November 30,, 2005 - If you are over 60 you will remember the scene. It was a stock feature of every WWII movie set in Nazi occupied Europe. The hero, an OSS agent; a member of the French Underground; or an escaping flier making his way to neutral Portugal on his way back to England is riding on a train. A Gestapo agent accompanied by two SS troopers carrying machine pistols boards the train. The search party is working its way through the train. They stop at each compartment, throw open the door and, inspecting the passengers inside the Gestapo man demands, “Your papers, Please?” Tension builds as the evil officer comes closer and closer to he hero. You know what the hero’s fate will be when the search gets to him.

Fast forward to September 2005. The scene is set in Denver. It is the morning rush hour. The conveyance is an RTD bus, not a train. Deborah Davis, a matronly 50 year old is commuting to work. The bus stops at the Federal Center, a US enclave in the Colorado capitol’s metropolitan area. Ms. Davis is not stopping there. The Arvada resident works in Denver, on down the bus line. At the Federal Center stop two officers of the Federal Protection Service board the bus. Working their way down the alley to the back of the bus they demand identification from each passenger. Each day the scene is repeated. One day Ms. Davis tells the officer that she does not have an identification with her. The officer tells her that she must carry an ID and not to get on the bus without it. The next day she tells the officer that she had her ID but she refuses to show it to him. She is pulled from the bus, arrested, taken to the police station and issued a notice to appear in court. She is three hours late for work. She is fired........click here for entire article

November 25, 2005 - What was the mission on which we sent soldiers to be maimed and die in the cities and deserts of Iraq? Was it to insure that Iraq was not able to threaten its neighbors or indeed the United States with weapons of mass destruction? That mission has been accomplished. That certainly is no arsenal of unconventional weapons in Iraq today, if ever there was outside of fertile imaginations – both in Washington and Baghdad.

Was the mission to enforce the Security Council resolutions directed at Iraqi behavior; to enforce the inspections regime and bring Baathist Iraq into compliance. That mission was accomplished when Baghdad fell. There are no unenforced resolutions left to enforce. That mission has been accomplished as well

Was it to topple the evil dictator who used weapons of mass destruction against his own people; whose regime relied on torture; whose sons committed unspeakable acts of sexual domination in rape rooms? His sons are dead. The tyrant himself was dragged out of his hidey hole and before a court of his countrymen and now stands trial for his life. That mission has been accomplished – mostly. (We don’t want to say much about torture.)......click here for entire article

November 24, 2005 - Jose Padilla was arrested on May 9, 2002 in the arrival lounge at Chicago’s O’Hare airport as he went to collect his luggage. He was not charged with any crime. The FBI agents had a warrant to detain him as a material witness whose testimony was needed before a Federal Grand Jury sitting in New York City. He was immediately transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. He was brought before a Federal Magistrate, advised of the reason for his detention and a lawyer was appointed for him. A hearing to determine his status as a material witness was scheduled for June 11 th, 2002. The Department of Justice turned him over to the Department of Defense on the order of the President based upon the President’s declaration that Padilla was an “enemy combatant” a classification of prisoner not previously known in US law.

“Yesterday, at the direction of the president, the Department of Justice transferred control of Jose Padilla, who is a U.S. citizen, to the Department of Defense. As of today, he will be held at the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina.......click here for entire article

November 15, 2005 - There are leaks and then there are leaks. Some are those leaks which jeopardize a mission, an army, or an agent’s undercover mission. Those are the ones described in the WWII posters that warned GI and civilian alike that “loose lips sink ships”. That is why the investigation into the politically motivated intentional exposure of a covert CIA operative is justified and important. Other leaks are those celebrated in the literature of Watergate that reveal those inner machinations of our political leaders; machinations that have been concealed from the public, not to protect a vital national interest from prying alien eyes but to protect a narrow and corrupt political interest from exposure.

It is now revealed that the US Defense Department not only condoned the use of torture against detainees taken in the Afghan and Iraqi wars but actively directed the application of those techniques against which the US was training its personnel to resist in Project Sere. DOD had studied and adapted those techniques to which US prisoners in the Korean and Vietnamese Wars were exposed. Shortly after the detention camp at Guantanamo was established US intelligence personnel were detailed from Gitmo to SERE not to learn how to resist the techniques that had been taught by the Red Army but to learn how to apply them.......click here for entire article

The question of whether or not to remove Saddam Hussein from power never came up for a vote. The President knows that. In fact, as the Congress and the country discussed the possibility of invading Iraq, Mr. Bush and his spokespersons maintained that their only objective was to disarm Iraq and to insure that it would not be in a position to invade its neighbors. Mr. Bush and his administration’s talking heads specifically declared to the country, the Congress, and the World that regime change was not an objective of American foreign policy. Mr. Bush and his spokespersons specifically told the country, the Congress, and the world that if Saddam would only disarm; if he would give up his weapons of mass destruction then we and our allies would leave him alone. That is the history of how the war began as Mr. Bush wrote it with his statements and his orders as the war began. It is that history that Mr. Bush was trying to re-write in ......click here for entire article

November 4, 2005 - We don’t have a parliamentary system.  We don’t have a mechanism to have a no confidence vote and bring down an administration.  The founding fathers opted for the stability of public officers and legislators elected for fixed terms of office.  While Congress doesn’t have the authority to change the face of government with a vote of no confidence the American voter does have the opportunity to express it lack of confidence in the administration by altering the make up of Congress in the mid term elections.  In the interim all the American voter has to voice discontent are the public opinion polls.

With just a year to go before we trek again to the polls the Republican leadership has got to be mightily concerned.  The leader of the Republican party has sunk to an all time low in the citizens’ collective esteem.  Six out of ten Americans disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the Presidency according to the Washington Post – ABC poll published today.  Almost the same number (58%) say that the President is lacking in personal integrity.  The CIA leak scandal is taking its toll.  A majority feel that the Libby indictment is indicative of deeper and more extensive ethical lapses in the Administration.  Sixty percent of Americans say that Karl Rove should resign now – whether or not he is guilty of a crime.  President Bush promised to return respect for ethics to the Presidency.  Two thirds of Americans give him a failing grade on that subject.......click here for entire article

November 2, 2005 - There is a debate going on at the highest levels of our government.  The subject is whether and to what extent agencies of the United States may employ torture to achieve national security ends.  The debate in the Congress is over an amendment to a funding bill forbidding the torture of anyone detained by an agency of the United States.  It is sponsored by the one Senator who knows more about torture that almost all Americans – John McCain.   The debate in the executive branch is over a Pentagon draft directive using the language of the Geneva Convention to proscribe torture of detainees held by the US military.  I don’t know whether to be proud that in my country this subject is being openly talked about or horrified that in the United States the subject of torture is open to debate.

I am a child of the battle against totalitarian regimes.  My childhood was dominated by World War II and the struggle against Nazi Germany.  The dominate influence of my teen years and most of my adult life was the Cold War and the struggle against Soviet totalitarianism.  Torture was the province of the Gestapo.  Torture was the business of the KGB.  Americans were tortured by the North Koreans.  Americans were tortured by the North Vietnamese.  Americans did not sink to the level of their adversaries.  Americas foes were treated humanely.  Our conduct was not governed by the nature of our enemies but was an expression of what we were – of the ideals of human dignity and freedom that we held proudly as the core of our national identity; of what set us apart from what they were.......click here for entire article