The Rag Blog

Texans seeking to escape the next hurricane or state emergency by evacuation bus will first be submitted to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director says.

The idea, according to Jack Colley, is to keep sex offenders and others who may be wanted by police off the same buses used by the most vulnerable during an evacuation: the elderly, disabled residents and children.

“This will allow us to help them evacuate,” Colley said of sex offenders and others wanted for crimes. “We’re not going to leave anyone.”

Though the intent is to make sure vulnerable evacuees aren’t victimized, Colley acknowledged that culling sex offenders and other criminals from a herd of evacuees during a potentially chaotic evacuation comes with plenty of challenges.

“We’ll be able to do it,” he said of the task, declining to be more specific about the process because of safety concerns.

He said the agency’s first concern is to move people out of harm’s way.

But Colley insists a better filter on who gets on an evacuation bus with special needs residents will eliminate potential problems.

“We’re here to save lives,” Colley said.

Earlier this month, it was announced AT&T Inc. has contracted with the Texas Governor’s Division of Emergency Management to provide electronic wristbands for those residents wanting them, before they board an evacuation bus.

The wristbands would be scanned by emergency management officials and the person’s name would be added to a bus boarding log. That person’s name and their bus information would be sent wirelessly to the University of Texas Center for Space Research data center.

When the evacuee arrives at a designated shelter, the wristband would be scanned again to help state employees respond to inquiries from the public about the safety and location of evacuated family members.

The decision to wear a wristband is purely voluntary. But anyone who boards an evacuation bus will have to provide a name. There will be no requirement to show an identification card, such as a driver’s license, but officials may ask those boarding for an ID.

Colley confirmed that all of those names will be checked against existing sex offender registries and other criminal background databases. Colley said officials are not interested in evacuees’ past criminal convictions, only if they have outstanding warrants, are sex offenders or parolees.

After Hurricane Katrina, nearly 1,700 parolees failed to check in with authorities in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“We’re all entitled to privacy, but we’re not entitled to anonymity,” Colley said.

Colley would not discuss how thorough the background checks will be. He said the state’s focus was keeping sex offenders and those with current warrants segregated from vulnerable residents.

“We’ll have procedures and we’re not going to advertise what they are,” he said.

The history of trying to obfuscate the truth and distort the image of Iraq has always been the aim of the U.S. aggression against the people of Iraq. There is the added factor now of new breed of ‘journalists’ and ‘bloggers’ ever on the lookout for a story that will tell Westerners all they need to know about Iraq, its problems, dangers, and prospects. Despite this, Iraq remains a nation of proud people struggling to liberate themselves from a murderous colonial Occupation.

In a recent interview (“Iraq Doesn’t Exist Anymore”) with the self-described ‘leftists’ blogger Mick Whitney, Nir Rosen made untruthful and unsubstantiated statements regarding the situation on the ground in Iraq and the Occupation of that country by U.S. forces and their collaborators.

Let’s start with the fact. Nir Rosen is an Israeli-American (‘dual loyalty’) citizen of Iranian descent. Before he was recruited for the war on Iraq, Rosen once wrote; “I had dreamed of joining Israel’s elite special forces” to murder defenceless Palestinians and Arabs. Like many of the new breed of journalists who have been drafted into service, Rosen was an embedded ‘reporter’ with U.S. Armoured Cavalry Regiment in western Iraq. Embedded journalism is the antithesis of independent journalism. In embedded journalism, journalists have to serve power and cover-up war crimes. With his “Middle Eastern appearance”, Rosen is the perfect face of U.S. imperialism.

Rosen publishes in many of the U.S. mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, Times Magazine and the Boston Review. However, if Rosen articles about the Middle East, Iraq in particular, had any shred of truth in them, they wouldn’t appear in the New York times, Times Magazine or the Boston Review. Because if Rosen deviates from what Noam Chomsky calls the ‘doctrinal framework’ or the line of serving power, he wouldn’t get his rubbish published there.

In the interview Rosen told Whitney: “The main reason that things have gone so horribly wrong in Iraq is there was no plan for anything; good or bad. The looting was not ‘deliberate’ American policy. It was simply incompetence. The destruction of Iraq’s cultural icons was incompetence, also – as well as stupidity, ignorance and criminal neglect. I don’t believe that there was really any deliberate malice in the American policy; regardless of the malice with which it may have been implemented by the troops on the ground. The destruction of much of Iraq was the result of Islamic and sectarian militias-both Sunni and Shiite-seeking to wipe out hated symbols. The Americans didn’t know enough about Iraq to intentionally execute such a plan even if it did exist. And, I don’t think it did”.

So Rosen and Whitney want us to believe that, the illegal invasion of Iraq was not planned and the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and Police in order to create chaos and insecurity was not deliberate. The mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians and the destruction of Iraq, including Iraq’s cultural heritage was simply “incompetence”, according to Nir Rosen.

Anyone who has paid serious attention to the aggression against the Iraqi people knows that Rosen is patently dishonest and lack moral principles when he touts the situation there was the result of “incompetence” and the destruction of much of Iraq was the result of the militias. The aggression was not a deliberate “malice” according to Rosen; it just happened. According to Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial in 1945 wrote: “Any resort to war — any kind of war — is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty, and destruction of property”. Imagine Rosen describing the aggression in Jackson’s term.

The interview was simply a rehashing of Rosen’s crude simplification that fills a need felt by many pro-Occupation fascists to have it confirmed for them that what happen in Iraq was “unintentional”. Our mission was to “spread democracy” and “freedom” because we jus have too much o them in the West. It is just something gone wrong in Iraq and we had no control over it. Once again we are misled by a typical example of the Western man led by moral principles to promote ‘good’.

Repeating the same rubbish he has been perfecting, Rosen told Whitney: “The violence in Iraq was not senseless or crazy, it was logical and teleological. Shiite militias were trying to remove Sunnis from Baghdad and other parts of the country, while Sunni militias were trying to remove Shiites, Kurds and Christians from their areas. This has been a great success. So you have millions of refugees and millions more internally displaced, not to mention hundreds of thousands dead. There are just less people to kill”. Of course, Whitney did not challenge Rosen during the interview, and the interview is posted on all Zionist and pro-Occupation websites.

Whitney and Rosen know very well that before the U.S. illegal aggression against Iraq, Iraqis were living in harmony regardless of religious or ethnic backgrounds. No racist journalist should deny the fact that before the aggression, Iraq was a safe country for every one, including Westerners like Whitney, Rosen and their ilk. Baghdad is a city of one million Kurds. The “great success” of terrorising Iraqis is happening under the radar screen of the Occupation. Indeed, sectarianism is brought by the invasion and subsequent Occupation, like the Cholera epidemic. It is encouraged and nurtured because it is a vital instrument of the Occupation.

Different militia and extremist groups are working as paid death squads for the Occupation. Iraqis have publicly denounced the violence as without distinction (between ‘Sunnis’ and ‘Shiites’) carried out by criminal gang and death squads on the U.S. pay roll. To increase the violence and justify the ongoing Occupation, the U.S. began inciting one faction against the other. Of course, every thing is ‘masterminded’ by the phantom of “al-Qaeda”. [1]

The current division and political violence is an imperialist-Zionist ploy designed to destroy Iraq as a nation. The destruction of Iraq (physically, culturally and militarily) has been the ideological dream of the Israeli leaders and their Zionist supporters in the U.S., the pro-Israel Jewish Lobby. The recent U.S. Senate vote to partition Iraq along ethnic/religious lines is the beginning of an old scheme for the Middle East. This imperialist-Zionist scheme is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who are loudly demanding the end to the murderous Occupation.

Rosen failed to admit that Iraqis fought an eight-year war against Iran defended their country with pride regardless of religious affiliation. Iraqis do not see themselves in terms of ‘Shiites’ or ‘Sunnis’. Iraqis identify themselves as Muslim-Arab and see themselves as Iraqis first. They showed this loyalty during the Iran-Iraq war. According to U.S. military findings, when the Iraqi government “initiated a total call-up of available manpower in 1986, the response was good. No draft riots occurred; young men-even college students—reported without incident. The fact that the public answered the call tells us that Iraqis support their government … Eighty-five percent of the army belongs to the sect of Shiism”. [2]

The needless killing of more than 1.3 million innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, appeared to have escaped Rosen’s reporting. In fact since 1990, the U.S. and Britain declared outright intent to use disproportionate force, mortally targeting Iraqis as a national group. Some 1.5 million Iraqis died, including 500,000 infants, as a result of the 13-years U.S.-UK enforced UN sanctions.

Countless U.S. soldiers are publicly condemning their criminal actions in Iraq. Writing in the Vermont’s Rutland Herald, Matt Howard, a U.S. Marine, reflects on his participation in the deliberate and unprovoked war of aggression against the Iraqi people: “We did not go to war with the country of Iraq; we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.”

In Rosen’s view, the total destruction of urban centres such as Fallujah, Tel Afar, Samarra, Al-Qaim, Haditha, Tikrit, and Ramadi, among other cities and towns by indiscriminate bombing is not considered war crimes perpetuated with intent to terrorise and pacify the entire Iraqi population.

It is important to remember that from the outset of the Occupation, the U.S. Administration embarked on dividing Iraqis into religious and ethnic groups and hence planted the first seed for disunity and violence. The U.S.-imposed “Iraqi Governing Council” was the best example of a colonial-imposed puppet government formed along ethnic and sectarian lines. The puppet government is simply an extension of the Occupation. It is voids of anything resembling a democracy. It has no political control whatsoever beyond the ‘Green Zone’ where it is protected by the Occupation. Its main function is to provide a façade and legitimise the Occupation. The recent “agreement” to extend the Occupation in flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty is a case in point.

Back in August 2007, Nir Rosen told Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow news: “It’s too late for anything good to happen in Iraq, unfortunately. If the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of this civil war, of ethnic cleansing, until all of Iraq is sort of ethnically—or sectarian, homogenous zones, which is basically what’s already happened. If the Americans leave, then you’ll see greater intervention of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, supporting their own militias in Iraq and being drawn into battle. But no matter what, Iraq doesn’t exist anymore”. Not as simple as that, Mr. Rosen.

And what proof is offered for this Zionist propaganda? None. In fact all the evidence pointed to a premeditated and deliberate U.S.-Zionist plan to destroy Iraq as a nation and replace it with a collection of dependent fiefdoms. It is true, if the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of a U.S.-perpetuated violence and ethnic cleansing. But this is not what Rosen meant. Rosen failed to acknowledge that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is supported by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and will remove the primary cause of the violence.

Where all these militias and criminals came from? Who trained them, armed them and finance them? Whitney didn’t ask. Nowhere in the interviews and scattered articles does Rosen tell us that the militias were the creation of the Occupation and that the violence is the only pretext left to justify the ongoing Occupation. Why Iraqis didn’t “hate each other” before the illegal invasion of their country is totally ignored by Western media and remains a mystery to most Westerners.

Furthermore, Whitney did not challenge Rosen how the Americans managed to protect the Iraqi Oil Ministry while at the same time turn blind eye to the looting and burning of Iraq’s most important buildings and Iraq’s cultural heritage. If the looting was not “deliberate” American policy, there must be a selective “incompetence”. Reports after reports showed clearly that the looting was pre-organised policy to strip Iraq of its Muslim-Arab identity and history. It is important to remember that at the time of looting and destruction, the British journalist Robert Fisk was in Baghdad and witnessed a systematic and deliberate attempt to destroy Iraq as a nation.

Again, Whitney failed to ask Rosen how the Americans were able to build the largest C.I.A. station (“U.S. Embassy”) in the world, “the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defence force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future”, while most Iraqis left without food, drinking water and electricity. Why Iraq’s healthcare services, including major hospitals and medical centres, and Iraq’s education system including, schools and university remained destroyed and dysfunctional, while Americans are busy building military bases, described by many as “bustling American towns, replete with Burger King, Pizza Hut, shops, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads”? In fact, like most people, many Americans now openly admit that there is a plan to occupy Iraq permanently and loot Iraq of its natural resources.

Finally, Like in Vietnam, the Americans offer the Iraqi people a choice: either you submit to a murderous colonial Occupation or we break you. The Iraqi people refused to submit and the Americans failed to break them.

U.S. policy in Iraq is not simply “incompetence”; it is “an essential component of U.S. policy [since 1990], constituting premeditated genocide against the people of Iraq”, writes Ian Douglas, a professor of Political Sciences and a member of the organising committee of the Brussels Tribunal. Furthermore, the U.S. failed in its imperialist strategy in Iraq not because of “incompetence”, but because “the Iraqi Resistance prevents Iraqi oil from reinforcing the occupation or paying for America’s global war of aggression”, added Douglas. [3].

One question that Mike Whitney didn’t ask Rosen which may clarify Rosen’s perspective is, why thousands of Iraqi scientists, professors, intellectuals and other professionals have been murdered in cold blood? Why at least 40 per cent of the educated and experienced Iraqi professionals have been threatened and forced to leave the country? The aim is to destroy Iraq’s independence by liquidating Iraq’s human resources.

There is no doubt that the premeditated aggression and murderous Occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces and their collaborators have succeeded in destroying the physical state of Iraq and terrorising the Iraqi population. “But, of course, the spirit of the Iraqi people is indestructible. They cannot be broken. They will resist, drive out all intruders, and they will recover. The people of Iraq will overcome the catastrophes of recent years”, writes Denis Halliday, former UN assistant secretary-general and one of the very few honourable voices in the West to publicly condemn the deliberate genocide in Iraq.

Iraq does exist. We should never forget the fact that there is an Iraqi nation and nationalism represented by legitimate National Iraqi Resistance. The U.S. government and its collaborators may have succeeded in killing many innocent Iraqis and removed a sovereign government but the U.S. failed and will not success in its attempt to destroy the Iraqi nation and the Iraq people’s will to resist the Occupation.

Today more than ever there is a need for honest and independent journalists who can stand up and against the active complicity of the mainstream media and in support of the people of Iraq struggle for freedom and independence. Nir Rosen is just another propaganda agent who has shown to be part of a murderous colonial Occupation.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

Endnotes:

[1] Hassan, Ghali, Iraq: Occupation and Sectarianism; Varea, Carlos, Iraq: Sectarian Violence in Iraq and the New War in the Middle East; Wolf, Max, For Iraq, the ‘Salvador Option’ becomes Reality.

[2] Marine Corps Historical Publication – FMFRP 3-203, Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War, December 10, 1990 Chemical Weapons.

A great victory, an unexpected one for several of the affected, was delivered today by Copenhagen’s City Court for those who fight for their liberation and sovereignty and for those who act in solidarity.

One juridical judge and two lay judges found the seven accused Danish solidarity activists, “Fighter and Lovers”, innocent of the Justice Ministry’s charge that they had materially supported “terror groups” FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

Since FARC and PFLP are not terrorist organizations, concluded the judges, neither are the seven activists guilty of any crime.

The seven had produced and sold t-shirts with FARC and PFLP emblems in an effort to raise a debate about Denmark’s terror law, which is shaped after USA’s Patriotic Act and EU’s terror list on which FARC and PFLP are placed as terror groups.

The court’s decision is a worldwide precedent. No other court, outside those in Colombia and Israel, have legally judged the contested groups for terror crimes. This will have significance in the international world of politics and justice, and is a setback for the imperial coalition’s “war on terror” with civil liberty restrictions as one consequence.

The court found for the defense in its argument that while both armed movements fighting oppressive governments over four decades had committed specific atrocities their goal is not a terrorist one, rather their goal is to combat government and paramilitary forces, and create a different political course, albeit not with the intent to do damage to constitutional foundations.

FARC and PFLP, said the court, were not engaged in “terrorizing the population,” as is required in Danish law, paragraph 114, to be classified as terrorist, nor was their intent to “destabilize or destroy the land’s basic, political, constitutional, economic or societal structures”.

One of the lay judges was in disagreement regarding terror actions purported by FARC. The total vote was 4-0 against the states attorney’s terror charge against PFLP and 3-1 for FARC.

It is unknown if the state will appeal the decision. The case for them is thin, as the 50-page court decision clearly shows. No hard evidence of terror was presented. The court’s report states that only one of the state’s witnesses had any direct knowledge of the charges. Israeli researcher, Reuven Paz, testified against PFLP as a purported terrorist organization. His credibility, though, was not well taken as he had worked for Israeli intelligence services for 27 years.

Another state’s witness, Angel Rabasa, a former Cuban, testified as a witness from Rand Corporation, a California based weapons industry and US military think-tank.

His credibility was discredited when it was revealed that he had worked for the US military in contrast to his denial of such. Furthermore, he had asserted that FARC had never operated in the legal political arena, yet he had written to the contrary in his book, “Colombia Labyrinth”, published in 2001 by RAND with support of the US military.

Surprising decision

It was a surprising verdict, given the temper of the times: the constant fright signals for terror attacks daily disseminated by the mass media and the government. The Danish government is also fully committed to the war against Afghanistan and has 650 troops there with tanks and heavy artillery. Danish soldiers are regularly shot and killed.

The Danish government, with support from the Social Democratic “opposition”, also continues its “commitment to the Iraq project”, albeit with fewer and fewer military forces.

Yet another reason why the decision was surprising, and an uplift for political activism, is that the court could have taken an easy way out of the dilemma on who is or is not terrorist. The state’s case against the seven had to be based upon material support. Therefore, the collection of proceeds from the t-shirt sales, which was to go to a radio station for FARC and a poster printing press for PFLP, was decisive.

A technical problem for the state’s case was that the $4-5000 collected, slated to be sent to the two groups, was confiscated by the Danish secret police (PET) before any could be sent. PET also confiscated some t-shirts and “Fighters and Lovers” computer and homepage.

The court could have easily found the seven innocent for not having broken the law concretely. Instead, it decided to take the political case head on: are FARC and PFLP terrorists. Their decision is a clear NO.

Collateral consequences

The city court’s decision will also have positive consequences for three other Danish organizations, which have also donated material support to FARC and or PFLP.

The first group to do so, Rebellion (Oprør), had actually sent several thousands of dollars to both FARC and PFLP to do with as they chose. One of Rebellion’s spokespersons, Patrick Mac Manus, was charged with violating the same law, paragraph 114. That case has been postponed due to his illness.

A key figure in Rebellion said that with this court’s decision there is no ground to continue a case against MacManus.

A veterans group from World War 11 (Horserød-Stutthof Foreningen) also sent some money to FARC to challenge the state, which refused to prosecute those old heroes. In an act of solidarity with “Fighters and Lovers”, a Copenhagen union of carpenters and constructions workers (TIB) recently did the same.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — In a tumultuous final session at international climate talks in which the United States delegates were booed and hissed, the world’s nations committed Saturday to negotiating a new accord by 2009 that, in theory, would set the world on a course toward halving emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2050.

The standoff started when developing countries demanded the United States agree that the eventual pact measure not only poorer countries’ steps, but also the effectiveness of financial and technological assistance from wealthier ones.

The United States capitulated in that open session, which many observers and delegates said included more public acrimony than any of the treaty conferences since 1992, when countries drafted the original climate pact, the now-ailing Framework Convention on Climate Change. That change followed a more profound shift by the Bush administration, which agreed during the two-week conference to pursue a new pact fulfilling the unmet goals of the original treaty; the pact would take effect in 2012 when the only existing addendum, the Kyoto Protocol, expires.

While many observers described the United States change as a U-turn, it was the culmination of months of movement by the Bush administration, which had for years insisted that the 1992 treaty was sufficient to avoid dangerous human interference with the climate.

In 2005 talks in Montreal, for example, the American negotiating team walked out of one session, rejecting any talk of formal negotiations to improve on that pact.

While accepting the need for a new agreement, in the end the United States retained the flexibility that it had sought at the outset, fending off European attempts to set binding commitments on emission reductions. American negotiators said this was vital to gain global consensus.

That success, though, was bemoaned by some observers.

Andrew Light, an expert on environmental ethics at the University of Washington who was in Bali, said that by keeping targets out of the two-year negotiating plan, the Bush administration had, in essence, rejected the foreboding climate projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which it had repeatedly praised in recent weeks.

“We could have moved on from here with a confident range of future cuts,” Prof. Light said. “Instead we have to move on with the same continued uncertainty. At the beginning of the week I was really heartened by the public praise the U.S. delegation was giving to the I.P.C.C. and now I can’t help but think, was it all lip service?”

Somewhat obscured by the focus on the American delegation was another important shift: China, which has now surpassed the United States in carbon dioxide emissions, agreed for the first time to language that could commit developing countries to pursue emissions-cutting actions that are “measurable, reportable and verifiable.”

Developing ways to reliably measure how policies or projects affect emissions is a vital prelude to any commitments to limit emissions, said Philip Clapp, the deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group.

The changing position of the Bush administration is likely a reflection of dramatic recent shifts in both the science and politics of climate change.

This year, a set of four reports emerged from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, each stating more clearly than ever that humans were warming the world, and that the unabated burning of fossil fuels and destruction of forests would lead to centuries of disrupted climate patterns, rising seas and ecological and social harm.

Along with the science came the Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth;” Hurricane Katrina, which, while not linked to global warming in itself, was a vivid and effective icon; and spiking oil prices. Finally, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration’s contention that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo with Damien Corsetti, a former private in the US army who served as an interrogator and was charged with crimes. He says he witnessed torture but did not commit it himself. He also says that most of the individuals he interrogated had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Many of the practices Corsetti says he witnessed are already illegal. Others would be banned by a new bill passed by the House of Representatives, which George W. Bush has threatened to veto. The bill would place the Central Intelligence Agency under the same rules as obtain for the US military and would disallow waterboarding, mock executions, and sexual humiliation. I repeat, Bush has pledged to veto this legislation.

Former US interrogator recounts torture cases in Afghanistan and Iraq
El Mundo (Internet Version-WWW)
Monday, December 10, 2007 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Former US interrogator recounts torture cases in Afghanistan and Iraq

Discharged US army private Damien Corsetti has described the “morally unacceptable” cases of physical and psychological torture he says he witnessed as an interrogator at the prisons of Bagram in Afghanistan and Abu-Ghurayb in Iraq. Speaking in an interview with a Spanish paper, he said the vast majority of the individuals he questioned in the course of his duties “had nothing to do with either the Taleban or Al-Qa’idah” and that while he never took part in acts of abuse, many were tortured “to make them suffer, not to get information out of them”. The following is the text of the report on the interview with Corsetti published by the Spanish popular liberal newspaper El Mundo website on 10 December; subheading as published:

Fairfax (Virginia): Damien Corsetti looks at me with his small eyes and says: “Look, they leave us alone in this room, they give me a roll of duct tape to tie you to the chair, I turn off the light and in five hours you sign a piece of paper for me saying that you’re Usamah Bin-Ladin”.

It is a Thursday night. Damien Corsetti – who, according to The New York Times was nicknamed “The King of Torture” and “The Monster” by his colleagues at Bagram prison, in Afghanistan – is sitting down having a glass of wine in a French restaurant in Fairfax, on the outskirts of Washington. Four days ago, this US private arrived on the outskirts of Washington from North Carolina, where he had been living since September 2006, when he was discharged from the army following a trial in which he was found not guilty of the charges of dereliction of duty, maltreatment, assault and performing indecent acts with prisoners at Bagram.

Now, Corsetti – who was also under investigation in the Abu-Ghurayb torture case – only wants to put his life “in order”. It is a difficult task. Because first he will have to forget the torture to which he says he was a witness in Afghanistan of prisoners such as Al-Qa’idah leader Omar al-Faruq. “The cries, the smells, the sounds are with me. They are things that stay with you forever”, he recalls.

Corsetti arrived in Afghanistan on 29 July 2002. He was a military intelligence soldier, not an interrogator. “But the army needed reliable interrogators, because most interrogators do not meet security requirements. They are not reliable. So we arrived there”. A five-hour course in Afghanistan and, at 22, Corsetti began trying to extract information from the prisoners in the jail – prisoners who, in his opinion, “in 98 per cent of cases had nothing to do with either the Taleban or Al-Qa’idah”.

That is how Corsetti found himself interrogating prisoners at the jail. Many of them were people who had nothing to do with (George W.) Bush’s war on terror, like his first prisoner, whose name he still remembers: Khan Zara. “He was a peasant and grew opium. But he was there three months until he told us. Do you know how I found out. Because of his hands. His hands were full of calluses. Those are not the hands of a terrorist”.

Other prisoners include a farmer who had put mines on his land to kill his neighbour, with who he had a long-standing family dispute, and an Afghan who had bombs in his house to fish in the river. They were people like Dilawar, a taxi driver detained in 2002 who had nothing to do with the Taleban and who died after four days of beatings from US soldiers.

Because Bagram is a very tough prison. “Each prisoner has in his cell a carpet measuring 1.2 m by 2.5 m. And they spend 23 hours a day sat on it, in silence. If they speak, they are chained to the ceiling for 20 minutes and black visors are put on them so they can’t see and protectors are put on their ears so they can’t hear. They are taken down to the basement once a week, in groups of five or six, to shower them. It’s done to drive them crazy. I almost went crazy”, recalls Corsetti. Apart from those normal cells, in the basement of the prison there are six isolation cells, plus two rooms for who the former soldier describes as “special guests”.

But Bagram has an underworld in which the CIA tortures the leaders of Al-Qa’idah. “One day I went to an interrogation session and as soon as I arrived I knew that it was not a normal case. There were civilians, among them a doctor and a psychiatrist. The prisoner was called Omar al-Faruq, an Al-Qa’idah leader in Asia who had been brought to the prison by one of those agencies”, recalls Corsetti. “I don’t want to go into details because it could be very negative for my country, but he was brutally beaten – daily. And tortured by other methods. He was a bad man, but he didn’t deserve that”. Al-Faruq escaped from Bagram in action which, according to some, was tolerated by the USA and was killed in April 2006 by the British in the Iraqi city of Basra.

Corsetti says that he never took part in the torture. “My sole job was to sit there and make sure the prisoner didn’t die. But there were several times when I thought they were about to die, when they were interrogated by those people who have no name and who work for no-one in particular. It’s incredible what a human being can take”. A resistance similar to that of the memory of those torture sessions. Because Corsetti, a veteran of two wars, says: “I have seen people die in combat. I shot at people. That is not as bad as seeing someone tortured. Al-Faruq looked at me while they tortured him and I have that look in my head. And the cries, the smells, the sounds, they are with me all the time. It is something I can’t take in. The cries of the prisoners calling for their relatives, their mother. I remember one who called for God, for Allah, all the time. I have those cries here, inside my head”.

“In Abu-Ghurayb and Bagram they were tortured to make them suffer, not to get information out of them”. And the fact is that at times the torture had no other goal that “to punish them for being terrorists. They tortured them and didn’t ask them anything”. That is the case of the practice known as “the submarine”: to simulate the drowning of the prisoner. “They have them hooded and they pour water on them. That makes it very difficult to breath. I think you can’t die with the submarine. I certainly never saw anyone die. However, they do cough like crazy because they are totally submerged in water and that gets on their lungs. Perhaps what it can give you is serious pneumonia”. The civilians who took part in the interrogations used the submarine whenever they wanted. They gave it to them for five or 10 minutes and didn’t ask anything”.

Other torture included using extreme cold and heat. “I remember one of my prisoners trembling with cold. His teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. I put a blanket on him and then another, and another, and his teeth never stopped chattering, never stopped. You could see that man was going to die of hypothermia. But the doctors are there so that they don’t die, so as to be able to torture them one more day”. At other times, “they put them under blinding lights that worked mechanically, giving out flashes”.

“They are going to kill your children”

An important subject was that of psychological torture, administered by psychiatrists. “They tell them they are going to kill their children, rape their wives. And you see on their faces, in their eyes, the terror that that causes them. Because, of course, we know all about those people. We know the names of their children, where they live – we show them satellite photos of their houses. It is worse than any torture. That is not morally acceptable under any circumstances. Not even with the worst terrorist in the world”, says Corsetti, before adding: “Sometimes, we put one of our women (female US military personnel) in burqas and we made them walk through the interrogation rooms and we told them: ‘That is your wife’. And the prisoner believed it. Why wouldn’t they! We had those people going without sleep for a whole week. After two or three days with no sleep, you believe anything. In fact, it was a problem. The interpreters couldn’t understand what they were saying. The prisoners were having hallucinations. Because, of course, this is not like if you or me go three days without sleep when we’re partying. I’ve gone five days without sleep when I’ve been partying. But this is different. You’re in a cell where they let you sleep only a quarter of an hour every now and then. With no contact with the outside world. Without seeing sunlight. Like that, a days seems like a week. Your mental capacity is destroyed”.

In the opinion of Corsetti, the only thing his experience as an interrogator taught him “is that torture doesn’t work. One thing is losing your temper and punching a prisoner, another is to commit these acts of brutality. In Bagram we managed to find out about an Al-Qa’idah plan to blow up dozens of oil tankers across the world. We smashed the plot so well that they only managed to attack one, the French oil tanker Limburgh, in Yemen in October 2002. And we managed to get a guy to tell us without laying a finger on him”.

WASHINGTON (Dec. 15) – The Bush administration told a federal judge it was not obligated to preserve videotapes of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists and urged the court not to look into the tapes’ destruction.

In court documents filed Friday night, government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about the tapes would interfere with current investigations by Congress and the Justice Department.

It was the first time the government had addressed the issue of the videotapes in court.

Kennedy ordered the administration in June 2005 to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.”

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Government lawyers told Kennedy the tapes were not covered by his court order because Zubaydah and al-Nashiri were not at the Guantanamo military prison in Cuba. The men were being held overseas in a network of secret CIA prisons. By the time President Bush acknowledged the existence of those prisons and the prisoners were transferred to Guantanamo, the tapes had been destroyed.

In court documents, acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey S. Bucholtz was concerned that Kennedy might order CIA officials to testify about the tapes. Bucholtz said that “could potentially complicate the ongoing efforts to arrive at a full factual understanding of the matter.”

The administration has taken a similar strategy in its dealings with Congress on the issue. On Friday, the Justice Department urged Congress to hold off on questioning witnesses and demanding documents because that evidence is part of a joint CIA-Justice Department investigation.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey also refused to give Congress details of the government’s investigation into the matter Friday, saying doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry was vulnerable to political pressure.

Even if Kennedy accepts the argument that government did not violate his order, he still could demand a hearing. He could raise questions about obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in “pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation.”

Zubaydah was the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002. He told his interrogators about alleged Sept. 11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, and the two men’s confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the U.S. government said was the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks.

Al-Nashiri is the alleged coordinator of the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors. Like Zubaydah, he is now at Guantanamo.

12/14/07 “ich” — — — Fascist! A word that is thrown around all too commonly in today’s political debates and partisan quibbling that is common among the cable “news networks.” A flip of the channel on any night to CNN, FOX, Headline News or other similar programs reveals time slots devoted to the latest celebrity scandal or any other unimportant story. When not emphatically debating the latest celebrity DUI or child-custody battle, you will frequently see a story or hear a media talking head propagate the fear-mongering about hoards of radical Muslims swimming across both oceans to destroy the very fabric of the North American homeland. Wouldn’t that be an impressive feat of stamina? But these individuals will not be referred to as just fanatics, terrorists or Islamists, but instead the newest trend “Islamofascists.”

Huh, did I miss something? Do these people who spew out rhetoric with that term even consider what fascism stands for or actually means. After all, would you not think that “esteemed” members of the media and their “expert” guests would actually understand what they are saying? Is that too much to ask? Unfortunately, yes. Not only do these individuals not use the term in a proper manner, they purposely distort the term in order to evoke thoughts of fear and insecurity.

Fascism?

So what defines a fascist society? Often times, fascism is subconsciously linked to the grainy black and white pictures of marauding Wermacht and SS troops from the 1940s. However, this shows a mental normalness which is incorrect. While Nazism did have fascist overtones, Nazism is not a form of government. Nazism is political ideology implemented through the use of a fascist government system. It is this system that needs to be understood and not the policy employed through it. This is vital since any form of government – yes, including a democracy – can be operated through a fascist structure. It is not exclusive to a dictatorship. As this article will show, you may be surprised by the results of the analysis.

Now, you reader, may argue that “who cares what the actual meaning of the word is, because it has taken on further societal overtones and inferences which society and it’s people now attribute to the word.” However, this does not do justice to the reality of the word or the reality of the world we live in today. You see, if we were to associate the word Fascist with Nazi, then we consciously set ourselves up to be oblivious to actual fascist tendencies which do not exhibit the racial or genocidal image that one has of Hitler’s master race. In order to analyze the events of the world today, we need a clear understanding of the true nature of Fascism, separate from its societal inferences. When this is done we see surprising results.

So what is fascism ? Lawrence Britt, writing in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2, summarizes fourteen common traits of a fascist society.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

4. Supremacy of the Military

5. Rampant Sexism

6. Controlled Mass Media

7. Obsession with National Security

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined

9. Corporate Power is Protected

10. Labor Power is Suppressed

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

14. Fraudulent Elections

I recommend a read of his article to gain a deeper understanding of each point. While I wholeheartedly agree with the above delineation of a society crippled by the thrones of fascist power, I differ in the analysis as to how a government becomes fascist. I would to key in on Britt’s point number “9. Corporate Power is Protected.”

Corpofascism?

My argument comes at the issue from a different point of view. Instead of considering the above as traits of fascism, I believe that in fact, the fascist structure of government is what enables these attributes to manifest themselves. That fascist structure of government begins with the co-option of corporate and government interests becoming one in the same. This is the primary transition in the nature and operation of the government apparatus. Corporate power is not so much as protected; it is one in the same as government power. Hence the government is an extension of the corporate powerbrokers in society. Let me elaborate.

It begins with the unfettered control of government by corporate and business interests which leads to the detriment of the well-being of the many for the benefit of the few. Once the corporate and money powers have co-opted government, they are then able to work with government officials – who may have their own self-interested motives and ideologies – to instill policy that meets Britt’s thirteen other points.

So, fascism begins to manifest itself at the point when corporate interests highjack the operations of the government. Yes, business and government have and always been intertwined, it would be naïve not to think so. Yet, while intertwined in history there was a degree of separation and distinction between the functioning of each body. Each worked separately but in mutual respect of the other and would lend a helping hand to the other party. They mutually serve to promote each other. When working within the appropriate checks and balances, this enables a capitalist society to prosper and grow. After all, this is not fascism but capitalism at its very definition. In order for a society and its people to continue to be free and prosper the government must let economies thrive. However, in order for a society and its people to be treated equally and with justice, the government is needed to legislate and regulate the capitalist system so that it does not ultimately devour itself through its own desire for continual wealth. This is the act of mutual balance that is needed in a strong and healthy capitalist system.

A fascist government is one which is terminally ill with an incurable cancer. In a fascist society this system of mutual balance has completely and utterly collapsed to the point where government is not functioning as the representative of the people, but the security guard for the corporate interests. So if “experts” can throw around the word “Islamofacism”, let me make up a term “Corpofascism.”

So what happens when corporate interests rein supreme? We get a government system that exhibits the following:

1. It is a system where business interests and motives are held supreme over the interests of the public – usually leading to detrimental impacts on the public good.

2. It is a system where government has compromised every ounce of its duty, in order to serve the interests of the power brokers and money men through the legislation of laws and policies which benefit the rich and the corporations over those of the society.

3. It is a system where members of the government and the business community are indistinguishable from each other. Thus leading to patronage and cronyism beyond the normal expectations of a government official.

4. It is a system dominated by think-tanks and lobbying groups that influence politicians to act in the benefit of the industries and businesses they represent.

5. It is a system where politicians are corrupted and compromised through significant political contributions by big business (both under and over the table).

6. It is a system where the military, government and business are indistinguishable from each other. Succinctly described by Eisenhower as the “military industrial complex”.

7. It is a system where no distinction can be made between the overall policies and stances taken by opposing political parties within the Corpofascist system. The approach may differ, but the end result is the same.

8. It is a system with a domineering drive to reduce the scope of public services and the continued drive to privatize essential societal needs – health, education, welfare, etc.

9. It is a system where the public is inundated with propagandized rhetoric in order to distract them from the important issues. This maintains resistance to a minimum and enables the corporate interests to be served unabated.

Once a government structure begins to exhibit the above characteristics, it is safe to say that the government is now simply a tool – a very powerful tool at that – to serve the interest of the corporate masters. The checks and balances that once existed to keep government from falling into such a state have effectively been overwhelmed and defeated. The system is effectively broken and replaced with a Corpofascist operating racket.

Once this has occurred the government is used by the business and corporate interests not to further the advancement or well-being of the people, but instead to further the profit making abilities of the corporation. Laws and regulations are passed which benefit business by the same people that only months or a few years ago were commanding figures in industry and business. These “public citizens” now passing legislation were once minions serving as officers or directors for large multinational corporations. Their allegiance does not lie with the commoner, but with the industrial elites to whom they once belonged or to whom they owe their election financing. These same individuals maintain close business relationships and once their terms in office are complete frequently return to serve with the same corporations that they did before office or that they generously assisted while in office. The entire system is structured as a self-perpetuating revolving door that continues to perpetuate the corporate benefactor.

Maintaining the System

But certainly you say that such a corrupt system would be noticeable to the good citizenry of any nation and that they would rise up and demand more of their political masters. They would protest, use the power of their vote and demand a change to the way things are. Oh really? Well, a cursory application of the traits of a Corpofascist society reveals that this isn’t the case. And the reason is because the public is effectively disengaged and distracted from the truth through an ingenious use of a variety of means. This is where I will bring into my analysis Britt’s remaining points.

The Corpofascist government and its handlers know all too well that their power is only derived by the ability to distract the citizenry from the true nature of the racket they are operating. Therefore they employ a number of tools that do just this. These aren’t haphazardly applied, but instead carefully crafted to achieve the results of the corporate state.

It begins with the creation of an enemy upon which to blame all of the country’s problems and to distract the unknowing public from the actual events that are occurring in the echelons of power. These are the scapegoats to blame for all the state’s problems. This enemy is all powerful, all evil and just about ready to strike at the innocent children of the citizenry.

This enemy must be confronted. Alas, a call to arms is made using nationalistic and patriotic overtones that would make even a Nazi giddy with joy. The call to defend the homeland, to snoop on your neighbours and to serve your country becomes the heralded and virtuous duty of the citizen. Such indoctrination can only be completed by the complicit corporately controlled mass media which spews half-truths and utter lies on the television in order to whip the masses into fervor. Those who say that the media is separate and free from the government, forget that the government is not free and separate from the same corporations that control and own the media outlets.

To confront the enemy usually includes two further traits of a fascist society:

1. the use of military power to attack, invade and “liberate” the threat.
2. a curb on the domestic freedoms and civil liberties of the governments domestic citizenry in order to contain and monitor dissent.

In its thirst for power and growth the Corpofascist state indulges in the patriotic use of the nations military to secure access to regions, resources and access points that are critical to the profiteering of the business. Innocents on both sides of the military adventure endure the wrath of war while the corporate masters sit back in their air-conditioned offices. Countries are invaded, innocent women and children of brown skin (usually – let’s be honest) are considered “collateral damage” while their husbands, fathers, brothers and uncles are labeled as “terrorists.” Soldiers of the invading force, believing in the nobility of their mission – as a result of the lies they have been fed by their military and corporate masters, are brought home in body bags or on stretchers with arms and legs missing. They and their families suffer the continued mental and physical scars of a war to which they see no purpose.

Human rights, foreign and domestic, are flaunted by the Corpofascist state. In order to denigrate the worth of the people they are bombing wild stories of incomprehensible evil are spun and attributed to the enemy. Extraordinary measures, renditions and torture are employed to fight the enemy all in the name of preserving security. The Corpofascist state citizen is confronted with a perception of a government that is there to protect and genuinely take care of its citizens. Nothing could be further from the truth, but the veil of benevolence must be cast to get the citizen to capitulate their moral and intellectual fiber to the Corpofascist state.

When the veneer of goodwill is removed and dissent within the society begins to stir, the domestic populace is subject to strategies of harm reduction. Dissenters are characterized as unpatriotic, terrorist sympathizers and the all too common anti-semitic. Domestic criticism is quelled and laws are passed by the society to clamp down on citizen protests. The domestic police force is increasingly militarized in order to scare and confront the citizenry. Instead of serving and protecting the people they serve and protect the interests of the elite and the business powers.

While overt action against dissenters is taken the mass populace is kept in a state of ignorance. The corporate media feed them dribble about insignificant events which would be better served to be written on toilet paper. Stories of non-events are pumped, exaggerated and continually reported on by “experts” and “respected” members of the media. Celebrity gossip dominates the airwaves as a way to distract the individual from their own lives and important events. This is just fine for the Corpofascists.

Political discourse and debate is drawn down to severe partisan lines, whereby perceived differences are introduced within the political parties, despite the fact that the overall goal – the advancement of the corporate interest – is still paramount. Issues of debate between the political parties in the respective house of government focus on “distracting issues.” While important issues in their own rights – abortion, gay-rights, women’s rights, minority rights, etc. – these bear no relation to the prevailing problem with the sick society. No mention is made or attention paid to the domineering influence of the corporation within all aspects of the society. Corporate interests at all levels are hidden, minimized or protected by the Corpofascists even though vital areas of the citizenry are impacted – food, water, health, education, civil rights, human rights, domestic policy, foreign policy, energy security, and on and on.

The facade of fair and free elections is propagandized to the public. The citizen is made to feel like their vote counts. Little do the people realize that the “nominees” and “contenders” within the electoral process have already been pre-selected by the Corpofascist masters – the business elite. Despite theres being nominal differences between political parties, the interests of the Corpofascist elite will continued to be served. Nevertheless, elections are still tampered with. Fraud, corruption, intimidation and other immoral methods are used move the elections in the way the masters want them to go.

And thus, the cycle maintains its continuance. More and further enemies – real and imagined, mainly imagined – are constructed, and the entire cycle perpetuates itself. This is the essence of living in a Corpofascist state. The perpetuation is not infinite as the weight of the corruption and demagoguery will eventually erode the system from within. It will be a classic case of the cancer killing the host and itself in the process. How long and how terrible the suffering of the people under the system is a matter of how much of a fight the beast puts as it is being destroyed.

So What?

Given the above analysis, one has to ask, does the term “Islamofascist” even make any sense. The simple answer is no.

The main reason is that by nature fascism is a form of government, not an incurrence of political ideology like Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, Arabism or Islamism. Therefore, a non-stateless entity is incapable of being fascist by the very nature that a system of government is lacking.

So are there governments in the world today which meet the criteria for a Corpofascist state? Yes, of course. To varying degrees there are numerous nations across the globe that meet the criteria. Is it unexpected? Not at all. Is it worrying? Yes. However, I propose an increasingly worrisome proposal. A certain nation, the richest and most powerful in the world, founded on the principles of freedom, liberty and justice has succumbed to the sweet nectar of Corpofascism.

A cursory look at the operations and characteristics of the United States Government reveals that the good ole US of A meets each and every one of the criteria mentioned above. The United States is a great nation in theory and on paper; the great experiment in liberty, freedom and democracy. And it still can be. However, in actuality the once proud banner of freedom and justice has been hijacked. The USA is a thriving example of a Corpofascist state. I will not go into presenting detailed facts in this narrative. That is not my objective. My objective was to highlight the traits of a Corpofascist state in order to engage the reader to follow up and apply the criteria for themselves.

Nonetheless, a look at the application of the Corpofascist criteria against readily available information – out there in the public domain – would lead even a fleeting reader in agreement. The only problem is that majority of the American people are not aware of this.

The solution is not too late. There is still time to change, but time is running out and a shift in the public consciousness and awareness is imperative. The first step is becoming aware of the issues and realizing the problem. It is important to realize that the problem is deeper and is more than solely the cause of one administration over another. It is a pervasive problem that has clung itself at the roots of government. Informed citizenry must come together to make people aware about the depths of corporate influence and corruption within the American government. Focus must be paid to the root case (corporate influence) and this issue must be confronted head-on through activism, information programs, and ‘spreading the gospel.’ Only then can real change be brought into the system.

The ultimate goal is not to reach a state of utopia. No government system is perfect, to believe so would be irrationally naïve. However, there is a point in time where the threshold between the checks and balances of a society can only be stretched so far. The line has been crossed, and now it is time for individuals to exercise their social conscious and fulfill their obligation as a citizen. And this matters not only for the American people. Being the only superpower and current imperialistic nation in the world, the functioning of the American government apparatus has far-reaching consequences on the livelihood and lives of all individuals that inhabit the planet. Most will say that the fate of the world depends on it.

As President Eisenhower stated in his farewell address, Jan. 17, 1961:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.

May I add guard against the unwarranted influence of any industrial or corporate complex. Only then can the American dream of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” be achieved.

12/14/07 “The Nation” — — Three senior members of the House Judiciary Committee have called for the immediate opening of impeachment hearings for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Democrats Robert Wexler of Florida, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on Friday distributed a statement, “A Case for Hearings,” that declares, “The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.”

In particular, the Judiciary Committee members cite the recent revelation by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan that the Vice President and his staff purposefully gave him false information about the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent as part of a White House campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson. On the basis of McClellan’s statements, Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin say, “it is even more important for Congress to investigate what may have been an intentional obstruction of justice.” The three House members argue that, “Congress should call Mr. McClellan to testify about what he described as being asked to ‘unknowingly [pass] along false information.’”

Adding to the sense of urgency, the members note that “recent revelations have shown that the Administration including Vice President Cheney may have again manipulated and exaggerated evidence about weapons of mass destruction — this time about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”

Although Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin are close to Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, getting the Michigan Democrat to open hearings on impeachment will not necessarily be easy. Though Conyers was a leader in suggesting during the last Congress that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney had committed impeachable offenses, he has been under immense pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, to keep Constitutional remedies for executive excesses “off the table” in this Congress.

It is notable, however, that Baldwin maintains warm relations with Pelosi and that Wexler, a veteran member of the Judiciary Committee has historically had an amiable and effective working relationship with Conyers. There is no question that Conyers, who voted to keep open the impeachment debate on November 7, has been looking for a way to explore the charges against Cheney. The move by three of his key allies on the committee may provide the chairman with the opening he seeks, although it is likely he will need to hear from more committee members before making any kind of break with Pelosi — or perhaps convincing her that holding hearings on Cheney’s high crimes and misdemeanors is different from putting a Bush impeachment move on the table.

The most important immediate development, however, is the assertion of an “ask” for supporters of impeachment. Pulled in many directions in recent months, campaigners for presidential and vice presidential accountability have focused their attention on supporting a House proposal by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nod, to impeach Cheney. When Kucinich forced consideration of his resolution on November 7, Pelosi and her allies used procedural moves to get it sent to the Judiciary Committee for consideration. Pelosi’s hope was that the proposal would disappear into the committee’s files.

The call for hearings by Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin puts impeachment on the table, at least as far as activists are concerned, creating a pressure point that can serve as a reply when House Democrats who are critical of Bush but cautious about impeachment ask: “What do you want me to do?” The answer can now be: “Back the call for Judiciary Committee hearings on whether to impeach Dick Cheney?”

“Some of us were in Congress during the impeachment hearings of President Clinton. We spent a year and a half listening to testimony about President Clinton’s personal relations. This must not be the model for impeachment inquires. A Democratic Congress can show that it takes its constitutional authority seriously and hold a sober investigation, which will stand in stark contrast to the kangaroo court convened by Republicans for President Clinton. In fact, the worst legacy of the Clinton impeachment – where the GOP pursued trumped up and insignificant allegations – would be that it discourages future Congresses from examining credible and significant allegations of a constitutional nature when they arise,” write Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin.

“The charges against Vice President Cheney are not personal,” the House members add. “They go to the core of the actions of this Administration, and deserve consideration in a way the Clinton scandal never did. The American people understand this, and a majority support hearings according to a November 13 poll by the American Research Group. In fact, 70 percent of voters say that Vice President Cheney has abused his powers and 43 percent say that he should be removed from office right now. The American people understand the magnitude of what has been done and what is at stake if we fail to act. It is time for Congress to catch up.”

Arguing that hearings need not distract Congress, Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin note that the focus is on Cheney for a reason: “These hearings involve the possible impeachment of the Vice President — not our commander in chief — and the resulting impact on the nation’s business and attention would be significantly less than the Clinton Presidential impeachment hearings.”

They also argue, correctly, that the hearings are necessary if Congress is to restore its position in the Constitutionally-defined system of checks and balances.