BUSH WATCH...BERNARD WEINER

Bush Scandals Are Roiling: Turn Up the Heat!

By Bernard Weiner

In the face of imminent scandal-eruptions, it's surprising to see Bush&Co.; moving so forcefully in so many domestic-policy areas, rather than pulling back and trying to ease their way through the November 2 election.

This aggressive attitude suggests a firm belief on their part that they'll still be residing in the White House after January inauguration day. What do they know that we don't? Rigged computer-voting machines with no way to double-check manipulated vote tallies? Osama bin Laden already in the can? Photos of John Kerry in flagrante delicto with a parakeet?

Something strange is going on sub-rosa beneath the subtext. How else to explain the following list? Carried out to solidify their rightwing, militarist, fundamentalist base? Exhibiting lotsa muscle to indicate confidence and lack of fear? Grabbing for what they can get now because they're not really that confident about victory in November? What?

So, let's try to examine the actions on this list -- all engineered or encouraged by the Bush Administration -- and see what they indicate, taken as a package, and what kind of sense we can make of them.

JUDICIAL END-AROUND. During a recent congressional recess, Bush appointed two Southern appeals-court judges, Pickering and Pryor, so far to the right that there was no way they were ever going to gain the required Senate approval. Now these two rightwing activists are hearing major federal appeals.

GOP HACKING. The Republicans got caught with their hands -- and eyes and ears -- in a Watergate-like bugging, but this time in a high-tech kind of way: For months, as a result of computer hacking, a key GOP Judiciary Committee staffer was reading top Democratic Senators' emails about strategy and tactics, and passing them on to his superiors; selected newspapers then reported these private communications. No wonder many in the GOP constantly seemed to be one step ahead of their Democratic opposition.

DUCT-TAPING MOUTHS SHUT. The Republican National Committee is pressing the Federal Election Commission to issue new rules that would hamstring non-profit groups that try to communicate with the public in any way critical of Bush Administration policy. As MoveOn notes: "Any kind of non-profit -- conservative, progressive, labor, religious, secular, social service, charitable, educational, civic participation, issue-oriented, large, and small -- could be affected by these rules." In other words, shut yo' mouth, "watch what you say."

WHAT CAN BE TAUGHT. The Bush Administration is moving to control curriculum and expression on college campuses, especially in the teaching faculty. HR 3077, the so-called "International Studies in Higher Education Act of 2003" -- which has passed the House overwhelmingly and now is in the Senate -- would monitor the curriculum in colleges and universities of, among other things, professors deemed critical of the Bush Administration's neo-imperialist and Middle Eastern policies. In other words, you pointy-headed liberalcommiepinko perfessors better alter your ways or face the consequences.

UNDER THE MEDIA-RADAR. On the same day that Saddam Hussein was captured, with the media focused on the events in Tikrit, Bush signed an order giving the FBI widesweeping new powers to examine any business' financial records -- and, if you've dealt with businesses (and who hasn't?), your records as well -- without having to seek any sort of court approval. The new rules also forbid the affected businesses discussing the matter with any of their clients involved. In other words, you'll never know what hit you, or that you even got hit. (Sort of like the Patriot Act, which permits sneak-and-peek explorations of your computer and email, without you even knowing the government is violating your privacy.)

YEEGADS, FLORIDA AGAIN! There's a Republican bill making its way through that state's Senate that would outlaw any manual recounts of undervotes from touch-screen computer machines. One wonders why the GOP in Florida would not want there to be a manual recount -- which, conceivably, could benefit their candidate -- unless they're pretty confident about the computer-voting outcome long before the election even will be held.

YOUR HOME IS YOUR CASTLE -- NOT. According to a 5th Circuit Appeals Court decision, police officers in Louisiana no longer need a warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business. A reminder, if more are needed, about the power to influence policy for decades through the judicial appointments to the Appeals Courts; see Pickering/Pryor item above.

BACK TO THE FRONT. To meet the demand for troops in Iraq, the military has be en deploying some National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers who aren't fit for combat. More than a dozen members of the Guard and reserves told Knight Ridder they were shipped off to battle with little attention paid to their medical histories -- including imminent heart-attacks because of badly clogged arteries. Those histories included other ailments such as asthma, diabetes, recent surgery and hearing loss. Once in Iraq, the soldiers faced severe conditions that aggravated their medical problems (the soldier with clogged arteries died), and the medical care available to them was limited.

HERE, HAVE A SUBPOENA. Ashcroft's Justice Department has been targeting peaceful anti-war and anti-Administration groups -- religious, political, civic -- issuing subpoenas left and right, trying in the public mind to equate dissent with aid to terrorists.

FEEL A DRAFT IN HERE? The Bush Administration is moving to re-institute the military draft, probably by June of 2005. Initially, they will be doing selective drafting -- that is, picking those with certain skills deemed essential by the Pentagon planners. After that, further drafting will depend on how many countries are selected for the honor of having themselves invaded.

"WORSE THAN WATERGATE"

Well, one could go on and on with this list. There is no lack of frightening actions in Bush&Co.;'s world. But you get the picture. A little slice of your freedom here, another slice there, another there, and, before you realize it, the militarized state has amassed more power into the hands of government and police agencies.

As John W. Dean, President Nixon's counsel, titles his new book: "It's Worse Than Watergate." Far, far worse; most of the Nixon crimes involved trying to cover-up a scandal, but the Bush Administration has turned its extremism into permanent national policy, with horrifying consequences. Now, what Bush&Co.; haven't been able to fully control are events on the ground here in this country, and, especially in Iraq.

Domestically, they still have to maneuver their way through the political/judicial minefields of their most egregioius scandals: doing nothing with their pre-9/11 knowledge, their outing of a covert CIA agent, and their gross lies and manipulations that took the country to war in Iraq. Abroad, the Bush Administration has to hope and pray that things go their way in the roiling Iraq snakepit.

Let's take them one at a time:

THE 9/11 HEARINGS

Unless she blows it bigtime -- in which case she can conveniently take the fall for the decision-makers -- Condoleezza Rice might be able to wiggle her way through her hearing before the so-called "independent" 9/11 Commission. (The quote marks are used because not only is that word laughable in terms of who Bush appointed and who's in charge, but because White House counsel Alberto Gonzales contacted at least two of the GOP members of the panel right before Richard Clarke's testimony and apparently supplied them talking points for questioning the White House's former counter-terorrism chief.

In addition, even though the commission held the best cards, the panel permitted itself to get snookered by Karl Rove. In order to get Rice under oath and in public, the commission too quickly agreed to the sneaky White House deal that: ensured that Rice will testify only for a few hours -- if the GOP panelists ask long questions and she gives long answers, she's basically home free; guaranteed that Rice can't be called back and that nobody else on the NSC staff (such as key Rice deputy Stephen Hadley) can be made to testify; and caved by agreeding that Cheney and his sock-puppet can testify together and NOT UNDER OATH!

In short, this commission -- which, in any case, has concentrated on lower-level intelligence failures all along, rather than on what exactly the executive decision-makers knew, when they knew it, and what they did or didn't do about their knowledge -- is designed to be an ineffective truth-seeker and probably will decide nothing all that important with regard to Bush Administration crimes and misdemeanors. I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong.

THE PLAME OUTING

The Plame case -- where two "senior Administration officials" revealed that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a covert CIA operative -- is a bit more potentially explosive. For one thing, revealing the identity of CIA agents is against the law; former President George H.W. Bush called such outing of secret operatives "treasonous." The issue is too hot and too public to hide. Somebody is going to have to be indicted.

The only question is whether Bush&Co.; can minimize the damage by having a couple of lower-level aides take the fall (supposedly "rogue elements" acting on their own), or whether the grand jury investigating the case won't be content with that B.S. but will go after the Big Guys, maybe Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby or maybe even Cheney Hisself.

The Bush Administration may not be able to postpone the investigation past Election Day, so the thinking here is to get the indictments out soon and the cases into the judicial system, so as to diffuse the potential electoral damage as much as possible and make the Plame issue "old news" by the time November rolls around. My guess is: limited indictments of lower-level aides, dragged-out court cases beyond November 2, pardons later if anyone is convicted. But, again, I would be happy to be proven wrong.

THE IRAQI TIME-BOMB

If 9/11 and the Plame case are explosive and potentially hurtful to Bush's election hopes, what's happening in Iraq is positively catastrophic to those chances. There are so many things that can continue to go wrong, and unlike the Plame and 9/11 Commission cases, the U.S. has far less control over the unfolding events. (And I'm not even talking here about the egregious lies of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Rice, Wolfowitz, Powell, et al. that were used to manipulate the country into approving a war that was one of choice, not self-defense. Those deceits could come back and bite them with the electorate -- at the least, removing the cloak of "trustworthiness" from Bush -- but far more likely is that the military situation in Iraq will continue to spiral out of control.

The whole Bush&Co.; object here is to try to rig events from now until Election Day so that the worst aspects of the ongoing war in Iraq disappear from the political radar screen in the U.S. To this end, the U.S. desperately wants to hand over a limited kind of "sovereignty" to its own appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which presumably then will exercise (or seem to be exercising) total control over domestic matters. If Paul Bremer, with U.N. help, can somehow can get to that point -- the whole of Iraq may explode into outright rebellion and/or a civil war before the handover -- the military will pull back to bases outside the flash points, with Iraqi army and police forces in charge of security operations.

The Bush&Co.; hope is that once that happens, the Iraqi insurgency either will ease off its violent campaign since "sovereignty" has been transferred to the Iraqis -- or, if not, that mainly Iraqi soldiers and police will take the brunt of the bombings and shootings rather than American forces. In short, the theory goes, there won't be the daily stories (and graphic images) on America's TV networks about the rising rate of U.S. dead; the Bush hope is that the U.S. population will be content that it's Iraqis being slaughtered rather than our own young men and women, and the issue of a continually rising military death toll will disappear as a volatile one for the election campaign. After November, assuming Bush wins, the Administration figures it can do whatever it wants to do in Iraq (it's already set up 14 military bases in that country), since it'll have four years to make things right there, with only limited and ineffective opposition anticipated from the defeated Democrats and others. In addition, the compliant corporate media will remain faithfully in the Bush&Co.; camp, the so-called "peace/anti-war" movement can be marginalized or frightened by the use of police force against them or indicted for "impeding the war effort," and the internet political websites can be effectively dealt with and neutralized.

THE KERRY FACTOR

Another unknown for the Bushistas is how strong a candidate Kerry will turn out to be. So far, the GOP has been able to keep the Massachusetts senator from roaring ahead in the polls -- even during the past several weeks, when Bush&Co.; suffered a lot of political damage -- by trying to define him as a typical Dem tax-raiser, a flip-flopper on issues, and weak on national defense.

The whole object here is to keep Kerry locked solely into his base voters -- union workers, liberal Democrats, minorities, etc. -- but not let him break out where he could attract enough moderate Republicans, Independents, Libertarians and so on to make an electoral difference.

The GOP strategy appears to be: to solidify the 40% Bush base, keep Kerry boxed in to his 40% Dem base, and lure or frighten enough swing voters and swing states to pick up the requisite electoral votes for victory. And they're not forgetting either the Nader factor -- they're covertly supporting his run in hopes that he can pull 3-6% of votes away from Kerry in key states -- or that many millions of voters will be using touch-screen voting machines that provide no paper or other means of double-checking the ballots cast.

If Kerry were to fire himself up as a campaigner, and distinguish himself more from Bush on key issues -- for example, on the Iraq war and Sharon's policies in the Middle East -- the electorate would be able to see two very different candidates and candidacies, and Kerry might begin to rise more in the polls. But, on foreign policy, as Noam Chomsky has observed, Kerry is "Bush lite" -- representing the concerns of the corporate power-wielders -- though he's much better on domestic issues such as health care, prescription drugs, judicial appointments, the economy, the environment, Medicare, veterans' rights, etc.

If only because of his domestic policies on most issues, he deserves our enthusiastic support. A Kerry administration would not be as arrogant, mean-spirited, greedy, or corrupting. Potentially, he could bring the country back more toward the liberal-moderate center, and away from the extremist, reckless domestic direction Bush&Co.; have taken us, and (though he needs to re-examine some of his foreign positions) international policies that have created such havoc here and around the globe.

But Kerry does need to grow as a campaigner, and as a human being. He said he admires the late Robert Kennedy; now is the time for him to grow, as RFK did, into a compassionate, thoughtful, determined, dynamic campaigner -- and, as Kerry sometimes exhibits, into even more of a scrapper against Bush's dirty tricks and as a fighter for justice and peace.

BUSH CAN BE BEATEN

The scandals are bubbling away in Washington's political pressure-cookers, and the opposition to Bush is building up steam and momentum. Critical mass could occur at any time. In short, Bush CAN be denied a second term -- if all of us pitch in to make it happen, concentrating a good share of our energies on the computer-voting dangers -- and the country CAN, after the January inauguration in 2005, start to reverse the immense damage caused by the Bush neo-cons.

Not only will a GOP defeat rob Bush&Co.; of their absolute hold on power and their control of billions to hand out to friends and supporters, but it could leave some of the higher-ups in danger of criminal prosecutions. This helps explain the ferocity of their attacks, and why the anti-Bush fight to dislodge them is not going to be easy. But the battle must be joined.

But if we and Kerry blow it, it's clear where the country will be headed: down the dark road of a kind of police-state neo-fascism domestically, and more imperial war-mongering abroad. We simply cannot allow that to happen. Regardless of what we may think of some of Kerry's positions, the alternative of four more years of unchecked power in the hands of Bush&Co.; is too horrific to contemplate.

It's time now, even eight months before Election Day, to head toward the electoral ramparts and make our power and determination felt. To do otherwise is to abandon our country to the shadow forces currently obscuring the sun that is our beloved country; grab a light and let's make a stellar difference in our collective future.

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at various universities; was a writer-editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years; and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)

Peace Marchers: You Can't Defeat Bush Without Backing Kerry

By Bernard Weiner

Don't get me wrong. It felt great Saturday to be in the street-company of tens of thousands of anti-war compadres, letting the powers that be know that we're still here, still resisting, still serving as a kind of theatrical chorus while our leaders lie and manipulate and wind up slaughtering innocent people and endangering our national security in the process.

A year ago when several hundred thousand marched down these San Francisco streets, there was a sense of extreme urgency and focused, determined will. We knew what we wanted to do -- stop the war before it even started.

All around the globe, millions upon millions marched with fervent intensity in the service of that same goal: For God's sake, Mr. Bush, don't let the war genie out of the bottle! There is no good reason to rush to war, to willingly seek to enter a quagmire we don't really understand, to barge ahead in our go-it-alone, arrogant foreign/military policy.

We protesters felt like a force of history; those in the streets denouncing the impending war were termed "the world's second superpower" in newspaper editorials.

But it did no good, Bush and Blair and their Coalition of the Shilling already had determined the summer before (though we could not prove it at the time) to launch their war in March 2003, come hell or high water or the disapproval of millions of their protesting citizens.

AMBIVALENCES IN THE MOVEMENT

This year, even though the proof of Bush/Blair duplicity and gross lies is now out there, the anti-war march clearly was smaller, and seemed to lack a clear, focused message and energy. (At least, this appeared to be the case in San Francisco; maybe the mood was different in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago and elsewhere.)

It wasn't just the myriad of issues being peddled by one group or another that helped create that dispersal of energies -- Free Mumia, Liberate Palestine, repeal the Patriot Act, stop the sanctions on North Korea -- but by several huge, unspoken issues that symbolized the ambivalence in the crowd.

When a chant was started by a speaker from the platform -- "What do we want? Bring the troops home! When do we want it? Now!" -- not everyone clapped and chanted. Even in this liberal/left throng, many felt that, despite their government's illegal and reckless war, a precipitate U.S. pullout would be morally wrong and that U.S. troops should not leave the poor Iraqis in the lurch until a United Nations force is invited to come in and help stabilize the situation.

That little bit of ambivalent theater around the chant symbolized the major problem facing the anti-war movement right now: the lack of a clear, unified political direction. We do fine when united in our animosity toward the Bush Administration that lied us into this unnecessary war of choice, but we are far more divided when it comes to how to handle the "post-shock&awe;" phase.

Likewise, segments of the march organizers believe in "liberating" Palestine (by which many of them mean liberating the land on which Israel sits or, at the very least, ignoring Israel's security concerns), while others are for an equitable two-state solution. Again, a major issue that splits the movement.

KERRY CAMPAIGN BARELY MENTIONED

John Kerry's campaign represented another huge ambivalence. His name was barely mentioned during the speeches and on the placards and banners carried by the protesters.

Most of the estimated 50,000 marchers can barely abide the Massachusetts senator, given his votes to support the blank-check Iraq-war resolution and for the Patriot Act. But rather than get into their aversion for the man, the predominant focus here was on George W. Bush&Co.; of course, when it comes down to it, we will vote and work for Kerry. But with little enthusiasm at this point. Still a lot of "a pox on both your houses" talk here. (Though nothing major, there appeared to be a willingness on the part of some to take another look at Ralph Nader as an alternative.)

Still, it seems clear that the overwhelming sentiment is to vote for Kerry but only after leaning on him to alter many of his foreign-policy views. As Noam Chomsky said the other day, Kerry is a kind of "Bush-lite," and voters in November will have to choose between "two factions of the business party." But, emphasized Chomsky -- who in no way can be mistaken for an accomodationist liberal -- "despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

And that's the nub of the matter: You either vote for the rapacious, greedy, arrogant Bush forces, or you vote, out of necessity, for someone with enough significant differences to break the neo-con momentum that threatens to take the country into a kind of American fascism domestically and more neo-imperialist wars abroad.

Kerry may not be the ideal candidate we would have wished for, but the kinds of judges he nominates will be less extreme, the environmental legislation he proposes will not be written by the polluting industries, the health care and Medicare drug-delivery system he desires will help real people rather than merely pay off the pharmaceutical giants, his military-foreign policy will not be so arrogantly, brutally unilateralist, and so on.

So, yes, as the campaign heats up, we will be sending Kerry money and donating our time and energies to his campaign. But right now, we're still smarting and hurting and angry at our leaders, all of them, and today's march was a venting of a year's worth of frustration and smashed hopes.

NEEDED: LASER-LIKE FOCUS

Now, having said that, it's important to note that this anger and frustration, while real, were not presented always with a gloom-and-doom tone. Folks have fun on these marches, composing their own handmade signs and banners, doing street theater satirizing the greedy corporate philosophy underlying Bush's policies, devising giant masks and soaring doves, drumming and dancing and chanting, and so on. That fun-loving, creative approach is a wonderful antidote to the single-minded, my-way-or-the-highway, puritanical approach of the neo-cons.

And yet, even with the fun we had on this sunny San Francisco day -- making fun of our incompetent, greedy, militarist leaders -- there was no escaping the realization that in order to seriously challenge Bush&Co.;, we in the anti-war/pro-democracy movement need to rethink our priorities and approach. We need to focus our progressive energies and our message in a laser beam of activism and political campaigning.

If we can't do that, if we permit ourselves to be split into focusing on our own little factions and don't see the big picture -- that Bush&Co.;, if they're not stopped in November, will have free rein for four years to unleash their extreme domestic and foreign agendas on the country and the world -- then America is in for the darkest, most retrograde period in our modern history. The first four years of his current term will resemble a sedate tea party when compared to the reckless damage he will initiate in a second term.

Make no mistake about it: The next six months leading up to the November election are going to be the most important in our civic and personal life. Let's mount up, friends, and join the growing movement for peace and justice. We need to light the torches of hope and righteousness, and send the shadow forces represented by Bush&Co.; back into the dank caves from whence they came.

The people, united, can never be defeated. The question is: Can we unite? And can we bring to our cause those independents, libertarians and moderate Republicans who will provide the swing votes in swing states to defeat Bush&Co.; in November?

It's up to us. Let's get to work. --posted 03.22.04

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught American government and international politics at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years, and currently co-edits the progressive website The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).

Bush Should "Move On," Right Out Of White House

By Bernard Weiner

As we all know, Bush&Co.; act forcefully, aggressively, arrogantly, in both the domestic and foreign arenas. They don't seem to care if what they do is based on lies, or immorality, or illegalities. Once the deed has been done, the Bushies say it's senseless to look back and examine how those decisions were made. That's old history, it's time to "move on."

As Bush himself has suggested, whether his Administration gave true or false reasons for going to war is not the issue -- he blithely said "What's the difference?" The supposed biological and chemical weapons ready to be used on U.S. troops and delivered by drone planes to the U.S. mainland, the supposed nuclear bombs that could be detonated over American cities, the supposed close links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden -- all these constantly-repeated charges are, according to Bush, no longer worth discussing. "What's the difference?"

But to members of Congress and to us ordinary American citizens in the run-up to the war, those reasons -- delivered as proven facts by the likes of Cheney, Bush, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld -- were accepted as genuine. Not only did it turn out that those assertions that took us to war were untrue, but now we're told that they don't really matter, anyway. According to Bush and his cronies, the war happened, Iraq is occupied, and it's time to "move on," nothing to see here, folks.

You see how the magic trick is performed. First, you make the war "inevitable," then you make the United Nations and other protesting agencies and allies "irrelevant" because, you see, the war is "inevitable." And then, once you've launched the war and got lots of people killed and maimed, then -- according to this non-logic -- it doesn't make any sense to keep debating the rightness or wrongness or morality or practicality of what you did. It's a done deal, and the U.S. citizenry needs to "move on."

This is the same Bush&Co.; that, in true conservative fashion, talk endlessly about the need for folks to assume personal accountability and responsibility for their actions. (They're even pushing a "Personal Responsibility" bill right now, with regard to food-consumption.) But personal responsibility is for the other people, the little people. Bush never assumes responsibility for anything that goes wrong on his watch. If he's forced to admit that "mistakes were made" -- notice the intransitive language -- he'll find a scapegoat to take the hit.

As a matter of fact, as many have noted, the mantra of Bush's election campaign in 2004 appears to be: "It's not my fault." The economy is lagging, the Occupation is a deadly mess, millions of jobs have disappeared, the treasury is beset by humongous deficits -- all those may be in a terrible state, but, in Bush's view, I inherited the awfulness, you won't find my fingerprints on any of the murder weapons, let's just "move on."

Who's to blame? It's the "intelligence community," or the gays, or the protesters, et al. -- and, when things are really dicey, it's the "terrorists." Or if you're really desperate, of course, it's Bill Clinton who ate my homework.

CHALABI SPILLS THE BEANS

Bush (for good reasons) usually avoids answering questions about his Administration's culpability in the various major problems affecting the nation. But others connected to Bush often are much more direct and honest in dealing with the lies and manipulations upon which so much of Bush policy rests.

One such is Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, the exile opposition group that supplied much of the distorted, exaggerated, mendacious "intelligence" on Iraq to Rumsfeld and his PNAC boys at the Pentagon -- and to New York Times reporter/propagandist Judith Miller. (By the way, the Pentagon, even after Chalabi's lies have been demonstrated, is still paying him and his group millions of our tax dollars. Why do you suppose that is?)

Chalabi -- who is a convicted (in absentia) felon in Jordan for a wide variety of fraudulent activities -- makes no bones about how he operates. Look, he said in essence, we were doomed to remain in exile forever unless we could get the U.S. or some major military force to invade and topple Saddam. So we told a few fibs about the supposed WMD and Al Qaida link. Big deal. The only thing that matters to us is that we're back on Iraqi soil and are working ourselves into positions of power. We had to do what he had to do. Move on.

Here's Chalabi's amazing admission about his exiles: "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

The Bush Administration's same "move-on" advice is being given these days with regard to the recent "regime change" in Haiti. It's simply not important to look at how Mr. Aristide came to depart his island nation, the Bush Administration says. The "inevitable" happened, it's a done deal, no looking back, there's a new government now, let's just move on, folks. What was said before is not important.

SO WE LIED, SO WHAT?

Bush&Co.; are so blatantly Machiavellian in their manipulations. If you'd don't like what we did, so what? So we lied, what are you going to do about it, you weak-kneed liberal scum? You going to try to impeach us? Don't make us laugh. You think Kerry and his wussy democratic base can take us down? You ain't seen nothing yet. We've got all sorts of dirt to spread and surprise rabbits to pull out of our Rove magic hat.

There's another variation of the "move on" scenario employed by Bush and his cronies to handle the accountability/responsibility problem. If you're backed into a corner about your misdeeds or incompetencies, and the press and opposition are calling for probes to get to the bottom of the mess, you head them off at the pass: You investigate yourself.

Governor Grope-inator in California did this explicitly after 16 women accused him of various forms of sexual battery; he said he'd hire a private investigator after the election to probe the allegations. That is, he'd be in charge of investigating himself. But even that was too much for the governor. A short while later, Schwarzenegger "concluded that there was very little point to the investigation," said his press secretary, so Arnold simply closed up the probe, saying that the time had come to move on. Being one's own prosecutor, judge and jury -- neat, yes?

The same pattern repeats on the national level: You decide which malleable leaders will head up the "independent" investigations, you name the key members and appoint the chairmen of the probe, give them a very circumscribed mandate, make sure that nobody appears under oath, and then, if they ever get around to asking for key documents and frank interviews, you stonewall like crazy, thus ensuring that their report can only be a partial one -- and won't appear, in any case, until after the next election.

We've watched the Bush cabal do a monstrous variant with regard to Cheney's secret energy task force -- the term "stonewall" wouldn't do this one justice; it's more like a total and complete refusal to cooperate, with anyone, the courts, the Congress, the press, God, whomever. Too much explosive material (we already know that some of the deliberations had to do with Iraq and oil) to risk it getting out.

A more traditional example would be the 9/11 "independent commission," the "intelligence" commission, and the Plamegate probe.

PACKING THE "COURTS"

It took several years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to finally generate enough civic momentum to get a commission named to probe what happened. (You may recall that Cheney went to Congressional leaders and, using the "national security" dodge, requested that Congress not investigate pre-9/11 knowledge.) Eventually, Bush&Co.; had to establish such an "independent" commission, but made sure to appoint a whole raft of folks, including the chair and executive director, whom they believed wouldn't make waves; made sure nobody would testify under oath; made sure to evade and delay sending answers to key questions. In short, the Administration was taking the old Nixon route: a "modified, limited hangout" -- in other words, a stonewall.

And it still goes on: Condoleezza Rice refuses to testify in public or under oath, Bush and Cheney won't testify in public or under oath, Bush will talk not to the commission but only to the chair and vice-chair -- originally just for one hour, but the public outcry was so intense that he's backed down from that unhelpful position.

The fallacious "intelligence" presented by Bush&Co.; to justify their decision to attack Iraq is so far from reality that Bush felt that he had to bow to public and Congressional cries for an investigation into what went wrong and why. But the commissioners, appointed by Bush, are not to examine executive decision-making and are to issue their report after the November election in any case. Break out the whitewash for a coverup job extraordinaire. (Of course, Bush could go another route. He could take chief weapons inspector David Kay's advice: "It's about confronting and coming clean with the American people...He [Bush] should say: `We were mistaken and I am determined to find out why'." But that will happen when pigs sprout wings.)

Or take the case of CIA operative Valerie Plame, who was feloniously outed by "two senior Administration officials" after her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, wrote an article criticizing Bush for including the Niger uranium lie in his State of the Union address. If he'd wanted to, Bush could have learned the identities of those two officials in less than ten minutes and disciplined them on the spot -- but he did nothing.

Instead, Bush made sure that no special prosecutor would be appointed to investigate this "treasonous" act (that adjective comes from President George Herbert Walker Bush, who said anyone who would reveal a CIA operative's name was committing treason), and left it to Attorney General John Ashcroft and his associates to manage the in-house probe. We're still waiting, and you can bet that if indictments are delivered, lower-level officials will take the fall for those in power who were at the genesis of the leak.

There are numerous other examples of key Bush officials avoiding responsibility for their actions -- Rumsfeld, for example, shifting the blame from his own Office of Special Plans to the CIA for the intelligence lies that led the country into the Iraq war -- but you get the picture. These guys will do anything, say anything, blame anybody but themselves for their misdeeds, incompetencies and illegalities. The whole object at this juncture is to do or say whatever is necessary in order to win the November election; after their presumed victory, the gloves can come off and their original extreme agenda will be back in play.

John Kerry's campaign should be sure to focus on those areas where Bush has avoided, and continues to avoid, taking responsibility for his actions. In short, the November election should be, at least in part, a referendum on that principle of personal accountability for one's decisions -- in Bush's case, most of which were incorrect or based on manipulative deceptions. If the Democratic campaign is steady and forthright and unrelenting in this regard, and because Americans do not like to be lied to so openly, Bush will face the ultimate rejection by the citizenry on November 2nd: impeachment and conviction by the ballot.

In the meantime, we should "move on" for real -- move on to signing up, as two million of our fellow citizens already have done, with MoveOn.org -- that creative activist group that is giving the Bush-Cheney campaign such fits with their super TV ads and other activities. Let's MoveOn, indeed! --posted 03.22.04

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught American government and international relations at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly two decades, and currently co-edits the progressive website The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)

The America I Live In: Notes for the Campaign

By Bernard Weiner

This is the America I live in.

A normal, average citizen, I unlock the front door and enter my home. I don't know if anyone has entered surreptitiously -- perhaps a sneak-and-peek job by Ashcroft's black-bag boys.

I boot up my computer to go online. I don't know if my email is being monitored, if my keystrokes are being recorded.

I call my attorney, about a family matter. I don't know if communication with my lawyer, previously regarded as "confidential," is being listened to. (This, and the other examples above, and many below, flow from the Bush-Ashcroft "USA Patriot Act.")

I visit my physician, and learn later that my employer found out about a chronic condition I had and laid me off, to keep his insurance costs down. The doctor-patient confidentiality I thought existed is now breachable by government agencies in cahoots with insurance companies.

This is the America I live in.

I learn about U.S. citizens who have been thrown into military custody, with no access to the judicial system, kept uncharged for however long Ashcroft and Bush decide to hold them as somehow connected to "terrorists."

I know of American citizens, active in opposition to the war in Iraq, who have been kept off commercial airlines.

Hundreds of citizens of other countries are rounded up as suspected terrorists and sent to a prison camp run by our government; they can rot there for years with no charges and with no regularized access to the judicial process. To avoid having to conform to international codes of conduct, the detainees are not designated by the Administration as prisoners-of-war.

I hear Ashcroft telling Congress that those who raise questions about the government's harsh police tactics are giving "aid and comfort" to terrorists.

This is the America I live in.

In the daily newspaper, and online, I keep running into stories about plans for future U.S. wars against other nations -- Syria, Iran and Cuba are most often mentioned -- after the November election, should Bush win. Moves already have started to revive the military draft.

I read about GOP groups sending out doctored photos of John Kerry, and passing on false rumors, based apparently on nothing but partisan malice, about his private life.

The Bush Administration publicly revealed the name of a covert CIA agent, apparently in retaliation for her husband telling the truth about forged documents that were used to justify a WMD lie. Her life is put at risk, her career is in tatters, her contacts abroad are in danger. Revealing her name is a felony, but the Chief Executive does nothing.

This is the America I live in.

I will be voting in my state's primary balloting and then, of course, in November's general election. There are not adequate safeguards against tampering with touch-screen computer-voting machines (it's been demonstrated that they can be hacked into easily and the tallies manipulated, with nobody ever knowing), and there is no paper trail being used to verify the votes on most of those machines. The proprietary software inside those computer-voting machines are controlled mainly by three companies, one of which is partially owned by a Republican senator and the others by avowed Republican supporters.

Traditionally, when America (or any other country) suffers a major civil trauma, investigations are initiated almost immediately to find out what happened and why, witnesses are placed under oath, and those responsible are fired, or resign, or are indicted for their malfeasance. More than 3000 persons died in the September 11 tragedies, but the Bush Administration did everything possible to forestall an independent investigation about pre-9/11 knowledge, nobody has been placed under oath, and the Administration is continuing to stonewall and cover-up today. Whatever it is they are trying to hide must be very very embarrassing -- or criminal.

All sorts of outrageous lies and distortions were utilized by the Administration to get Congress and the American people to approve Bush&Co.;'s war in Iraq -- the plans for which were approved by mid-2002. All those untruths, exaggerations and manipulations are evident for all to see these days -- which explains why, in current polls, the first adjective that comes to the minds of many citizens when pollsters ask what they think of Bush is "liar."

This is the America I live in.

The Bush Administratioin promised it would be dedicated stewards for our air and water, but, as with virtually every other environmental decision, has given in to whatever rollbacks in environmental protection are desired by the polluting industries. More arsenic in the water, more industrial sludge in the rivers, more pollutants in the air, whatever. And when scientists raise questions about the Administration's environmental or global-warming policies, they are treated as the enemy -- unless the scientific judgment conforms to the Administration's political agenda.

Bush claims to care deeply for our soldiers and veterans, but he sends our young men and women to Iraq with the wrong post-war battle plan -- turning them into sitting ducks in a shooting gallery -- and without the proper body armor and armored vehicles that would save their lives in the guerrilla battle being waged. And he has provided no troops to guard Saddam's huge ammo dumps around the country; these are the same dumps that are scavenged nightly for armaments to make bombs that blow up our troops. U.S. soldiers, poorly paid in any case, were expected to pay for their meals while in hospital, and veterans benefits are cut back home.

The commander-in-chief apparently did not complete his military service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, and appears to have gone AWOL for at least a half-year, maybe more. At first, he claimed there are no records, trust him, he fufilled his responsibility, the proof being that he received an honorable discharge. When the public didn't buy that, he dumped hundreds of pages of records, which showed nothing conclusive. (His records and arrest sheet reportedly were "cleansed" of anything embarrassing before he ran for public office.) He's had years to remember and contact members of his Alabama Guard unit, to verify his claim that he showed up, but he has no names to suggest, and nobody believable has come forward. But Bush is quite happy to play dress-up soldier, and to send young men and women to fight and die and kill in Iraq and elsewhere.

The Bush Administration doesn't include the costs of war in Iraq in the defense budget; instead, it comes to Congress for "emergency" appropriations -- $50 billion here, $87 billion there -- to pay for that war-of-choice, and then browbeats legislators into passing those requests in the guise of "supporting the troops." (Only a share of those funds "support the troops"; the fat slice goes to "reconstruction," meaning, in practice, to huge conglomerates like Bechtel and Halliburton.) Those who don't vote for those bills know they will be smeared with the "unpatriotic" brush.

All those billions for the Iraq adventure are draining and bankrupting the national treasury, building up half a trillion dollar deficit this year (and, it is estimated, many trillions more in next seven years) that will have to be paid for somehow -- but not by the wealthiest in our society, who are receiving huge tax cuts. No, that bill is being paid for by the poor and middle-class, whose public services are being cut left and right, and whose children and grandchildren will have to pay through the nose just to maintain the interest payments on that humongous debt.

This is the America I live in.

A good share of the elderly, and soon-to-be-elderly, in this country often have to face the excrutiating choice of paying the rent or buying their required medicines. The Bush Administration, knowing something had to be done before the election, concocted a half-baked Medicare drug-scheme that would permit the insurance and pharmaceutical companies to make out like bandits at the expense of true reform and aid. (Seniors no longer will be permitted to purchase those drugs legally in foreign countries, at a discount; the Medicare administration could get the drugs at a much cheaper rate if it negotiated with the pharmaceutical companies to do so, but that is now outlawed.)

Middle-class workers have paid into the Social Security system for decades, expecting to receive their Social Security checks as promised to help them through their retirement years. Now, as the Baby Boomers are about to reach retirement age, there is serious talk of cutting back on those promised payments in order to help cover the gap in income caused by the Bush Administration's wars and tax-cuts for the wealthy.

To distract us from examining Bush&Co.;'s appalling record of mistakes, mismanagement, imcompetence, and the ramifications of its reckless foreign adventurism and greed-oriented domestic policy, it has become so desperate that it's chosen homosexuals as its designated scapegoat for all that ails us in this nation. If Bush&Co.; have their way, gays will be written into an amended Constitution as second-class citizens, something that hasn't occurred since slavery days.

This is the America I live in.

In this country, citizens cherish the Constitutional protections afforded everyone, even those we may abhor. Our country does not attack other nations as a choice of geopolitical strategy, but only as a last resort in self-defense. The government really feels for its citizens and their daily dilemmas in getting through life, including the need for them to have safe, well-paying employment and decent health-care. The administration does not turn over pollution-control to the polluters, does not privatize away its public services, does not favor the wealthy corporate class in its tax policies. The government does not attempt to alter the Constitution to permit bias to be written into law. The leaders do not use divisiveness to push us apart but rally us to be helpful and tolerant and inclusive. The government does not attempt to keep its citizens in a constant state of fright. Teachers are permitted to teach and inspire, instead of mostly programming students for fact-based test-taking. Our foreign policy is developed in concert with our allies rather than as a sole, swaggering superpower bully enforcing its way around the globe.

That is the America I used to live in. That is the America I still want to live in. That is the America it is still possible to live in, 9/11 or not, a new pre-election terror attack or not.

The American people finally are starting to focus on the lies, duplicity, greed, arrogance, incompetence and general mean-spiritedness of Bush and his cohorts. They are not doing so just because of an upcoming election, but because those policies are doing great damage to each of us each day -- to the economy, to our jobs and job-security, to our health care, to our air we breathe and water we drink, to our crumbling infrastructure, to our declining and disappearing public services, to our inadequate school systems, to our sense of ourselves as a moral, forward-looking nation.

BEWARE OF CORNERED BEASTS

Bush's "re-elect" numbers are plummeting, his performance ratings are falling, his popularity is sinking. The arrogant hubris that got him to the top, and that so flummoxed his opposition for so long, is coming home to roost. He and his cronies have been found out, and they'll be bounced out -- and few will mourn their going from power, not even many true conservatives, horrified at how their party has been hijacked by greedy, power-hungry neo-cons, who have turned the Administration into a take-the-money-and-run system and into a huge, Big Brotherish police-state enterprise.

But cornered snakes are the most dangerous. One can only guess at the dirty tricks and surprises that Karl Rove and his operatives have in store for the Democratic nominee, and for us as a people. But those sleazy tactics may not work as well this time. At last, Bush and his neo-con friends are wounded, and may, through the determined and persistent opposition of an aroused public, be brought down.

But these guys are not going to go easily. They fought like tigers to get installed in power, and they will fight with every weapon, legit or criminal, in their arsenal. That is why it is incumbent on each of us -- liberal, conservative, moderate, independent, libertarian -- to gear up, now, to help defeat the Bush&Co.; crowd in November. (This assumes that in the wake of a new terrorist attack, any Bush attempt to impose martial law on the country -- "postponing" the election until the "war on terror" is concluded -- will be successfully resisted.)

HOLDING ONE'S NOSE

That means, if necessary, our willingness to vote for the Democratic candidate, even if we don't agree with certain aspects of his program. That means sending money to, and volunteering time for, whomever the Dem candidate turns out to be. That means registering as many new voters as possible in the next few months. That means pressuring the election officials in our various states and counties to disallow touch-screen computer voting until or if the software problems can be made transparent and are fixed -- and until alternative machines can be purchased that provide a paper trail for verification. That means talking to friends and neighbors and colleagues about the dire situation in which we find ourselves under Bush -- and, if he were to win, the even more egregious things that will transpire after the election -- and the absolute need to change course.

Our country finds itself in one of those periods when the shadow forces have emerged to take us back to darker, more authoritarian and rigid times. But shafts of light are beginning to pour through more and more cracks in the Bush&Co.; edifice. The force of light is coalescing across the country, and, if we do our job correctly, will aid in swinging history's pendulum away from the shadow world into a new dawn of hope and progress.

Always, our eyes have to remain on the prize: to break the back and momentum of the Bush&Co.; juggernaut. Once they are out of the White House, we can work to undo all the damage they have done (and are doing right now) and set about to push for true reforms and progressive programs. We will re-light the lamps of righteousness, and illuminate the path to a better country for all.

What you are willing to do will depend on which vision of America you favor. Which America do you want to live in?

Let's get to work. --posted 03.02.04

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government & international relations at various colleges, served as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).

Use "B.S. Away!" To Know What Politicians Are Really Saying

By Bernard Weiner

A scientist friend from Silicon Valley, who has been working on a top-secret project for the past three years, permitted me to visit his laboratory the other day to witness the results of his labors. He's calling his patent-applied-for invention "B.S. Away!"

He's sworn me to secrecy about the details of how and why it works, but, since he's about to bring it to market, he said it's OK for me to describe its essence: You can either spray it on the person engaged in B.S.ing, or on printed matter (and even on the computer screen) that carries the bullbleep. Instantly, it transforms the B.S. speech into simple English truth. It's amazing!

Let me give you an example. Bush, who always claims he wants folks to accept responsibility for their actions, is incapable of ever admitting that he might have made a mistake, and even more so these days in the run-up to the November election. You've heard and read all the many assertive statements over the months -- by Bush and his chief cohorts -- that the administration absolutely, positively KNEW the weapons of mass-destruction were there in Iraq, and even the exact areas where they were to be found.

Now we push the nozzle and the "B.S. Away!" sprays out. Voila! Here's Bush's truth version:

"My most important advisers -- including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and the whole PNAC crew -- were out to get Iraq even before we took office. We sorta knew that Iraq was going to be a pushover in the war. That's why we chose to bomb and invade it, so that we'd have an easy time establishing a military foothold in the Middle East.

"We didn't feel we could get Congressional permission to invade Iraq if we told the truth -- that there were strategic, political, corporate and natural-resource reasons to conquer that country -- so, since the CIA wouldn't give us the WMD report we wanted, Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans cherry-picked the raw intelligence to get the WMD justification. We hyped it to the press and public, and the invasion began. We were hoping we wouldn't get caught out -- that there would be lots of leftover WMD there to justify our propaganda -- but, unfortunately, nothing showed up. The lies and deceptions and manipulations were out there for all to see.

"On top of that, we grossly underestimated the resistance we'd get from huge segments of the Iraqi population, who chose to see us as their Occupiers rather than their Liberators -- we got played big time by the Iraqi exiles -- and how an ongoing guerrilla resistance over time would build a sophisticated network to attack our soldiers and those Iraqis working with us. Our troops had no nation-building Plan B and became, and remain even today, easy targets for those wanting to force us out.

"If the Iraqis will just cool it for awhile, we'll be out of the main fighting areas by July, when we'll return a manageable kind of 'sovereignty' to the Iraqis (our military forces still will be there, at our bases, as a warning not to go too far). Well sure, that July timetable has more to do with our own election cycle in this country rather than what's happening on the ground in Iraq -- but we've simply got to defuse the Iraq issue before the election; I'm being battered on our Iraq debacle daily from the Democrats. After I win in November, everything can be rethought and reversed, if we choose to. We'll have four more years to work our will, and there isn't anybody strong enough to stop us, inside the U.S. or out."

KERRY AND HIS WAR-VOTE

Want to see another example? Take John Kerry's wishy-washing fudging and waffling on his vote to authorize Bush's war in Iraq. He says that he voted for the resolution because he believed that "the Administration would wait for U.N. authorization" before it launched its attack.

I'm spraying "B.S. Away!" on my computer screen now. There it is -- Kerry's move into truthtelling:

"I want to clear up the whole Iraq-vote business, right here and now. My fellow Americans, I was wrong, horribly wrong. I let my political ambitions box me into a corner -- wanting not to appear 'unpatriotic' -- instead of standing up and saying, as only a few did, that this war had no rational justification, and yet we were willing to spend untold billions to send our young men and women into a rat's nest of little-understood tribal and religious complexity. I permitted myself, and I wasn't the only one, to be snowed by the neo-con arguments and didn't even stop to consider the parallels with the war that made my reputation, Vietnam.

"So I apologize for my vote. I should have known that Presidents lie, and that this President, who'd already made up his mind long before to go to war, was not about to return to the U.N. for authorization. I vow never to permit myself to be rolled so easily, and always to remember the lesson from Vietnam: never get our military involved in a ground war in Asia, especially in countries and cultures we don't really understand."

Want a couple more?

CONDI RICE AND 9/11

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said that Bush/Cheney and their national-security team "had no idea" that hijacked airplanes might be used as weapons. She also said the August 6, 2001 Presidential Briefing Report -- which contained warnings about an imminent, massive Al Qaida attack -- referred only to their activities abroad, not to any terror plot heading our way.

Here, have a misting of "B.S. Away!", Condi.

"Well, OK, I lied. We had been receiving reports all spring and summer of 2001 that Al Qaida was coming, and that hijacked airplanes would be employed, probably aimed at icon American targets. That's why Bush hightailed it to his Texas ranch for a whole month, and Ashcroft and others stopped flying on commercial airlines.

"The point is that in order for us to initiate and have any chance of carrying out our domestic and international agendas, we needed to have a compliant, frightened American populace, who would be willing to giving us all the power we needed. Since Al Qaida was coming anyway, we chose to do little or nothing and use 9/11 as our launching point. But, please believe me, we had no idea of the full magnitude of what Al Qaida had in store for our country.

"Because we were dissembling to begin with, the coverup just naturally followed. Cheney requested of the leaders of Congress, especially Daschle and Gephardt, not to investigate the pre-9/11 knowledge of the Bush Administration, for 'national security' reasons. They obliged. But eventually we couldn't ignore the growing calls for an independent investigation, so we delayed and postponed and stonewalled their requests for information -- hoping that there would be no definitive report on our pre-9/11 activities, only incomplete surmises. We're still covering up, since nobody has to testify under oath, and we'll probably get away with it."

BUSH AND THE AWOL SCANDAL

Bush has stated unequivocally that he "fulfilled his duties" in the National Guard in the early-'70s, that he served with honor, that he got an "honorable discharge" -- and that's the end of it.

Spray on some "B.S. Away!", and here's Bush's truer version:

"I was a wild, spoiled kid, who spent a good share of my 20s drinking, smoking, snorting and chasing skirts. My family and their wealthy friends always bailed me out. My dad's clout -- he was a Congressman, and then U.N. ambassador -- got me skipped over 500 other applicants anxious to avoid service in 'Nam and I joined the Guard. I trained and flew for awhile. I didn't want to have to take the annual medical exam, for reasons that probably are obvious. (Because I wouldn't submit to the exam, that meant I couldn't fly anymore, dammit!)

"So, sure, I didn't show up in Alabama very much...well, hardly at all. But the paperwork got filled out and I received an honorable discharge -- it was fairly easy to arrange all that in those days -- in case I ever ran for office. Oh yeah, we 'cleansed' the files later, I think it was 1998, so there would be no embarrassing revelations about my Guard duty and my brushes with the law.

"I don't know why I just didn't fess up about my missing Guard duty when I first went into politics -- just tell folks right out that those were 'youthful indiscretions.' Usually, Americans are very forgiving to those who sin and confess, especially when they're young. Coverups always are worse than the crime, and they drag out endlessly. Clinton knows that, and I now know that."

RUMMY AND THE MIDDLE EAST And, here's one from Donald Rumsfeld, who has denied that the U.S. has any "imperial ambitions" either in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. Give that man a spritz of "B.S. Away!", and here's the truer story.

"Cheney and I and Wolfowitz and Perle and the rest of the PNAC crew are not about to give up on our dream of a modernized, 'democratic, free-market' Islamic world in the Middle East -- which, of course, means one run by regimes we can easily influence and control. We'll pull in our aggressive horns for now, to get Bush elected in November, but after that, it's full steam ahead. (By the way, hot diggety, we got one of our PNAC founders appointed to the commission examining pre-war intelligence on Iraq!)

"We're already starting to quietly propagandize against and undermine the regimes in Iran and Syria and, if they don't agree to our terms next year -- in terms of oil production quotas, bilateral projects with American companies, malleable governments to our liking, and so on -- they'll learn there are severe consequences to pay. The transformation is liable to be messy, but if it has to be done, by suasion or by force -- and a return to drafting young soldiers -- we'll do it.

"The liberals and the Europeans may scream and holler in the short run, but in the long run, they'll thank us for our willingness to think big and to do the heavy lifting. And provide their citizens with a stable source of oil for the foreseeable future. Of course, it doesn't hurt any that our huge corporations -- oil and energy and construction and otherwise -- stand to make a good deal of change in this Middle East transformation, a good share of which will come back to the GOP to keep this neo-con machine running forever."

ASHCROFT ON THE PATRIOT ACT

And, finally, here's John Ashcroft, who wants to amend the Patriot Act to give the government even more police powers. He says the "war on terrorism" justifies all the drastic actions. Here, have a full blast of "B.S. Away!", John.

"Look, virtually every one of the extreme police powers in the Patriot Act were proposed in bills over the years, and the namby-pamby Congress, citing 'Constitutional protections of due process' or some such horsemanure, turned them down. Once 9/11 came, it was easy to collect all those powers and put them into the Patriot Act, and get it passed nearly unanimously; of course, it helped that few if any of those Congress types got a chance to read the final version of the bill, which we whipped through at the last minute.

"I love my job. And I have no qualms about locking people up, sending them to detention camps, violating attorney-client privilege, reading their email, authorizing blackbag jobs -- whatever it takes to deter and capture 'terrorists,' and those pinko liberals who support them, I'll enthusiastically do. There still are too many 'civil-liberties' holes in the Patriot Act, though, and I need more police powers to clamp down on dissenters, revolutionists, and immoralists. Martial-law might work better; maybe if Bush is still down in the polls in late-October, we can postpone the elections along those lines. Red terror alert, that sort of thing."

Well, based on those quick examples, you get the idea. "B.S. Away!" is a wonder product that is amazingly useful when dealing with politicians. It's also helpful in personal relationships. Want to hear this "Dear John" letter I got the other day, and then the truth version after spraying "B.S. Away!"? Well, OK, maybe another time.

But if you're interested in getting in on the IPO for "B.S. Away!", talk to your broker. Things are going to start popping quick. Unless Ashcroft confiscates the entire stock of prototype cannisters because they look too phallic. --posted 02.23.04

Bernard Weiner is a poet, playwright and journalist, formerly with the San Francisco Chronicle. A Ph.D. in government & international relations, he has taught at various universities and currently co-edits the progressive website The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)

Shallow Throat to Dems: "One Chance, Don't Blow It"

By Bernard Weiner

I'd been trying to reach "Shallow Throat" for several months, but had never received a response. "I apologize, Bernie, for not answering your coded messages," said ST, as we sat opposite each other in a dimly-lit Virginia tavern, "because you wouldn't believe how scary it is to be inside the Bush Administration these days.

"For the first time in three years, they really are aware that their whole deck of cards could come tumbling down around their ears -- and not just in November at the ballot box -- and so they're getting even more desperate and vicious."

The high-ranking GOP mole -- formerly inside the White House and now in another government agency -- had talked with me numerous times over the past year and a half.* To be sure, there was apprehension expressed on those occasions, about the possibility of Bush operatives seeing us in conversation, but nothing like this fright.

"So why are you taking chances now by meeting me?" I asked.

"Because the seeds of self-destruction finally are sprouting in the Bush Administration," ST said, "and I don't want you and your liberal friends to blow it and give these guys the opportunity to hang on to power.

"If that happens, we're all in deep, deep trouble -- continued imperialism abroad, more militarist police-state actions at home, further shredding of the Constitution, larger federal deficits and their debilitating effects on the economy, millions out of work despairing of finding decent jobs, fatal weakening of Medicare and Social Security, the whole ball of wax.

"But if you and your friends play it right -- and you're finally starting to do so -- you can take these guys down via united activism on key issues like pre-9/11 knowledge, Cheney's secret energy policy, the lies that got us into Iraq, Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, Bush's AWOL period, the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, and so on -- and through the election in November.

"Get Mr. Halliburton first -- Cheney's even more vulnerable than the Bush Boy -- and then keep going. You can get these guys. Even with the dirty tricks that are being readied as we speak."

"What tricks?" I asked, as I took in ST's impressive new wig and dark glasses.

"Anything you can conceive of, the Rove boys are working on. Not just the smears and lies regarding Dem candidates -- the electorate has come to expect that, to a certain extent, although the Bushistas carry that stuff to new levels of dirty politics -- but the bigger manipulations. Like the way computer-voting programs can be tampered with to change election results with nobody being the wiser. (Take another look at Georgia and Max Cleland's "defeat" in the 2002 election.) Like in key states removing thousands of folks from the voting rolls deliberately and 'by accident.' (For the worst example, see how the Bush campaign, under Gov. Jeb Bush, arranged it in Florida in 2000.)

"Like almost inviting another huge al-Qaida attack inside the U.S. sometime before the election. Like being able to pull the rabbit Osama bin Laden out of a magic hat to demonstrate how 'successful' our war on terror is going. Didn't do much good when Saddam was taken in Iraq, and Osama's death or capture won't change much on the terrorism ground either -- but Bush will be able to brag about his anti-terorrist 'leadership,' hoping we'll forget that his policies have created more terrorists than the U.S. has eliminated."

WHO'S MORE FRIGHTENED OF WHOM?

"But," I countered, "the U.S. populace (along with the world in general) has become much more cynical these days about anything Bush and his cohorts say, especially after all the WMD lies that got us into the Iraq war to begin with. Why would the Bush Administration risk getting caught out in more lies and deceptions and manipulations?"

"I told you," said Shallow Throat, looking around nervously. "Though some of the key players like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Perle think their in-your-face arrogance and the compliant mass-media will see them through, the more political operatives like Rove and Gillespie see the electoral handwriting on the wall -- Bush is defeated in poll after poll by any unnamed Democrat, and in head-to-head polls now against Kerry -- and they'll risk anything to stay in power. And I mean anything. (They may be dumb but they ain't stupid: many top Bush officials are fully cognizant of the possibility of being brought before criminal courts when they leave office.)

"The Bushistas know how to play the ongoing 9/11 and WMD 'investigations,' by appointing a number of puffballs to the commissions, circumscribing what they can look for, and then delaying and withholding information, trying to postpone the final reports until after election day. If your Democrat friends had any smarts, and balls, they would establish their own truly independent, blue-ribbon commission on the WMD lies, for example.)

"Bush's first three years involved laying the foundations for full implementation of their agenda in a second term; they don't want to lose the chance to execute the rest of the plan, because they know they might not get back into the White House for quite awhile. Their whole momentum will be shot to hell."

"You mean," I asked, "that they're that frightened of John Kerry, or whoever might emerge if he falters or gets taken down?"

"You bet your patooties they're scared. Their arrogance and bullying and brazen lying -- and the thoroughgoing incompetency with which they've operated, domestically and abroad -- have made innumerable enemies in the GOP and re-energized the Democrat party. Rank-and-file Dems are even willing to vote for someone they don't particularly care for, just to break the back of the Bush neo-con juggernaut and return the country to a more sane, rational course.

"But while the Bush folks are afraid of the Dem candidate, whoever it turns out to be -- and, since they're especially vulnerable on AWOL and Iraq policies, they're most worried about Kerry and Clark -- they're almost more concerned about the defections popping up in conservative and moderate Republican ranks. These good, traditional Republicans might not be able to vote for a Democrat in November, but they might well choose to stay home on election day."

LEAKAGE IN THE RED STATES

"You really see major weakness in Bush's usual base of support, especially in the Red states, that he carried last time?" I asked.

"It's not what I see that matters," ST replied. "It's what the Bush folks are hearing from all around the country. Sure, they can count on their fundamentalist base -- and they'll throw occasional hunks of red meat their way on abortion, gay marriage, gun-control and rightwing judges -- but the usual Republican coalition is no longer solid and impregnable.

"The black-helicopter crowd is terrified with the precedents being set by the Patriot Act as interpreted by John Ashcroft. The small-government and Libertarian types are appalled at the massive intrusion into citizens' private lives, and the huge bureaucracy that accompanies such police-state tactics. The balanced-budgeters can't believe how Bush is endangering the entire economy with his reckless spending and the enormous deficits being racked up that our kids and grandkids will have to pay for somehow. The isolationist wing of the GOP is horrified by the eagerness with which Bush and his neo-con buddies are willing to send out the military to invade and bomb one country after another, with more to come.

"In short, there are enough dissatisfied, frustrated Republicans out there who, even at this early date, are vowing not to vote for Bush in November. Even with the dirty tricks and Roveian 'surprises' that are sure to come, Bush could lose. That's why they were desperate enough to send Bush onto 'Meet the Press' last Sunday, to try to tamp down a lot of the hot spots. Unfortunately, Bush's awkward, stay-on-message spinning just revealed how defensive and vulnerable he is on key issues, and how unprepared he is for the election debates that will be coming up in the Fall."

"Debates against whom?" I asked.

"Any of the Dems still in the race could verbally wrestle Bush to the mat. Dean could whupp him up one side and down the other, but probably won't get the chance. Edwards and Clark may be a bit green when it comes to no-holds-barred political debating, but they could tie Bush in knots as well. Kerry could take him easily, but let's hope he develops a more lively, passionate persona -- which he probably could do with gusto if he confronts Bush on his war-lies and his AWOL status, with facts to back up the attack."

THE IDEAL TICKETS

"As long as you brought up the candidates, are you willing to suggest the strongest ticket the Dems could put up?"

"Sure," said Shallow Throat, "for whatever it's worth, I'll have a go.

"Assuming that Kerry is the top dog -- and that the Massachusetts senator can finesse his way around the gay-marriage decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court -- I think there are any number of combinations that could work. Kerry/Clark or Kerry/Edwards would be mighty strong; so would Kerry/Graham -- all three of those guys are Southerners -- or maybe even Kerry/Dean or Kerry/Gephardt. I just wish our party had a strong group running for the nomination, instead of just the Bush Boy. But, if he's smart, Rove will dump Cheney as a tainted liability -- excused for 'health reasons' -- and go to Rudi Giuliani or Condi Rice."

"And if the GOP goes into the election campaign with either of those combos, do you still think the Democrat could win?"

"I do indeed. Mainly because they have a secret weapon within the GOP itself...George W. Bush. The Democrat party can count on Bush -- and his mean-spirited, greedy, power-hungry, incompetent courtiers -- to provide all the ammunition the Dems need. Go get him."

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., a former writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, co-edits the progressive website The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).

Robert S. McNamara, Colin Powell & "The Fog of War"

By Bernard Weiner

Secretary of State Colin Powell should be forced to view the new Errol Morris "Fog of War" film. You may have heard about it: a documentary interview with former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, plus lots of historical film footage and dynamite audiotape recordings of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson talking frankly with McNamara and other advisors about Cuba and Vietnam.

In "Fog of War" -- which opened recently nationwide -- McNamara, in his mid-80s, speaks agonizingly of his moral culpability in World War II and later in Vietnam in the '60s and early-'70s.

McNamara saw himself as a loyal soldier, who told the truth to his boss, the President of the United States -- that the Vietnam war was unwinnable, that the best thing the U.S. could hope for was an endless stalemate -- but who was overruled. Rather than resign in protest, as a way of perhaps saving tens of thousands of American (and many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilian) lives, he stayed on as a technocrat, positively spinning the war news while leading a disastrous campaign he knew made no sense. His soul was forever tarnished.

Secretary Powell could have saved his soul when he came to realize that the nuclear-related "intelligence" being used by the Bush Administration to pave its way to war in Iraq was "bullshit" (his term). But, a loyal soldier to his boss, he has chosen to stick out his four-year term. Similar to what happened to McNamara, Powell early on tried to ameleriorate the worst policies of Rumsfeld and his neo-con cabal at the Defense Department, and maybe Powell still believes he's playing that role now.

But when Powell tried to convince an unbelieving U.N. Security Council that war on Iraq was justified on the basis of the embarrassingly flawed WMD "evidence" provided him by Rumsfeld's crew and the White House, the Secretary of State lost all moral credibility in that world body and among those domestically who still had any faith left in him. Any slim chance he had for a potential presidency vanished. (It's fascinating to speculate what the primaries would look like today if Powell's conscience had led him to resign in order to run against Bush.)

You may wonder why I'm urging Powell to see "Fog of War" when McNamara's counterpart is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It's easy: Rumsfeld totally accepts -- and really seems to enjoy -- the making of "pre-emptive" war and accepting whatever goodies and control can accrue to the United States. The neo-conservative Rumsfeld simply would be unable, and unwilling, to deal with some of McNamara's more maturely worked-out rules for how successfully to conduct foreign and military policy: "Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning," "Empathize with your enemy," "get the data," and so on.

THE SORROW AND THE PITY

"The Fog of War" can be viewed on a number of intersecting levels. One can view it as a history lesson -- for example, the WWII firebombing of Japanese cities, wiping out hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, long prior to the A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, where, as McNamara says, we escaped nuclear war largely by luck. Both were campaigns in which McNamara was deeply involved. In understanding the logic of battle in World War II, and the tense atomic game of chicken being played in Cuba, one comes to understand a bit more the universe and rationale in which McNamara and his generation lived and worked.

One can view the film in political terms -- both the complex politics in which McNamara and JFK and LBJ, engaged, and in how these policies and intrigues resonate today in the Bush Administration. (More of that below.)

One can view the documentary in military terms -- learning how the technology of war influenced bombing runs, for example, over Japan and Vietnam: bringing the B/29 bomber planes down from their normal 23,000-feet release level (where their accuracy was questionable) to 5000 feet (better targeting but losing more airplanes and crews). Fascinating stuff, all.

I stand in awe of the artful way Morris weaves these strands into a compelling documentary tapestry. But, as I think Morris intended, I found myself concentrating mostly on this most complex and interesting character, whose middle name ("Strange") speaks volumes.

McNamara is boastful and proud at certain moments. But the overwhelming impression he leaves is that of a broken, haunted man. He looks like Mr. Death, and no wonder; in many ways, he was directly or indirectly responsible for the killing and maiming of millions of Americans and Japanese and Vietnamese.

He can't quite bring himself to confess openly about the depths of his moral and spiritual failings. Instead, he talks about the "evil" that one sometimes has to do in order to do "good." One reads between the lines when he talks about the "errors" and "mistakes" that governmental and military leaders invariably make in the confusions and chaos that is warfare.

He ponders whether, if the U.S. had lost World War II, he and the others who planned the firebombing of Japanese cities would have been put on trial for crimes against humanity. He suspects that he would have been in the war-crimes dock, along with Gen. Curtis LeMay and others, as a result of Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam, when the U.S. Air Force dropped more bombs in that one campaign than were dropped in all of World War II. (He asks a good question: "What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?")

At one and the same time, McNamara is seeking absolution (from us, representative Americans) for his unnamed sins, and also wants to keep silent even now about many of the unconscionable policy-atrocities in which he participated and, at times, initiated. One gets the distinct impression that if he were to openly talk about those secrets, he would have to swallow the black revolver. He's that delicately poised on the razor's edge of conscience.

His eyes tear on occasion when he tells his stories, but mostly not about the mass-deaths for which he was at least partially responsible, but rather when he talks about specific individuals with whom he worked. The former head of Ford Motors was a cold-fish technocat of warfare -- members of his own family apparently were driven to break with him about his Vietnam policies -- who was referred to in those days as "an IBM machine with legs."

Political leaders often appear somewhat lost and remotely connected to the world when they leave their high offices. McNamara is such an example, in extremis; he's like a character in a Beckett play, living out a dry, despairing life in a grey fog, halfway between zero and void. He will die a lonely, cracked old man, proud of many of his accomplishments -- and there were some -- but dragged down by the weight of his moral crimes and heartlessness. (The film never even goes near his post-Vietnam tenure as the head of the World Bank.)

Robert S. McNamara emerges as a pitiable wretch that we both understand a bit -- and thus we listen to his story with a certain sympathy -- and despise, because of his unwillingness to fully acknowledge and accept responsibility for his actions. It's a sorrow and a pity. And you can't take your eyes off him up there on the screen -- these dead eyes seemingly inches from your vision -- precisely because of that dichotomy.

THE WRONG INTERVIEWER?

Errol Morris knows how to make stunning documentary films; his visual eye and imagination are acute. Even though his films center on talking-heads ("The Thin Blue Line," "Gates of Heaven"), he's able to add poetic visual elements that grab us and make us keep watching and listening. Sometimes these visuals are a bit abstract and precious, but mostly they work to keep us optically engaged while listening to someone speak at length. In this regard, "The Fog of War" is a work of extraordinary cinema, with a most effective Philip Glass score, sometimes ominously insistent, at other times ethereal and hopeful.

Morris' major mistake, I believe, was to do the interviewing himself. His knowledge of his subject, and the details of the contexts in which McNamara worked, appears limited mostly to the surface issues. He hardly ever comes at the former Secretary of Defense with responses or questions that force McNamara into corners, and, on those occasions when he comes close to a sensitive subject, he tends to back off.

(Morris' method of interviewing -- the filmmaker in one room, McNamara in another, both looking at monitor images of the other right where the camera is -- didn't help; the film's Epilogue rests on an apparent telephone conversation Morris had with McNamara after the interviews were completed, and here more direct questions are posed. But it's too little, too late, and telephone questions are easy to evade.)

Maybe Morris simply didn't do quite enough of his preparatory homework. The film could have used a hard-hitting journalist, well-versed in the realities of Vietnam politics and military skullduggery, throwing hardball questions McNamara's way.

I say that without knowing how Morris was able to obtain the 20+ hours of interviews with his subject; maybe McNamara, no fool he, said he would sit for Morris only if the filmmaker was the interrogator. Or maybe Morris saw how delicately McNamara was poised emotionally, and didn't want to risk pushing him over the edge, or having his subject abruptly stand up and cancel the whole project. Who knows?

Whatever, one gets the impression that on sensitive topics, McNamara got something of a pass, which permitted him to tell his self-justifying version of events without being forced to go deeper, without having to confront aspects of his personality and behavior that resulted in horrendous consequences for himself and millions of others.

VIETNAM/IRAQ LINKAGES

In "The Fog of War," McNamara never makes the connection overt between Vietnam and Iraq. But the chronology and details of his story permit us to forge the link.

*For example, McNamara tells us that the alleged torpedo attack on the U.S.S. Maddox in 1964 never happened, but LBJ used it anyway as the precipating event for the open-ended Gulf of Tonkin resolution that the Congress passed, giving the President authority to wage full-scale war in Vietnam. George W. Bush used lies about non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction and supposed links to al-Qaida & 9/11 to manipulate the American people and Congress into supporting his blank-check resolution for war against Iraq.

*"Fog of War" reveals how absolutely ignorant American policy-makers were about Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese history, Vietnamese politics, the Vietnamese language -- and paid a heavy price because of that lack of intimate knowledge of the enemy and how they thought and what motivated them. The same charge could be leveled at Bush: he has taken the U.S. into a war against a people, and in some measure against a branch of a major religion, about which his policymakers have precious little knowledge or understanding. No wonder the U.S. keeps stubbing its toes all over the Middle East. Arab-speaking officers and policy-makers, for example, are few and far-between -- and some that can speak the language were dismissed because they happen to be homosexual. (Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!)

*The U.S. moved into Vietnam prepared to fight classical battles, and found itself bogged down in the big muddy of guerrilla warfare, where it often was impossible to tell the friendlies from the enemy. The result was that many frightened G.I.s just emptied their weapons at everybody, thereby losing the "hearts and minds" of the population even more. Under Bush, the U.S. moved into Iraq with conventional equipment, materiele and mind-set, and quickly found itself having to struggle against guerrilla forces, many of whom are nationalists fighting because they don't like being humiliated and brutalized by their Occupiers.

*Many of the "best and the brightest," McNamara among them, told JFK and LBJ the truth about what was likely to happen if the U.S. got engaged on the ground in 'Nam, but their counsel was dismissed by their bosses, locked as they were into a Cold War mental construct of a centrally-controlled monster called World Communism; there was no room in that worldview that could account for the strength of nationalism in the socialist world. McNamara confesses that he, too, was blinded by the constancy of that Cold War spotlight, and thus had to struggle to see the war in different terms.

The same tunnel-vision sydrome was repeated, to a large extent, when Bush orginally was contemplating his war with Iraq; he paid no attention to those civilian and military and intelligence officers who urged the Administration not to attack Iraq, that it was the wrong war at the wrong time (especially because the U.S. still had unfinished business with al-Qaida), and that "preventive" war was a risky, possibly self-destructive policy in the long run. Bush and his advisors had mentally switched over from "communists" to "terrorists," and thus they didn't feel they have to gave much thought to any of those objections or to the reality of Arab nationalism and tribal/sect loyalties.

LESSONS UNLEARNED

As Daniel Ellsberg noted in his memoirs "Secrets," (www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/ellsbergs-secrets.htm) presidents too often believe they can force victory by their sheer will, determination, and the technological superiority they command, and thus they downplay the wise counsel offered by their own professional military and intelligence officials to reconsider before making a bad mistake. The tragedies that result -- the millions killed and wounded, the depletion of the treasury, the loss of respect internationally, the political civil wars that accompany dissent -- degrade our culture, shred our Constitutional protections, wreck the economy, place American national interests in great jeopardy.

One would have thought that America would have remembered at least some of the lessons of Vietnam. But, no; thirty or forty years go by, the last war's catastrophes are forgotten, and we're at it again, making the same mistakes, with even more disastrous consequences.

McNamara thinks this pattern is the inevitable result of the "fog of war," where everything is moving in chaotic warpspeed where nothing is clear and mistakes are so easy to make. But, in the Bush Administration, with a far different agenda, the faultline runs much deeper than that, and we all are paying an enormous, agonizing price for our leaders' bullheaded imperial-like obstinacy in the face of infinitely complex political realities on the ground.

Given how difficult it is to figure out what to do, and how wars have unforeseen and horrendously tragic consequences, you would think that leaders would move to the war option last, only as a desperate final resort. McNamara eventually came to that position. The Bush boys didn't seem to give a flying fig, making war the first, and almost only, option. America will pay a terrible price for Bush&Co.;'s misguided, greedy, power-hungry folly.

WILL POWELL LEARN Mc'S LESSON?

In an exclusive interview with McNamara (www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040124/MCNAMARA/TPColumnists) published a few days ago, Canadian journalist Doug Saunders put some direct questions to the former Defense Secretary about the Vietnam/Iraq equation and received some surprisingly frank, tough responses:

"I told him [Saunders writes] that his carefully enumerated lists of historic lessons from Vietnam were in danger of being ignored. He agreed, and told me that he was deeply frustrated to see history repeating itself.

"'We're misusing our influence,' he [McNamara] said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. 'It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong.'

"While he did not want to talk on the record about specific military decisions made by Mr. Rumsfeld, he said the United States is fighting a war that he believes is totally unnecessary and has managed to destroy important relationships with potential allies. 'There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-à-vis the other nations of the world'."

Are you listening, Colin Powell? Do you really want to wind up pitied and reviled like McNamara for moral culpability, or are there lessons you can learn from this introspective, deeply troubled man -- such as when and why to get out?

Our Secretary of State, one would like to believe, could decide that his patriotism and conscience dictate an immediate, pre-November departure from the Bush Administration -- in order to help stop the reimposition of the draft, keep more unjustified "pre-emptive" wars from happening, save the lives of countless soldiers and civilians who will die in Iraq and in other countries. In such a circumstance, he could talk frankly with the American people, revealing what he knows about how Bush policy was conceived and carried out. But, while I once believed Powell capable of such principled action, I don't think Powell now has the courage or moral strength to do that; in short, an imminent Powell resignation is not likely to happen. Ever the loyal soldier, he seems content to wait out his tenure and leave in January.

But it's possible that Powell -- who admitted the other day that Iraq probably had no WMD before the U.S. invasion -- is operating from a different agenda and timeline. He may be biding his time, to see if Bush wins a second term in the upcoming election.

If a Democrat wins, Iraq policy will change and there will be no neo-con "pre-emptive" moves on Syria and Iran -- so Powell would not have to dis his old boss. But if Bush were to win, Powell might then summon his courage and moral core and make a much-belated attempt to resurrect his reputation by choosing to unload what he knows about Bush lies and possible criminal behavior.

If Powell were to do so -- in, a major public address, say, or in a Paul O'Neill-type tell-all book -- the effect of his revelations would be cataclysmic, probably leading to immediate impeachment moves in the Congress.

Go see "The Fog of War," Colin. --posted 02.03.04

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at Western Washington University, San Diego State University, San Francisco State University; worked as a writer-editor with the San Francisco Chronicle; currently, he is co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).

Ten "New Year's Revolutions"

By Bernard Weiner

For many years, four San Francisco families have gathered after Christmas week in a cabin in the Sierra snow. One of our rituals takes place on New Year's Eve: We each write out our resolutions on pieces of paper, put them in a pot, and then one person reads each out loud and everyone has to guess whose resolution they think it is. When all the authors have been named, or have confessed, we burn the papers in the fireplace and watch as the embers fly up the chimney and out into the world.

One year, someone made a slip of the tongue and referred to his "New Year's Revolutions," and ever since many of us refer to them under that rubric.

I won't burden you with my highly personal resolutions for 2004, but here are my public "New Year's Revolutions," which possibly might resonate with your own life and political desires.

1. I resolve to support -- with time, energy and money -- whatever reasonable candidate the Democrat party puts up in opposition to George W. Bush, even if I may disagree with aspects of that candidate's program or personality. There is no higher patriotic act I can perform right now than to work for the defeat of Bush&Co.;, the policies of which are endangering our national security, coarsening our civil society, ruining our air and water, and shredding our Constitutional guarantees of due process of law. (On the local level, I resolve to help alternative candidates, so that we can begin to grow a principled party from the grassroots that can prepare for power and responsibility in the future.)

2. I resolve to help register as many potential new voters as I can in time for the 2004 election. I'll set myself a goal of at least five.

3. I resolve to contact my election officials and protest purchasing and use of the new touch-screen computer-voting machines until the software-coding programs that count the votes are examined, fixed and certified as accurate, along with a paper receipt of the ballot cast. As it currently stands, this new technology has been proved to be easily manipulatable by hackers or partisans attempting to alter the numbers.

4. I resolve to work toward election-financing reform, to help ensure that the influence of big-money contributors and institutions is minimized, while the will of ordinary voters has more sway. Our democratic republic will fluorish only when the government cannot be bought.

5. I resolve to work to protect the freedom of the press, certainly for the traditional mass media (newspapers and radio and television) but also for the internet, the media most attuned to and democratically run by the people themselves. Already, there are indications that corporate-government forces are moving toward institution of controls over internet access and content.

6. I resolve to pay more attention to the relationship between justice and peace. I know that unless the two go together, there can be no meaningful progress in any political-social endeavor. I vow to work more in the non-violence movement as a means of effecting change, but I'm realistic enough to know that unless justice accompanies peace, the fires of violence increasingly will be stoked.

7. I resolve to see the world in a more holistic way. Cuts in the education budget are connected to the increasing number of potholes on our streets are connected to the huge costs of wars abroad are connected to the tax breaks for the wealthy are connected to the Israel/Palestine confrontation are connected to election dirty tricks. To miss seeing where and how the dots are connected is to deal only in segmented ways with the overall problem. "Radical" means going to "the root."

8. I resolve to act where and how I can to help repair the world, not blaming myself if such efforts can't be immediately successful. I will cultivate patience and persistence -- and compassion, especially toward my political enemies -- and join together with those similarly inclined, and as a united force we will move humanity the short (or long) distances required for genuine progress. I will remind myself that sometimes humanity moves a quarter of an inch forward and sometimes -- when the social factors are just right -- it jumps ahead a whole foot. And, at times, humanity often stays mired in the mud, or reverses fields and falls back an inch or even a foot. Right now, we're in such a minus-foot period, and the need is great for reversing that backwards momentum.

9. I resolve to maintain and grow my spirituality, to help bring light in a time when shadow forces, here and around the globe, spread darkness and despair to so many. Hope and faith can indeed move mountains, and I will be a soldier of hope, helping to move the pendulum back toward the flame of progress.

10. I resolve to aid the arts, in all their wonderful diversity, for they provide soul mortar in the construction of our humanity. I will contribute creatively where and when I can, and contribute money and time and energy to other of my compatriots energetically engaged in art's glory. Art, as with a child's laugh, can help lift us from society's pit and show us a better way.

Keep on laughin', keep on artin', and keep on keepin' on. --posted 12.28/.03

Bernard Weiner, a poet and playwright, for 16 years was the San Francisco Chronicle's theater critic. He has taught at Western Washington University, San Francisco State University and San Diego State University, and is co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)

East Coast/Left Coast: The Throbbing Political Pulse

By Bernard Weiner

Whenever traveling around the country, I (surprise!) talk politics with folks I meet; it's often instructive and it serves as a way of taking the social pulse. Last week's trip to the East Coast, to meet with fellow website editors -- mainly in New York, but checking in with Crisis Papers compadres in Washington, D.C., as well -- presented me with both encouraging and dispiriting signs.

The Congressional Democrats scurry around like frightened rabbits, but out beyond the beltway this trip re-affirmed for me that there are plenty of ordinary Dems -- appalled at Bush&Co.; policies -- who have more starch in their spines. These Democrats seem willing to unite big time behind the party's eventual candidate (providing money, energy and time), even if it turns out that they might not agree with some of the standard-bearer's positions. I heard this same commitment from supporters of all the major candidates. This is a hopeful sign.

To a person, these citizens -- and even a goodly number of Greens, and Republican moderates, angry at how their party has been hijacked by far-right zealots -- are willing to put ideological considerations aside in the service of defeating Bush in 2004. They know that this may be the last chance available to break the back of the neo-con momentum currently wreaking such havoc on our country, domestically and internationally. This may be the final opportunity to stop the imperial war machine as it greedily eyes other countries in the oil-rich Middle East and elsewhere. This may be the last chance to save and protect our Constitutional form of government.

I did talk to one Democrat who vowed he would support any of the party's candidates but Joe Lieberman, whom he described as "Rambo lite." The overall choice of the Dems I talked to on this trip was Dennis Kucinich -- my main-man as well -- but nary a one believed he had a snowball's chance in Hell to get the nomination. They thought it would be Dean or (this one surprised me) Gephardt, or, as a middle-range compromise, Clark.

But many of these same Democrats have told me that if and when the Dem nominee wins the presidency, they are going to go after the party's Congressional leadership with a vengeance. Watching the Democrats cave time and time again to Bush's threats and demands makes them ashamed to be in the same party. The best recruiter for the Greens is Tom Daschle.

The sentiment I heard again and again on this trip was that the Congressional Democrats "just don't get it." By which was meant that the supposed Democratic leaders, by and large, think their Republican opponents are just playing the usual style of politics, and thus the Dems can deal with them in the same civil way they've been used to for the past several decades. The Democrats, I was told often, simply don't, or won't, understand what activist role a Loyal Opposition is supposed to play in the current world of cutthroat Washington politics.

Because of this confusion and timidity, Democratic action translates all too often into accomodation -- formerly called selling-out -- that tends to give Bush&Co.; whatever they want, whether it be a blank-check authorization for war, a deeply flawed Medicare bill that is the first step in the elimination of that all-important program, a bloated $87 billion bill to finance the Iraq war and to continue paying off corporate behemoths like Halliburton and Bechtel, and on and on.

GETTING IT AND NOT

In truth, the Congressional Democrats do NOT get it. "It" is the fact that the Republicans these days are a different breed of political animal, operating from an extremist neo-con locus -- an arrogant bullying approach to political opponents, which has so discombobulated the Dems that even Congressional Republicans that can't stomach the agenda are happy to participate. These zealots are out not just to best the opposition but to destroy it, in order to create what amounts to a one-party state.

The most obvious recent demonstration of this was the way the Administration's energy bill was created and rammed onto the Congressional floor -- hammered out in secret (both by Cheney and his fellow energy-company execs, and later by the Congressional GOP leadership), with absolutely no input from Democrats permitted. Or the GOP unwillingness at times to allow proper committee hearings where Democrat objections can be heard, or to entertain Dem amendments to bills, etc. etc.

Add this movement toward one-party rule to the increasing militarization of the country, where criticism of Bush policies and the incompetency with which they're carried out is painted as support for terrorists; see the Republican National Committee's TV ads currently running in Iowa. And then there's the shredding of Constitutional guarantees of due process under the Patriot Act, with even more being sought in Patriot Act 2, the so-called "VICTORY" bill.

The pattern is clear: under Bush&Co.;, we are moving more and more quickly toward a kind of American neo-fascism, where one set of ideas is all that will be permitted. (And you can bet that plans are being hatched already in Ashc roft's office for taking care of critical internet websites such as this one: "detrimental to the war effort," you know.)

The progress made for most Americans under the New Deal and Great Society programs of the past 60 years are being rolled back. Private greed, corporate gluttony, more power to the powerful, imperial rampaging abroad, the polluters making the pollution rules, the working/middle class (and minorities) taking it in the neck -- all these and more help define Bush rule, and will only get worse if the White House remains in GOP hands after 2004.

I'm not exaggerating. The handwriting is already clearly on the wall. War and represssion. It's that bad.

THE BLUES VS. THE REDS

All those with whom I spoke on my East Coast trip, be they liberal Democrats or traditional GOP conservatives, tended to see the Bush Administration in much the same way as described above. But, we all agreed, by and large we were talking about the more metropolitan "Blue" states, those on the two coasts that tend to be more tolerant, more liberal in social outlook, more internationalist in foreign policy.

But what about the "Red," Bush-country, states inbetween the two coasts? How to reach those citizens and convince them that voting for Bush again is not in their interests?

Several of the website editors I talked with noted that there have been increasing signs, backed up by polling, that even in those Red states disenchantment with Bush&Co.; is palpable. Even in Kansas and Idaho, for example, many small-government conservatives are deeply agitated by the extremist politics practiced by the Bush cabal -- starting unnecessary wars abroad; creating a huge, Big Brother federal government; damaging the economy and the resulting enormous job losses; decimating Medicare, with Social Security next. Similarly, when I was in Texas several months ago, I heard of lifelong Republicans who already had announced that they would not vote for Bush again; many letters from moderate/conservative Republicans to The Crisis Papers and other political websites, from a variety of states, echo that sentiment.

So fertile ground is open to Democratic plowing in supposed Bush country. Al Gore vacillated back and forth in the 2000 campaign, but his initial more-populist message did resonate with many voters; Howard Dean didn't handle his position very elegantly on the need to talk sense to angry Southern white males, but he, too, like Gephardt, is suggesting a campaign that takes it to the Bush heartland on populist-type economic issues, especially in the Republican-dominated South.

If the Democratic nominee can clearly articulate how it is in nobody's economic or social interest to vote for the Republican candidate -- not even, in the long run, for the corporate fat-cats -- then Bush country itself is put into play and the Dems have a hope of taking some of those electoral votes. Especially given the latent disenchantment with the Bush Administration among many true conservatives in those states.

THE ODIFEROUS NECKLACE

In short, the 2004 election can be won. Both because of the candidate the Democrats will put up, and the scandals that hang like a putrifying collection of roadkill around George W. Bush's neck, most notably the coverup of Bush's pre-9/11 knowledge, the felonious outing of a covert CIA agent to punish a political opponent, the massive lying to the Congress and American people that led us into an unnecessary quagmire in Iraq, and so on.

So, yes, Bush is defeatable, but it ain't gonna be easy. Rove&Co.; realize what's at stake here -- their last chance to implement their far-right agenda, and set up their repressive infrastructure, for another decade or two -- and already are way ahead of the Democrats in terms of fund-raising and money available. They are much more adept, for example, in how to employ the internet to their advantage, with the Dems just getting started in playing catch-up. So that's a big disadvantage one year ahead of the election.

Then, too, those opposed to Bush have to deal in a serious way with the touch-screen computer issue, to eliminate the possibility of GOP fiddling with the vote-counting software that currently is controlled mainly by three Republican-leaning corporations. Since those corporations refuse to permit state election officials to examine and test the software, the only way to ensure a thoroughly clean, suspicionless balloting in 2004 is for the citizenry to demand a postponement of computer-voting until the corruption and hacking issues can be dealt with and resolved.

A major activist campaign should be mounted to convince the various Secretaries of State -- who will be meeting in convention in February -- to REFUSE TO PURCHASE computer-voting machines for their respective states from these three companies until the software can be examined, tested and, if necessary, fixed, ensuring that later manipulation of the results cannot be carried out.

If this process is not done, or cannot be done in time, the only method that guarantees a fair and impartial election in November will be to use paper ball ots, hand-counted, with GOP and Dem representatives observing the tallying. We've already had a tainted, controversial election in 2000; to restore faith in the democratic process, the 2004 election must be fair, and be seen as fair, by the entire electorate, untarnished by even a hint of chicanery.

If there is a fair and untampered-with election in November, the Democrat will win. But that means that you and I need to start our work NOW, one year in advance, to make that happen. The name of the game is active citizen involvement that will build to a crescendo of democratic (small- and large-D) activism that will eventuate in putting Bush and his dangerous cronies on the unemployment rolls where they belong. --12.03.03

Bernard Weiner is co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org), and was a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years. A Ph.D. in government & international relations, he has taught at various universities.

Current Events for Dummies

By Bernard Weiner

Overwhelmed by one crisis after another, one scandal after another, one politician's lies after another, I turn to the franchised book empire that tells it like it is, in plain English, so that even confused citizens like myself can understand current events.

Q. What's really going on in Iraq? Is the U.S. trying to get out of that country, or is it planning to stay for another year or two?

A. The Bush Administration will never openly admit that it's wrong, about anything, and certainly not about its incoherent policy in Iraq. But it's been forced by events on the ground to come to grips with reality.

The reality: Since the Bush Administration came to the "post-war" phase totally unprepared -- because it swallowed whole the fantastical theories the neo-cons had devised in their right-wing ivory towers, along with the self-serving lies told by the Iraqi exiles -- they walked right into a political/military buzzsaw, probably just as Saddam Hussein foresaw when most of his forces dispersed without much of a fight.

The reality: you can't create democracy from the barrel of a gun. It won't work in Iraq, it won't work in the rest of the Islamic Middle East. The operative rule, for all nations -- Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist -- is this: No country's citizens like to be Occupied by a foreign army, one that claims to be interested in their welfare but which seems more concerned with power, cont rol, organized corporate-looting -- and, in this case, appears to wear a big Christian-crusader chip on its shoulder when it comes to the Muslim world.

Q. You haven't answered my question.

A. Down, fella; I was just getting warmed up. Providing context. Setting the stage...

So, there are twin forces at work within Bush&.Co.: On the one hand, the more pragmatic theorists in the Administration -- mainly in the White House, State and CIA -- see the Vietnam-quagmire handwriting on the wall, and the anger their $87-billion for Iraq is causing in the American electorate, and are desperate to find a way to get U.S. troops out of the target areas before election day.

This would entail turning over more power more quickly to the Iraqis themselves -- but conceivably, if even that doesn't work, may require going back to the U.N. and the European allies and offering them a power-sharing arrangement in helping run and re-construct Iraq, with their companies getting a good share of the reconstruction boondoggle money.

This Bush faction believes that if the democratization/reconstruction phase is under a U.N. or other international umbrella and the U.S. troops are not that visible, the Iraqis will cease-and-desist, or at least ameliorate, their deadly attacks on the peacekeeping forces and humanitarian-aid agencies. Instead, in this scenario, with some elected officials starting to take charge of Iraqi affairs instead of the current U.S.-appointed Coalition Provisional Authority, the Iraqis will see those international forces and agencies as being helpful reconstructionists, not as threatening Occupiers, and Iraq can move forward quickly toward democracy and free-market prosperity.

THE NEO-CON FACTOR

Another faction, mainly consisting of the neo-con zealots at Rumsfeld's Pentagon and in Cheney's office, want to stay on the present course. They bet so much on getting the U.S. militarily into Iraq -- lying through their teeth to do so -- because they believed in the cause of using that weak Arab country as a demonstration model for the rulers of other Middle East nations: This is what could well happen to your country unless accomodations are made to U.S. geopolitical desires and corporate interests. The ultimate Bush&Co.; goal, other than to set up the profit-making machine for their corporate backers, is to totally alter the instability of the oil-rich region, and the mainly autocratic governing system of Islam.

If the U.S. were forced by events on the ground to devolve power to others and not remain in full control in Iraq, the entire neo-con agenda is put at risk. Were the U.S. to be forced by the Iraqi insurgents to move toward power-sharing with the U.N., the Bush Administration -- without its sole-superpower ability to threaten and bully -- might not find it possible to change the face of modern Islam in the direction of less militant behavior towards the West (and, significantly, towards Israel, America's proxy-state in the area). Oil politics could turn against the U.S. and its all-consuming need for cheap, reliable sources of black gold.

Q. So, which faction is winning?

A. It depends on the day. And on the weather. And on which side Pete Rose is betting on....But, seriously, folks, the truth is that both factions interweave, even as they launch attacks against each other.

Given the strength of both factions, it would appear that attempts are being made to reconcile the two seemingly incongruous policies. It would look something like this:

The U.S. would stay, in some strength, for maybe two years, but would remain in the background, pulling strings when necessary to get what it wants; presumably, fewer American young men and women would get killed and wounded.

Iraqis would begin to move toward some home-grown version of democracy, but always knowing that the Americans, still based in their country, could exercise a forceful kind of veto if it chose to do so. (And, since Bush has said that the American military will stay until the country is pacified, this means the U.S. will be there for a long time, since such a pronouncement invites a constant veto power through suicide bombings.)

In short, the U.S. may have to back down (or seem to be backing down: PR spin) in the short run in order to drastically lower the U.S. death-rate of our soldiers and get the Iraqi debacle off voters' minds prior to the November election.

THE P.N.A.C. POSSE

Q. And, don't tell me: After the election, back to neo-con 101?

A. You're a quick study. You got it. If Bush wins, the neo-con attack dogs are unleashed and off we go once again into the bloodred sunset.

Q. Could our government be so mendacious, so greedy, so power-hungry? I don't want to believe that, even of a Bush Administration. Nobody could be that manipulative, so traitorous to American values and long-terms national interests.

A. Wanna bet? The neo-cons (or neo-conmen, as some call them) have spent a good dozen years, and more, getting ready for the day when they could finally see their strategies working in the real world, with them in control. With the implosion of Soviet communism and the installation of a malleable Bush Jr. in the White House -- and the monstrous 9/11 attack -- they finally got that opportunity, and they're not about to abandon their long-range plans.

If they have to make a few tactical course-corrections before the 2004 election, they'll do it. If they have to immolate a few sacrificial lambs, they'll do it; if the investigative pressure continues to build, I wouldn't be surprised to see a few lower-level fall guys resign to take the heat off of Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney: Stephen Hadley at the NSC (at the heart of the Wilson-Plame scandal), Douglas Feith (one of Rummy's main Iraq Occupation designers and WMD fabricators at the Office of Special Plans), George Tenet at the CIA. Hell, they'd even be willing, in extremis, to dump Cheney, if they figure it'll help Bush's 2004 chances.

Anything in order to keep the original plan moving, as developed by The Project for The New American Century ( www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm) theorists for the past decade -- using American muscle aggressively to get their way in the world, cutting out the U.N. and any nation that could possibly threaten U.S. hegemony, getting effective control of the globe's energy resources, threatening preventive wars against those who get in the way of U.S. policy, and actually launching such wars where appropriate.

In short, the PNAC Posse will do what it has to do in the short run -- make Iraq accomodations, throw a few lesser lights overboard to protect the big cheeses, even (gulp) ask for international assistance -- in order to stay in power and carry out the rest of the imperial plan.

ANGERING THE SPOOKS

You namby-pamby liberals don't want to think your government would behave this way? Listen, buddo, they are consumed by arrogance and fear; they'll do what they have to do to stay in power. If it requires outing a covert CIA agent to make a political point, they'll do it, and to hell with the illegality of the act. Valerie Plame and her network of informants and agents around the world are merely collateral damage in the service of the cause; besides, Bush&Co.; know they won't be fingered on that one, since journalists will never reveal their sources.

Q. But when they outed Joe Wilson's wife, they stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition from inside the CIA, who now are leaking all sorts of information detrimental to the White House and its neo-con allies. Didn't they realize that the Plame outing, and blaming the CIA for all the bad intelligence about Saddam's supposed WMDs, would backfire?

A. We're talking about the tragic flaw of hubris here, the feeling that you can get away with anything because you're so powerful and nasty and scary. But you can almost feel the inexorable convergence of scandals into one big, huge mass at the top of a steep hill, with the White House at the bottom. Critical mass has just about been reached. When that huge boulder of scandal and incompetency and hubris begins to roll -- and a run-up to the election is the perfect launch ramp -- you know that the smashing and destruction at the bottom of the hill is going to be swift and ugly. Impeachment and resignation are the best they can hope for, to try to stave off criminal prosecution.

Q. Oh, come on. That's not going to happen. These guys control the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the radio and cable networks and much of the rest of the mass-media. Your scenario is just a fantasy -- even you know that, right?

A. You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't have it all. More and more Americans are realizing they were lied to and egregiously manipulated by the Bush Administration in order to move the country into Iraq. Our young men and women are targets in a shooting gallery, dying and being wounded at an astounding rate; the Iraqi insurgents can bleed us for years, a war of a thousand cuts.

Support for the U.S. war effort is below 50% in the polls and falling rapidly, and there's a rising understanding that Bush&Co.; didn't have a clue when it came to "post-war" Iraq. We're basically out there all by ourselves, the rest of the world content to watch us flounder in the muck. In short, there's no strong support, domestially or internationally, for Bush's original neo-con policies that got us into this immoral, reckless mess.

In addition, domestically there is so much revulsion against the excesses of the USA Patriot Act -- which was rammed through Congress right after 9/11, with virtually no legislators having had a chance to read the final draft -- that even conservatives are joining in to strip it of its worst, fascist-like, Big Brother provisions. More than 200 cities and towns and states have passed resolutions that they will not honor it, or help the federal government enforce it, in their jurisdictions. (And, believe it or not, Ashcroft and Bush are trying to EXPAND the federal government's powers under Patriot Act 2! These guys are shameless.)

Even Pvt. Jessica Lynch, whom the Bush spinners turned into a poster girl for Iraq-War heroism, has rebelled, complaining that her story was largely manipulated for political purposes.

In short, all the seeming power and control in the world can't conceal forever that the citizenry, finally, is getting a peek behind the Washington curtain and they don't like what they see -- all that lying and mendacity and meanness and hidden agendas. Meanwhile, more than 3,000,000 have lost their jobs since Bush moved into the White House -- many of them really good jobs "outsourced" to the cheaper labor markets abroad -- and a lot more citizens are fearful of becoming unemployed. All this doesn't bode well for Bush&Co.; in the 2004 election.

THE TOUCH-SCREEN PROBLEM

Q. You mean Bush is vulnerable enough to lose to the Dems?

A. You're forgetting something: Republicans control the computer-software that adds up the votes on the touch-screen voting machines being installed all over the country. A slight manipulation of the software there, a serruptitiously-installed patch here, a quiet hack into the system there -- and, surprise!, Bush pulls ahead in enough states to emerge the winner. Already, the Bush-supporting CEO of Diebold, one of the three major computer-voting companies, has promised Bush he will "deliver" Ohio to the Republicans in 2004.

That's the bad news. The good news is that 12 months before the election, word of this scandal is finally moving out from the progressive internet sites -- which have kept this story alive and building for more than a year -- into the mainstream press. And, as a result, more and more folks are getting outraged, and even beginning to ask embarrassing questions about the elections of 2002 and how some Democrats, who in key states were slightly ahead in the polls just before the vote, came to lose -- Max Cleland in Georgia, for example. Turns out software-patches may have been illegally installed just prior to the balloting.

California has put a hold on full certification of Diebold machines until it can be convinced that the software system is on the up-and-up. There are moves in other states to do something similar. These three companies refuse to let anybody look at their proprietary software (and even have threatened lawsuits against websites publishing internal Diebold memos), but if state and local election officials REFUSE TO BUY THEIR MACHINES until the software problems are solved -- and a paper-trail made available as a further double-check on the voting totals -- we might see some action quick.

But, as always, there will be no official action by the bureaucrats unless the people organize themselves on the local levels and demand it. So get to work. It would be a crime, literally, if the Democratic candidate once again won the presidential election, only to be robbed of it by chicanery and fraud.

Q. I'd like to believe your rosy predictions of how Bush could lose. But you're forgetting something really important: the terrorists who hit the United States badly on 9/11. We Americans were, and remain, scared, and thus we're willing to cut Bush some slack, since he's protecting us from the bad guys -- who, by the way, are not figments of your liberal imagination but real, and anxious to do the U.S. more harm. You've seen what they did in New York and Washington, and the atrocities they've pulled off all over the world. Don't you think they could do it again inside the U.S.?

A. Of course. Despite the draconian, police-state tactics of Ashcroft's Justice Department, and the setting up of the Homeland Security Department (significantly, without the FBI and CIA folded in), the U.S. is still mightily vulnerable to terrorist attack. The first time it happened, on 9/11, the inner circles of the Bush Administration knew that something like it was coming, and decided to do nothing, in order to further their domestic and foreign agendas. That's why the Bush White House is fighting so tenaciously to keep the 9/11 commission from getting its hands on the key pre-9/11 documents.

It's possible the Bush Administration could choose to look the other way again and further manipulate our fears and insecurities, so that the populace would permit the central government to do whatever it wants in the name of "homeland security" and the "war on terrorism."

But we're two years away from 9/11 now, and the American people have been able to get some perspective and have seen how Bush&Co.; used our insecurity against us, leading us by lies and deceptions to support an unnecessary, unprovoked war against Iraq -- a country so weak and defenseless that it could barely put up a decent fight during the invasion -- and to acquiesce to the shredding of our Constitutional protections against tyrannical rule. I don't think we'd make the same mistake twice.

THE DEMS AND REGIME-CHANGE

Q. Says you. Look at the polls. Bush still has 40% of the country solidly behind his election effort, and many more who look up to him as a folksy, likeable guy -- plus he's got a campaign war-chest of close to a quarter-billion dollars. Who can the Democrats nominate who could defeat him?

A. You're looking at the cup as half-empty. Try half-full. Even without naming a candidate yet, the Democrats already have 40% support of the population behind defeating Bush. That's pretty damn good in "wartime." And Bush&Co.; seem more and more incompetent and desperate all the time, trying one thing after another, for example, in Iraq, in order to paper over the holes and unworkability of their policies.

The Democratic contenders are, on the whole, a fairly strong, competent bunch. Assuming the computer-voting scandal can be taken care of -- maybe even going back to paper, hand-counted ballots for 2004 -- virtually any of them probably could take Bush next November. Especially if Iraq remains a mess and the jobs issue continues to haunt Bush next year.

It looks like Howard Dean may pull away from the pack pretty quickly after the initial primaries; any of the other contenders would make a good ticket-balancer -- it might well be Clark or Graham or Gephardt. Karl Rove pretends not to be worried by a Dean candidacy, but you'd better believe he reads the poll numbers and is not at all happy at the prospect of Bush going one-on-one against Dean, or almost any of the other candidates for that matter.

Q. So you're hopeful the American people will rally behind the Dem candidate in order to get the Bush extremists out of power?

A. Let's just say that we have no choice if we love our country, our Constitution, our once-admirable reputation in the world. If Bush&Co.; are gone, we can return to an economy aimed at decreasing deficit-spending, increasing employment-growth, reducing the number of good jobs going overseas, setting up a tax-system fairer to the middle-class, etc. With Bush&Co.; gone, we can focus on the anti-terrorism campaign without massive, reckless, horrendously expensive wars; we can service our citizens without bankrupting the treasury.

But we will be able to accomplish none of these goals as long as the Bush extremists, these ideological zealots, remain in power. I think the American people are beginning to understand this, and are willing to organize to take the country back -- even if it means supporting and voting for a Democrat with whom they may have some disagreements -- because the situation simply has to change if we're going to save our country. Onward! --11.17.03

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught government/international relations at various universities, served as a a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for 19 years, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org)

There Is No "Road Map" to Peace, Only the Hard Road Not Taken

By Bernard Weiner

Can we just acknowledge that there is no "road map" to peace in the Middle East? Under Bush, there is no U.S.-sponsored avenue or boulevard or street or back alley that could possibly take the parties to a solution. In sum, there are no shortcuts to peace.

But there is a longcut that could work: A comprehensive peace treaty. One worked out by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves, perhaps within a short period of negotiation, that takes all the most difficult issues -- the Occupation, settlements, Jerusalem, right of return -- and arrives at an overall agreement.

It would be a peace that gives no veto power to Arab or Israeli terrorists. If there dedication and commitment to peace, and a bomb blows up a cafe or a car, the two governments do not let it interfere with the peace process; instead, they proceed apace and seek to arrest the perpetrators. After awhile, when the extremists see that neither side uses this kind of violence as an excuse to stop the peace, such bombings will grow fewer and fewer.

Once there is peace, both battered societies, bloodied by decades of brutality (by the Others and by themselves), will begin initiating joint projects for jobs, water, agriculture, etc. Those positive developments on the ground -- which will yield employment, steady income, lessening of tension, hope for improvement -- will further marginalize the extremist groups.

*****

So with that as a goal -- yes, I know it sounds like a well-worn fantasy, but stick with me on this one -- how do we get from here to there?

The Mideast realities in the Autumn of 2003 tell me that the rivers haven't run red enough, the slaughter hasn't cut deep enough, the politicians aren't smart or courageous enough. In short, the situation is hopeless. Too broad a section of both societies believe they can still "win," i.e. drive the Others away, make them disappear like magic.

Extremists on both sides (egged-on, unfortunately, by their elected leaders) believe that their claim to the disputed land is given by God. The Israeli fundamentalists want a Greater Israel, the Palestinian extremists want a Greater Palestine, with no Israel.

Ordinarily, when two religiously-oriented groups claim that God is on their side, there is no room for accomodation, because it is believed that a compromise would be an affront to God.

But in this extraordinary situation, it is not required that either side forsake their God. If and when both sides can finally agree that the continuing slaughter is intolerable, that their economic and social situation are intolerable, that the constant stress is intolerable, that each losing its moral way is intolerable -- if and when they get to that point (which, unfortunately, probably means after Arafat and Sharon have died), then both sides can say to themselves something like this:

"Dear God/Allah: We have remained true to your desires for decades upon decades, but our peoples have grown weary with despair and never-ceasing bloodshed. We want to continue the battle for your rule, but the reality is that neither of us can make the other side disappear. If we don't come to some sort of agreement -- not to like each other but merely to recognize that the others are here and they're not going to go away -- we will provide nothing to our children and grandchildren but hopelessness and despair and perpetual slaughter and unbearable tension. Therefore, in the name of reality -- and, we hope, with your blessing -- we will make a peace. It will not get us everything we and you want, but it will reclaim the likelihood of a future for succeeding generations."

Having come to this mental/spiritual/political decision, the necessary accomodations can then be made, those same compromises that have been evident to everyone for decades: Israel ends the Occupation and withdraws into its secure, pre-1967 borders, its settlements abandoned to the Palestinians in need of homes, and officially recognizes the new state of Palestine; the Palestinians now have a contiguous, economically and administratively viable state, and officially recognizes Israel's right to exist, and promulgates the necessary laws, and translates and broadcasts/publishes them in Arabic; Israel permits some Palestinian families to return to ancestral lands, but most are provided monetary compensation; Jerusalem becomes an international city.

The ultra-Orthodox extremists in Israel and the Hamas/Jihad extremists in Palestine are made parties to the ultimate agreement, if possible; if not, they are restrained as much as they can be. These terrorist groups become fringe elements within their respective societies. And if and when they carry out a terrorist atrocity -- be it Ultra-Orthodox attacks on Arab citizens, or Hamas/Jihad suicide-bombings in Tel Aviv or Haifa -- the political leadership simply and resolutely maintains the peace, while hunting down the assailants.

Since there is now peace and re-construction can fluorish, new jobs are created, leading to water rights being developed and expanded, joint artistic and economic projects initiated -- and the extremists are marginalized. They begin to lose their hold on the imagination of the populace, since other things, more positive things, are happening on the ground. The attacks grow further apart.

*****

Again, how does one get from here to there? Is the United States involved? Is the United Nations involved? Is the Arab League involved?

Clearly, all three have to be majorly involved. Without their third-party legitimacy, financial backing and moral suasion, none of this can happen.

The United States -- and it's likely we're talking about post-Bush, since his much-ballyhood "road map" was little more than a device to buy some quiet on the Arab street while preparing to invade Iraq -- has to realize that it's in America's national-security interests that there be a true and effective and comprehensive peace in the Middle East. Bush&Co.; sometimes say those words, but never follow through with the actions that would help make a peace happen. Instead, they continue to place all their chips on Ariel Sharon as their proxy enforcer. The result is to pour gasoline on a smoldering regional-political fire.

If and when the U.S. is serious about helping bring peace to the region, it will threaten to withdraw all financial aid to the Israelis and Palestinians -- and if pushed to it, actually will withdraw the aid -- until the necessary steps are taken that will lead down that road to peace. Once all that is done and the peace is made, with U.S. help, American can contribute a flow of funds and experts to the area.

The Arab League can be most helpful here in convincing their Palestinian brothers and sisters -- the same people they've abandoned for so long -- to make the peace, and to help them enforce the peace. There might also be consideration of turning over small border areas to the new country of Palestine where many Palestinians currently reside . And, of course, there would have to be massive financial aid to the currently impoverished, devastated state.

The United Nations in this post-treaty phase likely will have to contribute peacekeeping troops on the ground, to separate the two sides temporarily while the transitions are being made (Israelis withdrawing from the settlements, when the separation wall is torn down, etc.), to supervise the administration of Jerusalem as an international city, to bring all its moral suasion to bear, to help raise and funnel aid and expertise to the area.

In other words, probably none of this will happen, or can happen, until the entire world becomes involved in helping to create the conditions and context and moral power for peace. Lest we become too pessimistic at the possibility of peace ever coming to the Mideast, let us remember how intractable the Northern Ireland situation looked for hundreds of years, and likewise how hopeless the South African apartheid situation looked for so many decades. But peace and economic/social progress are now being made in both areas long torn by religious, class or ethnic divides. The focus of the world on those seemingly unsolvable disputes helped bring about those peaceful solutions.

But, of course, the hardest work has to be done by the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. Not just the leaders -- or not even mainly the leaders, who are caught in a time-warp of violence-revenge -- but ordinary citizens, longing for peace and stability and economic progress in their lives, and a different, more positive life for their kids. American Jews and American Arabs have much to contribute to this momentum for peace as well.

When the Israelis and Palestinians finally recognize that violence and intimidation and brutality simply won't get them what they want -- to eliminate the other side -- and are willing to take action to convince their leaders to make the compromises that need to be made, then the wheels of the peace bus will begin turning for real. (This just might be the right time in history for a massive non-violent movement to emerge on both sides. What can they lose except the lives they already are losing in their pro-violence societies?)

Only then will the realization be made by the Sharons and Netanyahus, and the Arafats and Hamas/Jihad leaders, that their policies have brought nothing but perpetual bloodshed to their peoples and to the region and that they simply can't go on any longer down that brutal road.

But unless we are able soon to get to this place of peace, this haven of hope, the future is clear: years and years, decades and decades, of further slaughter, revenge, brutality, escalation, another generation and then another lost to hate and despair -- the type of negative energy and attitude that increasingly threatens the stability of the entire region (and, Americans and Europeans take note, the flow of oil), and provides rich bloody humus for the growth of increased international terrorism worldwide, etc. etc.

Unless the forces of peace prevail, soon, the rivers of blood will destroy both societies, not only their populations but their sense of themselves as peoples with a moral core of righteousness. And the whirlwind of destruction will blow them onto the dustheap of historical failure.

The choice is clear.# -- posted 11.10.03

Bernard Weiner, a poet/playwright and former journalist with the San Francisco Chronicle, co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org); a Ph.D in government & international relations, he has taught at various universities.

Because the voters are starting to catch on; my re-elect numbers are falling like crazy, and the old tactics aren't working any more. Karl is preparing to use "national security" as our campaign touchstone -- along with such hot-button issues as gay marriage, late-term abortions, and the ever-popular "liberal media" -- but I worry that this may not be enough, and too much tweaking of the computer vote-tallies may be a bit obvious. I wonder if al-Qaida is preparing anything big for inside the U.S.?# --10.22.03

Bernard Weiner, who was a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years, currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). For his peeks inside the diaries of Rove, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and others, see >>www.crisispapers.org/weinerpubs.htm <<.