Does America Put Israel's Interests Above Its Own?

The Christian Science Monitor and others have called attention to a new study by two professors arguing that due to the influence of the Israeli lobby in the United States, America puts Israel's interests ahead of its own.

This encourages me to think that I'm not paranoid and not anti-Semitic. There really is something to worry about. This comes on the heels of the criminal investigation of spying activities by AIPAC. The AIPAC scandal involves Iran, and it's well known that Israel wants the US to be tough on Iran.

For the record, here is the full text of the article on the Harvard web site.

What will Sen. Saxby Chambliss Do to Tammy Duckworth?

I have still not recovered from what Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss did to former Democratic Senator Max Cleland. Chambliss called Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam veteran, soft on defense because he opposed certain portions of the homeland defense bill (which has turned out to be a mess).

Tammy Duckworth, who is running for a House seat as a Democrat in Illinois, is a double amputee, wounded in Iraq, just the sort of person Chambliss hates. I don't know why Georgians would elect a Senator who hates people wounded while fighting for America, but Chambliss fits the bill. I don't know why Republicans would give him, a man who despises military veterans, a position having anything to do with defense, but they made him a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a sign of why things are going so badly in Iraq.

There is no mention in Chambliss' Senate biography that he ever served in the military, although he was the right age to have been drafted at the peak of the Vietnam war, graduating from college in 1966 and completing law school in 1968. I graduated from college in 1967 and was drafted after my first year of law school (at the University of Georgia) in 1968. How did Chambliss avoid the same fate?

I hope Tammy Duckworth gets elected and one day kicks Chambliss in the rear end with one of her prosthetic feet. She is probably too nice to do that, but Chambliss deserves it for what he did to Cleland.

What about the Ships?

Everybody in Congress is happy because Dubai has ceased trying to manage US ports, as reported by the Washington Post, for example.

But what about the ships that dock in the US ports, now to be managed by an American entity? Most of the ships plying the oceans fly flags of convenience. They are registered in foreign countries and thus are under the jurisdiction of some of the world's most unreliable countries, Liberia, for example. They do this to escape the regulation of more advanced, civilized countries.

So what's the point of making sure the managers of American ports are American, when almost all of the ships are foreign, and are regulated by some of the most lenient, undiscriminating countries in the world? They are flagged in these countries, because of more lenient regulation, just as most large American companies incorporate in Delaware, because it is more "friendly."

The bottom line is that the Dubai/P&O port management fiasco, is just that. The US will be no safer, because Congress is not really serious about making ports safer, by for example, inspecting more containers arriving on these unregulated, foreign flagged ships.

Brazil Ready to Start Uranium Enrichment

The Mercury News reports a Knight Ridder story that Brazil is about to start up its own uranium enrichment plant, probably putting it ahead of Iran in this technology. Having spent two years, twenty years ago, trying to discourage Brazil from doing this, I am somewhat disappointed. The good news is that Brazil, unlike Iran, is cooperating closely with the IAEA. Then, there are the lessons we could learn from Brazil's nuclear program.

For me, it's that you have to be a reliable supplier and work closely with countries that have nuclear reactors. I've described it earlier, but Brazil had no intention of developing the full nuclear fuel cycle when it purchased its first nuclear reactor from Westinghouse in the US in the 1970s, mainly as a hedge against the oil shortages gripping the world then. Just as the reactor was about to go on line, the US refused to sell fuel for it, as the Arabs were refusing to sell oil then. Senator John Glenn passed a law requiring "full scope safeguards" (equivalent to NPT membership) on all nuclear activities in a country before the US could sell nuclear fuel to it. Brazil said this was changing the terms of the agreement after the agreement had already been concluded and after Brazil had spent about a billion dollars on its reactor. Brazil got so mad that it has spent the last 30 years developing a fuel cycle, so that its nuclear reactor supplied power will not be subject to the whims of the US and its allies.

Beating people (like Iran and North Korea) about the head and shoulders is likely to be counterproductive, as it was in Brazil, unless we are willing to back up our demands with military force, as we did in Iraq. The poor planning and execution in Iraq, however, may have taught protential proliferators a lesson that to counter US pressure you need to develop a bomb. This may be the lesson of Bush's current trip to India, which seems to have gotten a "get out of jail free" card from Bush after developing nuclear weapons. See this briefing on how Clinton viewed the Glenn amendment for his trip to India.

Another project that Brazil started during the 1970s oil crisis, developing ethanol automobile fuel from sugar cane, has also been successful, putting Brazil far ahead of the US in this technology, which Bush just recently indentified as important (30 years after Brazil).

Bush Is Right on Ports

It's unusual, but I agree with President Bush and David Brooks on approving the sale to the U.A.E. of the P&O company that manages several American ports. Port security is the responsibility of the US government, not the company that runs the ports. Of course, the government has done almost nothing to increase port security, but that's not the U.A.E.'s fault.

In addition, about 20 years ago at the American Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil, I worked with the woman who chairs Treasury's CFIUS committee that approved the sale, Gay Sills. (At that time, while she was married to Bill Hoar, her name was Gay Hoar, a tough moniker, which she carried with aplomb.) I have confidence in her, and think that she would have vetted the sale thoroughly. Of course, she may have based the committee's approval on certain, existing criteria which were met, and the Congress may add extra criteria now. But those new criteria will probably be based on some xenophobic, anti-Arab, racist standard, rather than on an analysis of true security threats, which will be bad for our image in the Middle East, as David Brooks points out.

Bushies Love Torture

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Navy's general counsel warned against allowing torture. There are responsible voices crying in the wilderness. Good for him!

The draft-dodging Bushies don't understand that refraining from torturing detainees is a protection for American troops. The deal used to be, "If you don't torture my troops, I won't torture your troops." But Bush says he doesn't care if American troops get tortured. He says, "Bring it on. Out troops can take all the torture you can dish out. Cheney and I, of course, won't expose ourselves to the risk of torture, but our mercenaries can take it for us."

More on Politicization of State Department

The Washington Post reports further on the politicization of the State Department's nonproliferation activities. Every administration pushes its own political people into the State Department, but not often into mid-level policy positions dealing with life and death issues. Usually the senior people rely on career staff to at least present them with a range of options, from which they can choose the options in keeping with that administration's policies. But the Bushies are replacing the mid-level staff, which means that they only get options already scrubbed to reflect only the administration's viewpoint. When the future of the world is at stake, this is not a good idea.

It shows that while Condi Rice has been getting favorable reviews from the liberal press as an enlightened leader of the State Department, she is continuing many of the close-minded, right-wing policies she oversaw at the White House.

Split on Bush Presidency to Last 1,000 Years?

Gibbon's discussion of the divisions among historians about the legacy of Constantine makes you wonder whether the current divisions over Bush's legacy will also endure a thousand years. In the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 18), Gibbon says:

The character of the prince [Constantine] who removed the seat of empire, and introduced such important changes into the civil and religious constitution of his country, has fixed the attention, and divided the opinions of mankind. By the grateful zeal of the Christians the deliverer of the church has been decorated with every attribute of a hero, and even of a saint; while the discontent of the vanquished party has compared Constantine to the most abhorred of those tyrants who, by their vice and weakness, dishonoured the Imperial purple. The same passions have, in some degree, been perpetuated to succeeding generations, and the character of Constantine is considered, even in the present age, as an object of satire or of panegyric.

So both Constantine and Bush are viewed positively by Christians. In Bush's case, make that by evangelical or fundamentalist Christians. Gibbon ends this chapter on the successors to Constantine with the following passage:

The most innocent subjects of the West were exposed to exile and confiscation, to death and torture; and as the timid are always cruel, the mind of Constantius was inaccessible to mercy.

This passage sums up what I think is wrong with the Bush administration: "the timid are always cruel." We have torture, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib because the Bushies are cowards. Bush and Cheney both avoided service in Vietnam -- Bush by hiding out in the National Guard. Then, he had the effrontery to call up the National Guard -- his hidey-hole -- to bear much of the fighting in Iraq. As President and Vice President, when the US was attacked on 9/11, Bush disappeared into Louisiana and Nebraska on Air Force One, while Cheney disappeared into the bowels of the earth in his famous undisclosed location. A courageous man would have immediately appeared on national television to assure the national that he was in charge, would repel the invaders, and would care for the victims. Bush did this about three days later, when he was sure it was safe to come out. But he and Cheney are still afraid, hence their resort to torture, and their refusal to comply with international or domestic law where they fear physical threats, such as their illegal use of NSA to intercept domestic calls.

Gibbon on Use of Torture in the Roman Empire

Gibbon relates in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire how the use of torture increased as Roman liberty decreased. Some other parallels to today's United States are noted in my Colorado Confederate blog. About torture in the time of Constantine (Chapter 17), Gibbon says:

The annals of tyranny, from the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian, circumstantially relate the executions of many innocent victims; but, as long as the faintest remembrance was kept alive of the national freedom and honour, the last hours of a Roman were secure from the danger of ignominious torture. The conduct of the provincial magistrates was not, however, regulated by the practice of the city, or the strict maxims of the civilians.... The acquiescence of the provincials [in Guantanamo?] encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinctions of rank, and to disregard the privileges of Roman citizens.... But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason [terror], which included every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from an hostile intention towards the prince or republic, all privileges were suspended, and all conditions were reduced to the same ignominious level.

Afghanistan Heads South

An Economist magazine editorial laments the fact that the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating. With all the concern about Iraq, and the general consensus that the war in Afghanistan was much more justified than the war in Iraq, the news that Afghanistan is following Iraq down the tubes is discouraging.

Bad Intelligence on Iraq

It has become so accepted that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence to get us into war in Iraq that one forgets how reprehensible it was. Thousands of people have died because of this decision: 2,000 plus American soldiers, but untold (because the administration won't tell) numbers of Iraqi military and civilians, as well -- probably in the high tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

A new article in Foreign Affairs documents the Administration's misuse of intelligence. One must ask, however, if the author was the NIO for the Middle East, why did he stay in his job? Since he did stay in his job during the period when intelligence was being misused, he undercuts his integrity to protest today. That doesn't mean that the facts he reports should be ignored.

The LA Times reports on a new British book that similarly claims that the US and Britain doubted the strength of the information with which they justified their invasion of Iraq.

While there may be some legal questions about whether Bush violated any law, particularly since any relevant law would probably have been international and not domestic, this purposeful misleading of the American people seems like it should be an impeachable offense.

The Foreign Affairs summary of its article is as follows:

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

State Dept Dumps Career Weapons Experts

Knight Ridder reports that the State Department is dumping or passing over career Foreign Service and Civil Service weapons experts to hire or promote outsiders who are loyal to the Bush Administration. It appears that at least some of the problems are left over from (now UN Ambassador) John Bolton's reign over arms control policy at State. One of Condi Rice's best moves was to get him out of the State building, but apparently he left some problems behind for a "realist" foreign policy.

Actually, such personnel shake-ups are not unusual. I left the Foreign Service partly because Clinton and Gore wanted to shrink the government payroll any way they could, and pressured people like me, working on non-proliferation issues, to leave. (Remember those good old days when the President actually worried about how much money the government was spending.) Another reason I left was that the Republicans in Congress were blocking US implementation of its nuclear agreement with North Korea through KEDO. My job as the senior diplomatic working on scientific issues at the American Embassy in Rome turned out to require a lot of time begging Italy and other European countries to donate money to makeup for American shortfalls in funding KEDO because Republicans in Congress didn't like it. I thought the US should live up to its treaty obligations.

Also, the personnel issues are not unusual. When I worked for then-Assistant Secretary Richard Clarke (of 9/11 fame) in State's old Politico-Military bureau during the Bush I administration, I got promoted while I was assigned there, based on my performance in my previous job in Brasilia, Brazil. Clarke did not want me to have a supervisory position in his bureau, although my new rank required it. To Clarke's credit, his opposition was not political. He wanted someone who was a more aggressive bureaucratic infighter than I was. Nevertheless, he finally agreed (grudgingly) to allow me to hold a supervisory position on missile proliferation matters.

Data Mining after NSA Phone Surveillance?

This Christian Science Monitor story on data mining outlines the latest threat to individual privacy from the government, following the furor over NSA's monitoring of telephone calls. Of course, this is only what the government is doing. Corporations are already deep into data mining, mainly to figure out what we like and how to sell us stuff, but it could get more nefarious.

No War on Terror

A war means millions of people in uniform from one country fighting millions of others in uniform from another country. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were carried out by about 20 people, and even if one counts all the people trained with them in Afghanistan under Osama bin Laden, there are only a few thousand more. There are, of course, wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US invaded with thousands of uniformed troops, and where troops in uniform continue to fight.

Although the attack on the WTC and Pentagon was not the beginning of a war on terror, the Bush administration used it as a basis for starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cynically, they decided that going to war was the way to get re-elected, that the American people would not throw out a president who was leading a war. But it wasn’t a war. 9/11 was a terrorist attack by a handful of people from various countries that was wildly successful beyond their expectations. The lack of attacks on the US is not due to great defense by the Bush administration but rather to the lack of military force on the enemy’s side. Bush showed his true colors by failing to prevent the 9/11 attack not by “preventing” subsequent attacks, which would likely not have occurred in any case.

The American invasion of Iraq was not to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction or to bring democracy to Iraq, but rather to get George W. Bush re-elected. If he had not invaded Iraq, he would not have had much of a “war” on terrorism. Iraq made it a real war, not a fake war, albeit not a war on terrorism.

Where Is Yasser Arafat When You Need Him?

Everyone claims to be surprised by Hamas’ victory in Palestine. What happened? One thing is that Yasser Arafat is gone from the scene. If Yasser Arafat had still been around he may well have been able to orchestrate the politics to produce a Fatah victory. Arafat was a cagy political operator, both on the international and domestic stages. The Israelis couldn’t wait to get rid of Arafat, but it may be another case of be careful what you wish for. Is Israel going to be happier with the Palestinians under the rule of Hamas rather than Arafat?

All indications are that Mahmoud Abbas was selected by the US and Israel to succeed Arafat, because he was a moderate who allowed himself to be influenced by Washington and Tel Aviv (or Jerusalem). But that was certainly part of Fatah's problem; Abbas' appeal to the US and Israel was anathema to Palestinians. So now, what will his relationship be with Hamas? Nobody seems to know. It seems likely that things will get worse before they get better, in part at least because of Sharon’s departure from the scene, in part because of the way Washington and Israel have played their hands. The Europeans, who have been more balanced between Israel and the Palestinians, may be able to play a more constructive role now that American Middle Eastern policy has failed.

Israel, of course, is one of the main problems in dealing with the Iranian nuclear problem. Israel's nuclear arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons is a driving force behind Iran's (and earlier, Pakistan's) desire for its own nukes. If things continue to deteriorate, maybe Israel will finally get to use some of them. The good news is that Israel will not use its nukes without strong provocation, because it sees them as the ace in the hole to protect the entire Jewish race if it is ever again threatened by something like the Holocaust. The question is: how closely does Israel see its future linked to the future of the entire Jewish race?

Letter to Congressmen and Senators

I have not written to you for some time. As the year comes to an end, I am writing to tell you some of my concerns, lest you think everything is okay with this constituent.

My main concerns are:
1. Torture carried out by the US Government,
2. Poor progress of the Iraq War,
3. US failure to honor the rule of law,
4. Government corruption,
5. Immigration mess, and
6. Failure to follow up Hurricane Katrina.

Torture. There seems to be little doubt from reliable press reports that the US has used torture in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I express my concerns about torture as a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army artillery on the DMZ, an attorney who is a member of the Alabama bar, and a retired Foreign Service officer who spent over 20 years with the U.S. Department of State. In Vietnam, one of our worries was that we would be captured by the “barbaric” North Vietnamese or Viet Cong and tortured. If you are properly trained as a soldier to hate the enemy, there is always the temptation to torture or mistreat a prisoner you take, but on the other hand, if you are properly trained, you will resist this temptation and uphold what used to be the high standards of the West in general and the United States in particular. As a junior Foreign Service officer, one of my jobs was to look after Americans who were arrested in Brazil, where prisoners were often mistreated. It was my impression (based on an unscientific sampling of what I saw and heard) that those who carried out this mistreatment, which often fell short of real “torture,” were not normal people. They were often sexual deviates, among other things, who delighted in the pain of others. I cannot understand why the US has not reacted in horror at torture by Americans, whether military or CIA. Incidentally, as a Foreign Service officer, I worked regularly with CIA officers, including from the operations side in Washington and overseas, and I do not think they would use torture. I think the CIA people who used torture were probably some kind of paramilitary types, who are a small minority of all CIA employees. The press reports that the Bush Administration, particularly Vice President Cheney, supports the use of torture. I hope that the Congress will assert its authority and force the Government — the military, the CIA, and anybody else — to stop using torture against anyone in US custody. We should also stop “rendition” of prisoners to other countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe, where they may be tortured by the foreign police or military. Prisoners captured by the US should be treated humanely, no matter what the circumstances were under which they were captured. We cannot let Saddam Hussein be the model for our democracy.

Iraq War. I am very concerned that the Iraq War will end up creating more serious problems in the Middle East than it solves. Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but now it has become a breeding ground for terrorists. It may degenerate into civil war, with the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds fighting one another. Iraq could become a giant, black hole of violence that will roil the Middle East for decades to come. Outside of the usual suspects, the Kurds are seen as a threat by Turkey, because of their desire for a greater Kurdistan, which would include part of Turkey, as well as part of Iraq. Although Turkey is a relatively moderate Muslim state, the disintegration of Iraq may radicalize Turkey and draw it into the already volatile mix. Furthermore, the US occupation of Iraq has made the US a focal point of Arab and Muslim hatred. Finally, I am concerned that the main beneficiary of our war there will be Iran, because we have facilitated the ascendancy of the Shiites in Iraq, who have a natural alliance with Iran, which is the only other predominately Shiite country in the world. Iran, of course, is working on an atomic bomb, which we are powerless to stop, because we destroyed our credibility on non-proliferation by being dead wrong about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, and because we are so tied down in Iraq, we have no remaining forces even to make a credible military threat against Iran (not to mention North Korea). In addition, I am disappointed that the Iraq War prevented us from killing or capturing Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the 9/11 attacks. I am concerned that we entered the ill-advised Iraq War because of pressure from Jews, who may have been more concerned about the welfare of Israel than about the US. Many of the neo-conservatives who argued for the war were Jews — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and William Kristol, just to name a few. In light of the Abramoff and AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee) scandals, I am concerned that American politicians are sending Christian soldiers to die in Iraq in return for Jewish money. In the old days, Jews were mostly Democrats, but both of these scandals involve Jews who were trying to influence this Republican Administration and Republicans in Congress (and succeeding). I realize that this is a politically incorrect accusation, but one of the concerns underlying all of the issues I raise in this letter is the American abandonment of the New Testament of the Bible. The Old (Jewish) Testament said “an eye for an eye,” (torture?), but the New (Christian) Testament said, “Love your enemies.” Christians should certainly be tolerant of Jews, but Christians should also live up to their own moral standards. By waging what is a particularly Jewish war in Iraq, we are losing sight of those standards. I have not seen the new Spielberg movie, “Munich,” but I am concerned that it is propaganda supporting the Old Testament, Jewish response to terrorism. I am also disappointed that the US Government does not trust its American troops in Iraq. Most senior officials are protected by private contractors, such as Blackwater or Triple Canopy, not by soldiers or marines. More and more the war is being fought by these private contractors, who may earn ten times what their counterparts in the military make. Many are not Americans. Giving so much money and prestige to these non-military fighters dishonors the troops who are fighting for our country and flag, not just for money.

Rule of Law. US failure to adhere to the rule of law is related to the torture issue, but much broader. For me it began with the US abrogation of the Kyoto Treaty and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. I was particularly upset by the American failure to adhere to the Vienna Convention, which deals with consular access to prisoners arrested in a foreign country, because as a vice consul, I personally used the Vienna Convention to protect Americans arrested in Brazil. As a veteran, I was also dismayed by the US failure to adhere to the Geneva Convention. We will have no basis to protest if American soldiers are captured and tortured by their enemies. (According to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Hitler “considered denouncing the Geneva Convention in order… ‘to make the enemy realize that we are determined to fight for our existence with all the means at our disposal.’ …When some of the officers present raised legal objections Hitler retorted angrily: ‘To hell with that!’” (Page 1100). Hitler apparently did not follow through on his threat.) I thought early in the Bush Administration that these actions indicated only contempt for international law, but as time has passed, the Bush Administration has shown contempt for domestic law as well, up to and including the Constitution and the judicial branch of government in general. If the Bush Administration had been interested in law, it would have negotiated some kind of exit from Kyoto and the ABM Treaty, but it just said, like Hitler, “To hell with that.” Now we find that the Administration created a prison in Cuba to try to escape American law, that it engages in “extraordinary rendition” to evade American legal protection for prisoners, and that it even does weird things with prisoners arrested in the US. The US courts have slapped the Administration’s hand for its handling of Jose Padilla. It remains to be seen what action the Supreme Court will take, if any. Recently revelations about National Security Agency spying on private American citizens have been published. The Administration’s denial of habeas corpus (a right granted in the Constitution, Article I, section 9) for Padilla and possibly others, and its violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures by wiretapping without a court warrant are certainly serious concerns to law-abiding Americans. It may warrant impeachment proceedings. An editorial in the financial newspaper Barron’s for December 26 stated, “Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later.”

Corruption. Jack Abramoff, Congressman Tom DeLay, Congressman Duke Cunningham, White House aide David Safavian, Congressman Bob Ney, and the list of possibly corrupt politicians and lobbyists goes on. AIPAC, which is supposed to be a lobby for Israel, was found to be spying against the US for Israel. Outside government, we find a number of CEO’s in trouble with the law, from Joe Nacchio of Qwest here in Colorado, to Ken Lay of Enron, and even to business icon Jack Welch, who according to the December 26 issue of Barron’s, cooked the books at GE to the tune of about $6 billion to make his reign as CEO look better. I believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg, mainly those who got caught because they were too greedy. I am particularly outraged at Halliburton and Vice President Cheney, who personally benefits financially from Halliburton’s profits, for their war profiteering in Iraq. Halliburton has not performed well, but has raked in millions, perhaps billions, from unsupervised contracts with the US government. Others, who were perhaps a little less greedy, have stayed below the radar and gotten away with billions. I was particularly irked that the US Chamber of Commerce came out in favor of illegal immigration, no doubt because their constituents, the major businesses of America, benefit from this illegal traffic. I think it is odd that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has not gotten more criticism for employing an illegal alien, working for him at the Cherry Cricket restaurant in Denver, who killed an off-duty cop. Apparently businessmen think that violating laws regarding immigration is not really breaking the law. I think it is. If you don’t like the law, change it, don’t violate it.

Immigration. As I noted above in connection with corruption, immigration is a big mess. I think this country needs a policy and needs to adhere to it. I don’t favor amnesty. If we want to have a guest worker program, it should start prospectively. We should not reward people who have come to the US illegally for committing an illegal act. This is one point on which I disagree with Senator John McCain, whom I respect for standing up on many other issues that agree with him on, from torture to funding political campaigns. More generally, I don’t believe that the Department of Homeland Security is up to any of its jobs. It failed in New Orleans after Katrina; it’s failing to control immigration, and it would certainly fail to protect the homeland from another attack. Somebody needs to do something to whip the Department into shape, although I think it is probably impossible. It’s too big; its various activities — from the Coast Guard to the Secret Service, from border patrol to FEMA — are too diverse to produce any synergy.

Katrina. The failure to help New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina epitomizes many of the failures listed above. On the Jewish issue, many families in New York who suffered losses in 9/11 received millions of dollars from the federal government. Osama bin Laden probably attacked the World Trade Center because the New York financial district contains one of the highest concentrations of Jews of any place in the world outside of Israel. A number of Jews working in the financial district were killed, and their families and politically connected friends demanded huge sums in reparations. They got it through their enormous power on Capitol Hill. Payments to New Yorkers from the reparations fund run by Kenneth Feinberg came to about $7 billion, separate from money for reconstruction. If New Orleans had had as many Jewish residents as New York City, it would have been buried in federal money before the rain stopped falling. In addition on the corruption side, then-Senator Tom Daschle’s wife was a lobbyist for American Airlines, one of the companies that could have been sued by victims of the 9/11 attacks. Thus, he shepherded the bill through Congress which made the federal government responsible for paying victims, rather than American Airlines or its insurers. The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are just plain old Americans, and the federal government could care less about them. They were treated like the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, who were also just ordinary citizens, like me.

It looks like the government only does what lobbyists and campaign donors pay it to do. I hope that you will consider changing that.

Why is Jordan's Government Better Than America's

Reuters reports that several Jordanian officials including Jordan's national security adviser (Condi Rice's counterpart) resigned over the three hotel bombings there. Fifty some odd people were killed in Jordan, versus about 3,000 in 9/11. Why did no American take responsibility for failure in 9/11. In retrospect, it has become clear that George Tenet pretty much destroyed the CIA while he was director. The CIA is now a broken shell of its old (pre-9/11, pre-Iraq War) self. What a failure of leadership! First, Tenet's failure. Then George Bush's failure for not firing him right after 9/11. Did Bush offer to let him stay on if Tenet promised to provide the intelligence support for a war in Iraq? They're all worthless liars; I wouldn't put it past them. Poor America!

Condi Rice, of course, was in charge of national security, but took no responsibility, nor did Don Rumsfeld, who could have sent some Air Force fighters to take out the airliners before they hit the WTC and the Pentagon, thus saving thousands of lives, if he had been doing his job.

Jordan's King Abdullah makes Bush, who hid in Louisiana or Nebraska after the 9/11 attacks, look like a helpless crybaby. And his young, beautiful Queen Rania makes Laura look like an inarticulate, fuddy-duddy old housewife. But of course Laura, who seems to be an honest, intelligent, decent woman, comes off much better in comparison to Queen Rania than stupid, old, dishonest George does in comparison to Abdullah.

Problem with Iraq War Was 9/11

Bush's attempt to save his reputation by saying that most Democrats agreed with his decision to go to war is misguided. It's true that many Democrats voted to allow Bush to go to war in Iraq, but they did so because the 9/11 attacks were still fresh in everyone's mind. The Republicans cynically linked Iraq to 9/11, partly by timing and partly by public arguments, implying a link, made by Bush, Cheney and company. Democrats knew that if they voted against taking out Saddam that they would be seen as insensitive to the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Egged on by the neo-cons, the Bushies struck while 9/11 was still hot, still in everyone's consciousness.

To me, all the debate about the intelligence is largely irrelevant. I'm glad the Democrats are finally doing something. But the issue is not the intelligence. The issue is using 9/11 to go to war with a country that had little or nothing to do with 9/11. The neo-cons wanted to get Saddam. Cheney has probably wanted to get Saddam ever since he was Secretary of Defense during the first Iraq war, when Bush I stopped him from marching to Baghdad and taking out Saddam. We now see how smart Bush I was compared with Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company. Bush I was a patriot. Bush II and his cronies are just sucking money out of the US Government as fast as they can. In gratitude for his largess with the people's money, Bush II's rich friends will no doubt look after him financially for the rest of his life. It's ironic that the Republicans argue to reduce taxes "because it's your money," but when they get it, they don't treat it as yours; they give it to their rich friends, who pay proportionately little in taxes.

Torture Debases the US

The continuing reports that the US is mistreating prisoners undermines what the United States should be standing for. The most recent report in the Washington Post that the CIA has secret detention centers in Eastern Europe and other places adds a particularly distasteful piece to the puzzle. This administration's disregard for the US Constitution is disgraceful, and is a bad omen for the future of this country. We already know of its contempt for international law. Contempt for international law is bad, but contempt for the US Constitution is worse. Perhaps this contempt was illustrated by Bush's attempt to name Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. She wasn't a bad person, but she knew nothing about the Constitution, and Bush didn't care that she didn't.

However, you don't need the Constitution to know that torture is wrong. Torture is an affront to human decency. We have advanced as a civilization from the days when the church tortured "infidels" in the Inquisition, in the name of Christ, etc. Now we seem to be back there again. Is it an accident that Bush's two appointees to the Supreme Court have been Catholics, the church that ran the Inquisition?

My opinion is that Bush and Cheney, and all the politicians who fail to speak out against torture are failed human beings. They are trash -- black and white (Rice and Bush). They are vile, filthy, inhuman scum. They make me ashamed to be an American. How can so-called "Christians" support them? I expect Colorado Springs to be swallowed up by fire and brimstone any minute.

It's not that these impulses to torture are unusual. Today we have many child molesters, and various, other types of perverts in our society, but we try to keep them under control. In World War II, we had the German Holocaust, the Japanese Bataan death march, and the Japanese atrocities committed in China. We had My Lai in Vietnam. In any war troops who are encouraged to kill the enemy will develop a hatred for the enemy that will lead to atrocities, if not controlled by better men at higher levels. There are always atrocities committed in wars. But that's why we have the Geneva Convention, and the other international laws to prevent torture and other atrocities. Men agree on them in more peaceful times when heads are cooler, and then should adhere to them when passions are hot. But Bush and company rejected them after 9/11. Bush used Saddam Hussein has his role model.

This is awful. Cooler headed, more moral leaders of our society need to rise up against Bush and Cheney and make them change their policies on torture. John McCain and Jimmy Carter have recently done so. More power to them!

Where is the so-called "Christian right" when there is a truly Christian issue to be handled? They are missing in action, demonstrating how little they understand the Bible. A pox on their houses!

Did Libby/Cheney Hate the CIA or Joe Wilson More?

Did Scooter Libby get himself indicted because he hated Joe Wilson so much? I don't think so. It's more likely that Libby hated the CIA that much, and that he saw Joe Wilson as the CIA's representative or front man in a battle between the CIA and the White House. I first heard this idea from Mort Zuckerman on the McLaughlin Group, and then found it in an op-ed by David Ignatius in the Washington Post.

Although Joe Wilson was an ambassador to an African country, he was not one of the top tier of career Foreign Service officers. He was more or less equivalent to a midlevel general in the military, most of whom are never heard from again after they retire. He seems to have some political connections, but again, not of the highest level. He did not have the personal clout to threaten the White House. He wrote an op-ed attacking the White House's WMD justification for the Iraq War, but a lot of other people -- academics, think tank staffers, other retired government officials -- wrote articles attacking various aspects of the Iraq War, presumably without attracting the vicious attacks from Libby, Rove and Cheney that Wilson did.

Therefore, it makes sense to me that the White House saw the CIA as undercutting the White House rationale for the war and thus as a major bureaucratic enemy in Washington. When the White House staff found out that Wilson was married to a CIA agent, they assumed the worst: that he had been put up to his attack on the White House by the CIA. Thus, as a representative of the CIA he came under the kind of attack usually reserved for major Washington players, which he personally was not.