of the United States and NATO.

Thus, George W. Bush ordered arms shipments to Kosovo. Because of this, Moscow insisted on an emergency session of the NATO-Russia Council - it will be held in Brussels on March 28.

Incidentally, Bush issued this order two days after the Moscow visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who urged Moscow to promote cooperation, expand consultations, and display more openness in general.

The haste with which the Pentagon is trying to take the fledgling Kosovo under its wing demonstrates the West's lack of confidence that peace will come to the Balkans after Kosovo's cessation. But the West was actively using this rhetoric - the need to put an end to the Yugoslav crisis - in order to justify its support for the Kosovo separatists. There can be no peace when one side is being equipped with weapons against the other. This means pouring more fuel on the fire...

The Serbs have already got the message. In the city of Kosovska Mitrovica (in northern Kosovo), they desperately rushed to defend their last shelter - a courthouse. Previously, it was the venue of Serbian justice, but now it is occupied by international lawyers who will turn it over to their Albanian colleagues. Blood was spilled there during clashes with peacekeepers. There are numerous rallies in Belgrade supporting the Serbian minority in Kosovo.

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