Shake Your Bhutto, Rock Your World

posted: October 16, 2007 10:56 EST

Bad news on the global terror front: Unstable Pakistan will become even more shaky when its former leader (and Musharraf's enemy) returns home this week.

By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice

As Benazir Bhutto prepares to return to Pakistan later this week from her Dubai exile and becomes a target of strongman prick Pervez Musharraf's assassins, we can only recall how tragic it was for the U.S. to pull back from that volatile region more than five years ago.

Back in 2002, the Bush-Cheney regime abandoned the full-fledged hunt for Osama bin Laden and duped Congress and the country into invading Iraq.

Pakistan was where it was at. Bin Laden was hiding there and in neighboring Afghanistan. As the Soviets found out, you can't fight rebels in Afghanistan without somehow, some way also fighting them as they scurry across the border into Pakistan, where they have even government support.

Officials of Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI — widely credited with co-opting the Taliban and, along with the Saudis and Reagan administration, arming them — were sympathetic to bin Laden as long as he didn't destabilize their own country.

Recall that Porter Goss and Bob Graham, chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, were having breakfast on the morning of 9/11 with Mahmood Ahmed, the Pakistani ISI official who later turned out to be hijacker Mohammed Atta's bagman. It was also Ahmed who had sent $100,000 to Atta on orders from the guy who later kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. You can't make this shit up.

Yes, we left Pakistan in 2002. Big mistake.

We invaded Iraq. Bigger mistake.

We inflamed the Shia-Sunni schism in Iraq, widening everywhere else that ancient rift between Islam's main sects. Take Pakistan. Unlike in Iraq, the Sunnis are the majority. Please remember that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and despotic monarchy Saudi Arabia is ruled by Sunni fanatics.

There has long been sectarian violence in Pakistan — see this October 2004 BBC backgrounder. Add to that the return to the country of Benazir Bhutto, whose daddy, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was Pakistan's prime minister in the '70s before he was executed by the country's military. Later, Benazir Bhutto — nearly a dead ringer for Andrea Martin/Edith Prickley's version of another South Asia strongwoman, Indira Ghandi — became prime minister, and then she was driven from Pakistan amid corruption charges.

Pakistan was a bigger threat to world stability after 9-11 than Iraq was. Yes, Iraq was a bigger threat to Israel and always a danger to Kuwait, but Pakistan's instability was a much more dangerous threat to the U.S., no matter what the Bush regime's propagandists have drummed into our heads.

Now's the perfect time to recall that the hunt by Musharraf and the ISI for bin Laden was half-hearted at best. Our reaction has been to step up arm sales to Musharraf, as I noted in April 2005.

Don't be surprised if that well-armed Pakistan government sends more Lockheed fighter jets swooping down on Bhutto than it sent to look for bin Laden.

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» categories: 9/11 | Afghanistan | Bush regime | GWOT | Iraq war | Unfounded Optimism | Ward Harkavy

Unhappy Accidents

posted: September 17, 2007 12:34 EST

When it comes to war casualties, Pat Tillman's Ranger battalion may be its own worst enemy.

By Rick Anderson, Seattle Weekly

For the 75th Ranger Battalion, based at Fort Lewis, Washington, the deadliest foe in the "war on terrorism" may not be the enemy.

Four of the fort's nine Ranger fatalities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and training exercises since 2004 have been caused by accidents, including the notorious friendly-fire death of Cpl. Pat Tillman. The latest was last month, when 23-year-old Spc. George Libby of North Carolina was killed in Afghanistan. (The Army hasn't yet revealed whether his death was due to a mishap, tactical error, or friendly fire.)

However, members of the battalion who are now back in the Northwest tell Seattle Weekly that negligence may have at least contributed to three of the Ranger deaths that have been officially classified by the military as "hostile fire."

The Army disagrees, although Army spokesperson Carol Darby said she was unable to comment on individual cases.

Members of the 75th Ranger Battalion might be excused for questioning official versions of events. The friendly-fire fatality of fellow 75th Ranger and ex–pro footballer Tillman, 27, in Afghanistan was initially covered up, and Rangers were ordered not to speak publicly about it. The shooting became the most investigated military death since the war on terror was launched in 2001, and, to Tillman's family and many others, it is still unresolved.

"Since Pat," says one Ranger, "there have been a number of accidents in which Rangers were either killed or disabled." (The Ranger, who served in Iraq, asked not to be identified, saying he faced "severe repercussions" if his identity were revealed.) "Being a Ranger is a dangerous job," the soldier notes. "Unfortunately, I think the battalion has come close to killing and injuring more of its own than the enemy has."

The Fort Lewis battalion of 580 tan-beret Rangers, who typically deploy in small teams in high-risk fire zones, is one of three battalions that make up the 75th Ranger Regiment. The two others are based in Georgia, and all are under the Army's Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. Training at Ranger School, a grueling trial of physical and mental endurance, has helped keep losses low—at the hands of the enemy, at least.

Both Georgia battalions of the 75th have also experienced a high rate of accidental deaths. A Weekly review shows 21 members of those two battalions have died since 2001, almost half from nonhostile causes. They include a sergeant killed when he accidentally set off a grenade, two Rangers who died during training, three more who died in accidental vehicle rollovers, and four who died in accidental chopper crashes.

The soldier who spoke with the Weekly says he and others believe negligence was a contributor to the 2004 death of Pfc. Nathan Stahl, 20, of Indiana, killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb not long after Tillman died. The Ranger says Stahl had been riding in a vehicle protected with quarter-inch Iraqi armor that "wasn't anything that you would ever sanely use" to stop bullets and bombs. Commanders were aware of the high risk of sending Stahl and others out on patrol in poorly armored Humvees, says the Ranger. But, "They ignored [the risks] until Nathan died, and then banned Rangers from riding in the unprotected backs of trucks....The armor actually acted as shrapnel from the impact of the IED [improvised explosive device]."

He also cites the 2006 death of two Rangers attempting to clear an Iraqi building they shouldn't have been inside of, he claims. A loudspeaker was used to ask insurgents to surrender; after a short wait, the Rangers—Staff Sgt. Ricardo Barraza, 24, and Sgt. Dale Brehm, 23, both of California—were sent inside to detain or kill them. "This goes against every tactical instinct a Ranger has," the Ranger says. "The element of shock and surprise is removed, and the warning allowed insurgents to barricade and prepare for the coming assault. The result: two dead Rangers." It's a tactical policy no longer practiced, he says.

John Pike, a military expert with GlobalSecurity.org, says the Ranger's interpretation of events—in the Barraza and Brehm deaths, anyway—are certainly debatable. Pike acknowledges he doesn't know the full details of the entry order, "but that seems to me to be a command judgment."

But he says the experience of the Rangers is not unusual. "It continues to be the case that a significant fraction of the Americans who die in Iraq die due to accidents." Similarly, he notes, "There were more U.S. service members killed in accidents than were killed in action during the first Gulf War back in 1991." The latest figures show that of 3,750 U.S. fatalities in Iraq, 670 are considered nonhostile or accidental. In the first days of the war in 2003, accidental deaths actually exceeded hostile deaths, Army figures show.

The two Fort Lewis Ranger deaths (besides Tillman and Libby) that are officially recognized as accidental occurred during training exercises at Fort Lewis. In 2005, Pfc. Blake Samodell, 24, a Ranger from Davenport, in Eastern Washington, was killed in a nighttime static-line airborne jump when the parachutes of two other Rangers became entangled and the soldiers dropped onto Samodell's open chute, witnesses said. All three fell to the drop zone and were critically injured; Samodell later died from a skull fracture.

In 2004, Pfc. Devin Peguero, 20, of California, was shot by another soldier in a live-fire training exercise. The Army never announced details of the incident. But the Ranger who spoke with the Weekly says "a number of targets were [accidentally] misplaced, allowing Rangers going through the range to fire into an area where other Rangers were recovering and practicing for their next iteration [sequence]," killing Peguero with a bullet to the neck.

There's a reason why the public isn't informed of some of these details, he adds. "We are never allowed to talk to the media."

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» categories: Afghanistan | GWOT | Iraq war | Rick Anderson

History Will Not Absolve Us

posted: August 30, 2007 5:53 EST

Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial.

By Nat Hentoff, Village Voice

If and when there's the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA's secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament—as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press) and Charlie Savage's just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown).

While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world—or else governments wouldn't let them in.

But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do—on the orders of the president—to "protect American values."

read on . . .

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» categories: Afghanistan | Bush regime | GWOT | Iraq war | Nat Hentoff

Canadian Soldiers' Closed Door Policy

posted: August 27, 2007 10:05 EST

By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice

Regarding "Off With Our Heads" (August 24, 2007), about the War on Terra making our soldiers nuts, Carmelita McQuillan of Sydenham, Ontario, writes:

Your article about the mentally disturbed (or destroyed) Iraq and Afghanistan vets reminded me of a podcast I heard about a year ago. The young man who was speaking was one of a group of four who had joined up, trained, and were posted to Iraq together. His other friends were all killed and he was the only one of the four left. When the interviewer asked him how he managed from day to day, he said that when he was very worried or tense, he would take the feeling and "put it in the closet and close the door," to deal with on some other day.

There must be so many of them like that. What is going to happen when they all come home and start opening up those doors?

I remember how the returning vets from Vietnam were often abandoned, despised, or just ignored by people who no longer wanted to think about that war and its consequences.

Some of that neglect is happening here in Canada, with the families of soldiers posted to Afghanistan. [Timeline of Canadian casualties in Afghanistan.] One group, from CFB Petawawa, has been particularly hard hit. Many children are suffering emotional trauma and there isn't enough professional help for them. One little boy whose father was killed has to go home from school several times a day to make sure that his mother is still alive, otherwise he's unable to cope.

I thought that was the deal with military service — if you signed up, the government was required to train and equip you properly, not waste your life on unnecessary wars of aggression, and to care for you and your family if something should happen to you. It doesn't seem like either of our countries is living up to its promises.

Tragedy everywhere, but if you complain or disagree, you're called unpatriotic or accused of not supporting the troops. (Yes, we get that line here too.)

Thanks for your columns. Always interesting.

Thanks for writing, Carmelita. Canada's Liberal Party is pushing Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party to get Canuck soldiers the hell back home. Before last week's "summit" of Harper, George W. Bush, and Mexico's Felipe Calderón, Opposition Leader Stephane Dion urged that Canadians end their combat role in Afghanistan by early 2009.

There's no doubt that Canadian troops will be home a lot sooner than U.S. troops. But as you say, one of the big questions, of course, is what kind of shape the troops from either country will be in to resume any kind of sane civilian life. If the U.S. veterans get another administrator like GOP hack Jim Nicholson, whose previous job was chairman of the national party and who says he's leaving his post as Secretary of Veteran Affairs in October, forget about much sane help for the soldiers we've driven insane.

Maybe it will be different in Canada, where at least the number of fried soldiers is smaller and the provincial governments have a few more internal watchdogs. But there's always collateral damage: Reader McQuillan pointed out this frightening CBC story from April 13 about military children up north:

» categories: Afghanistan | Bush regime | GWOT | Iraq war | Ward Harkavy

Fortress of Solitude

posted: August 15, 2007 4:47 EST

The Bureau of Prisons is as good at keeping prisoners in as it is at keeping reporters out.

By Alan Prendergast, Westword

A hundred miles southwest of Denver, the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum houses a killer lineup of mobsters (Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano), gang leaders (Barry "The Baron" Mills), assassins (Colombian hit man Dandenis "La Quica" Muñoz Mosquera) and terrorists (John "American Taliban" Walker Lindh). But not to worry — despite some embarrassing security breaches and two inmate homicides in the past two years, ADX has never had anything close to a breakout. It's probably the most escape-proof prison in the world.

For almost six years, it's also been media-proof. High-security prisoners are locked away in the Florence supermax, out of sight and mind — and reporters can't get in to see them, no matter how hard they try.

According to documents obtained by Westword, ADX officials have denied every single media request for a face-to-face interview with supermax prisoners from January 2002 through May 2007. It doesn't matter if the request comes from a major news organization or a humble local TV station; it doesn't matter if the prisoner is a high-profile resident or an obscure career criminal. Contrary to bureau policy, prison brass have turned down every journalist, citing boilerplate "security concerns" if no handier excuse is available.

read on . . .

Read Prendergast's related story:

The Caged Life: Is Thomas Silverstein a prisoner of his own deadly past — or the first in a new wave of locked-down lifers?

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» categories: Afghanistan | Alan Prendergast | GWOT | Gangsters | Gun nuts | Murder | The press

Striking Out

posted: August 8, 2007 6:09 EST

By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice

If only Al Qaeda spokesman Azzam the American had been a good baseball player when he was growing up on a goat farm in California.

That might have diverted his attention, and maybe he wouldn't have converted to a fanatical brand of Islam that led him overseas to become Al Qaeda's version of Tokyo Rose.

Born Adam Gadahn in 1978 to a Jewish hippie originally named Phil Pearlman who had embraced Christianity, the kid was home-schooled in rural Riverside County. Get the details in a fascinating New Yorker profile of Gadahn by my ex-colleague Raffi Khatchadourian. Adam was a smart kid, but don't let that fool you. Ezra Pound, a brilliant hero of fellow writers, was also a crackpot anti-Semite.

As for baseball, well, young Adam apparently wasn't very good, but at least he was faithful:

Years later, Gadahn is still striking out. This time he's swinging at "those infidels," meaning us. In a video released Sunday (only the latest of several from him since 9/11), Gadahn said:

And from this supremely self-hating Jew — his grandfather, urologist Carl Pearlman, with whom he spent time, was a board member of the Anti-Defamation League — here's some more religious doody:

What is this, the Four Questions?

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» categories: Afghanistan | Church/state | Conversions | GWOT | Gangsters | Iraq war | Unfounded Optimism | Ward Harkavy

They're Covered

posted: August 2, 2007 3:49 EST

By Rick Anderson, Seattle Weekly

Oh what a tangled web we weave

"I don't think there's any regulation that would require me to do anything." — Gen. Richard Myers, former Joint Chiefs chair, who admits he found out prior to Pat Tillman's funeral that the Fort Lewis Ranger was killed accidentally, but did not inform Tillman's family or the public.

"I know that I would not engage in a cover-up." — Don Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, who nonetheless can't recall when he was told that Tillman's death was the result of friendly fire.

When first we practice to deceive.

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» categories: Afghanistan | Bush regime | GWOT | Rick Anderson

We Break Kids

posted: August 2, 2007 2:44 EST

By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice

Bad news really does come in threes. The Iraq Debacle and the continued hounding of Afghans are said to cost $10 billion a month, according to CNN. Working my abacus, I come up with $333,333,333 a day.

Where's the money going? Over at the excellent site EthicsDaily.com, Robert Parham, executive director of the Nashville-based Baptist Center for Ethics, breaks down the breakdown in Iraq and talks about the human cost:

Every minute the United States government spends $200,000 in Iraq, as human suffering worsens, not counting the violence of suicide bombers and roadside bombs. So, where is the United States spending its tax revenue in Iraq?

Ending malnutrition among children isn't an answer. Providing an adequate water supply isn't an answer. Ensuring decent sanitation isn't an answer. Slowing the growing humanitarian crisis isn't an answer. Advancing fundamental human rights isn't an answer.

Digression: Meanwhile, George W. Bush is fighting against the spending of a relatively piddling $47 billion — spread out over five years — to provide health coverage for poor American kids. Five months of war or health care for American kids? Tough choice.

Back to Parham and Iraq's kids: He leans on a just-released Oxfam report, Rising to the Humanitarian Challenge in Iraq, that is required, if depressing, reading. Here are the deadly truths Parham plucks from the report:

Oxfam International and the Non-Governmental Organization Coordinating Committee in Iraq released a report on Monday that painted a bleak picture of the humanitarian situation, which, if not addressed, will make Iraq even more unstable. Here are some of the facts:

• "Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 percent before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 28 percent now."

• "More than 11 percent of newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared to 4 percent in 2003."

• "Forty-three percent of Iraqis suffer from 'absolute poverty.'"

• "Bereavement is … a major cause of poverty. Most of the people killed in Iraq's violence — perhaps 90 percent — are men. Their deaths leave households headed by women who struggle to survive the loss of the main breadwinner."

• "The two million internally displaced people … have no incomes to rely on and are running out of coping mechanisms."

• "The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since 2003."

• "Eighty percent of Iraqis lack effective sanitation."

• "Of the 180 hospitals countrywide, 90 percent lack key resources including basic medical and surgical supplies."

• "More than two million Iraqis are estimated to have fled to neighboring countries … . Approximately 40,000-50,000 Iraqis are leaving their homes to seek safety inside and outside Iraq on a monthly basis."

• "Christians — who comprise between 8 to 12 percent of the Iraq population — are increasingly reported to be experiencing discrimination in accessing labor market or basic social services, and are particularly fearful of the attacks by militia."

• "Iraq is … losing its educated public-service workers in massive numbers … .At least 40 percent of Iraq's professional class, including doctors, teachers, and water engineers, have left since 2003."

Oh, wait, my mistake. We're not spending $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's actually closer to $12 billion a month. Forget that folk saying about bad news coming in threes. The working figure for bad news is about $399,999,999 a day.

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» categories: Afghanistan | Bush regime | GWOT | Iraq war | Ward Harkavy

Creep Show: Rumsfeld Enters House of Waxman

posted: August 1, 2007 11:16 EST

Former SecDef goes to Capitol Hill to finally answer for Tillman coverup — or at least face some unfriendly fire. Watch it live.

By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice

Three years after the Pentagon covered up the circumstances of soldier Pat Tillman's actual death by fratricide in Afghanistan so it could falsely portray it as a death by hostile fire, thus taking the country's mind off Abu Ghraib, Don Rumsfeld finally has to answer questions about it.

The hearing's going on right now, thanks to dogged California congressman Henry Waxman — and only because of the 2006 midterm elections that wrestled control of the House from the GOP.

Why C-SPAN isn't televising it on its main channel is beyond me, but you can catch it right now on Waxman's excellent site, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of which he is now chairman. For background, read Waxman's opening statement and Waxman's hearing this past April on the Tillman coverup.

As the ranking minority member during the first six years of the Bush-Cheney regime, Waxman lobbed shell after shell at the disgraceful conduct before and during the war on Terra — and on many other issues as well. Now Waxman has the power to put Rumsfeld in his sights.

Just a few minutes ago, Rumsfeld began his opening statement by saying, "I want to extend my deepest sympathies to the Tillman family."

Well, he said the same thing to them in the spring of 2004. But what he forgot to tell them at that time — although he knew it — was that Tillman was actually killed by his fellow soldiers in a terrible screwup. The Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal covered up the real circumstances, even from Tillman's family, so that it could score p.r. points. The cabal trotted out Bush to make the point that the dastardly enemy killed Tillman and that his was a noble sacrifice.

Steve Coll of the Washington Post (now at the New Yorker) first uncovered this sordid public-relations maneuver, which has enraged Tillman's family. Check out Coll's brilliant work from December 2004.

The current Pentagon, under Bob Gates, has continued to cover up the actions of top officials. Only a few days ago, Richard Sisk of the New York Daily News wrote:

Pat Tillman's family yesterday ripped the Army's latest investigation of the pro football star's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan as a "sham" meant to protect higherups.

"It's so humiliating and disrespectful," said Mary Tillman, mother of the Arizona Cardinals defensive back who joined the Army and became a Ranger after 9/11.

"It's one more example of the Army investigating itself," she said. "It was all done to glorify this war. It's a sham. Pat deserves the truth."

Oh, now former Joint Chiefs chair Richard "Quag" Myers is talking about the "heartbreak" suffered by the Tillman family. But Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is saying to Myers, "Why didn't you tell the Tillman family the truth?" All they're doing right now is trying to get them to apologize. Maybe it'll get better. Check it out.

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» categories: Afghanistan | Bush regime | GWOT | Iraq war | The press | Ward Harkavy

Burning Down a Congressman

posted: August 1, 2007 7:35 EST

By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice

Already under attack by religious conservatives and censors in the United States, Muslim congressman Keith Ellison apparently survived a trip this weekend to Iraq without his own faith's religious conservatives and censors issuing a death fatwa against him.

The Minneapolis progressive Democrat got into trouble with conservatives and religious extremists over here on July 8 when he threw in a Nazi reference as he ripped the Bush regime for using 9/11 as an excuse for war.

Where were they when it was revealed three years ago that fellow black man Secretary of State Colin Powell — in the same context, thinking the same thing — had branded dual-disloyalist Doug Feith's Pentagon pre-war agitprop operation a "Gestapo office"?

Ellison is the first U.S. congressman known to be a Muslim, but he's no terrorist in thrall to the conservative mullahs of his own religion. They're more likely to condemn him to death for his support of gay rights and other progressive issues than embrace him.

Religious conservatives and censors in the U.S. claimed that Ellison compared George W. Bush with Hitler — he didn't. All it shows is how much religious conservatives have in common with one another, no matter which religion they claim to speak for. All of them regularly condemn one another and kill in the name of their faiths.

The latest of several ridiculous freakouts by conservatives over Ellison stemmed from something else that conservative Muslim mullahs would stone him for: his speech to a bunch of humanistic atheists. Reporter Mike Kaszuba of the StarTribune wrote it like this:

On comparing Sept. 11 to the burning of the Reichstag building in Nazi Germany: "It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

Ellison, a lawyer who landed a spot on the House Judiciary Committee even though he's only a freshman, also had this to say:

[On impeaching Dick Cheney]: "[It is] beneath his dignity in order for him to answer any questions from the citizens of the United States. That is the very definition of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and dictatorship."

On calling the war in Iraq an "occupation": "It's not controversial to call it an occupation — it is an occupation."

On commuting the prison sentence of Cheney aide Lewis Libby: "If Libby gets pardoned, then he should not have the cover of the Fifth Amendment. He's going to have to come clean and tell the truth. Now, he could get Gonzales-itis [referring to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales], you know, with 71 lapses of memory within a two-hour period."

The ADL's Abe Foxman came unglued over the Reichstag reference, blasting Ellison for using a reference to Hitler and the Nazis.

Well, let's go to page 292 of Bob Woodward's 2004 book, Plan of Attack, in which he described meetings just before Powell's February 2003 U.N. speech:

Powell thought that Cheney had the fever. The vice president and [Paul] Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Saddam and 9/11. It was a separate little government that was out there — Wolfowitz, Libby, Feith and Feith's "Gestapo office," as Powell privately called it.

He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first Gulf War just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq.

Powell had used a Nazi reference to Feith, a fanatical Jewish conservative who desperately wanted a war with Israel enemy Iraq. But Powell didn't catch hell for it. Earlier this year, Michigan senator Carl Levin (who's Jewish) blasted Feith for having spread disinformation in the run-up to the war:

Levin, who has long questioned Feith's prewar intelligence operation, was harshly critical. "Senior administration officials used the twisted intelligence produced by the Feith office in making the case for the Iraq war," Levin said.

In other words, the Cheney-Bush regime used 9/11 to justify the invasion of Iraq, just as Hitler had used the Reichstag fire 70 years earlier (February 27, 1933) as an excuse to curtail civil liberties, a key moment in the Nazification of Germany. If you doubt that the Reichstag fire could be compared with the 9/11 attacks, just imagine an arsonist's burning down Congress and the political power that a regime like Cheney's would seize as a result.

For now, extremists are just trying to burn down a congressman.

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» categories: Afghanistan | Bush regime | Conversions | GWOT | Iraq war | Race | The press | Ward Harkavy