[Peace-discuss] FW: Revolution

[Phil Stinard]

Quoting from John S. Hatch:

"America is like a born-again Christian fundamentalist-mean, ignorant, full 
of hate and rage and superstition, but utterly convinced of his own 
righteousness. In short, insane. Dangerously insane."

Actually, Lisa, I hope that most people you know aren't as ignorant and 
biased as Mr. Hatch.  Most of the born-again Christian fundamentalists I 
know are loving, generous people.  The bad behavior of a few shouldn't be 
used to judge the vast majority of good people.  There is a great danger 
that members of the peace and justice community are exhibiting the same 
blindness that they condemn in others.  They need to be more discerning than 
that, and make allies among the born-again Christian fundamentalists that 
share their views on peace rather than alienating them.

--Phil

>Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:49:25 -0600
>From: "Lisa Chason" <chason at shout.net>
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Revolution
>To: <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>Message-ID: <000201c5f36a$2938abf0$6700a8c0 at yourm5d4u9r2uv>
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>
>
>  A frind of mine in Europe who forwarded me this writes: This pretty much
>sums up the view most people I know have of America at the moment.
>
>Revolution
>
>By John S. Hatch
>
>11/26/05 -- President Bush was recently criticized for not being forceful
>enough in denouncing Chinese human rights abuses during a trip there. 
>Excuse
>me? This is the torture president. How on earth can the United States 
>preach
>to anyone in the world about human rights or the rule of law, or morality?
>In even raising the question, has Mr. Bush abandoned any claim to sanity? 
>If
>it is wrong for China to abuse human rights (and it's true that their 
>record
>is horrible) how is it acceptable for the US in Iraq to sexually torture
>imprisoned children as a means to coerce their (probably completely
>innocent) parents to disclose information they most likely don't have?
>
>There is within the mythology America finds so indispensable something so
>sick and downright evil, but so pervasive that even after all the
>revelations of torture and rape and murder sanctioned at the highest levels
>of government, even now the numbness persists, and writers still insist on
>thinking that America is somehow a shining example of decency to a world
>which needs its sanctimonious preaching. Who in their right mind would want
>to emulate America in this century? Who on earth would want to be an
>American in this darkest of times? America is like a born-again Christian
>fundamentalist-mean, ignorant, full of hate and rage and superstition, but
>utterly convinced of his own righteousness. In short, insane. Dangerously
>insane.
>
>In Iraq American sanctioned and trained elements of the Iraqi military are
>back to using electric drills on 'insurgents', an old Saddam phenomenon.
>Drill for oil, drill for blood. They'll drill your knee, or your arm, or
>your head. You are innocent. Doesn't matter. Think George cares? White
>phosphorous. Depleted uranium. Shock and awe. Cluster bombs. Etcetera. 
>Where
>are those photographs and videos of children undergoing torture at Abu
>Grahaib that a judge ordered released months ago? Whatever happened to the
>rule of law? Where did accountability go? Where the hell is the outrage? 
>Why
>are Bush and Rumsfeld and Rice and a bunch of others not in jail cells?
>Where is the outrage?
>
>For those who think that change is coming in '06 or '08, think again-these
>people cannot relinquish power, whatever further lies and outrages they 
>must
>commit to retain it. There are simply too many crimes against humanity and
>war crimes for which to avoid accountability at all costs. Lives depend on
>it. Many more crimes are yet to be reported. Do not for a moment consider
>that this bunch would not, if they saw it in their interests, engineer
>another deadly 911 incident (blamed on Muslims, of course) to once again
>terrorize the populace into meek submission. It may be pathologically
>manipulative and barbaric, but that's Straussian politics. To them it's not
>only acceptable, it's business as usual. It's probably going to happen, as
>Bush's numbers continue to decline.
>
>America has seen bad times-slavery, the civil war, McCarthyism and 
>communist
>hysteria, never-ending racism, Nixon and Kissinger, the unheralded horror 
>of
>Reagan, but Bush has brought disaster on a completely different level. Bush
>is a dupe, if an evil one, but there are truly ugly, nasty people pulling
>his strings. Nothing short of a second American revolution is going to
>rescue your nation. Even now Bush is making plans to violently stop such a
>thing from happening. We're going to see once and for all if Americans 
>stand
>for the vaunted values to which they give such eloquent and loud lip
>service. If so, then I fear they will have to pay in blood. It's come to
>that. I'm sorry.
>
>John S. Hatch is a Vancouver writer and film-maker. He can be reached at
>johnhatch at canada.com www.jhatchfilms.citymax.com
>
>
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>Message: 2
>Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:56:10 -0600
>From: "Lisa Chason" <chason at shout.net>
>Subject: [Peace-discuss] The long march of Dick Cheney
>To: <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>Message-ID: <001d01c5f36b$18d500f0$6700a8c0 at yourm5d4u9r2uv>
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>-----
>The long march of Dick Cheney
>
>For his entire career, he sought untrammeled power. The Bush presidency and
>9/11 finally gave it to him -- and he's not about to give it up.
>
>By Sidney Blumenthal
>
>11/25/05 "
><http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/11/24/cheney/print.html>
>Salon.com" -- -- The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its
>illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of
>authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential
>power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense
>Department and State Department have been sidelined.
>
>Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon
>administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation
>of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their
>consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but
>passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has
>been arranged, a closely held "cabal" -- as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief
>of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it -- wields
>control.
>
>Within the White House, the office of the vice president is the strategic
>center. The National Security Council has been demoted to enabler and
>implementer. Systems of off-line operations have been laid to evade
>professional analysis and a responsible chain of command. Those who attempt
>to fulfill their duties in the old ways have been humiliated when 
>necessary,
>fired, retired early or shunted aside. In their place, acolytes and
>careerists indistinguishable from true believers in their eagerness have
>been elevated.
>
>The collapse of sections of the façade shielding Cheney from public view 
>has
>not inhibited him. His former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, indicted on
>five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, appears to be 
>withholding
>information about the vice president's actions in the Plame affair from the
>special prosecutor. While Bush has declaimed, "We do not torture," Cheney
>lobbied the Senate to stop it from prohibiting torture.
>
>At the same time, Cheney has taken the lead in defending the administration
>from charges that it twisted intelligence to justify the Iraq war and 
>misled
>the Congress even as new stories underscore the legitimacy of the charges.
>
>Former Sen. Bob Graham has revealed, in a Nov. 20 article in the Washington
>Post, that the condensed version of the National Intelligence Estimate
>titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs" that was submitted to
>the Senate days before it voted on the Iraq war resolution "represented an
>unqualified case that Hussein possessed [WMD], avoided a discussion of
>whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions
>contained in the classified version." The condensed version also contained
>the falsehood that Saddam Hussein was seeking "weapons-grade fissile
>material from abroad."
>
>The administration relied for key information in the NIE on an Iraqi
>defector code-named Curveball. According to a Nov. 20 report in the Los
>Angeles Times, it had learned from German intelligence beforehand that
>Curveball was completely untrustworthy and his claims fabricated. Yet Bush,
>Cheney and, most notably, Powell in his prewar performance before the 
>United
>Nations, which he now calls the biggest "blot" on his record and about 
>which
>he insists he was "deceived," touted Curveball's disinformation.
>
>In two speeches over the past week Cheney has called congressional critics
>"dishonest," "shameless" and "reprehensible." He ridiculed their claim that
>they did not have the same intelligence as the administration. "These are
>elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are
>known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities."
>Lambasting them for historical "revisionism," he repeatedly invoked Sept.
>11. "We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001 -- and the terrorists hit
>us anyway," he said.
>
>The day after Cheney's most recent speech, the National Journal reported
>that the president's daily briefing prepared by the CIA 10 days after Sept.
>11, 2001, indicated that there was no connection between Saddam and the
>terrorist attacks. Of course, the 9/11 Commission had made the same point 
>in
>its report.
>
>Even though experts and pundits contradict his talking points, Cheney
>presents them with characteristic assurance. His rhetoric is like a paving
>truck that will flatten obstacles. Cheney remains undeterred; he has no
>recourse. He will not run for president in 2008. He is defending more than
>the Bush record; he is defending the culmination of his career. Cheney's
>alliances, ideas, antagonisms and tactics have accumulated for decades.
>
>Cheney is a master bureaucrat, proficient in the White House, the agencies
>and departments, and Congress. The many offices Cheney has held add up to 
>an
>extraordinary résumé. His competence and measured manner are often mistaken
>for moderation. Among those who have misjudged Cheney are military men --
>Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Wilkerson, who lacked a sense of him as a
>political man in full. As a result, they expressed surprise at their
>discovery of the ideological hard man. Scowcroft told the New Yorker
>recently that Cheney was not the Cheney he once knew. But Scowcroft and the
>other military men rose by working through regular channels; they were
>trained to respect established authority. They are at a disadvantage in
>internal political battles with those operating by different rules of
>warfare. Their realism does not account for radicalism within the U.S.
>government.
>
>Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal thwarted his designs for an
>unchecked imperial presidency. It was in that White House that Cheney 
>gained
>his formative experience as the assistant to Nixon's counselor, Donald
>Rumsfeld. When Gerald Ford acceded to the presidency, he summoned Rumsfeld
>from his posting as NATO ambassador to become his chief of staff. Rumsfeld,
>in turn, brought back his former deputy, Cheney.
>
> >From Nixon, they learned the application of ruthlessness and the harsh
>lesson of failure. Under Ford, Rumsfeld designated Cheney as his surrogate
>on intelligence matters. During the immediate aftermath of Watergate,
>Congress investigated past CIA abuses, and the press was filled with
>revelations. In May 1975, Seymour Hersh reported in the New York Times on
>how the CIA had sought to recover a sunken Soviet submarine with a deep-sea
>mining vessel called the Glomar Explorer, built by Howard Hughes. When
>Hersh's article appeared, Cheney wrote memos laying out options ranging 
>from
>indicting Hersh or getting a search warrant for Hersh's apartment to suing
>the Times and pressuring its owners "to discourage the NYT and other
>publications from similar action." "In the end," writes James Mann, in his
>indispensable book, "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War
>Cabinet," "Cheney and the White House decided to back off after the
>intelligence community decided its work had not been significantly 
>damaged."
>
>
>Rumsfeld and Cheney quickly gained control of the White House staff, edging
>out Ford's old aides. From this base, they waged bureaucratic war on Vice
>President Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, a colossus of foreign
>policy, who occupied the posts of both secretary of state and national
>security advisor. Rumsfeld and Cheney were the right wing of the Ford
>administration, opposed to the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, and
>they operated by stealthy internal maneuver. The Secret Service gave Cheney
>the code name "Backseat."
>
>In 1975, Rumsfeld and Cheney stage-managed a Cabinet purge called the
>"Halloween massacre" that made Rumsfeld secretary of defense and Cheney
>White House chief of staff. Kissinger, forced to surrender control of the
>National Security Council, angrily drafted a letter of resignation (which 
>he
>never submitted). Rumsfeld and Cheney helped convince Ford, who faced a
>challenge for the Republican nomination from Ronald Reagan, that he needed
>to shore up his support on the right and that Rockefeller was a political
>liability. Rockefeller felt compelled to announce he would not be Ford's
>running mate. Upset at the end of his ambition, Rockefeller charged that
>Rumsfeld intended to become vice president himself. In fact, Rumsfeld had
>contemplated running for president in the future and undoubtedly would have
>accepted a vice presidential nod.
>
>In the meantime, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld undermined the negotiations
>for a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty being conducted by Kissinger.
>Fighting off Reagan's attacks during the Republican primaries, Ford was
>pressured by Cheney to adopt his foreign policy views, which amounted to a
>self-repudiation. At the Republican Party Convention, acting as Ford's
>representative, Cheney engineered the adoption of Reagan's foreign policy
>plank in the platform. By doing so he preempted an open debate and split.
>Privately, Ford, Kissinger and Rockefeller were infuriated.
>
>As part of the Halloween massacre Rumsfeld and Cheney pushed out CIA
>director William Colby and replaced him with George H.W. Bush, then the 
>U.S.
>plenipotentiary to China. The CIA had been uncooperative with the
>Rumsfeld/Cheney anti-détente campaign. Instead of producing intelligence
>reports simply showing an urgent Soviet military buildup, the CIA issued
>complex analyses that were filled with qualifications. Its National
>Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet threat contained numerous caveats,
>dissents and contradictory opinions. From the conservative point of view,
>the CIA was guilty of groupthink, unwilling to challenge its own premises
>and hostile to conservative ideas.
>
>The new CIA director was prompted to authorize an alternative unit outside
>the CIA to challenge the agency's intelligence on Soviet intentions. Bush
>was more compliant in the political winds than his predecessor. Consisting
>of a host of conservatives, the unit was called Team B. A young aide from
>the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, was selected to
>represent Rumsfeld's interest and served as coauthor of Team B's report. 
>The
>report was single-minded in its conclusion about the Soviet buildup and
>cleansed of contrary intelligence. It was fundamentally a political tool in
>the struggle for control of the Republican Party, intended to destroy
>détente and aimed particularly at Kissinger. Both Ford and Kissinger took
>pains to dismiss Team B and its effort. (Later, Team B's report was 
>revealed
>to be wildly off the mark about the scope and capability of the Soviet
>military.)
>
>With Ford's defeat, Team B became the kernel of the Committee on the 
>Present
>Danger, a conservative group that attacked President Carter for weakness on
>the Soviet threat. The growing strength of the right thwarted ratification
>of SALT II, setting the stage for Reagan's nomination and election.
>
>Elected to the House of Representatives in 1978, Cheney became the
>Republican leader on the House Intelligence Committee, where he 
>consistently
>fought congressional oversight and limits on presidential authority. When
>Congress investigated the Iran-Contra scandal (the creation of an illegal,
>privately funded, offshore U.S. foreign policy initiative), Cheney was the
>crucial administration defender. At every turn, he blocked the Democrats 
>and
>prevented them from questioning Vice President Bush. Under his leadership,
>not a single House Republican signed the special investigating committee's
>final report charging "secrecy, deception and disdain for law." Instead, 
>the
>Republicans issued their own report claiming there had been no major
>wrongdoing.
>
>The origin of Cheney's alliance with the neoconservatives goes back to his
>instrumental support for Team B. Upon being appointed secretary of defense
>by the elder Bush, he kept on Wolfowitz as undersecretary. And Wolfowitz
>kept on his deputy, his former student at the University of Chicago, 
>Scooter
>Libby. Earlier, Wolfowitz and Libby had written a document expressing
>suspicion of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalizing perestroika and
>warning against making deals with him, a document that President Reagan
>ignored as he made an arms control agreement and proclaimed that the Cold
>War was ending.
>
>During the Gulf War, Secretary of Defense Cheney clashed with Gen. Colin
>Powell. At one point, he admonished Powell, who had been Reagan's national
>security advisor, "Colin, you're chairman of the Joint Chiefs ... so stick
>to military matters." During the run-up to the war, Cheney set up a secret
>unit in the Pentagon to develop an alternative war plan, his own version of
>Team B. "Set up a team, and don't tell Powell or anybody else," Cheney
>ordered Wolfowitz. The plan was called Operation Scorpion. "While Powell 
>was
>out of town, visiting Saudi Arabia, Cheney -- again, without telling Powell
>-- took the civilian-drafted plan, Operation Scorpion, to the White House
>and presented it to the president and the national security adviser," 
>writes
>Mann in his book. Bush, however, rejected it as too risky. Gen. Norman
>Schwarzkopf was enraged at Cheney's presumption. "Put a civilian in charge
>of professional military men and before long he's no longer satisfied with
>setting policy but wants to outgeneral the generals," he wrote in his
>memoir. After Operation Scorpion was rejected, Cheney urged Bush to go to
>war without congressional approval, a notion the elder Bush dismissed.
>
>After the Gulf War victory, in 1992, Cheney approved a new "Defense 
>Planning
>Guidance" advocating U.S. unilateralism in the post-Cold War, a document
>whose final draft was written by Libby. Cheney assumed Republican rule for
>the indefinite future.
>
>One week after Bill Clinton's inauguration, on Jan. 27, 1993, Cheney
>appeared on "Larry King Live," where he declared his interest in running 
>for
>the presidency. "Obviously," he said, "it's something I'll take a look at
>... Obviously, I've worked for three presidents and watched two others up
>close, and so it is an idea that has occurred to me." For two years, he
>quietly campaigned in Republican circles, but discovered little enthusiasm.
>He was less well known than he imagined and less magnetic in person than 
>his
>former titles suggested. On Aug. 10, 1995, he held a news conference at the
>headquarters of the Halliburton Co. in Dallas, announcing he would become
>its chief executive officer. "When I made the decision earlier this year 
>not
>to run for president, not to seek the White House, that really was a
>decision to wrap up my political career and move on to other things," he
>said.
>
>But in 2000, Cheney surfaced in the role of party elder, above the fray,
>willing to serve as the man who would help Gov. George W. Bush determine 
>who
>should be his running mate. Prospective candidates turned over to him all
>sensitive material about themselves, financial, political and personal. 
>Once
>he had collected it, he decided that he should be the vice presidential
>candidate himself. Bush said he had previously thought of the idea and
>happily accepted. Asked who vetted Cheney's records, Bush's then aide Karen
>Hughes explained, "Just as with other candidates, Secretary Cheney is the
>one who handled that."
>
>Most observers assumed that Cheney would provide balancing experience and
>maturity, serving in his way as a surrogate father and elder statesman. Few
>grasped his deeply held view on presidential power. With Rumsfeld returned
>as secretary of defense, the position he had held during the Ford
>administration, the old team was back in place. Rivals from the past had
>departed and the field was clear. The methods used before were implemented
>again. To get around the CIA, the Office of Special Plans was created 
>within
>the Pentagon, yet another version of Team B. Senior military dissenters 
>were
>removed. Powell was manipulated and outmaneuvered.
>
>The making of the Iraq war, torture policy and an industry-friendly energy
>plan has required secrecy, deception and subordination of government as it
>previously existed. But these, too, are means to an end. Even projecting a
>"war on terror" as total war, trying to envelop the whole American society
>within its fog, is a device to invest absolute power in the executive.
>
>Dick Cheney sees in George W. Bush his last chance. Nixon self-destructed,
>Ford was fatally compromised by his moderation, Reagan was not what was
>hoped for, the elder Bush ended up a disappointment. In every case, the
>Republican presidents had been checked or gone soft. Finally, President 
>Bush
>provided the instrument, Sept. 11 the opportunity. This time the failures 
>of
>the past provided the guideposts for getting it right. The administration's
>heedlessness was simply the wisdom of Cheney's experience.
>
>-- By Sidney Blumenthal
>
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