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Fascism should more
properly be called corporatism since it is
the merger of
state and corporate power

Timelock: if by April 1st, 2005--one year from the formal launch of this site--I don’t sell a book, script, ten short stories, get a play produced or get a decent job writing, I will commit Hari-Kiri live on the net. Sounds gimmicky, doesn’t it?

"If a terrorist group attacked the U.S. three days before an election, does anyone doubt that the American electorate would rally behind the president or at least the most aggressively antiterror party?" --David Brooks

"This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of atomic annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority."-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The U.S. will assure Israel that it will not have to withdraw to the Green Line in a future permanent settlement with the Palestinians.

UNGA Resolution 181 (II) concerning the Future Government of Palestine (November 29, 1947) establishes the parity of the two peoples with respect to their respective rights to establish states on the former mandated territory of Palestine, and the duty of both states to respect both minorities and the special juridical status of Jerusalem.
UNGA Resolution 194 (III) (December 11, 1948) affirms the right of Palestinians to return to their original homes and lands, and to receive compensation for any losses incurred, as well as the right of resettlement for those Palestinian refugees choosing not to return, and compensation for their losses. The UN established the UN Conciliation Commission to uphold the rights of Palestinian refugees.
UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338 (November 22, 1967 and October 22, 1973) require Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied during the 1967 and 1973 wars, and call for "a just settlement of the refugee problem."
UNGA Resolution 34/70 (December 6, 1979) asserts the need for any solution of the conflict to be in accordance with the right of self-determination, regardless of what the parties might negotiate.
UNGA Resolution 43/177 (December 15, 1988) acknowledges the 1988 Palestinian proclamation of a Palestinian state as consistent with UNGA Resolution 181.
UNSC Resolutions 476, 480 and 1322 (June 30, 1980, November 12, 1980 and October 7, 2000) reaffirm the basic principle of international and UN law that it is inadmissible to acquire territory by force or conquest, as well as the unconditional applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the civilian population of occupied territory.

The Washington investment firm, run by a who's who of Republican heavyweights, including former Secretary of State James Baker and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, has put money into about 300 different companies and properties.
Those investments include United Defense Industries, a maker of combat vehicles, naval guns and missile launchers; and Sippican, a maker of submarine systems and countermeasures to protect warships.

They also include a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm called MedPointe, which just so happens to be one of only three companies licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to manufacture over-the-counter potassium iodide pills.

That's significant because potassium iodide can help protect against thyroid cancer in the event of exposure to large amounts of radiation -- from a small, easily transported nuclear weapon, say, or a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant.

The fine print of the deal takes the chance of the commission taking sworn public testimony from any other White House official – including Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley, Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, President Bush himself or Vice President Dick Cheney – completely off the table. It also precludes the panel from having the option of calling Rice, who's made media statements contradicting evidence and sworn statements by other officials, back to testify.

The commission quickly agreed to the White House demands, including that it not seek additional public testimony from any White House official.

a 1999 audit conducted by the Saudi government that reportedly discovered that the bin Mahfouz family's National Commercial Bank had transferred at least $ 3 million to charitable organizations believed to be fronts for bin Laden's terror network.

Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or Central Intelligence Agency interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group.

Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she misspoke; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles.

"to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States."

It is one element of a larger missile defense effort -- estimated to cost $53 billion over the next five years -- that will use ships at sea and other methods to track and deflect missile launches. Navy Secretary Gordon England announced Monday that a specially equipped Aegis destroyer will be positioned this fall in the Sea of Japan, where it will be an alert for North Korean missile launches.

The top U.S. weapons tester told Congress Thursday it was too early to say if a multibillion-dollar missile shield -- due to start deployment this year -- would thwart a North Korean attack.

"They can't get it to work, but the political momentum is probably irresistible," said John Pike, a space specialist with the Federation of American Scientists and a longtime critic of the program.

In an op-ed published Monday in The Washington Post, Rice wrote that "through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda" that included "sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime" including the use of ground forces. But Armitage, testifying this week as the White House representative, said the military part was not in the plan before Sept. 11.

WOODRUFF: One person who is unhappy with the fact these hearings were held at all is Georgia Senator Zell Miller. He's a Democrat who's supporting President Bush for reelection. Miller tells me that this week's hearings, he thinks, could be a bad thing for the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. ZELL MILLER (D), GEORGIA: But I think it could do great damage to this country. I think that our enemies, our terrorist enemies, look at what's happening here and they see all this bickering, they see this divisiveness, they see this disunity and they will interpret it as weakness and instability.

"...you can remain a person's friend without excusing his behavior. In life, every action has a consequence. He'll have to live with the knowledge of what he did for the rest of his life. And that's tough punishment for a man who understands history like he does."

The political reality of the situation is, it doesn't matter whether you have censure, resignation or impeachment," Miller said Monday. "The fact is, his credibility is shattered and your credibility is what politicians operate on."

"I'm talking about what came after that: sending his aides out to continue the lie. That particularly galled me because he was betraying them every day,"

"It's really hard to watch a man that you love betray others, betray his family and his friends, and debase himself and diminish the office."

After three straight days of television interviews on the same topic by a variety of White House officials, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters at the White House Wednesday that Clarke's charges were "scurrilous."

Rice's willingness to brief Fox executives is especially intriguing in light of the fact that she continues to refuse to brief the bipartisan panel that is investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
301 7th Street, SW
Room 5125
Washington, DC 20407

Washington Office
Tel: (202) 331-4060
Fax: (202) 296-5545 info@9-11Commission.gov

The spiritual leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas says it has decided to suspend "fighting operations" against Israelis.
In a television interview in Gaza City, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said this was not yet a formal ceasefire, and that Hamas was working with other Palestinian factions on a joint statement.

"In the past we declared a unilateral ceasefire, we gave the Israeli enemy a truce for 50 days, but they did not commit to it even for one day. They continued with their killings and crimes, with demolishing houses and building settlements.
"So we have to study where the national interest lies: with resistance, or with declaring a ceasefire."

'Military battle'

Hamas has been calling for a mutual ceasefire, one that would mean an end to Israeli assassinations and incursions as well as Palestinian attacks.

Judging by public statements, Palestinian officials have also adopted that approach.

He said the United States was "very troubled" by the events in Gaza. He also avoided condemning Israel explicitly, but turned the White House's general call for calm into a message aimed at Israel, urging Jerusalem to avoid further action that would make it difficult to restore calm.

Last week's cabinet decision to kill off the Hamas leadership broke the rules of the game, and could move the armed conflict to areas never seen before. For the first time the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken on a religious dimension since the target chosen by Israel was an Islamic leader whose symbolic stature went far beyond the borders of the country. Moreover, the declared decision - to assassinate the entire political and spiritual leadership of the Hamas, on the grounds that they initiate terror operations and are responsible for them - pushes them into a corner where they have nothing left to lose. It will also provoke them into adopting a particularly extremist approach, hoping for unusually spectacular terror attacks that would revive their own deterrence against Israel and reestablish the balance of fear on which the violent conflict has taken place until now.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.-- Gandhi

The report found that 40 percent of Palestinians - or 1.4 million people - are now classified as food insecure, meaning they don't have access on a continuing basis to the food they need to live normal and healthy lives.

Another 1.1 million people, or 30 percent, are threatened with becoming food insecure if conditions continue, said the
report.

First, settlements have a stranglehold over Israeli politics. Particularly today, with unremitting terrorist attacks against innocents, the Israeli body politic is unable to effectively voice its growing discontent over settlements.

There is a second problem - the Israeli government's dishonesty. Just look at what Zeev Schiff, Israel's most respected security analyst, had to say about settlements this month in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz: "When it comes to the (settlement) outposts, the issue has involved the spreading of one of the state of Israel's biggest lies - not only a lie that was told to the Americans but an ongoing lie that the Israeli public is being fed."

Schiff revealed that despite Israeli government claims that some settlement outposts were being dismantled, the number of outposts grew steadily during Sharon's tenure. Moreover, the government has deliberately skewed the numbers. Schiff cites information confirming that at least 90 outposts have been set up. "The only viable conclusion," says Schiff, "is that Washington must apply pressure to Israel for its own sake."

Individual Arabs may perhaps be bought off but this hardly means that all the Arabs in Eretz Israel are willing to sell a patriotism that not even Papuans will trade. Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.

That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel".


...they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.
--The Iron Wall by Vladimir Jabotinski, 1923

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . We need believing people."
Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the NAZI-Vatican Concordat of 1933

"... a principle familiar to propagandists is that the doctrine to be instilled in the target audience should not be articulated: that would only expose them to reflection, inquiry, and, very likely, ridicule. The proper procedure is to drill them home by constantly presupposing them, so that they become the very condition for discourse"--Noam Chomsky

Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration's efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is aware of the entertainment industry's impact on the department's image. While on a recent visit to Los Angeles, he met with entertainment industry executives who asked him how they could help the Homeland Security effort, Scolinos said.

"There was a tension, almost until the day filming began, which manifested itself in our comments which went unanswered by in subsequent drafts of the script. When the filmmakers realized that unless the services were satisfied with the script, approval would not be granted, the changes were finally made."
_{further on}
In short," Major Georgi wrote of the changes, "military depictions have become more of a 'commercial' for us."

"In my experience over the past thirty years, every White House- save one,the Gerald Ford White House -has on occasion willfully misled or lied to the press."--David Gergan

It's from the IPA that we get the so-called 7 "tricks of the trade" in propaganda campaigns: name calling (bad label for an idea), glittering generalities (associating your campaign with a virtuous concept like freedom or democracy), transference (using authority and prestige to transfer message), testimonials (celebrity endorsements), plain folks ("of the people" is always good), card stacking (selection of facts or illustrations to prevent best and worst case scenarios), and band wagon (everybody is doing it; "we are of one mind").

The potency of right wing politics and opinion molding lies in the architecture of the movement. That is, its constituent organizations think and act strategically. Agendas, priorities, and propaganda are directed from the center. Members are disciplined and dedicated to the narrow theology of the right.

The disparate streams of conservative thought and action -- social, economic, religious, libertarian, and corporate -- set aside major differences and march to a single drummer -- with the tempo set at weekly tactical conferences in Washington.

This cohesion has undeniably had a large impact on the American body politic. The far right coalition now effectively controls the three branches of the federal government, overriding the checks-and-balances against rampant political power built into the Constitution. Conservatives now also set the terms of the national political debate through their dominance of the unofficial "fourth estate," the media.

Benjamin Franklin, leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, was asked by a bystander what kind of government the Founders had bestowed. "A republic," he famously replied, "if you can keep it." There have been moments in American history when we kept our republic only by the slenderest of margins. This year is one of those times.

Roger Noriega is the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and the lead plotter in the recent coup against the democratically elected government of Haiti. Before that, he was the United States Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS). During Iran-Contra, he was an aide in the Bureau of Latin American Affairs of the US State Department. The other felonious characters in the Contra-Crack scandal were Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, John Poindexter, and Otto Reich. The Vice President during this episode was George Herbert Walker Bush, former Director of Central Intelligence.

These guys are all now re-employed by the administration of George W. Bush. Otto Reich was in Noriega's current position in 2001 and now is the US representative to the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS). Reagan had Reich resign to protect his king when the story of the Cocaine-Contra connection broke, because Reich was easily connected by any journalist with five minutes to spare to CIA assassin Felix Rodriguez and terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Reich specialized in disinformation, planting fake stories in the press about Nicaraguan MIG's and Sandinista "atrocities" against Miskito Indians. Reich was also the US Ambassador to Venezuela, when he tried to secure the release of Orlando Bosch, a Miami-Cuban mafiosi who bombed a civilian airliner. That downing of a civilian passenger airline from Cuba was the same attack in which Posada Carriles had also been implicated.

The Iraq on the Record Report, prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. The search options on the left can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again." --George W. Bush

Q Scott, to follow on that, are you telling us, on the day the President signed it and presented it to the American people, made it law, he either thought it was going to cost $400 billion over 10 years, or he didn't know how much it was going to cost and he didn't care?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, the President -- in fact, you just heard from the President -- we've been going through our budget process; the budget will be released on Monday. The President was briefed just, I believe it was two weeks ago today when he was briefed on this aspect of the budget and was informed about the new -- or I guess this was the first estimate -- that we put forward the estimate that the HHS actuaries came up with in that budget process.
_{emphasis mine}

"The only time to use Social Security money is in times of war, times of recession, or times of severe emergency." --George Bush, five days prior to 9/11

As he said to me in mid-September, "Lucky me. I hit the trifecta." --Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels relating what Mr Bush said to him post-9/11

The average 2004 tax cut for the richest 1 percent--$59,292--is more than five times greater than the average retired worker's Social Security benefit.

When Social Security runs surpluses, it doesn't get any credit because it's just part of the government. But when it runs deficits, Social Security is on its own. This twisted logic in effect expropriates all of the extra money workers have paid into the system since 1983, when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others, pushed through an increase in payroll taxes ? an increase whose purpose was to build up the trust fund that the commission, co-chaired by Mr. Moynihan, now says isn't real.

But oil is just one reason for West Africa's growing demand for guns for hire. The US, for instance, is now more engaged in West Africa. But with troops tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, it's increasingly hiring private security firms to represent it.

In a recent speech, Theresa Whelan, a top official for Africa at the US Department of Defense, put it this way: "The use of contractors in Africa ... means that the US can be supportive in trying to ameliorate regional crises without necessarily having to put US troops on the ground, which is often times a very difficult political decision."

"I don't understand how poor people think." --George Bush, 8.26.03

Spending on defense and homeland security will fall by 14 percent as a share of the economy by 2009. Total domestic appropriations will plummet by 24 percent, with huge cuts in science (minus 19 percent), pollution control (minus 27 percent), transportation (minus 18 percent), disaster relief (minus 49 percent), education (minus 22 percent), housing assistance (minus 33 percent), and law enforcement (minus 20 percent).

BILL MOYERS: The Non-Partisan Center for Responsive Politics says less than one-tenth of one percent of the country gave 85 percent, almost 85 percent, of all itemized contributions in our recent elections. What does that tell you, Senator?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Well, it tells me that it's huge amounts of money contributed by a handful of Americans that are dictating the legislative agenda here in Congress.

Mr. Buckingham has made a killing by befriending and helping to power emergent Third World leaders.
...
Buckingham's corporate empire includes Branch Energy, Heritage Oil and Gas, and the so-called private security services, Executive Outcomes and Sandline International.

God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did...

"He can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell because it is God himself, with whom he is in permanent contact, and who gives him this strength,"

... the United States still has some 75,000 soldiers in Germany, 41,000 in Japan, 41,000 in Korea, 13,000 in Italy, 12,000 in the United Kingdom, and so on, down through a list of more than a hundred countries?plus some 26,000 sailors and Marines deployed afloat. The new jobs keep coming, and the old ones don't go away. Several times I have heard officers on Army bases refer mordantly to the current recruiting slogan: "An Army of One." The usual punch line is, "That's how many soldiers are left for new assignments now."

The Selective Service System wants volunteers to serve as members of local boards. Volunteers must be citizens of the U.S., 18 or older, registered with the Selective Service (if a male), not be an employee in any law enforcement occupation, not be an active or retired member of the Armed Forces and not have been convicted for any criminal offense.

S.89
Title: A bill to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Hollings, Ernest F. [SC] (introduced 1/7/2003)

Universal National Service Act of 2003 - Declares that it is the obligation of every U.S. citizen, and every other person residing in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a two-year period of national service, unless exempted, either as a member of an active or reserve component of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defense. Requires induction into national service by the President. Sets forth provisions governing: (1) induction deferments, postponements, and exemptions, including exemption of a conscientious objector from military service that includes combatant training; and (2) discharge following national service.

Amends the Military Selective Service Act to authorize the military registration of females.

...the Army's most recent stop-loss order, issued Nov. 13 (2003), covering thousands of active-duty soldiers whose units are scheduled for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming months. Because the stop-loss order begins 90 days before deployment and lasts for 90 days after a return home, those troops will be prohibited from retiring or leaving the Army at the expiration of their contracts until the spring of 2005, at the earliest.

People, especially reporters, he said, ask him if he thinks those lost lives are too high a price to pay.
His answer is "absolutely not" . "If it costs 500, that's OK, or 5000, OK, or 50,000, that's OK with me."

Not since World War II have so many National Guard units been pressed into service abroad. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, more than 143,000 National Guard members have been mobilized worldwide, with the biggest single concentration expected this spring when more than 35,000 Army National Guard troops -- topping the wartime peak of 30,000 -- are slated to arrive in Iraq as thousands of their colleagues rotate home.

"I think one of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights" in both northern and southern Iraq, Garner said, adding that such bases could provide large areas for military training. "I think we'd want to keep at least a brigade in the north, a self-sustaining brigade, which is larger than a regular brigade," he added.

Noting how establishing U.S. naval bases in the Philippines in the early 1900s allowed the United States to maintain a "great presence in the Pacific," Garner said, "To me that's what Iraq is for the next few decades. We ought to have something there ... that gives us great presence in the Middle East. I think that's going to be necessary."
--Jay Garner

"Thirty days, actually three weeks, was not enough time for us to read over 4,000 pages of documents, view the videos and the photographs that we got and conduct an investigation into what we believe is truly some very important excluded ... material by the FBI," attorney Chris Tritico said shortly after filing the appeal.

The appeal states that, if given the time, McVeigh's lawyers could show the FBI suppressed credible evidence that other people played a significant role in the bombing, which may change the jury's view of McVeigh's role and moral guilt in the bombing.

"There was also evidence, withheld by the government, that another person could well have been the mastermind behind the bombing," the appeal said. "Mr. McVeigh ... does not claim that the withheld evidence could change the guilty verdicts for murder. He does claim ... that he was denied due process when the prosecution withheld evidence concerning participation by others."

The spiritual leader at Elohim City is the Reverend Robert Millar. Elohim City had a close association with the Christian Identity Movement and The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord which had its own grievance
against the United States government. See D.E. 2191 at 33. The federal government conducted a raid on the CSA on April 19, 1985--exactly ten years to the day prior to the Oklahoma City bombing. See Id. at 33-34; D.E. 2840
(Pretrial Conference: Volume m--Sealed, January 1997 at 181). Members of the CSA now reside at Elohim City.

One of the members of CSA turned on the organization and testified at the trial of Richard Snell in Arkansas. Snell was on trial with others on charges of sedition--that they conspired to destroy the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City with a rocket launcher in the early 1980s. Id. Snell was convicted on unrelated capital charges, sentenced to death in Arkansas, and
was executed on the very day of the bombing in Oklahoma City--April 19, 1995. Id. One of his last statments [sic] before he was executed was, "Governor, look over your shoulder, justice is coming." D.E. 3410 at 16 (Pretrial Hearing--SEALED--Not Provided to Defendant Nichols, March 10, 1997). (Information in public press reports). His body is buried at Elohim City.

According to its charter, the board was set up in 1985 to provide the Secretary of Defense ?with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy.? The members are selected by and report to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy?currently Douglas Feith, a former Reagan administration official. All members are approved by the Secretary of Defense. The board?s quarterly meetings?normally held over a two-day period?are classified, and each session?s proceedings are summarized for the Defense Secretary. The board does not write reports or vote on issues. Feith, according to the charter, can call additional meetings if required. Notices of the meetings are filed at least 15 days before they are held in the Federal Register.

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator
--George W Bush

"Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually." --Dick Cheney

Urban areas can be the scene of inner-city conflicts, labor disputes, and political struggles. Disturbances in urban areas are usually fueled by aggrieved members of the community.

"Over the long term, the peacetime action programs of FEMA and other departments and agencies have the effect of making the conceivable need for military takeover less and less as time goes by. A fully implemented civil defense program may not now be regarded as a substitute for martial law, nor could it be so marketed, but if successful in its execution it could have that effect."-- Louis Giuffrida

Perseverance - Prepare for the measured, protracted application of military capabilities in support of strategic aims. Domestic support operations may require years to achieve desired effects. They may not have a clear beginning or end decisively.

Deployed "on the fly" in the first hours of turmoil on Sept. 11, one participant said, the shadow government has evolved into an indefinite precaution.

They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA.

1. Vice President of the United States - Dick Cheney
2. Speaker of the House - Denny Hastert
3. President pro Tempore of the Senate - Ted Stevens
4. Secretary of State - Colin Powell
5. Secretary of the Treasury - John Snow
6. Secretary of Defense - Donald Rumsfeld
7. Attorney General - John Ashcroft
8.Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton
9.Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman
10.Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans

Q Mr. President, is there a shadow government in place since September 11th? And --

THE PRESIDENT: A shadowy government or a shadow government?

In television interviews on Sunday, the leading congressional Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, confirmed that neither he nor any other congressional leader had been consulted about the plan. Asked whether this constituted a secret government, not just potentially in the future, but in actuality today, he replied, "I don't know. I don't know what their role is, what their current authority is, because we haven?t been informed. You'd think one person in Congress would know, and whether a congressional and judicial component is included."

Lenhardt and Thomson said in a statement last night they "visited a classified location to receive information regarding [presidential] line of succession in the event of a national emergency. We were not briefed on a program involving executive branch personnel being assigned on a rotating basis to insure operation of the executive branch."

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) first learned from a reporter about yesterday's classified briefing for congressional leaders on the contingency plans, his aides said. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer blamed a "scheduling matter" and said Gephardt had "already been talked to," which Gephardt's aides said was untrue.

The White House also disputed lawmakers' claims that they had not been advised of the administration's contingency plans, reported last week in The Washington Post, involving scores of career government officials taking rotations in underground bunkers outside of Washington. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who as Senate president pro tempore is third in line to the presidency, and Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) had said they were not informed of the plans.

Because Bush has decided to leave the operation in place, agencies including the White House and top civilian Cabinet departments have rotated personnel involved, and are discussing ways to staff such a contingency operation under the assumption it will be in place indefinitely, this official said.

An elite group of former Clinton advisers and former public officials of both political parties gathered at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington to announce their proposal to convert the House of Representatives from an elected body to an appointed body in the event of a national emergency. This group calls itself the Continuity of Government (COG) Commission, and the acronym is apt. The COG Commission is trying to be a cog that manipulates our constitutional process of self-government.

the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the western world-it may be in the United States of America-that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.