Addington's Assault on America

Americans have yet to comprehend the devastating impact of its legal strategies in the War on Terror that has defaced the country's image in the global community, and has tarnished the nation's soul. The "New Paradigm" made a mockery of the Constitution and disregarded ideals consistent with American values which the country once so proudly proclaimed, and nearly succeeded in overturning 200 years of jurisprudence that defined the limits of the President's powers - by making war a substance of dictatorial prerogative. The chief architect of this abomination is David Addington.

The New Paradigm was structured from an interpretation of the Constitution that would compel America's founding fathers to commit harakiri. It provides that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to violate the Civil Liberties of its citizens, trash International Laws, and contravene the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War if national security so requires. All known legal boundaries are eliminated, and illegal surveillance, torture, secret and prolonged detention shall be used to allow the Pentagon to contain terrorists, preempt and prevent future attacks. It devised a system of detention and interrogation called "rendition" that placed suspects outside of the US and beyond the reach of Criminal and Military courts, whose stringent standards on evidence and protecting defendants rights were seen as too complex. Instead, Military Commissions were created and the suspects were not designated as prisoners of war but as illegal enemy combatants - a legal euphemism to go around the established standards of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners.

David Addington is Vice-President Dick Cheney's General Counsel, and their partnership dates back to the late 80's and early 90's. Both share the belief that the Presidency was weakened by the reform movements after Vietnam and Watergate, and that the Office of the President was meant to be very powerful. When Cheney became Vice-President, Addington masterminded the transition of setting up the most powerful Vice-Presidency in American History. He merged the office of the President with Cheney's into a single Executive Office under the rationale' that the Vice-President is the executive and implementer of the President. Cheney thus became the de facto President of the less than intellectual lightweight George W. Bush, whose eloquence and use of the english language is slightly below the level of porky pig.

Addington is a summa cum laude Foreign Service graduate of Georgetown University who also earned honors at Duke Law School. After 9/11 he was the only lawyer in the Bush Administration's inner circle who was ready and prepared to provide legal certainty at a time of momemtous political and legal confusion. This gave him enormous power and influence in crafting the paradigm that sunk America's respectability and credibility as a just and humane society.

Despite his legal brilliance and mastery of National Security laws, Addington's creations manifest ignorance of military law or the laws of war. Military Commissions can try only violations of the Laws of War, and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts is not a crime under these laws as established by the Nuremberg trials after World War ll. Otherwise, all soldiers can be charged with conspiring to fight for their chosen side. In addition, his model has failed to produce results. Of the 700 detainees at Guantanamo, only 8% are alleged to have associated with Al Qaida, 55% never engaged in any hostile act against the US, and the rest were charged with spurious crimes like fleeing from US bombs. All but 5% were captured by non-US players, many of whom were bounty hunters.

Addington is a reclusive operator unknown to most US voters. But his arrogance, expressed in legal machinations that defy congressional oversight, public accountability, and a predilection for what is legally plausible rather than what is morally upright - even if it is a convoluted method of proving his philosophy of Presidential power. He has become so obsessed with this philosophy to the point of madness, that he would destroy all notions of America's fairness and proceed to construct rules with a vested interest in conviction. He frequently cites Lincoln's suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus during the civil war, which Lincoln never claimed an inherent right; as justification for placing National Security above the rule of law. In this, he has turned a historical aberration into a dogma of Presidential prerogative.

David Addington has assaulted America's honor among the community of nations which has damaged the country's reputation beyond what any other US President has done. But it is the face of George W. Bush that will be dragged to the slime and the mud for this atrocity; and it will be the American people who will carry the burden of this shame. The only real restitution that can be obtained for this crime is to make him a stateless person with sanctions on any country that would grant him asylum. Then we will witness what justice will be unleashed by the forces the New Paradigm sought to demolish, to this dog of war.

Haarrrrwwwwk...Twoooooooph...Ting!

Sources: Jane Mayer, The Hidden Power
The Legal Mind Behind the White House War on Terror
The New Yorker

Jeffrey Steinberg, Cheney's Lawyer Addington Penned Key Torture Memo
Executive Intelligence Review

Bob Herbert, Madness and Shame
New York Times

Turning from Treacherous Treaties

After enduring 150 years of broken promises, lies, deception, and neglect - to the point where they felt that the government simply wanted them to vaporize and vanish once and for all - the descendants of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, and have set up a country of their own.

The Lakota Country, according to longtime indian rights activist Russel Means encompasses parts of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. According to Means, they will issue their own passports and driver's licenses. They have invited people covered by the territory they mapped out to join them with offers of tax freedom for as long as they renounce US citizenship.

Russel Means is a lifelong indigenous rights and constitutional rights activist, actor, author and artist with a very colorful history. Considered one of the most magnetic speakers of our time, he has spoken in all major universities in the US and UK, done lecture tours in Switzerland, South Korea and Japan, and his most famous speech "For America to Live, Europe Must Die" has been included in America's top 100 speeches.

Means declared that the withdrawal is legal, citing Article 6 of the Constitution which states that Treaties are the supreme law of the land. He said that their move was bolstered further by the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the United States and the rest of the international community in 1980. "The treaties with the US are worthless words on worthless paper. We are within our legal rights to be free and independent", Means said.

How this move will play out in the future is uncertain. It would be a wise move to have the issue discussed in debates during the election campaign, specially among the Democrats. The annexation of Indian lands "have made the once proud tribes mere facsimiles of white people", Means said. Life expectancy for men is the shortest in the world at 44 years old, teen suicides are 150% above the US norm, and infant mortality is 5 times higher than the US average. These numbers are attributable to loss of hope, lost opportunities, depression, and a long history of abuse and oppression from the US government.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and those "Honorable" men in the US Congress came out with a Declaration of genocide against Turkey last November for the massacre of Armenians prior to WW 1; what do they think this issue with the Lakota indians are, a mere oversight? After 150 years? The tribes have been deprived to the point of starvation for long periods. As I mentioned in a previous post, perhaps the US Authorities were experimenting to see if starvation would make the Indian tribes turn white.

The blacks, latinos, and asians have had a better deal than America's own indigenous people. This is perhaps because these 3 ethnic groups adapted to the American way of living such as junk food, drugs, pollution,environmental degradation, wasteful consumption, consumer orientation, sex, violence, guns, etc. The Indian tribes were one with nature, they respected the environment and kept it in balance. An entire culture with enormous knowledge and sound practices that could lead us to a better way of harnessing nature's resources has been wiped out because of the age old greed of the white man for the fast buck and the huge profit. Massacre and genocide was a mere method to "clear the wilderness". Americans need not look elsewhere in the world for what its foreign policy makers do to the smaller countries of the planet. Right in their own backyard, they can see its oldest laboratory for oppression and genocide!

I am with Russel Means. I would like to see his country, may not be much, but its theirs. I will find a way to support their cause. However, what I foresee is an army of FBI men swooping down on their territory demanding that they surrender or die. Should this transpire and Russel and his tribe are vanquished, this will not be the end of it. There will always be those who will toil for it, fight for it, suffer for it. If need be, die for it. That is the power of truth.

To Russel Means and the future of Lakota Country, I return the phrase: Mitaku Oyasin (We are all related).